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 this morning
come from the Gospel according to Matthew chapter
28, starting with verse 16.
But the eleven disciples proceeded to Galilee, to
the mountain which Jesus had designated.
And when they saw him, they worshipped him.
But some were doubtful.
And Jesus came up and spoke to them,
saying, All authority has been given to me
in heaven and on earth.
Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the
nations, baptizing them in the name of the
Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,
teaching them to observe all that I commanded
you.
And, lo, I am with you always, even
to the end of the age.
Lord, that promise includes this message and this
moment in this service.
Authority belongs to you now over this service,
and you'll be with me as I try
to unfold this truth from your word.
And I cherish those two promises.
If I had to lean on my own
authority or if I had to wonder if
you were here to help me, I would
despair.
But you have spoken.
All authority is yours and I'll be with
you to the end of these services, the
end of this day and the end of
this age and forever.
It's a very precious thing to me, as
it is to hundreds of people in this
room, to know that the Christ who is
alive will be with us.
So now come and make yourself known.
That's what I asked for at the beginning.
It's what I asked for again, that you,
Jesus Christ, would be known for who you
really are, because when you're known for who
you really are, we believe you.
It's only distortions that drive us away.
It's only the clouds of sin and unbelief
that keep us from seeing you.
So come, please, and reveal yourself now, power.
In your name, I pray.
Amen.
Now, if these two or three things that
Sam just read are true, if they're real,
that Jesus is alive, that he has all
authority in heaven and on earth, all authority,
and if he is with us to the
end of the age, then the most important
thing in this room right now for every
person is believing him and following him as
Lord.
I just can't think of anything that would
surpass the importance and the need and the
cruciality of knowing this Christ, believing in him
and following him.
If this is true, it's a big if,
I know, but think on it.
Just think of the implications of that statement,
all authority is mine.
He is risen now from the dead, triumphant
over death, to an indestructible life, and he
says all authority in heaven and all authority
on the earth belongs to me, all authority
over politics and government, over armies and military
might, all authority over industry and business, NASDAQ
and the Dow Jones, all authority over science
and education, all research and discovery and universities
and colleges and high schools and grade schools,
all authority over entertainment and media, TV and
radio and magazines and newspapers and internet and
theater and art, all authority over sports and
leisure, over wolves and blazers and every other
possible playoff game that will be played 10
,000 times in the next eight weeks, and
all authority over natural phenomena like weather and
floods and volcanoes and tornadoes and earthquakes and
hurricanes and warming globally and ozone layers and
all authority over planets and moons and stars
and light and energy and motion and time
and all authority over our lives, our diseases,
our health, our success, our failures, our death,
he just takes your breath away, that all
authority belongs to this Jesus, and if that's
true and if he comes to you alive
with that authority this morning and says, as
he does in verse 20, I will be
with you to the end of the age,
when you put those two things together, all
authority is his, I'll be with you, it
doesn't get any better, nothing could be more
important in this room right now than for
you and me to believe that and follow
this Lord.
And so I'm praying, oh Lord, through my
words, through this orchestra, through the choir, through
the prayers, through the word read, through the
worship, stand forth and make yourself known for
who you really are, just be known, not
for what I want to make you or
what anybody else thinks you are, but for
who you really are, that's what I'm praying,
because I think if you saw him for
who he is, you would marvel and believe.
I've tried, I've tried this week to think
of a greater event in history than the
resurrection of Jesus from the dead like this,
and I can't think of one except maybe
one, namely what happened three days earlier when
he died, that might be greater, the death
of Jesus, the crucifixion of Jesus might be
greater than the resurrection of Jesus, I don't
know which is the greatest, and I'm glad
that I don't have to choose, because if
I had to choose, they would not be
valid, the death without the resurrection wouldn't mean
anything, the resurrection, had he not died, would
be impossible, can't raise a non-dead person,
and therefore both of them come together as
a glorious moment in human history, and those
are the two events that I want to
linger over with you this morning.
I want to just say a few words
about the crucifixion, and I want to say
a few words about the resurrection, so that
you will see him in his dying, and
see him in his rising, and know who
he really is, and then, God willing, by
his spirit, you'll feel your heart drawn out
to him, and embrace him as your own
Lord and Savior.
So here we are in Matthew 28, and
I'm going to back up earlier than where
Sam started reading, Mary Magdalene and the other
women are there, blessed their hearts in courage
and love to be there, risky though it
was, and an angel in verse 3 is
like lightning in the way he appears to
them, and he says in verse 5 to
Mary, the angel said to the women, do
not be afraid, for I know that you
are looking for Jesus who was crucified.
That's the phrase I want to linger over
first.
He was crucified.
Now, what can I say from the Bible
about the crucifixion of Jesus that will set
us up to properly understand and feel the
force of his resurrection?
I want to say five brief things.
Number one, the crucifixion of Jesus was public.
That's important because it was not secret, and
rumored, and therefore maybe mythological.
It was public.
There were people milling all around as he
suffered and breathed his last.
The secular rulers, the religious rulers, they were
all over the place.
This was a public event.
Tacitus, the Roman historian who was born in
55 AD, that's what, 20 years or so
after Jesus died, had to figure out for
himself where all these Christians came from at
the end of the first century.
And so doing his historian work, he wrote
his annals about the Roman empire, and he
has this little paragraph in section 1554.
He wrote, Christus, from whom they took their
name, had been put to death as a
punishment during the reign of Tiberius.
It's a Roman emperor.
At the hand of one of our procurators,
Pontius Pilate, so there's a governor, and a
most mischievous superstition, thus checked for a moment,
again broke out, not only in Judea, the
first source of the evil, but even in
Rome.
So here's an unbeliever and a historian who
rejects Christianity outright, writing about just the simple
fact that I'm making.
This is a public event.
Everybody knew Jesus lived, died, was crucified and
buried.
Everybody knew that.
It's public.
The second thing I want to say about
this crucifixion is that it was painful.
I did a little more review and study
this year.
I always try to do this when Good
Friday and Easter roll around just to let
myself feel the force of Good Friday and
Easter.
So let me read what I read from
the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia about the nature
of crucifixion.
The punishment was meted out for such crimes
as treason, desertion in the face of the
enemy, robbery, piracy, assassination, sedition.
Among the Romans, crucifixion was preceded by scourging,
undoubtedly to hasten the impending death.
The victim then bore his own cross, or
at least the upright beam to the place
of execution.
The number of nails used seems to have
been indeterminate.
A tablet.
On which the feet rested or on which
the body was partly supported seems to have
been a part of the cross to keep
the wounds from tearing through the transfixed members,
according to Irenaeus against heresies.
The suffering of death by crucifixion was intense,
especially in hot climates.
The swelling around the rough nails and torn,
lacerated tendons and nerves caused excruciating agony.
The arteries of the head and stomach were
surcharged with blood and terrific, throbbing headache ensued.
The mind was confused and filled with anxiety
and dread foreboding.
The victim of crucifixion literally died a thousand
deaths.
The suffering was so frightful that Josephus wrote,
quote, even among the raging passions of war,
pity was sometimes excited.
Unquote, the length of this agony was wholly
determined by the constitution of the victim.
But death rarely ensued before 36 hours had
elapsed.
Death was sometimes hastened by the breaking of
the legs of the victims and a hard
blow delivered under the armpit before crucifixion.
Crura fracta was a well-known Roman term,
according to Cicero.
The sudden death of Christ evidently was a
matter of astonishment.
Shouldn't surprise us then when we read about
loud cries from Jesus in the New Testament.
Sometimes we romanticize this as though he had
some kind of stoical control and he spoke
these seven wonderful words from the cross.
It wasn't that way.
There was screaming until his voice was raw,
perhaps, and then these loud cries.
Thirdly, not only was it public and painful,
it was planned by God.
We need to see this lest we think
it was some historical fluke, some mere effect
of human injustice.
It wasn't that way.
Jesus, you remember, on the way to the
cross said, the son of man is going
to be delivered into the hands of men
and they will kill him.
Jesus said that they're going to kill me.
So he knew it.
How did he know it?
Because his father and he had talked it
over in eternity and agreed to make it
happen.
And the father sends the son into the
world, clothed in human flesh for one reason.
Humans can die.
Gods can't.
Acts 427, Luke writes.
Truly in this city, there were gathered together
against your holy servant, Jesus, whom you anointed,
both Herod and Pontius Pilate and the Gentiles
and the peoples of Israel, all these people
who were involved to do, it says, what
your hand and your purpose predestined to occur.
This is God's plan all over the New
Testament.
I mean, what verse did you learn as
a child?
Maybe the only verse, you know, for God
so loved the world that he what?
That's enough.
Did he?
He gave it.
This is no accident.
According to Romans 832, God did not spare
his only son, but delivered him up for
his own.
I thought Judas did that.
God delivered, delivered, handed over.
It's the same word, handed over his son.
So it was planned, was planned.
Here's the fourth thing I want to say
about the crucifixion.
It was punishment for sin, but not his
own.
It was punishment for sin, but not his
own.
Listen to Galatians 1, 4 from the New
Testament.
Christ gave himself for our sins, according to
the will of God.
For our sins, it was planned and executed.
First Corinthians 15, 3.
Christ died for our sins, according to the
scriptures inspired by God.
So God planned it in public, painfully as
a punishment, but not for his sins, for
our sins.
And if that weren't enough to win us,
to draw us to himself in love, he
does something amazing 700 years before it happens.
He describes it for us as a way
of wooing us to him by saying, could
I increase my believability by telling you what's
going to happen 700 years before it happens
and describe it in beautiful detail in the
Jewish scriptures?
I'll read it for you.
This is Isaiah, the prophet Isaiah, chapter 53.
He was wounded for our transgressions, not his
own.
He was bruised for our iniquities.
Upon him was the chastisement that made us
whole and with his stripes we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray.
And the Lord has laid on him the
iniquity of us all.
That's 700 years before it happened.
As if God would reach down to you
right now and say, can I help you?
Can I help you believe?
Can I help overcome obstacles to embracing the
beauty and the truth of what happened at
Calvary 2000 years ago by describing it 2700
years ago?
I would like to help you this morning.
It was punishment, but not for his own
sins for ours.
Now, here's the last thing I want to
say about the crucifixion.
It was and is precious.
We sang there is a redeemer, Jesus, God's
own son, precious lamb of God, Messiah, holy
one.
That word precious is not my word.
It's not the songwriter's word.
You know whose word it is?
It's Peter's word.
Peter.
Remember what he did?
I never knew him.
I don't know who you're talking about.
Scared to death, he denies his master in
his greatest hour of need.
And Jesus forgives him.
And then he writes a letter.
Let me read you a couple of sentences
from Peter's letter.
You were ransomed from the feudal ways inherited
from your fathers, not with perishable things like
silver and gold, mere silver, mere gold.
But you were ransomed with the precious blood
of Christ.
And then he says later to you, therefore,
who believe he is precious.
If you saw him, I promise you, if
you saw him this morning for who he
really is, he would be precious to you.
If he's not precious to you, you don't
see.
That's why we're having this service.
I want you to just see him, just
see him, because if you saw him in
his crucifixion and now I'm going to turn
toward the resurrection, if you saw him in
his resurrection, he'd be precious to you because
he came as a ransom.
Remember what he said?
Mark 10, 45, the son of man did
not come to be served, but to serve
and to give his life as a ransom
for many.
When he died, his punishment was a ransom
by which we get freed from punishment and
wrath and hell and sin and guilt and
condemnation and Satan, everything that holds us from
life and joy.
We get ransomed from it because he paid
such an infinitely precious price.
And so I pray, oh, God, make your
son precious in this room to everybody before
we're done.
So now let's turn finally to the resurrection.
He wouldn't be precious if he were dead.
And you might say, oh, yes, he would.
My mother's still precious to me and she's
dead.
Mine is.
Is?
I wonder, is it the memory that's precious?
Or if you believe she's alive?
Yes.
But if there is death and no more,
all that can be precious about Jesus is
a memory.
If he's gone, if he's not alive, all
that's precious about Jesus is a memory.
And I'll tell you, the New Testament and
Christianity is not about a memory.
It's about a living Christ who today is
seated at the right hand of God, who's
risen from the dead, and he's not merely
a memory.
So let's talk for just a moment about
the resurrection.
Oh, if we had time, if we had
time to do five piece with the resurrection,
here's what they would be.
But I don't have time, but I'll just
tell you what they would be if I
had time.
It's public.
He appeared before a lot of people, 500
at once.
Secondly, it's physical.
He did not rise a ghost.
He had to persuade his disciples.
I'm not a ghost.
He held out his hands, touch me, give
me a piece of fish.
You got a piece of fish.
I'll eat fish.
I'm not a ghost.
He has a risen new body.
And do not think, listen, you may have
misconceptions about Christianity and how it all ends
up someday, like we die.
And then there's ghosts, little spirits with no
bodies flying around all over universe somehow.
That's not the way it's going to be.
When Jesus appears, we will be raised.
We will be changed in the twinkling of
an eye.
This mortal will put on immortality.
This perishable will put on the imperishable, and
we should be changed.
And there'll be a new heaven and a
new earth.
And if you love this sunshine, if you
love like I love those little teeny white
flowers on the hedge in my backyard with
little green leaves are just poking through it.
And the green is now competing with the
white.
And you love that.
And when you start dying, you think I'm
going to lose that.
You won't.
If you believe in Jesus, because in the
new heavens, in the new earth, Jesus will
take everything good about this world and he
will blow it up about 10,000 fold
into things we never dreamed could be so
good.
You will have a new body.
It won't be the things you're disappointed with
in your present body.
It will be new and it will be
glorious.
In fact, the Bible says you will shine
like the sun in the kingdom of your
father, the sun, you walk out of here
and look up at that sun and remember
that sentence.
One day, if I'm a Christian, if I
believe in this Jesus, if I'm a disciple
following him, I'm going to shine like the
sun cripple, though I be ugly, though I
be fat or skinny, though I be, I'm
going to shine like the sun in the
kingdom of my father someday.
It really makes a difference that it's physical.
And it's productive.
He's the first fruits of all of those
who are going to rise in him, but
those are not the three piece I want
to talk about.
I just got carried away for a minute.
The really, the two peas I want to
talk about in the resurrection are it is
powerful and it is personal.
So let's just close with these two.
The reason I choose to linger over these
two, just a little longer is because of
verse 18 and 20.
So you can see the idea of powerful
in verse 18 and can see the idea
of personal in verse 20.
Can't you verse 18, let's take powerful first.
Jesus says all authority in heaven and on
earth has been given to me.
That's power.
All authority has been given to me over
and over again.
In the new Testament, we read things like
this.
Peter says he has been raised and exalted
to the right hand of God.
Stephen, when he was being stoned, looked into
heaven and God gave him a glimpse.
And it says, I see heaven opened and
the son of man standing at the right
hand of the throne of God.
Paul says Christ is seated at the right
hand of God.
Hebrews says he endured the cross, despising the
shame and sat down at the right hand
of the throne of God.
Why?
Why does it say over and over again,
Jesus was exalted to sit at the right
hand of the throne of God?
Because that's the place of authority.
That's the place of power.
Authority over all politics, government, industry, business, science,
education, entertainment, media, weather, stars, light, energy, life,
death, you name it.
He has authority over it and he cannot
die.
And he's with you to the end if
you trust him.
And therefore you in him cannot lose.
It is suicide to oppose or neglect Jesus
Christ.
You can't win by opposing an indestructible foe.
You can't win if you oppose an indestructible
foe.
And Jesus has all authority and therefore to
neglect him, to resist him, to refuse him,
not to follow him is suicide forever.
Don't do that.
Now, one more point.
It's powerful and I know that the power
of it creates a problem.
And I don't want to talk about the
problem.
I want to give you an alternative way
of looking at it that just might consume
the problem.
Here's the problem.
Thoughtful people right now are thinking it in
this room.
If he has all authority, like you just
described, he has all authority.
Why is this world in such a mess
or make it personal?
If he has authority, like you says he
had authority, like you said he had authority
over life and death.
Why my little girl died?
Why'd my wife die?
Why'd my husband die?
Why did, why, why, why?
Now that's a good question.
That's not a bad question and it deserves
lots of answers and there are lots of
answers in the Bible.
But here's what I want to do.
Instead of giving those answers, if you want
to hear more of those answers, you come
back for some classes here at Bethlehem sometime.
But here's what I want to do.
I want to suggest that when Jesus said
this, all authority in heaven and on earth
is mine, he didn't mean first for these
11 to say, Hey, that's a theological problem.
That's not what he expected to happen there.
Rather putting it together with, and I'll be
with you to the end.
What he meant to happen was you are
now mega problem solvers.
Because if I have all authority and I
am with you to the end, then you
can now be unstoppable in your loving of
people, in your sacrifice, in your risk-taking,
in your laying down of your life in
this world to overcome problems and be part
of the solution and not part of the
problem.
I think that's the way he meant it
to be heard and understood.
Because when he, he spoke the first one,
he put a little thing called the great
commission in there.
Go make disciples of all nations.
And he put a second half in there,
go and tell them to do everything I've
taught you to do.
And what's the main thing he taught us
to do answer, love our enemies, love God
and love your enemy.
Now here's the closing question.
If that's one of the biggest problems in
the world, if man's inhumanity to man is
one of the biggest problems, not the only
one, but one of the biggest ones.
And I now commission you that I have
all authority over all things.
And I will be with you as your
powerful lover, helper, friend, savior, Lord, go and
do what I taught you to do.
I think that's the key to becoming the
kind of person that almost everybody in this
room wants to be.
Because deep down, there's nobody in this room
who's cherishing the thought, Oh, what I really
want to be all my life so that
I can think I've become it at the
deathbed is selfish.
I really want to be selfish boy.
If I could be more selfish than anybody,
I would love to be selfish so that
when I get ready to die, I can
dream about how selfish I've been all my
life.
Nobody in this room is feeling that right
now.
You may come close because of how deceitful
sin is.
But I said in your best moments, you
know, that's not what you want to be.
What you really want to be is big
hearted.
You want to have something inside of you
that is so capacious.
It's just so stretching.
It's so full.
It just gets out and, and gets around
others and does more good than you could
ever do harm.
That's, that's the dream and the best moments
of every human being.
And sin distorts it all over the place.
So what's the solution.
I want to give you a closing quiz
or illustration and how you answer it is
up to you, but the illustration will make
plain what the, what this solution is to
becoming the kind of people Jesus is calling
you to be.
And I think you want to be in
your deepest soul.
Here's illustration number one.
I read in world magazine this week that
three children wandered in Bosnia into a mine
field where their landmines and got blown up
and killed three children.
One of them was 11 years old and
she didn't die right away.
She called for help for hours and nobody
would go get her.
Nobody would go get her.
Why it's a minefield.
Would you have gone to get her?
Come on now.
Don't check out here and think about the
blazers and the wolves for a minute.
Just ask yourself the question, would you have
gone to get her?
I don't know.
When I read that, I put the magazine
down.
I said, Lord, what I want more than
anything in the world is to be the
kind of person who would go to get
her.
That's what I know for sure.
I want to be that kind of person.
And then the question is, how do you
become the kind of person?
And here's the biblical answer from our text.
All authority over landmine locations and footfalls belong
to Jesus.
And I will be with you to the
end.
That's the only answer I know.
If you go out of here without Jesus
and the confidence that all authority belongs to
Jesus and that he's with you to the
end, you won't go probably.
But if you walk out of here saying,
really, all authority over landmines, all authority over
my feet and where they fall, and you'll
be with me whether I die or whether
I live to the end.
Then you might go.
Oh, I hope you'd go.
You would go if you believe those two
things.
And you heard Jesus.
My command is that you love your enemy,
that you love your neighbor as you love
yourself.
If you were there, would you want somebody
to come?
If your daughter were there, would you want
somebody to come love your neighbor as you
love yourself?
How are you going to obey that if
you don't have a Christ who governs footfalls
in landmines and is with you to the
end?
And I'm not promising you that you would
get there.
That's not in the Bible.
What I'm promising you is he has authority
over whether you get there or not.
And if you don't get there, you go
home and you'll go home gladly.
Oh, what a good thing.
Just think of all those people who didn't
go and what they're sleeping with now.
When you'd be home, happy, and your relatives
would write books about you, you can't lose
when you believe this Christ and when you
obey him.
Here's my closing illustration.
On Wednesday, this week, Ruby Eliason, over 80,
and Laura Edwards, 78, were killed in Cameroon.
I smile.
You see me smiling?
I'm smiling.
Why am I smiling?
I asked Abraham yesterday over lunch, is this
a tragedy?
Let me tell you who these women are
before you answer that question.
Ruby Eliason, over 80, served the poor, the
diseased and the lost around the world and
in Cameroon, especially, all her life, medically.
Laura Edwards was a missionary in India for
a long time, came back here, practiced medicine
as a doctor here in the Twin Cities.
And now in retirement, we're talking retirement, what,
13 years after, 65, she's there alongside the
80-year-old, the 78-year-old serving
Jesus and the poor and the diseased and
the lost in Cameroon.
And the car goes off a cliff under
the authority of Jesus.
And I ask Abraham, is this a tragedy?
And we agreed, yes and no, which is
the answer to most of the questions I
ask.
Yes, every death is in one sense a
tragedy.
There are people who will miss them, love
them.
But then we began the conversation in earnest.
And I said, you know, there are hundreds
of thousands of 70 and 80-year-old
people spending all their time in America in
relative health with one aimless, empty leisure
day after the other.
And that's a tragedy.
That's a tragedy.
But I ask Abraham, is it a tragedy
when an 80-year-old and a 70
-year-old woman, when they could be resting
in northern Minnesota somewhere with everybody's approval after
a faithful service, have gone under the authority
of King Jesus to bless the poor and
the hungry and the diseased and the lost
in Cameroon, in the very midst and act
of their love along that treacherous road between
dew and bim, and in the very moment
of love, instead of dwindling away in a
painful disease over an Augustana home, or instead
of protracted years of an oppressive sense of
uselessness, are taken immediately into heaven?
Is that a tragedy?
And I answer, it is not a tragedy.
It is a glory.
And I say rather, O Christ, O living
Christ, give me such a life, such a
ministry, and such a death.
Give me such a death and let no
one weep, but glory.
These are two women nobody should weep over
except that we will miss them, because they
have gotten their reward in a way all
of us, oh I pray all of us,
would want to get it.
So I'm done.
And the point is, Jesus came into the
world, he died for sinners, he rose again
in order to make people like that, who
live forever and who have lives of significance
now, he came to make you like that.
And how do you become like that?
You look at the promise, all authority is
mine.
You look at the promise, I'll be with
you to the end.
You look at the death, he died for
my sins, and you take all that and
you say, yes, that's mine now.
I believe it, I embrace it.
Sinner though I be, I receive the forgiveness,
I receive the power, I receive the presence
and the personal love and fellowship of I
will be with you, and I count myself
to be his.
And we want to serve everybody in this
room, members and regular attenders and visitors.
And why don't you take this out of
your worship folder?
We concocted this so that we could serve
you better.
And let me show you how very clearly
everybody in this room, regular Bethlehem folks, regular
attenders, visitors, we would like everybody to turn
one of these in in a moment.
And the reason is because there's something on
here for everybody.
We will pray for all these prayer requests.
You see that up at the top.
How may we pray for you, pray for
you?
And you say, really, you're going to pray
for 2000 prayer requests.
And the answer is yes, we'll assemble 40
people or so on Tuesday afternoon.
They're already there and we will pray over
every one of these.
So we'll pray for you.
So somebody will have a prayer request.
And then the next one is I'm interested
in taking part in a five week discussion
group here at Bethlehem about the Christian faith
called Quest for Joy.
If you'd like to be in a class
for five weeks to learn more about the
pursuit of joy along the lines I've been
describing it, check that the next one.
I would like more guidance in knowing and
following Christ.
We'd love to send you some material.
The next one is perhaps the most precious
of all to me and would bless my
heart the most.
This service.
And I mean, God and Jesus Christ and
the spirit through this service has helped me
see who Jesus Christ really is.
And today I put my trust, my faith
in him.
If that's happening, has happened in this service,
would you check that?
Because I would be so encouraged.
Nothing would make my life more than to
know that God has used this service and
this word to bring someone to saving faith
in Jesus.
So let's just bow as we fill them
out in prayer.
Father, I thank you so much for Jesus.
I thank you that he has all authority
in heaven and on earth.
And I thank you for that personal word
that I'll be with you to the end
of the age, forever, always.
And that when these two come together, we
can walk into minefields in the cause of
love.
We can go to Cameroon in the cause
of love and we can cross the street
in the cause of love.
We can do whatever it takes because you
are with us.
And so in these closing moments, we just
want to celebrate Christ.
So come and help us as we sing
in Jesus name.
I pray.
Amen.
Thank you for listening to this message by
John Piper, pastor for preaching at Bethlehem Baptist
Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
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