Make Sin Visible

I do a lot of reading to prepare for my Sunday School class with my primary sources, outside of simply reading the passage over and making sense of it myself, are the notes in my Study Bible, my Bible College notes on Galatians, Precept-Austin and the commentaries it leads me to on Galatians, and John Piper's sermons on Galatians.

This conclusion to a Piper sermon really struck me this afternoon. After explaining one primary purpose of the law throughout the Bible was to expose sin and make it visible he says:

Finally, if God thought it wise and helpful not to let the sediment of pride and rebellion and distrust lie quietly at the bottom of the human heart, but instead, stirred it up and made it visible by demanding the obedience which comes from faith, then that's what my preaching should aim to do. More than ever I see the need for pastors to preach and Sunday School teachers to teach and members to admonish each other in such a way that the sediment of sin in the lives of so-called "carnal Christians" be stirred up and come to a crisis. Could it be that one of the reasons we see raindrops of blessing at Bethlehem instead of showers is that week after week several dozen people sit in these services with a layer of sinful muck at the bottom of their lives with no intention of doing anything about it? If so, let's pray that God use the Word to stir it up, so it can be seen for what it is, so there can be repentance and forgiveness and cleansing and renewal.

How To Pray For Half-An-Hour

..............Some have wondered: How do you spend a half-an-hour in prayer, not to mention two or three hours? Here is my three-fold answer:

1. Resolve to do it. Don’t purpose to pray until you run dry. Purpose to pray the full half-hour. Prayer is work. It is not always a “sweet hour.” Jesus did many works with ease, but he prayed with “loud crying and tears” (Hebrews 5:7).

2. Think about what you want to see change in your heart and life and family and neighborhood and church and world. Make a list if necessary. Then pray through it, giving God reasons from Scripture why this is something that he would surely do.

3. Put the Bible in front of you and simply read a line and turn it into a prayer. Paraphrase it, expand on it, apply it to yourself and others. This works best with the ethical portions of Scripture like Matthew 5-7; Romans 12; 1 Corinthians 13; Galatians 5, 6; Ephesians 4-6; Colossians 3, 4; 1 Thessalonians 5; 1 John, etc. You can pray all day once you catch on. And you will be surprised how many insights come as you really take Scripture seriously and try to pray it into your life. If you run into theological or interpretational problems, tell the Lord you will work on that later and move on. If we seek hard to obey what we do understand, more light will come on the hard parts.

I am praying for your praying. What depth and power we will have as a church if hundreds of us learn to pray over the Word of the Almighty God!

By John Piper

Make This a Day of Turning

This is simply copied and pasted from the Desiring God Blog but I thought I'd put it here too since prayer is certainly on my mind all the time....

Here’s the challenge John Piper issues as he closes his chapter on prayer (chapter 6) in Desiring God:

[O]ne of the main reasons so many of God’s children don’t have a significant life of prayer is not so much that we don’t want to, but that we don’t plan to. If you want to take a four-week vacation, you don’t just get up one summer morning and say, “Hey, let’s go today!” You won’t have anything ready. You won’t know where to go. Nothing has been planned.

But that is how many of us treat prayer. We get up day after day and realize that significant times of prayer should be a part of our life, but nothing’s ever ready. We don’t know where to go. Nothing has been planned. No time. No place. No procedure. And we all know that the opposite of planning is not a wonderful flow of deep, spontaneous experiences in prayer. The opposite of planning is the rut. If you don’t plan a vacation, you will probably stay home and watch TV. The natural, unplanned flow of spiritual life sinks to the lowest ebb of vitality. There is a race to be run and a fight to be fought. If you want renewal in your life of prayer, you must plan to see it.

Therefore, my simple exhortation is this: Let us take time this very day to rethink our priorities and how prayer fits in. Make some new resolve. Try some new venture with God. Set a time. Set a place. Choose a portion of Scripture to guide you. Don’t be tyrannized by the press of busy days. We all need midcourse corrections. Make this a day of turning to prayer—for the glory of God and for the fullness of your joy. (Desiring God, 2003 edition, pages 182–183)

Meaning of Obey and Submit

A while back the elders here at Lansing had planned a sermon series on the local church, with the first particularly tricky/sensitive message dealing with submission in verses like Hebrews 13:17. That sermon has led to a number of questions about just what it means to submit and obey. If one example is given, it naturally leads to thinking of another example and wondering about this, that, or the other possible situation. And it becomes a little tricky.

John Piper is the best. I listened to a couple sermons by him on Monday that were preached on Hebrews 13:17, "Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with grief, for this would be unprofitable for you." They were very good and in the second one when he talks about what obey and submit actually means, he takes a while to develop biblically and practically that leaders/elders can be very fallible and there needs to be safeguards in place.

Then at the end he asks:

What then does "Obey your leaders and submit to them" mean? The word for "obey" (peith) is a very broad word and means "be persuaded by" (Hebrews 6:9), "trust" (Hebrews 2:13), "rely on" (Luke 11:22), and comes to mean "obey" because that is what you do when you trust somebody. So you might say it is a "soft" word for obey. It encourages a good relationship of trust, but still calls for the people to be swayed by leaders.

The word for "submit" (hupeik) occurs only here in the New Testament. It's the more narrow word, and means "make room for by retiring from a seat," or "yield to" or "submit to."

So with all this background, what I would try to distill as the meaning would be something like this: Hebrews 13:17 means that a church should have a bent toward trusting its leaders; you should have a disposition to be supportive in your attitudes and actions toward their goals and directions; you should want to imitate their faith; and you should have a happy inclination to comply with their instructions.

Why Is Relevance?

I read this in Finally Alive on the weekend,

What Is Relevance?

As a preacher, I think a lot about relevance. Why should anyone
listen to what I have to say? Why should anybody care? Relevance
is an ambiguous word. It might mean that a sermon is relevant if it
feels to the listeners that it will make a significant difference in their
lives. Or it might mean that a sermon is relevant if it will make a
significant difference in their lives whether they feel it or not.

That second kind of relevance is what guides my sermons and
my writing. In other words, I want to say things that are really
significant for your life whether you know they are or not. My
way of doing that is to stay as close as I can to what God says
is important in his word, not what we think is important apart
from God’s word.

Jaw Droppingly Marvelous

Jams!

Sermon Jams are awesome! Check out these couple of John Piper sermon jams.

Make War!

Treasuring Him

(Sermon jams are short clips of preaching put to sweet jams and beats.)

Augustine Battles Lust and Fights for Joy

Wish I Could Go!

Don't Go To Church

Like most people, I forget most of what I hear in a sermon. But if the little bit that I remember is powerful then it's worth listening to an hour long sermon to hear it. Something that Matt Chandler said that I think will stick with me the rest of my life is this:

"The Bible says very little about going to church, but the Bible says a lot about belonging to a church."

There it is. One little sentence. But so powerful. Don't go to church people - belong to a church!


John Piper says of sentences:

What I have learned from about twenty-years of serious reading is this. It is sentences that change my life, not books. What changes my life is some new glimpse of truth, some powerful challenge, some resolution to a long-standing dilemma, and these usually come concentrated in a sentence or two. I do not remember 99% of what I read, but if the 1% of each book or article I do remember is a life-changing insight, then I don't begrudge the 99%. And that life-changing insight usually comes in a moment, a moment whose value is all out of proportion to its little size. That's why I call it an "immeasurable moment."

My Pilgrimage

I was inspired just now by this video clip from John Piper to go on a spiritual pilgrimage to Romans 5:1-11. Way better than visiting Mecca or Kapilavastu, or anywhere else like that. What a trip! What a sacred place.

Election Thoughts from John Piper

Good thoughts on the American Election here from Piper.



Outline:

1. Womanhood
2. Race
3. Abortion
4. Prophetic perspective
5. Sovereignty of God
6. Gospel

Quote of the Day

I sometimes like to check out the Quote of the Day at DesiringGod.org. Today it was:

Nothing makes God more supreme and more central in worship than when a people are utterly persuaded that nothing--not money or prestige or leisure or family or job or health or sports or toys or friends--nothing is going to bring satisfaction to their sinful, guilty, aching hearts besides God. -John Piper, God's Passion for His Glory, p. 41.

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Driscoll loves Piper

This post is particularly for people like Joe and Jason who love Mark Driscoll but are not as big of fans of Piper as they should be. ;)

If Mark Driscoll loves Piper this much, then shouldn't you as well?

The main points of why he loves him are:

1. He is the most passionate guy I think I've ever met.

2. He does not seem to really care about his approval ratings.

3. He has a father's heart.

4. By not trying to be cool ... he's cool.

Thomas Watson and Prayer

As I was thinking about what to share at the lunchtime prayer meeting today I thought again about giving an encouragement from God's Word to keep on praying and not give. This caused me to look for Thomas Watson's comments on delayed answers to prayer that I remembered reading in a Piper sermon a while back.

Piper wrote,

Thomas Watson, a Puritan pastor from 350 years ago, asked in his book, Body of Divinity, "Why does God delay an answer to prayer?" In other words, why would God ever keep us asking and seeking and knocking when he could respond sooner? He gives four answers (Baker Book House, 1979, pp. 399-400). I give these to you for your pondering as we press on in prayer...

1. Because he loves to hear the voice of prayer. "You let the musician play a great while before you throw him down money, because you love to hear this music."
2. That he may humble us. We may too easily assume we merit some ready answer, or that he is at our beck and call like a butler, not as sovereign Lord and loving Father.
3. Because he sees we are not yet fit or ready for the mercy we seek. It may be he has things to put in place—in us or in our church or in the world. There are a million pieces to the puzzle. Some things go first to make a place for the others.
4. Finally, that the mercy we pray for may be the more prized, and may be sweeter when it comes.

Pride vs. Humility

On Tuesday Night we started a Bible Study on Genesis 1-11. Of course we talked about Creation vs. Evolution and how over 700 excellent scientists have signed the Scientific Dissent from Darwinism, etc. In the course of all that, one thing I made sure to bring up was that when talking with others about Creation vs. Evolution - or about anything for that matter - it is important to remain humble. When we think we are right about something (and even more so when we are 100% sure we are right about something) there can be a dangerous tendency to get arrogant about it. I always think about this when it comes to Creation because as a kid I used to watch Kent Hovind talk about Creation Science and as I got older I began to noticed that he was absolutely arrogant about it. He did not seem to have in him the humility of Christ. I think he was correct with lots of his teachings (though Answers in Genesis does point out some areas where his arguments were based on faulty information) but he should have said it differently. When I heard Joe Book lecture on apologetics he said, "You can win an argument and lose the person." I'm sure Kent Hovind won lots of arguments. But I'm also sure he lost the people in the process because of his arrogance.


It is hard to remain humble when you are sure you are correct. But somehow we must remain humble. Both because otherwise people will be turned away, and even more so because God hates pride and we do not want Him to turn away!


One thing I really appreciate about Piper is his ability to be so firm and passionate and yet also be humble at the same time. He has some tips here on how to remain humble, and a couple of the key ones are these:


"I remember that I am by nature a depraved sinner and that, in all my sinning, I have treated God with contempt, preferring other things to his glory. I take stock that I have never done a good deed for which I don’t need to repent. Each one is flawed because perfection is commanded. Therefore I realize that God owes me nothing but pain in this life and the next."

"I ponder that this condition of mine is so desperate that it could only be remedied at the cost of the horrid death of the Son of God, to bear my punishment and provide my righteousness. And I revel in the forgiveness and righteousness that is mine in Christ."

"I meditate on those Scriptures that say, “Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for ‘God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.’ Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you,” (1 Peter 5:5-6; see James 4:6-10). And, “He who is least among you all is the one who is great” (Luke 9:48; Mark 9:35; Matthew 20:26)."

Lloyd Jones

I recently re-listened to Piper's Biographical Speach on Martyn Lloyd Jones and I loved it again since I have a tendency toward some Third Wave Theology.


I've heard some great Martyn Lloyd Jones quotes before and this is one of the best...

Prayer is the highest activity of the human soul, and therefore it is at the same time the ultimate test of a man’s true spiritual condition (there is nothing so much as prayer life that tells the truth about us as Christina people.) Everything we do in the Crhistian life is easier than prayer.
~ Dr. Martyn Lloyd Jones

Happy

"I find in the Bible a divine command to be a pleasure-seeker - that is, to forsake the two-bit, low-yield, short-term, never-satisfying, person-destroying, God-belittling pleasures of the world and to sell everything "with joy" (Matthew 13:44) in order to have the kingdom of heaven and thus "enter into the joy of your master" (Matthew 25:21, 23)" - John Piper, Desiring God, 25.

Desiring God

Desiring God (including John Piper) has started a blog!

In recent weeks I've been thinking of their "news" section as a pseudo-blog but am now so happy to see that they have their own actual blog! Check it out right here.

Below is the information about the Blog:

Announcing the Desiring God Blog

February 2, 2007 | By: Abraham
Category: Ministry Updates

We're starting a blog.

I suppose we're a little behind the times since there's already tens of millions of these. Nonetheless, if you're interested in adding one more to your reading list, we will try to make it worth your while.

We hope to offer four things (at least) with this blog:

• Information - This blog replaces our News section. Relevant info on conferences, resources, products, and more will be found here.
• Encouragement & Commentary - This blog will be an outlet for content that we pray will help you press on to know the Lord.
• Convenience - Subscribing to this blog will keep you informed about what's new and important at DG without having to find it all yourself. (Although, we hope you will still come visit our website!)
• Conversation - There are two ways we want to be involved in (the internet version of) conversation with this blog.
  First, there are constantly themes and issues in the blogosphere that we hope to have a helpful voice in.
  Second, each post will offer you a chance to respond. These will not be published, but we are very eager to read them, and they will influence our future posts.

This will be a group project. Contributors will include (at varying levels) John Piper, Jon Bloom, Matt Perman, David Mathis, Lukas Naugle, me, and others.

We look forward to seeing how the Lord may use this new endeavor. Always feel free to pass along any suggestions that you think could make this more useful and interesting.

Abortion

Check out www.Abort73.com

"Abort73.com has the potential of penetrating the world of teenagers and young adults...I would love to see Abort73 become a movement led by courageous, smart, Wilberforce-like young people who won’t let it go until abortion is as unthinkable in our land as slavery." -John Piper

Also, check out Piper's latest sermon called When Is Abortion Racism? If you don't have time to read it then just watch or listen to the excerpt or read parts of the conclusion like I did.