John Piper

Dr. Fuller and I were exchanging miracle stories. I finished writing my talk at 1 o'clock this morning. I went to bed and felt good. I needed another 2-3 hours to get it ready to deliver. For 5 years in this conference, I delivered the message on Wednesday morning. Wednesday morning, that's tomorrow. That's when I thought I was to talk in this conference, when I went to bed last night. Which means that had something not intervened, about lunch time somebody would have come up to me and said, I'm really looking forward to your talk today and I would have just froze. Today? It would have been awful. I would have just been totally unprepared.

Dwight tells us how he used his days as he rode on horseback. It took you a long time in those days to get where you were going. He would begin to think. Now, he had trained himself in this way to a conclusion. And then he would take a piece of paper. You've heard these stories, I think maybe. He would pick a spot on his coat and identify the spot and the paper with the conclusion and the sequence of thought and pin it on his coat. Because he couldn't write on horseback very easily. Pin it on his coat. And he'd have these things when he'd come home over his coat. And he would go to his study and take them off one at a time. This one is for... And he would write down. That's what he meant by saving or redeeming the time.

one time he was preaching Stacey Wood was there here's his account the account in an extraordinary way the presence of God was in that church I personally felt as if a hand were pushing me through the pew at the entrance of the church at the end of the sermon for some reason or other the organ didn't play the doctor went off into the vestry and everyone sat completely still without moving it must have been almost ten minutes before people seemed to find the strength to get up and without speaking to one another quietly leave the church never have I witnessed or experienced such preaching with such fantastic reaction on the part of a congregation

Take David. Let's just take one crystal clear example so that you can see the problem that it raises. David, you remember King David, committed adultery with Bathsheba, then to try to get himself out of this problem, orchestrated the death of her husband, Uriah. God hates what he's done and he sends the prophet Nathan to finger him. And he does with a parable. And God says to him in 1 Samuel 12, Why have you despised me? David hears the word and he's a broken man and he says, I have sinned against the Lord. And Nathan, the Gaul, the Gaul says, the Lord has put away your sin. You shall not die. Just like that. That is a problem for a God centered biblical mindset. That's what Paul means here in verse 25, where he says God had to prove and demonstrate his righteousness because so many times, this is just one illustration of a million, he has just passed over former sins. He just passed over them. He just says your sins are forgiven, period. Just like that. Now, that's a problem.

and I've walked to this church a thousand times across the bridge from where I live in the last 16 years and year in and year out the seasons come and the seasons go and I watch the leaves come out on the tree and I watch this magnificent tree over there just down 12th street that's about as tall as this room here and I imagine sap getting up there somehow and a little leaf springing out up there in the same perfect magnificent shape to do whatever green stuff is supposed to do to make life in that tree and I make no inferences I feel God you could put a bullet to my head and say, deny that that's God and all I could say is, shoot me dead and at the judgment you know what I expect to hear? I expect to hear Jesus call Professor Hawking over and call me up and he say, John, tell him about the tree tell him about the tree and I'll tell him about the tree and God will cause him to see at that moment what a folly to deny God but what I, you see what I meant earlier was this is helping me understand me and what God's done with me I grew up in a Christian home I know why I believe why do I believe? I always believed and now my experience of general revelation and my experience of God in the scriptures that I simply absolutely cannot deny cannot escape as much as I often was tempted to try my oh my I'm going to totally get out of hand here that was one page out of thirty what am I going to do? here's the way J.I. Packer here's the way J.I. Packer put it Packer is very helpful on this issue see if this isn't almost the same as what I'm saying I hope it is because I want somebody to agree with me because this is so fresh for me if I'm right on the way I understand Calvin here Packer, quote the internal witness of the spirit in John Calvin is a work of enlightenment whereby through the medium of verbal testimony the blind eyes of the spirit my spirit are opened and divine realities come to be recognized and embraced for what they are this recognition Calvin says is as immediate and unanalyzable as the perceiving of color or taste by the physical sense an event about which no more can be said than that when appropriate stimuli were present it happened and when it happened we know it happened period, close quote I think that's what I'm saying and that's Packer's interpretation of John Calvin and that's my explanation in answer to my first question

This is what Athanasius loved about Antony. I would like to give a whole message on Antony and Athanasius relationship to this desert father. He wrote a whole biography of Antony. It's in there. It's worth reading because you get the flavor of what the ideals of Athanasius were by reading the way he talks about Antony. And here's one of those excerpts. Let us be courageous and rejoice always. Notice the linking courageous and rejoice. Let us be courageous and rejoice always. Let us consider and lay to heart that while the Lord is with us. Our foes cannot do us harm. But if they see us rejoicing in the Lord, contemplating the bliss of the future, mindful of the Lord, deeming all things in his hand, they are discomfited and turned backwards.

so here's the report taken from Biza who wrote the first biography quoted in I forget what book I got it from the sermon had been preached the prayers had been offered and Calvin descended from the pulpit to take his place beside the elements at the communion table the bread and wine were duly consecrated by him and he was not ready to distribute he was now ready to distribute them to the communicants then on a sudden a rush was begun by the troublers in Israel in the direction of the communion table Calvin flung his arms around the sacramental vessels as if to protect them from sacrilege while his voice rang out through the building these hands you may crush these arms you may lop off my life you may take my blood is yours you may shed it but you shall never force me to give holy things to the profaned and dishonor the table of my God and after this says Biza the sacred ordinance was celebrated with a profound silence and under solemn awe all present felt as if the deity himself had been visible among them

He was a German and was born in 1700 and is perhaps best known as the founder of a community in Germany called Herrnhut of about 300 people in the early days, around 1727, when it got going. And he became famous as part of the Moravian Church for its unparalleled missionary zeal, this Herrnhut community. In 1727 it started a round-the-clock prayer watch, they called it. And of those 300 people, people signed up to make commitments to pray one hour in the 24-hour period. And that round-the-clock prayer watch lasted 100 years unbroken. In 1792, 65 years after it began, they had sent out to the unreached peoples of the West Indies and Lapland and Greenland and Turkey and North America, 300 of their own people as missionaries. These people were utterly, radically sold to Jesus Christ, given away. They were not their own. They belonged to Jesus.

How many coats are in your closet? Shoes. How many running pairs of shoes? Gloves for every occasion. Every manner of possible electronic device to heat your food. Fast, slow, rough edges, soft edges. Plumbing is in your house. Sewage carried away flawlessly. Pure drinking water. Refrigeration, 911 at your beck and call. I tell you, it is hard to go to heaven in America. Because who knows what you are leaning on until it is taken away. That's why 2 Corinthians 1.9 says, I was crushed to the point of death so that I might trust the one who raises the dead. In other words, everything was taken but resurrection. And that's coming, brothers. So I just plead with God now, get you ready.

So, when God tells us to do things, it's like a doctor telling you to take what will make you well. To do these back exercises that will keep you from having back pain. Of course, while you're doing them, it takes time and effort. But after a few days, your back firms up and you don't spring it as often and that was really good. And so God has a thousand good ideas for your life and you don't. Your ideas without God are all wrong. Give you short-term happiness and long-term pain. Whereas God's ideas might bring some short-term pain and will always bring long-term happiness.

You remember that amazing story of the Moravians. I love the stories of the Moravians. And in northern Germany, two of them getting on a boat, ready to sell themselves into slavery as it were in the West Indies, never to come back again. And as the boat drifts out into the harbor, they lift their hands and say, May the Lamb receive the reward of His suffering.

The reason I approach it like this very soberly is because the accusations of arrogance today are many. I eat the bread of the accusation of arrogance. Why? I have to think very soberly about this. If I took my adversary's word for it, I would be one of the most depressed, paralyzed, immobilized, discouraged pastors in the world. Because today, if you say of a certain theological viewpoint, just pick any error you think is an error and say, this is wrong and harmful. You will be accused of arrogance. Just simply say that with no loud voice. This is wrong and harmful. You will be accused of arrogance. Or if you say, we should pray for our Jewish friends that they believe in the Messiah Jesus and be saved. You will be accused of arrogance. Or if you pursue a wayward church member who's in sin, say sexual sin, and you take him and you say, stop, please repent, return. You may be accused of judgmentalism and arrogance. You can hardly do anything today that's rooted in truth that doesn't get you accused of arrogance.