Tag Archives: Piper

‘Go and Tell’ in 1988

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The distinction between the Church’s mission as ‘go and tell’ rather than ‘come and see’ has implications for how we live.

The ‘go and tell’ is essentially what the missional movement in the West has recovered about the nature of the Church. I embrace this. I think it is good. I think it is biblical. But it’s current popularity can become a point of criticism. Popularity has a way of doing that because we don’t know if it’s only a fad “all the kids are doing these days,” or if it is a legitimate revival that will propel the Church’s witness in the coming generations. It’s hard to see (and sometimes we’d rather not) its biblical faithfulness through the shrubs of coolness. But I believe it’s there.

And this made me glad to stumble across a fascinating find in Desiring God’s Resource Library last week. In a sermon on evangelism in 1988, John Piper encourages Bethlehem to adopt a missional mindset. In 1988. 1988, when all it had going for it was biblical faithfulness, not coolness.

Read the excerpt, The Church Has a ‘Go and Tell’ Mission.

Correct Thinking and Obedience

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John Piper concludes the Introduction to his 1979 monograph:

If a book about this command does not ultimately lead beyond mere thinking to an active realization of what the command intends, then that thinking itself, in all its possible technical accuracy, become worthless. “Though I understand all mysteries and all knowledge . . . and have not love, I am nothing.”

Read the whole post, Correct Thinking About Jesus’ Commands Is Not Obedience to Them.

Piper on the Preacher’s Tone

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John Piper has some excellent advice on the importance of the preacher’s tone:

So I ask again: What tone should you aim at in preaching?

My answer is: Pursue the tone of the text. But let it be informed, not muted, by the tonal balance of Jesus and the apostles and by the gospel of grace.

Read the whole post at Desiring God, What Tone Should Preachers Aim At?.

 

Honoring Harmon Killebrew

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John Piper will never preach a sermon about baseball. But he will say a few things about the inescapable reality of death, and when it pertains to the Twins’ Hall of Famer Harmon Killebrew, he’ll talk about the distance of homeruns to make a point for our benefit.

I really like Killebrew. Most of what I know about him comes from the Ken Burns documentary Baseball, which as a kid I watched in the place of cartoons. He wasn’t a big guy but he was strong, belting balls in the 1960s farther than most of the steroid-aided hitters could at the turn of the 21st century.

He was a gentleman and an important part of baseball history.

May the LORD bless his family and upon this event, may the LORD bring about good and use Piper’s message to effect redemption in many.

See the video at Desiring God, Harmon Killebrew Dies at 74.

Piper’s Sermon, “I Act the Miracle”

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“Fear and Trembling”

Why should there be “fear and trembling” as I attack my sin and bring about salvation from self-pity? The reason given in the text is not a threat. It’s a gift. Work and will to kill your sin, and do it with fear and trembling, because God Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, redeemer, justifier, sustainer, Father, lover is so close to you that your working and willing are his working and willing.

Tremble at this breathtaking thought. God Almighty is in you. God is the one in you willing. God is the one in you working. My “continuous, sustained, strenuous” effort is not only being carried out in the very presence of all-holy God, but is the very continuous, sustained, strenuous effort of God himself. I am not waiting for a miracle.  I am acting a miracle. My action is God’s action in fighting my sin. My willing is God’s willing.

Read, watch, listen, and download: I Act the Miracle

The Consummation of History and the Admiration of Christ

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Why Bethlehem College & Seminary Exists

God created the world and inspired the Scriptures and is guiding history to its consummation for one ultimate purpose, namely, to share with his creatures the ultimate pleasure that he has in admiring his Son, the radiance of his own glory (Hebrews 1:3).

Therefore, the ultimate reason that Bethlehem College & Seminary exists is to live and teach in such a way that students will see Jesus in every subject as infinitely admirable and thus come to share in the pleasure that God has in admiring the glory of his Son, and then be equipped to spread that everywhere.

via The Consummation of History and the Admiration of Christ.

A Pastor Like John Newton

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In a biographical sermon on John Newton, John Piper writes:

Oh how rare are the pastors who speak with a tender heart and have a theological backbone of steel.

I dream of such pastors. I would like to be one someday. A pastor whose might in the truth is matched by his meekness. Whose theological acumen is matched by his manifest contrition. Whose heights of intellect are matched by his depths of humility. Yes, and the other way around! A pastor whose relational warmth is matched by his rigor of study, whose bent toward mercy is matched by the vigilance of his biblical discernment, and whose sense of humor is exceeded by the seriousness of his calling.

I dream of great defenders of true doctrine who are mainly known for the delight they have in God and the joy in God that they bring to the people of God—who enter controversy, when necessary, not because they love ideas and arguments, but because they love Christ and the church.

via A Pastor Like John Newton.

Does It Matter What Others Think?

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Here are some helpful thoughts by John Piper on a question that everybody asks: Does It Matter What Others Think?.

Here’s an excerpt:

In other words, with Paul, we do care – really care – about what others think of Christ. Their salvation hangs on what they think of Christ. And our lives are to display his truth and beauty. So we must care what others think of us as representative of Christ. Love demands it.

How God Seeks the Good of the Creature

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The Church is the “creature of grace” and exists as the result of God’s expressed identity. Essential to the Church is the derivative nature that she possesses inseparable from the activity of the very essence of God himself. It is this relation or union that makes the aim of God for his own end the same as his aim for the creature’s end. Edwards says this most explicitly when he writes


Thus’ tis easy to conceive, how God should seek the good of the creature, consisting in the creature’s knowledge and holiness, and even his happiness, from a supreme regard to himself; as his happiness arises from that which is an image and participation of God’s own beauty; and consists in the creature’s exercising a supreme regard to God and complacence in him; in beholding God’s glory, in esteeming and loving it, and rejoicing in it, and in his exercising and testifying love and supreme respect to God: which is the same thing with the creature’s exalting God as his chief good, and making him his supreme end (End of Creation, 232).

This could be summarized: “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.”