It is wrong to wager with a trust fund. And all we have, as humans, is a trust fund. Everything we have is a trust from God, to be used for His glory. “[God] Himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything” (Acts 17:25). Faithful trustees may not gamble with a trust fund. They work and trade: value for value, just and fair. This is the pattern again and again in Scripture. And when you are handling the funds of another, how much more irresponsible it is to wager!
Don’t Play the Lottery for Me! January 1, 2003, www.DesiringGod.org, Used by Permission.
The better we understand the seething evil of the human heart that is ready to break out where there is no restraint, the more thankful we will be for government.
Grateful for (almost) Any Government, November 4, 2008, Used by permission. www.DesiringGod.org.
A profound understanding and fear of God’s wrath is exactly what many [people] need, because without it, the gospel is diluted down to mere human relations and loses its biblical glory. Without a biblical view of God’s wrath, you will be tempted to think that your wrath – your anger – against your [enemy] is simply too big to overcome, because you have never really tasted what it is like to see an infinitely greater wrath overcome by grace, namely, God’s wrath against you.
This Momentary Marriage – A Parable of Permanence, Desiring God Foundation, 2008, p. 44-45, www.DesiringGod.org.
The ultimate thing we can say about marriage is that it exists for God’s glory. That is, it exists to display God. Now we see how: Marriage is patterned after Christ’s covenant relationship to His redeemed people, the church. And therefore, the highest meaning and the most ultimate purpose of marriage is to put the covenant relationship of Christ and His church on display. That is why marriage exists. If you are married, that is why you are married. If you hope to be, that should be your dream.
This Momentary Marriage – A Parable of Permanence, Desiring God Foundation, 2008, p. 25, www.DesiringGod.org.
The wonder of marriage is woven into the wonder of the gospel of the cross of Christ, and the message of the cross is foolishness to the natural man, and so the meaning of marriage is foolishness to the natural man (1 Cor. 2:14).
This Momentary Marriage – A Parable of Permanence, Desiring God Foundation, 2008, p. 29, www.DesiringGod.org.
Marriage is for making children into disciples of Jesus. Here the focus shifts. This purpose of marriage is not merely to add more bodies to the planet. The point is to increase the number of followers of Jesus on the planet… God’s purpose in making marriage the place to have children was never merely to fill the earth with people, but to fill the earth with worshippers of the true God… When the focus of marriage becomes “Make children disciples of Jesus,” the meaning of marriage in relation to children is not mainly “Make them,” but “Make them disciples.” And the latter can happen even where the former doesn’t.
This Momentary Marriage – A Parable of Permanence, Desiring God Foundation, 2008, p.138-139, www.DesiringGod.org.
Very soon the shadow will give way to Reality. The partial will pass into the Perfect. The foretaste will lead to the Banquet. The troubled path will end in Paradise. A hundred candle-lit evenings will come to their consummation in the marriage supper of the Lamb. And this momentary marriage will be swallowed up by Life. Christ will be all and in all. And the purpose of marriage will be complete.
This Momentary Marriage – A Parable of Permanence, Desiring God Foundation, 2008, p.178, www.DesiringGod.org.
Full freedom is what you have when no lack of opportunity, no lack of ability, and no lack of desire prevents you from doing what will make you happiest in a thousand years. In order to be free in the fullest sense you have to have opportunity, ability, and desire to do what will make you happy in a thousand years. Another way to say it would be that there are four kinds of freedom, or better, four stages of freedom on the way to the full freedom all of us long for: The freedom of opportunity to do what we can, the freedom of ability to do what we desire, and the freedom of desire to do what will bring us unending joy… Therefore, true Christians are the freest people in the world.
Hagar and Slavery vs. Sarah and Freedom, Galatians 4:21-31, May 22, 1983, Used by Permission, www.DesiringGod.org.
Forgiveness is available for all sins, without exception. Forgiveness is received freely through trusting Christ. And trusting Christ involves confessing sin as sin and turning away from it to embrace the ways of God with joy.
Bethlehem Baptist Church, A Statement on Divorce and Remarriage in the Life of Bethlehem Baptist Church, May 2, 1989, www.DesiringGod.org.
Is masturbation wrong? Let me address the issue mainly for men. I cannot imagine sexual orgasm in the loins without sexual image in the mind. I know there are nocturnal emissions, which I regard as innocent and helpful, but I doubt that they are ever orgasmic apart from a sexual dream that supplies the necessary image in the mind. Evidently God has constituted the connection between sexual orgasm and sexual thought in such a way that the force and pleasure of orgasm is dependent on the thought or images in our minds. Therefore in order to masturbate, it is necessary to get vivid and exciting thoughts or images into the mind. This can be done by pure imagination or by pictures or movies or stories or real persons. These images always involve women as sexual objects. I use the word “object” because in order for a women to be a true sexual “subject” in our imagination she must in reality be one with whom we are experiencing what we are imagining. This is not the case with masturbation. So I vote no on masturbation. There may be other reasons why it is wrong. For now I rest my vote on the inevitable sexual images which accompany masturbation and which turn women into sexual objects. The sexual thoughts that enable masturbation do not help any man to treat women with greater respect. Therefore masturbation produces real and legitimate guilt and stands in the way of obedience.
Missions and Masturbation, September 10, 1984, www.DesiringGod.org, Used by Permission.
Missions is the overflow of our delight in God because missions is the overflow of God’s delight in being God.
A Christian is not a person who experiences no bad desires. A Christian is a person who is at war with those desires by the power of the Spirit. Conflict in your soul is not all bad. Even though we long for the day when our flesh will be utterly defunct and only pure and loving desires will fill our hearts, yet there is something worse than the war within between flesh and Spirit – namely, no war within because the flesh controls the citadel and all the outposts. Praise God for the war within! Serenity in sin is death. The Spirit has landed to do battle with the flesh. So take heart if your soul feels like a battlefield at times. The sign of whether you are indwelt by the Spirit is not that you have no bad desires, but that you are at war with them!
The War Within: Flesh vs. Spirit, June 19, 1983, Used by permission. www.DesiringGod.org.
If a preacher leaves his people where they are, seeking satisfaction in family and job and leisure and toys and sex and money and food and power and esteem, when suffering and death strip it all away they will be embittered and angry and depressed. And the worth and beauty and goodness and power and wisdom of God, the glory of God, will vanish in the cloud of murmuring, complaining, and cursing.
Feed My Sheep, ed. Don Kistler, Soli Deo Gloria Ministries, 2002, p. 246.
We must aim to preach in such a way that we breed a kind of people who feel loved not when they are made much of, but when they are patiently helped to enjoy making much of God, even when they themselves are slandered, ridiculed, persecuted, and killed.
Feed My Sheep, ed. Don Kistler, Soli Deo Gloria Ministries, 2002, p. 262.
People are not prepared or able to rejoice in suffering unless they experience a massive biblical revolution of how they think and feel about the meaning of life. Human nature and American culture make it impossible to rejoice in suffering. This is a miracle in the human soul wrought by God through His Word.
Feed My Sheep, ed. Don Kistler, Soli Deo Gloria Ministries, 2002, p. 258.
When a preacher preaches with joy (in the midst of) suffering, the people will see Christ for the infinite value that He is, and, seeing, will cherish Him above all things and thus be changed from one degree of glory to the next. The glory of God will be magnified in the church and in the world, and the great aim of preaching will be achieved.
Feed My Sheep, ed. Don Kistler, Soli Deo Gloria Ministries, 2002, p. 257.
God has ordained that our preaching become deeper and more winsome as we are broken, humbled, and made low and desperately dependent on grace by the trials of our lives.
Feed My Sheep, ed. Don Kistler, Soli Deo Gloria Ministries, 2002, p. 259.
All experiences of suffering in the path of Christian obedience, whether from persecution or sickness or accident, have this in common: They all threaten our faith in the goodness of God and tempt us to leave the path of obedience. Therefore, every triumph of faith and all perseverance in obedience are testimonies to the goodness of God and the preciousness of Christ – whether the enemy is sickness, Satan, sin or sabotage. Therefore, all suffering, of every kind, that we endure in the path of our Christian calling is a suffering "with Christ" and "for Christ." With Him in the sense that the suffering comes to us as we are walking with Him by faith, and in the sense that it is endured in the strength that He supplies through His sympathizing high-priestly ministry (Hebrews 4:15). For Him in the sense that the suffering tests and proves our allegiance to His goodness and power, and in the sense that it reveals His worth as an all-sufficient compensation and prize.
Suffering for the Sake of the Body – The Pursuit of People Through Pain, A Seminar for The Bethlehem Institute.
Worship is a way of gladly reflecting back to God the radiance of his worth. This cannot be done by mere acts of duty. It can be done only when spontaneous affections arise in the heart.
Desiring God, 1996, p. 83, Used by Permission, www.desiringGod.org.
The nature of true worship is worship that does two things: it expresses the feeling of God’s value and greatness; and it seeks to sustain in the congregation that same spiritual sense of God’s immense worth and beauty. Or to put it another way, true worship: comes from a heart where God is treasured above all human property and praise, and it aims to inspire the same God-centered passion in the hearts of the congregation.
Used by Permission, www.desiringGod.org.
Worship is an inward feeling and outward action that reflects the worth of God.
Worship: The Feast Of Christian Hedonism, Sermon. September 25, 1983, www.desiringGod.org, Used by Permission.
There are rare and wonderful species of joy that flourish only in the rainy atmosphere of suffering.
Desiring God, 1996, p. 111, Used by Permission, www.desiringGod.org.
Joy in God in the midst of suffering makes the worth of God – the all-satisfying glory of God – shine more brightly than it would through our joy at any other time. Sunshine happiness signals the value of sunshine. But happiness in suffering signals the value of God. Suffering and hardship joyfully accepted in the path of obedience to Christ show the supremacy of Christ more than all our faithfulness in fair day.
Feed My Sheep, ed. Don Kistler, Soli Deo Gloria Ministries, 2002, p. 256.
It is true that God will never forsake His own children. But the proof that we are His children is that He works in us the vigilance not to forsake Him. God’s not forsaking us is the work He does in us to keep us from forsaking Him (Philippians 2:12-13).
When Is It Dangerous to Look at Jesus? June 15, 2005, Fresh Words, Used by Permission, www.DesiringGod.org.
Whenever happy confidence in the sovereign power of God for our own lives and the lives of others grows weak, legalism creeps in. We inevitably try to compensate for loss of dynamic faith by increased moral resolve and the addition of man-made regulations. But wherever joyful confidence in the power of God is waning, the flesh is waxing. Which means that the morality we had hoped would save ourselves and the regulations we hoped would purify our church fall victim to the massive power of the flesh and become its instruments of self-reliance and self-sufficiency.
Brothers, We Are Not Professionals, p. 155, Used by Permission, www.DesiringGod.org.
To fear the Lord is to tremble at the thought of offending him by unbelief and disobedience. It is the feeling that God is not to be trifled with… Those who fear God shudder at the thought of speaking that way about their Majestic Father. Anything that dishonors God is anathema to those who fear God.
Sermon: Malachi 3:13-18, December 13, 1987. Used by Permission. www.DesiringGod.org.
Why Scripture memorization is so essential to the Christian life:
1. Conformity to Christ (1 Sam. 3:2).
2. Daily triumph over sin (Psm. 119:9,11).
3. Daily triumph over Satan (Mt. 4:1-11).
4. Comfort and counsel for people you love (Pr. 25:11).
5. Communicating the Gospel to unbelievers.
6. Communion with God in the enjoyment of His person and ways.
Why Memorize Scripture? September 5, 2006, www.DesiringGod.org.. Used by Permission.
When the heart full of God’s love can draw on the mind full of God’s word, timely blessings flow from the mouth.
Why Memorize Scripture? September 5, 2006, www.DesiringGod.org. Used by Permission.
When I pray for revival I pray first for the most radical thing: The utter devotion and allegiance of your hearts to Christ. That you would love Him so deeply and long for Him so passionately that His coming would be your great hope, and death would be gain, and life would be for Christ and His kingdom.
Sermon: 1 Corinthians 15:50-58, What Happens When You Die? July 25, 1993, www.DesiringGod.org.
A profound understanding and fear of God’s wrath is exactly what many marriages need, because without it, the gospel is diluted down to mere human relations and loses its biblical glory. Without a biblical view of God’s wrath, you will be tempted to think that your wrath – your anger – against your spouse is simply too big to overcome, because you have never really tasted what it is like to see an infinitely greater wrath overcome by grace, namely, God’s wrath against you.
This Momentary Marriage – A Parable of Permanence, Desiring God Foundation, 2008, p. 44-45, www.DesiringGod.org.
The gospel of Christ crucified for our sins is the foundation of our lives. Marriage exists to display it. And when marriage breaks down, the gospel is there to forgive and heal and sustain until He comes, or until He calls.
What God Has Joined Together, Let Not Man Separate, Part 2, July 1, 2007. www.DesiringGod.org, Used by Permission.
The purpose of the Lord’s Supper is to receive from Christ the nourishment and strength and hope and joy that come from feasting our souls on all that He purchased for us on the cross, especially His own fellowship.
Idolatry, the Lord’s Supper, and the Body of Christ, 1 Cor. 10:14-22, Sermon, Used by Permission: www.DesiringGod.org.
When justice is divorced from morality, when rights of individuals are separated from right and wrong, the only definition you have left for justice is the right for every individual to do as he pleases. And the end of that road is anarchy and barbarism.
It is crucial…that we not confuse or combine justification and sanctification. Confusing them will, in the end, undermine the gospel, and turn justification by faith into justification by performance.
Faith Alone and the Fight for Joy taken from When the Darkness Will Not Lift by John Piper, 2006, Crossway Books, a division of Good News Publishers, Wheaton Illinois 60187, www.crosswaybooks.org. p. 18.
Revelation is the act of God whereby what once was concealed from men is now made known to them.
The Wisdom We Speak, 1 Corinthians 2:6-13, July 20, 1980. www.desiringGod.org, Used by Permission.
Suffering is generally portrayed in the Bible as the necessary and God-ordained, though not God-pleasing, plight of this fallen world (Romans 8:20-25, Ezekiel 18:32), and especially the necessary portion of all who would enter the kingdom (Acts 14:22; 1 Thessalonians 3:3-4) and live lives of godliness (2 Timothy 3:12). This suffering is never viewed merely as a tragedy. It is also viewed as a means of growing deep with God and becoming strong in this life (Romans 5:3-5; James 1:3-4; Hebrews 12:3-11; 2 Corinthians 1:9; 4:7-12; 12:7-10) and becoming something glorious in the life to come (2 Corinthians 4:17; Romans 8:18).
Ten Reasons Why it is Wrong to Take the Life of Unborn Children, Sermon: April 7, 1989, www.DesiringGod.org. Used by Permission.
We must be deeply converted in order to enter the kingdom of heaven, and we are converted when Christ becomes for us a Treasure Chest of holy joy.
Desiring God, Bethlehem Baptist Church, 1996, p. 66, Used by Permission, www.desiringGod.org.
When people cast fear to the wind and spend themselves and risk their lives and fortune in the cause of God’s truth, and in love for other people, then God is revealed for who He really is: infinitely valuable and satisfying – so much so that His people don’t need the fleeting pleasures of sin in order to be content.
Brothers, We Are Not Professionals, Bethlehem Baptist Church, 2002, p. 120.
A broken, leaping heart will love like Jesus. And the power of the love will be proportionate to the felt fearfulness of our nearness to destruction. The keener the memory of our awful rescue, the more naturally we pity those in a similar plight. The more deeply we feel how undeserved and free was the grace that plucked us from the flames; the freer will be our benevolence to sinners. We do not love as passionately as we ought because our belief in these things is not real. So our pride is not broken and our demeanor not lowly. And we do not look with aching and longing on the crowds that pass us in the airport or the straying members of our flock.
Brothers, We Are Not Professionals, Bethlehem Baptist Church, 2002, p. 117.
We do not make a god out of pleasure; we make a god out of whatever we take pleasure in most. Pleasure is not the object of worship; pleasure is the worship.
The Blazing Center – The Soul Satisfying Supremacy of God in All Things, Q&A, 2005, www.DesiringGod.org, Used by Permission.
Outward acts of…piety which do not flow from the new and God-given affections of the heart, which delight to depend on God and seek his glory are only legalism and have no value in honoring God.
The Supremacy of God in Preaching, Baker, p. 83.
We ought not speak too long about God with our minds before we turn and speak to God from our heart. We must stir a lot of prayer into the stew of our theology.
Restful Words for Labor Day, Sermon on Psalm 23, August 31, 1980. Used by Permission, www.DesiringGod.org.
The first spiritual step on the Calvary road of radical obedience to Jesus is repentance. Repentance includes remorse for inward corruption and sin. Repentance is not only remorse. It is a change of mind and heart about sin and righteousness and about Christ. It is a turning from the broken cisterns of the world to the fountain of life.
Brothers, We Are Not Professionals, Bethlehem Baptist Church, 2002, p. 119.
What could God give us to enjoy that would prove Him most loving? There is only one possible answer: Himself! If He withholds Himself from our contemplation and companionship, no matter what else He gives us, He is not loving.
Desiring God, Bethlehem Baptist Church, p. 48, used by permission, www.DesiringGod.org.
The deepest need that you and I have in weakness and adversity is not quick relief, but the well-grounded confidence that what is happening to us is part of the greatest purpose of God in the universe – the glorification of the grace and power of his Son – the grace and power that bore Him to the cross and kept him there until the work of love was done.
I measure Your love for me by the magnitude of the wrath I deserved and the wonder of Your mercy by putting Christ in my place.
Defending My Father’s Wrath, June 26, 2006, www.DesiringGod.org, Used by Permission
So you can see what is happening in the New Testament. Worship is being significantly deinstitutionalized, delocalized, de-externalized. The whole thrust is being taken off of ceremony and seasons and places and forms and is being shifted to what is happening in the heart – not just on Sunday but every day and all the time in all of life.
Brothers, We Are Not Professionals, Bethlehem Baptist Church, 2002, p. 232.
Exultation that does not flow from education, affections that do not flow from knowing, savoring that does not flow from seeing, feeling that does not flow from thinking – are hollow and rootless – noisy gongs and clanging cymbals. And God is not glorified by artificial and empty passions. True delight is rooted in true doctrine. God-centered Exultation is rooted in God-centered Education.
Education for Exaltation, Psalm 100, May 19, 2002, www.DesiringGod.org, Used by Permission.
Relativism no longer means: your claim to truth is no more valid than mine; but now means: you may not claim to speak the truth.
Brothers, We Are Not Professionals, Bethlehem Baptist Church, 2002, p. 159.
When sexual desire rises Satan shifts his missile carriers into high gear. The rise of sexual desire does not mean victory for Satan, but does mean vulnerability to Satan.
Satan Uses Sexual Desire, Sermon, December 9, 1984, www.DesiringGod.org, Used by Permission.
We must not give a sexual image or impulse more than five seconds before we mount a violent counterattack with the mind. I mean that! Five seconds. In the first two seconds we shout, "NO! Get out of my head!" In the next two seconds we cry out: "O God, in the name of Jesus, help me. Save me now. I am yours." Good beginning. But then the real battle begins. This is a mind war. The absolute necessity is to get the image and the impulse out of our mind. How? Get a counter-image into the mind. Fight. Push. Strike. Don’t ease up. It must be an image that is so powerful that the other image cannot survive. There are lust-destroying images and thoughts.
A Passion for Purity vs. Passive Prayers, Matthew 5:28-29, November 10, 1999, www.DesiringGod.org.
Have you ever in the first five seconds of temptation, demanded of your mind that it look steadfastly at the crucified form of Jesus Christ? Picture this. You have just seen a peek-a-boo blouse inviting further fantasy. You have five seconds. "No! Get out of my mind! God help me!" Now, immediately, demand of your mind – you can do this by the Spirit (Romans 8:13). Demand of your mind to fix its gaze on Christ on the cross. Use all your fantasizing power to see his lacerated back. Thirty-nine lashes left little flesh intact. He heaves with his breath up and down against the rough vertical beam of the cross. Each breath puts splinters into the lacerations. The Lord gasps. From time to time he screams out with intolerable pain. He tries to pull away from the wood and the massive spokes through his wrist rip into the nerve endings and he screams again with agony and pushes up with his feet to give some relief to his wrists. But the bones and nerves in his pierced feet crush against each other with anguish and he screams again. There is no relief. His throat is raw from screaming and thirst. He loses his breath and thinks he is suffocating, and suddenly his body involuntarily gasps for air and all the injuries unite in pain. In torment, he forgets about the crown of two-inch thorns and throws his head back in desperation, only to hit one of the thorns perpendicular against the cross beam and drive it half an inch into his skull. His voice reaches a soprano pitch of pain and sobs break over his pain-wracked body as every cry brings more and more pain. Now, I am not thinking about the blouse any more. I am at Calvary. These two images are not compatible.
A Passion for Purity vs. Passive Prayers, Matthew 5:28-29, November 10, 1999, www.DesiringGod.org.
So the reason the tithe is not commanded by Paul is not that Jesus abolished it. He didn’t, He approved it (Lk. 11:42). Nor was the reason that we should no longer give proportionately. We should “as we may prosper” (1 Cor. 16:2). The more you make the more you give. Nor was it that the need of the ministry is less in the New Testament. It’s not. Teaching, preaching, caring and missions all take money… The reason that Paul did not use the command to tithe in order to enforce his teaching about giving was that he wanted to emphasize willingness over constraint, and liberality over limitation, and a sense that all our money is God’s not just a tenth.
Sermon: Malachi 3:7-12, December 6, 1987. Used by Permission. www.DesiringGod.org.
If we are going to “set aside” the command to tithe…because it feels slavish and legal, and because we want to promote freedom in our giving, then let us beware of jumping out of the frying pan of legal slavery to a command into the fire of carnal slavery to fear and greed. Sin lurks at both doors.
Sermon: Malachi 3:7-12, December 6, 1987. Used by Permission. www.DesiringGod.org.
My take on tithing in America is that it’s a middle-class way of robbing God. Tithing to the church and spending the rest on your family is not a Christian goal. It’s a diversion. The real issue is: How shall we use God’s trust fund – namely, all we have – for His glory? In a world with so much misery, what lifestyle should we call our people to live? What example are we setting?
The New Testament exists because the final, complete, decisive, lasting act of divine salvation happened when Jesus, the Messiah, came into the world. He was the final Adam (Romans 5:12-21), and the final prophet like Moses (Acts 3:22; 7:37), and the final Israel (Matthew 4:1-11), and the final high priest (Hebrews 7:23-24), and the final Passover sacrifice (1 Corinthians 5:7), and the final manna from heaven (John 6:31-32), and the final suffering servant of Isaiah 53 (Mark 10:45), and the final Son of Man of Daniel 7 (Matthew 24:30). His blood was the blood of the promised final new covenant in Jeremiah 31:31 (Luke 22:20). He therefore was the final, decisive Yes and Amen to all God’s promises (2 Corinthians 1:20).
Abortion: The Innocent Blood of Our Sons and Daughters, Sermon: January 27, 2008, www.DesiringGod.org. Used by Permission.
This is God’s universal purpose for all Christian suffering: more contentment in God and less satisfaction in the world.
[Jesus Christ] did not ransom everybody. He gave his life a ransom for many (Mark 10:45). He did not propitiate the wrath of God against everybody. But He laid down His life for the sheep. They are scattered throughout the world in every tongue and tribe and people and nation.
Jesus Christ is an Advocate for Sinners, Sermon, February 10, 1985, www.DesiringGod.org, Used by Permission.
They will object: does not the Old Testament promise that God will prosper His people? Indeed! God increases our yield so that by giving we can prove our yield is not our God. God does not prosper a man’s business so he can move from a Ford to a Cadillac. God prospers a business so that thousands of unreached peoples can be reached with the gospel. He prospers a business so that twelve percent of the world’s population can move a step back from the precipice of starvation.
Desiring God, Bethlehem Baptist Church, 1996, p. 169, used by permission, www.desiringGod.org.
Since God made man like Himself, man’s dominion over the world and his filling the world is a display-an imaging forth-of God. God’s aim, therefore, was that man would so act that he mirror forth God, who has ultimate dominion. Man is given the exalted status of image-bearer not so he would become arrogant and autonomous (as he tried to do in the fall), but so he would reflect the glory of His Maker whose image he bears. God’s purpose in creation, therefore, was to fill the earth with his own glory. This is made clear, for example, in Numbers 14:21, where the Lord says, “All the earth shall be full of the glory of the Lord,” and in Isaiah 43:7, where the Lord refers to his people as those “whom I created for my glory.”
Desiring God, 1996, p. 256, copyright Bethlehem Baptist Church, used by permission, www.desiringGOD.org.
The impulse to create the world was not from weakness, as though God were lacking in some perfection which creation could supply.
Christian Hedonism is a philosophy of life built on the following five convictions:
1. The longing to be happy is a universal human experience, and it is good, not sinful.
2. We should never try to deny or resist our longings to be happy, as though it were a bad impulse. Instead we should seek to intensify this longing and nourish it with whatever will provide the deepest and most enduring satisfaction.
3. The deepest and most enduring happiness is found only in God. Not from God, but in God.
4. The happiness we find in God reaches its consummation when it is shared with others in the manifold ways of love.
5. To the extent we try to abandon the pursuit of our own pleasure, we fail to honor God and love people. Or, to put it positively: the pursuit of pleasure is a necessary part of all worship and virtue. That is, the chief end of man is to glorify God BY enjoying Him forever.
Desiring God, 1996, p. 23, Used by Permission, www.desiringGod.org.
Christian Hedonism does not make a god out of pleasure. It says you have already made a god out of whatever you take most pleasure in.
Desiring God, 1996, p. 289, Used by Permission, www.desiringGod.org.
My quest for happiness is now nothing other than a quest for God. And He has been found in Jesus Christ.
Loving God as Yourself – Part 2, May 7, 1995, www.DesiringGod.org. Used by Permission.
When sin entered the world, it ruined the harmony of marriage not because it brought headship and submission into existence, but because it twisted man’s humble, loving headship toward hostile domination in some men and lazy indifference in others. And it twisted woman’s intelligent, willing, happy, creative, articulate submission toward manipulative obsequiousness in some women and brazen insubordination in others. Sin didn’t create headship and submission; it ruined them and distorted them and made them ugly and destructive.
This Momentary Marriage – A Parable of Permanence, Desiring God Foundation, 2008, p. 79, www.DesiringGod.org.
[In Ephesians 5] husbands are compared to Christ; wives are compared to the church. Husbands are compared to the head; wives are compared to the body. Husbands are commanded to love as Christ loves; wives are commanded to submit as the church is to submit to Christ.
This Momentary Marriage – A Parable of Permanence, Desiring God Foundation, 2008, p. 77, www.DesiringGod.org.
Headship is not a right to control or to abuse or to neglect. (Christ’s sacrifice is the pattern.) Rather, it’s the responsibility to love like Christ in leading and protecting and providing for our wives and families. Submission is not slavish or coerced or cowering. That’s not the way Christ wants the church to respond to His leadership and protection and provision. He wants the submission of the church to be free and willing and glad and refining and strengthening.
This Momentary Marriage – A Parable of Permanence, Desiring God Foundation, 2008, p. 80, www.DesiringGod.org.
We belittle God when we go through the outward motions of worship and take no pleasure in His person.
Worship: The Feast Of Christian Hedonism, Sermon. September 25, 1983, www.desiringGod.org, Used by Permission.
Grace is not simply leniency when we have sinned. Grace is the enabling gift of God not to sin. Grace is power, not just pardon. Therefore the effort we make to obey God is not an effort done in our own strength, but in the strength which God supplies.
The flesh is as good as dead. Its doom is sure. But there are outlying pockets of resistance. The guerrillas of the flesh will not lay down their arms, and must be fought back daily. The only way to do it is by the Spirit, and that’s what it means to walk by the Spirit – so live that He gives victory over the dwindling resistance movement of the flesh.
The War Within: Flesh vs. Spirit, June 19, 1983, Used by permission. www.DesiringGod.org.
1. Jesus himself testified to his coming resurrection from the dead (Mk. 8:31; cf. Mt. 17:22, Lk. 9:22).
2. The tomb was empty on Easter (Luke 24:3).
3. The disciples were almost immediately transformed from men who were hopeless and fearful after the crucifixion (Lk. 24:21; Jn. 20:19) into men who were confident and bold witnesses of the resurrection (Ac. 2:24; 3:15; 4:2).
4. Paul claimed that, not only had he seen the risen Christ, but that 500 others had seen him also, and many were still alive when he made this public claim (1 Cor. 15:6).
5. The sheer existence of a thriving, empire-conquering early Christian church supports the truth of the resurrection claim.
6. The Apostle Paul’s conversion supports the truth of the resurrection (Ac. 9).
7. The New Testament witnesses do not bear the stamp of dupes or deceivers.
8. There is a self-authenticating glory in the gospel of Christ’s death and resurrection as narrated by the biblical witnesses (Jn. 16:13).
Eight Reasons Why I Believe That Jesus Rose from the Dead, February 28, 2007, www.DesiringGod.org, Used by Permission.
The dead body of Jesus could not be found. There are four possible ways to account for this.
1. His foes stole the body. If they did (and they never claimed to have done so), they surely would have produced the body to stop the successful spread of the Christian faith in the very city where the crucifixion occurred. But they could not produce it.
2. His friends stole the body. This was an early rumor (Matthew 28:11-15). Is it probable? Could they have overcome the guards at the tomb? More important, would they have begun to preach with such authority that Jesus was raised, knowing that he was not? Would they have risked their lives and accepted beatings for something they knew was a fraud?
3. Jesus was not dead, but only unconscious when they laid him in the tomb. He awoke, removed the stone, overcame the soldiers, and vanished from history after a few meetings with his disciples in which he convinced them he was risen from the dead. Even the foes of Jesus did not try this line. He was obviously dead. The Romans saw to that. The stone could not be moved by one man from within who had just been stabbed in the side by a spear and spent six hours nailed to a cross.
4. God raised Jesus from the dead. This is what He said would happen. It is what the disciples said did happen. But as long as there is a remote possibility of explaining the resurrection naturalistically, modern people say we should not jump to a supernatural explanation. Is this reasonable? I don’t think so. Of course, we don’t want to be gullible. But neither do we want to reject the truth just because it’s strange.
Eight Reasons Why I Believe That Jesus Rose from the Dead, February 28, 2007, www.DesiringGod.org, Used by Permission.
I don’t so much pray that my death will be without pain, but that it will be without doubt.
I am aware that some killing is endorsed in the Bible. The word for “murder” in Exodus 20:13 (“You shall not murder”) is the Hebrew rahaz. It is used 43 times in the Hebrew Old Testament. It always means violent, personal killing that is actually murder or is accused as murder. It is never used of killing in war or (with one possible exception, Numbers 35:27) of killing in judicial execution. Rather a clear distinction is preserved between legal “putting to death” and illegal “murder.” For example, Numbers 35:19 says, “The murderer shall certainly be put to death.” The word “murderer” comes from rahaz which is forbidden in the Ten Commandments. The word “put to death” is a general word that can describe legal executions.
Ten Reasons Why it is Wrong to Take the Life of Unborn Children, Sermon: April 7, 1989, www.DesiringGod.org. Used by Permission.
God has commanded us in his word, “You shall not murder” (Exodus 20:13). And He told us why. He said in Genesis 9:6, “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.” In other words, when you murder a human, you attack God who makes every human in his image.
Love Your Unborn Neighbor, Sermon: January 22, 2006, www.DesiringGod.org. Used by Permission.
The most fundamental task of a mother and father is to show God to the children. Children know their parents before they know God. This is a huge responsibility and should cause every parent to be desperate for God-like transformation. The children will have years of exposure to what the universe is like before they know there is a universe. They will experience the kind of authority there is in the universe and the kind of justice there is in the universe and the kind of love there is in the universe before they meet the God of authority and justice and love who created and rules the universe. Children are absorbing from dad his strength and leadership and protection and justice and love; and they are absorbing from mom her care and nurture and warmth and intimacy and justice and love – and, of course, all these overlap.
This Momentary Marriage – A Parable of Permanence, Desiring God Foundation, 2008, p.143-144, www.DesiringGod.org.
Preaching is God’s appointed means for the conversion of sinners, the awakening of the church, and the preservation of the saints. If preaching fails in its task, the consequences are infinitely terrible.
The Supremacy of God in Preaching, Baker, 1990, p. 54-55.
So, let us work hard but never forget that it is not us but the grace of God which is with us (1 Cor. 15:10). Let us obey now, as always, but never forget that it is God who works in us both the will and the deed (Phil. 2:13). Let us spread the gospel far and wide and spend ourselves for the sake of the elect but never venture to speak of anything except what Christ has wrought in us (Rom. 15:18). In all our serving may God be the giver, and may God get the glory.
Brothers, We Are Not Professionals, Bethlehem Baptist Church 2002, p. 44.
Trying to work for God without worshipping God results in joyless legalism. Work minus worship magnifies your will power not God’s worth. If you try to do things for God without delighting in God you bring dishonor upon God. Serving God without savoring God is lifeless and unreal.
Today singleness is cherished by many because it brings maximum freedom for self-realization. You pull your own strings. No one cramps your style. But Paul cherished his singleness because it put him utterly at the disposal of the Lord Jesus… The contemporary mood promotes singleness (but not chastity) because it frees from slavery. Paul promotes singleness (and chastity) because it frees for slavery – namely slavery to Christ.
Satan Uses Sexual Desire, Sermon, December 9, 1984, www.DesiringGod.org, Used by Permission.
God promises spectacular blessings to those of you who remain single in Christ, and He gives you and extraordinary calling for your life. To be single in Christ is, therefore, not a falling short of God’s best, but a path of Christ-exalting, covenant-keeping obedience that many are called to walk.
This Momentary Marriage – A Parable of Permanence, Desiring God Foundation, 2008, p. 107, www.DesiringGod.org.
Children are born into God’s family and receive their inheritance not by marriage and procreation but by faith and regeneration. Which means that single people in Christ have zero disadvantage in bearing children for God and may, in some ways, have great advantage. The apostle Paul was single in Christ, and he said of his converts, “Though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your Father in Christ Jesus through the gospel” (1 Cor. 4:15). Paul was a great father and never married. And does he not speak beautifully for single women in Christ in 1 Thessalonians 2:7 when he writes, “We were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children?” So it will be said of many single women in Christ, “She was a great mother and never married.”
This Momentary Marriage – A Parable of Permanence, Desiring God Foundation, 2008, p. 110-111, www.DesiringGod.org.
It is a calling to do what only single men and women in Christ can do in this world, namely, to display by the Christ-exalting devotion of your singleness the truths about Christ and His kingdom that shine more clearly through singleness than through marriage. As long as you are single, this is your calling: to so live for Christ as to make it clearer to the world and to the church
1. that the family of God grows not by propagation through sexual intercourse, but by regeneration through faith in Christ;
2. that relationships in Christ are more permanent; and more precious, than relationships in families;
3. that marriage is temporary and finally gives way to the relationship to which it was pointing all along: Christ and the church – the way a picture is no longer needed when you see face-to-face;
4. and that faithfulness to Christ defines the value of life; all other relationships get their final significance form this. No family relationship is ultimate; relationship to Christ is.
This Momentary Marriage – A Parable of Permanence, Desiring God Foundation, 2008, p. 113-114, www.DesiringGod.org.
Every good deed we do in dependence on God does just the opposite of paying Him back; it puts us ever deeper in debt to His grace. And that is exactly where God wants us to be through all eternity.
Brothers, We Are Not Professionals, Bethlehem Baptist Church, 2002, p. 33.
There is a kind of cavalier attitude toward our security today. There is little trembling. Little vigilance and earnestness and caution and watchfulness over our souls. There is a kind of casual, slack, careless attitude toward the possibility that we might make shipwreck of our faith and fail to lay hold on eternal life. We have the notion that security is a kind of mechanical, automatic thing. We prayed once to receive Jesus. We are safe and there is no place for “working out your salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12).
When Is It Dangerous to Look at Jesus? June 15, 2005, Fresh Words, Used by Permission, www.DesiringGod.org.
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.
God’s Passion for His Glory, p. 41.
A God-centered theology must be a missionary theology. If you say that you love the glory of God, the test of your authenticity is whether you love the spread of that glory among all the peoples of the world. Or another way to say it is that worship is the fuel and the goal of missions. Missions exists because worship doesn’t. God’s passion is to be known and honored and worshipped among all the peoples. To worship him is to share that passion for his supremacy among the nations.
The Driving Convictions Behind Missions, Nov. 2, 1996.
We will continue to say what the world, by and large, will not believe, namely, that it is possible to describe homosexual behavior as sinful, perverse, abnormal, and destructive to persons and culture while at the same time being willing to lay down our lives in love for homosexual persons. In fact, we say something even more radical and unbelievable to the world, namely, that you must believe homosexual behavior is sin and harmful in order to love homosexual persons. Because God tells us in 1 Corinthians 13:6, “[Love] does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.” If you deny the truth that homosexual behavior is sin, but instead approve of it or rejoice in it, what you bring to the homosexual person will not be love – no matter how affirming, kind, or tolerant. Our aim is the biblical combination of conviction in God’s truth and compassion for God’s creation.
Discerning the Will of God Concerning Homosexuality and Marriage, August 8, 2004, www.DesiringGod.org, Used by Permission.
1. The Will of God for Marriage Was Expressed in Creation: Jesus confirmed God’s will in creation when He said in Matthew 19:4-6, “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” That’s the Bible’s teaching and the Bible’s assumption from cover to cover. Marriage is one woman and one man becoming one flesh by covenant and sexual union.
2. There Is No Such Thing as Homosexual Marriage in the Eyes of God: The other biblical reason marriage cannot be between two men or two women is that, on the one hand, the Bible defines homosexual behavior as “dishonorable” and “shameless” and “contrary to nature” (Romans 1:26-27), but on the other hand the Bible says that marriage is to be “held in honor” (Hebrews 13:4). Marriage does not produce shame. And marriage is not contrary to nature. There is therefore no such thing as homosexual marriage in the eyes of God. And there should not be in the eyes of his people – no matter what the state says.
Discerning the Will of God Concerning Homosexuality and Marriage, August 8, 2004, www.DesiringGod.org, Used by Permission.
We learn from Paul in Ephesians 5:31-32 that, from the beginning, manhood and womanhood existed to represent or dramatize God’s relation to His people and then Christ’s relation to His bride, the church. In this drama, the man represents God or Christ and is to love his wife as Christ loved the church. The woman represents God’s people or the church. And sexual union in the covenant of marriage represents pure, undefiled, intense heart-worship. That is, God means for the beauty of worship to be dramatized in the right ordering of our sexual lives.
The Other Dark Exchange: Homosexuality, Part 1, October 11, 1998, www.DesiringGod.org, Used by Permission.
God and man in covenant worship are represented by male and female in covenant sexual union. Therefore, when man turns from God to images of himself, God hands us over to what we have chosen and dramatizes it by male and female turning to images of themselves for sexual union, namely their own sex. Homosexuality is the judgment of God dramatizing the exchange of the glory of God for images of ourselves.
The Other Dark Exchange: Homosexuality, Part 1, October 11, 1998, www.DesiringGod.org, Used by Permission.
A few words to those among us who have homosexual desires:
1. Acknowledge the presence and pain of a disordered sexuality, with all the ambiguity of where it came from – much like other disorders and disabilities – and do not define your God-given personhood by your disordered sexuality.
2. Put your faith in Christ alone for the forgiveness of all your sins and for the gift of God’s righteousness and for the fulfillment of all his promises to you (Romans 1:16-17). The only sinner who can successfully battle his sins is a justified sinner. In other words, you fight against sexual sins from relationship, not for a relationship.
3. Begin to reorder your entire life around the centrality of the glory of God as your highest treasure. Homosexual sinning, like all other sinning, is an echo of exchanging the glory of God for other things. So restore the sun of God’s glory to its place at the center of your soul and all the planets of your desires will begin to return to their God-given orbit.
4. Resolve to live a chaste and, if necessary, celibate life by the power of God’s Spirit, with the confidence that if God does not heal now, he will in the age to come; and all the patience of purity of will be worth it (Romans 8:18). May God grant all the single people (and married!) at Bethlehem a passion for purity.
5. Seek wholesome friendships with both sexes, especially in groups… The more we do things in groups rather than pairs, the more opportunities we create for wholesome non-sexual relationships.
6. …There are ministries like Outposts here in our cities that have insights and experience and encouragement and Biblical counsel from a depth of awareness that goes beyond what most of us can bring. This may be something God would use in your life.
7. Take a bold and compassionate stand for truth…and hold up God’s purposes for human sexuality, namely, as an expression of Christ’s love for the Church dramatized in the covenant love of marriage between one man and one woman.
The Other Dark Exchange: Homosexuality, Part 2, October 11, 1998, www.DesiringGod.org, Used by Permission.
If your children are still small or yet to come, realize that, in large measure, their healthy sexuality hangs on your healthy attention and teaching and touching and loving. I say this especially to you fathers. For both boys and girls, the development of a healthy sexuality hangs more on strong, loving, godly male figures in their lives than on the women in their lives – though both are very important. Biblically and experientially and psychologically this can be shown – that the role of the father (or of some crucial man) is paramount for normal sexual development of boys and girls.
The Other Dark Exchange: Homosexuality, Part 2, October 11, 1998, www.DesiringGod.org, Used by Permission.
Whatever the physical or social or personal origins of the homosexual disordering of our sexuality, none of that would define it as good or “natural” or “normal.” In a world where God is the Creator and Designer of life, “natural” means in sync with God’s purpose and design, not just anything that has physical causes. Having a physical root makes nothing right. Physically-based, aggressive tendencies may lead to violent behavior, but we don’t condone it. Physically-based lethargic tendencies may lead to laziness and neglect, but we don’t condone it. Frenetic tendencies may lead to disruption and workaholism. A gloomy bent may lead to suicidal thoughts. An anxious bent may lead to paranoia. Addictive tendencies may lead to alcoholism or bondage to gambling or deadly smoking. A low frustration threshold may lead to outbursts of rage. Strong sexual desires may lead to lust or pornography or fornication or adultery or polygamy. In other words, in a world where the effect of sin permeates to the roots of nature and disorders all of life, we cannot define as good and natural whatever has physical roots. There must be a higher norm than fallen nature. There are many physically-based abnormalities in the world. Therefore having a physical base or root is not sufficient reason for condoning anything as natural or good.
The Other Dark Exchange: Homosexuality, Part 2, October 11, 1998, www.DesiringGod.org, Used by Permission.
The Son takes shape in those who abandon themselves to Him. Christ forms Himself in the lives of those who will let go of all the forms of life in which they have shaped on their own. Christ takes shape in a life that is willing to become putty in God’s hands. Christ presses the shape of His own face into the clay of our soul when we cease to be hard and resistant, and when we take our own amateur hands off and admit that we are not such good artists as He is.
O, That Christ Would Be Formed in You, Galatians 4:12-20, May 15, 1983, Used by Permission, www.DesiringGod.org.
There are only three kinds of Christians when it comes to world missions: zealous goers, zealous senders, and disobedient.
The Driving Convictions Behind Missions, Nov. 2, 1996, Used by Permission, www.desiringGod.org.
So, you have three possibilities in world missions. You can be a goer, a sender, or disobedient. The Bible does not assume that everyone goes. But it does assume that the ones who do not go care about goers and support goers and pray for goers and hold the rope of the goers.
John Piper Holding the Rope, Tabletalk, November, 2008, p. 65. Used by Permission.
Husbands and wives, recognize that in marriage you have become one flesh. If you live for your private pleasure at the expense of your spouse, you are living against yourself and destroying your joy. But if you devote yourself with all your heart to the holy joy of your spouse, you will also be living for your joy and making a marriage after the image of Christ and His church.
Desiring God, 1996, p. 178, Used by Permission, www.desiringGod.org.
When a couple speaks their vows, it is not a man or a woman or a pastor or parent who is the main actor – the main doer. God is. God joins a husband and a wife into a one-flesh union. God does that. The world does not know this. Which is one of the reasons why marriage is treated so casually. And Christians often act like they don’t know it, which is one of the reasons marriage in the church is not seen as the wonder it is. Marriage is God’s doing because it is a one-flesh union that God Himself performs.
This Momentary Marriage – A Parable of Permanence, Desiring God Foundation, 2008, p. 23, www.DesiringGod.org.
God decrees one state of affairs while also willing and teaching that a different state of affairs should come to pass. This distinction in the way God wills has been expressed in various ways throughout the centuries… For example, theologians have spoken of sovereign will and moral will, efficient will and permissive will, secret will and revealed will, will of decree and will of command, decretive will and preceptive will, voluntas signi (will of sign) and voluntas beneplaciti (will of good pleasure), etc.
Are There Two Wills in God? January 1, 1995. www.DesiringGod.org. Used by Permission.
