Flesh is the old ego that is self-reliant and does not delight to yield to any authority or depend on any mercy. It craves the sensation of self-generated power and loves the praise of men.
Walk by the Spirit! August 7, 1983, Used by permission. www.DesiringGod.org.
The flesh is the ego which feels an emptiness and uses the resources in its own power to try to fill it. Flesh is the “I” who tries to satisfy me with anything but God’s mercy.
The War Within: Flesh vs. Spirit, June 19, 1983, Used by permission. www.DesiringGod.org.
Grace is the pleasure of God to magnify the worth of God by giving sinners the right and power to delight in God without obscuring the glory of God.
Christ is our attorney and His portfolio is His propitiation. He stands before His Father in heaven, and every time we sin, He doesn’t make a new propitiation. He doesn’t die again and again. Instead He opens his portfolio and lays the exhibits of Good Friday on the bench before the Judge. Photographs of the crown of thorns, the lashing, the mocking soldiers, the agonies of the cross, and the final cry of victory: It is finished.
Jesus Christ is an Advocate for Sinners, Sermon, February 10, 1985, www.DesiringGod.org, Used by Permission.
If we cannot claim to live sinless lives, then the only thing that can keep us from despairing before a holy God is that we have an Advocate in heaven and He pleads our case not on the basis of our perfection but of His propitiation.
Jesus Christ is an Advocate for Sinners, Sermon, February 10, 1985, www.DesiringGod.org, Used by Permission.
God gave the law originally as a railroad track to guide Israel’s obedience. The engine that was supposed to pull a person along the track was God’s grace, the power of the Spirit. And the coupling between our car and the engine was faith, so that in the Old Testament, like the New Testament, salvation was by grace, through faith, along the track of obedience (or sanctification).
I Do Not Nullify the Grace of God, March 6, 1983. www.DesiringGod.org, Used by Permission.
Missions is the automatic outflow and overflow of love for Christ. We delight to enlarge our joy in him be extending it to others. As Lottie Moon said, “Surely there can be no greater joy than that of saving souls.”
Having held the glory of God in contempt through ingratitude and distrust and disobedience, (those without Christ) are sentenced to be excluded from the enjoyment of that glory forever and ever in the eternal misery of hell.
Desiring God, 1996, p. 57, Used by Permission, www.desiringGod.org.
The manual of operation for the Christian war-time mentality is the Bible. It was inspired and authorized by the Commander, and contains all the truth needed to win people over from the enemy camp, deprogram their old thought patterns, train them in strategies of righteousness and equip them with armor and weapons to defeat Satan and liberate his captives.
How the Spirit Helps Us Understand, 1 Corinthians 2:14-16, May 20, 1984. www.desiringGod.org, Used by Permission.
God’s delight in obedience is good news because it means He is praiseworthy and reliable. If He did not delight in obedience, He would be a living contradiction: loving His glory above all things and yet not pleased by the acts that make His glory known. He would be two-faced and double-tongued. His beauty would vanish and with it all our delight! And He would be unreliable because you can’t trust a God whose values are so fickle that He exalts Himself one minute and approves of insults the next.
The Pleasure of God in Obedience, Sermon, March 29, 1987, www.desiringGod.org, Used by Permission
God’s delight in obedience is good news because it shows that God’s grace is a glorious power and not just a flimsy tolerance of sin.
The Pleasure of God in Obedience, Sermon, March 29, 1987, www.desiringGod.org, Used by Permission
God does not elect and predestine and then stand back and wonder if his electing purpose will come to pass. He brings it to pass with his omnipotent call that creates the faith it commands.
God’s Invincible Purpose Part 5, 1 Corinthians 1:18-25, April, 5, 1992. www.desiringGod.org. Used by Permission.
The call of God is not exactly the same as the preaching of word of the gospel but it never comes without the gospel. God’s call is what happens when the gospel comes with irresistible force. It’s the gospel with an omnipotent supercharge.
God’s Invincible Purpose Part 5, 1 Corinthians 1:18-25, April, 5, 1992. www.desiringGod.org. Used by Permission.
The New Testament warns against gossiping. The Greek word translated “gossip” means whisper or whisperer. In other words, the focus is not on the falsehood of the word but on the fact that it needs to be surreptitious. It is not open and candid and forthright. It has darkness about it. It does not operate in the light of love. It is not aiming at healing. It strokes the ego’s desire to be seen as right without playing by the rules of love.
What I Said to the Pastoral Staff About Unity Amid Differences, April 15, 2009, www.DesiringGod.org, Used by Permission.
Christian fasting, at its root, is the hunger of a homesickness for God.
A Hunger for God, Crossway, 1997, p. 14.
Christian fasting is a test to see what desires control us. Fasting reveals the measure of food’s mastery over us – or television or computers or whatever we submit to again and again to conceal the weakness of our hunger for God. A real lived-out human act of preference for God over His gifts is the actual lived-out glorification of God’s excellence for which He created the world. Fasting is not the only way, or the main way, that we glorify God in preferring Him above His gifts. But it is one way.
A Hunger for God, Crossway, 1997, p. 18-20.
The absence of fasting is the measure of our contentment with the absence of Christ.
A Hunger for God, Crossway, 1997, p. 93.
What are we salves to? What are our bottom-line passions? Fasting is God’s testing ground – and healing ground. Will we murmur as the Israelites murmured when they had no bread? Will be leave the path of obedience and turn stones into bread? Or will we “live by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God?” Fasting is a way of revealing to ourselves and confessing to God what is in our hearts.
Man Shall Not Live by Bread Alone, Sermon, January 15, 1995, www.DesiringGod.org. Used by Permission.
That’s what I think fasting is at heart. It’s an intensification of prayer. It’s a physical explanation point at the end of the sentence, “We hunger for you to come in power.” It’s a cry with your body, “I really mean it, Lord! This much, I hunger for you.”
When the Bridegroom Is Taken Away, They Will Fast – With New Wineskins, January 8, 1995, www.DesiringGod.org. Used by Permission.
Love is the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22), and the Spirit is given in answer to prayer (Lk. 11:13). Love is the outworking of faith (Gal. 5:6), and faith is sustained by prayer (Mk. 9:24, Lk. 22:32). Love is rooted in hope (Colossians 1:4-5), and hope is preserved by prayer (Eph. 1:18). Love is guided and inspired by knowledge of the Word of God (Phil. 1:9; Jn. 17:17), and prayer opens the eyes of the heart to the wonders of the Word (Psm. 119: 18). If love is the path of fullest joy, then let us pray for the power to love “that our joy might be full!”
John Piper Desiring God, 1996, p. 153, Used by Permission, www.desiringGod.org.
What is the one thing that cuts us off from heaven? The answer is unbelief. Not trusting God. Not living “by faith in the Son of God who loved us and gave Himself for us” (Gal. 2:20). So what does [1 Peter 1] verse 5 mean then when it says we are “protected [from losing our final salvation] by the power of God through faith.” It means that God’s power protects us for salvation by sustaining our faith. The only thing that can keep us from heaven is forsaking our faith in Christ, and turning to other hopes, other treasures. So to protect us God prevents that. He inspires and nourishes and strengthens and builds our faith. And in doing this he secures us against the only thing that could destroy us; unbelief, lack of trust in God.
Sermon, The Elect Are Kept By the Power of God, October 17, 1993, www.desiringgod.org, Used by Permission.
The reason the use of your money provides a good foundation for eternal life (1 Timothy 6:19) is not that generosity earns eternal life, but that it shows where your heart is. Generosity confirms that our hope is in God and not in ourselves or our money. We don’t earn eternal life. It is a gift of grace (2 Timothy 1:9). We receive it by resting in God’s promise. Then how we use our money confirms or denies the reality of that rest.
Desiring God, Bethlehem Baptist Church, 1996, p. 167, used by permission, www.desiringGod.org.
Lack of intensity in preaching can only communicate that the preacher does not believe or has never been seriously gripped by the reality of which he speaks – or that the subject matter is insignificant.
The Supremacy of God in Preaching, Baker, p. 103.
The root of our sinfulness is the desire for our own happiness apart from God and apart from the happiness of others in God.
Loving God as Yourself – Part 2, May 7, 1995, www.DesiringGod.org. Used by Permission.
By itself, medicine is never a solution to spiritual darkness. All the fundamental issues of life remain to be brought into proper relation to Christ when the medicine has done its work. Antidepressants are not the decisive savior. Christ is. In fact, the almost automatic use of pills for child misbehavior and adult sorrows is probably going to hurt us as a society.
The Darkness of Melancholy 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. 27.
There are four reasons we can be absolutely sure that the mission of God will triumph in the world. First, the word of Jesus is more sure than the heavens and the earth (Matthew 24:35). Second, the ransom has already been paid for all God’s elect, and God did not spill the blood of his Son in vain (Revelation 5:9). Third, the glory of God is at stake and in the end he will not share his glory with another (Isaiah 48:9-11). Fourth, God is sovereign and can do all things and no purpose of his can be thwarted (Job 42:2).
The Driving Convictions Behind Missions, Nov. 2, 1996, Used by Permission, www.desiringGod.org.
More and more I am persuaded from Scripture and from the history of missions that God’s design for the evangelization of the world and the consummation of His purposes includes the suffering of His ministers and missionaries. To put it more plainly and specifically, God designs that the suffering of His ministers and missionaries is one essential means in the joyful triumphant spread of the gospel among al the peoples of the world.
How Few There Are Who Die So Hard, Bethlehem Conference for Pastors, February 4, 2003.
Money exerts a certain control over us because it seems to hold out so much [false] promise of happiness. It whispers with great force, “Think and act so as to get into a position to enjoy my benefits.” This may include stealing, borrowing, or working. Money promises happiness, and we serve it [Mt. 6:24] by believing the promise and walking by that faith.
Desiring God, 1996, p. 148, Used by Permission, www.desiringGod.org.
I wonder how many believers today realize that faith is not merely believing that Christ died for our sins. Faith is also being confident that His way is better than sin. His will is more wise. His help is more sure. His promises more precious. And His reward more satisfying. Faith begins with a backward look at the cross, but it lives with a forward look at the promises
How Dead People Do Battle With Sin, Sermon, January 1, 1995, www.DesiringGod.org. Used by Permission.
Christians will – and should – continue to feel bad for not sharing their faith. Christ is the most glorious Person in the world. His salvation is infinitely valuable. Everyone in the world needs it. Horrific consequences await those who do not believe on Jesus. By grace alone we have seen Him, believed on Him, and now love Him. Therefore, not to speak of Christ to unbelievers, and not to care about our city or the unreached peoples of the world is so contradictory to Christ’s worth, people’s plight, and our joy that it sends the quiet message to our souls day after day: This Savior and this salvation do not mean to you what you say they do. To maintain great joy in Christ in the face of that persistent message is impossible.
The Darkness that Feeds on Self-Absorption 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. 65.
God is not unjust. No one will be condemned for not believing a message they have never heard. Those who have never heard the gospel will be judged by their failure to own up to the light of God’s grace and power in nature and in their own conscience.
Desiring God, 1996, p. 192, Used by Permission, www.desiringGod.org.
God is pursuing with omnipotent passion a worldwide purpose of gathering joyful worshippers for Himself from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. He has an inexhaustible enthusiasm for the supremacy of His name among the nations. Therefore, let us bring our affections into line with His, and, for the sake of His name, let us renounce the quest for worldly comforts and join His global purpose.
If we love God’s fame and are committed to magnifying His name above all things, we cannot be indifferent to world missions.
Brothers, We Are Not Professionals, Bethlehem Baptist Church, 2002, p. 187.
These men’s writings do not read like the works of gullible, easily deceived or deceiving men. Their insights into human nature are profound. Their personal commitment is sober and carefully stated. Their teachings are coherent and do not look like the invention of unstable men. Their moral and spiritual standard is high. And the lives of these men are totally devoted to the truth and to the honor of God.
Eight Reasons Why I Believe That Jesus Rose from the Dead, February 28, 2007, www.DesiringGod.org, Used by Permission.
Headship is the divine calling of a husband to take primary responsibility for Christlike, servant leadership, protection, and provision in the home.
This Momentary Marriage – A Parable of Permanence, Desiring God Foundation, 2008, p. 80, www.DesiringGod.org.
When Adam and Eve sinned in the garden and God came to call them to account, it didn’t matter that Eve had sinned first. God said, “Adam, where are you?” (Gen. 3:9). That’s God’s word to the family today: Adam, husband, father, where are you? If something is not working right at [your home] and Jesus comes knocking on the door, He may have an issue with [your] wife, but the first thing He’s going to say when she opens the door is, “Is the man of the house home?” That’s the way it happened in the first marriage. That’s the way it will happen in our marriage.
This Momentary Marriage – A Parable of Permanence, Desiring God Foundation, 2008, p. 92, www.DesiringGod.org.
There is no necessary connection between being an effective leader and being more intellectual or more competent than your wife. Leadership does not assume it is superior. It assumes it should take initiative. See that the family prays, and reads the Bible, and goes to church, and discusses spiritual and moral issues, and learns to use the means of grace, and grows in knowledge, and watches your example in all these things.
This Momentary Marriage – A Parable of Permanence, Desiring God Foundation, 2008, p. 89, www.DesiringGod.org.
What women rightly long for is spiritual and moral initiative from a man, not spiritual and moral domination.
This Momentary Marriage – A Parable of Permanence, Desiring God Foundation, 2008, p. 89, www.DesiringGod.org.
Suicide is pursued out of [the] principle of self-love. In the midst of a feeling of utter meaningless and hopelessness and numbness of depression the soul says: “It can’t get any worse than this. So even if I don’t know what I will gain through death, I do know what I will escape.” And so suicide is an attempt to escape the intolerable. It is an act of self-love.
Loving God as Yourself – Part 2, May 7, 1995, www.DesiringGod.org. Used by Permission.
The key to Christian living is a thirst and hunger for God. And one of the main reasons people do not understand or experience the sovereignty of grace and the way it works through the awakening of sovereign joy is that their hunger and thirst for God is too small.
Christian living moves from what God has freely done for us in Christ to what we should freely do for others.
Exposing the Dark World of Abortion, Sermon: January 26, 1992, www.DesiringGod.org. Used by Permission.
The center of Christianity is the coming of the Son of God into the world as a real man to destroy the works of the devil and create a new people for His own glory. The very heart of our faith is that He did this by obeying the law of God, dying for the sins of His people, rising victorious over death, ascending to God’s right hand with all His enemies under his feet. The second coming of Christ is the completion of His saving work. If you take it away, the whole fabric of His saving work unravels.
Our Hope: The Appearing of Jesus Christ, May 18, 1986, www.DesiringGod.org, Used by Permission.
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).
Brothers, We Are Not Professionals, Bethlehem Baptist Church 2002, p. 44.
Faith is sustained by looking at Christ, crucified and risen, not by turning from Christ to analyze your faith… Paradoxically, if we would experience the joy of faith, we must not focus much on it. We must focus on the greatness of our Savior.
Waiting in Darkness 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. 41.
If we don’t share Jonathan Edwards’ God-entranced vision of all things, we will not consciously join God in the purpose for which He created the universe. And if we do not join God in advancing His aim for the universe, then we waste our lives and we oppose our Creator.
A God-Entranced Vision of All Things: The Legacy of Jonathan Edwards, Sermon, 2003 Desiring God Conference, Used by Permission, www.desiringGod.org.
In our proud love affair with ourselves we pour contempt, whether we know it or not, on the worth of God’s glory. As our pride pours contempt upon God’s glory, His righteousness obliges Him to pour wrath upon our pride.
The Supremacy of God in Preaching, Baker, p. 28.
Justification goes beyond forgiveness. Not only are we forgiven because of Christ, but God also declares us righteous because of Christ. God requires two things of us: punishment for our sins and perfection in our lives. Our sins must be punished, and our lives must be righteous. But we cannot bear our own punishment (Ps. 49:7-8), and we cannot provide our own righteousness. “None is righteous; no, not one” (Rom. 3:10). Therefore, God, out of His immeasurable love for us, provided His own Son to do both. Christ bears our punishment, and Christ performs our righteousness. And when we receive Christ (John 1:12), all of His punishment and all of His righteousness is counted as ours (Rom. 4:4-6; 5:1, 19; 8:1; 10:4; 2 Cor. 5:21; Phil. 3:8-9).
This Momentary Marriage – A Parable of Permanence, Desiring God Foundation, 2008, p. 46, www.DesiringGod.org.
My burden is to plead for the supremacy of God in preaching – that the dominant note of preaching be the freedom of God’s sovereign grace, the unifying theme be the zeal that God has for his own glory, the grand object of preaching be the infinite and inexhaustible being of God, and the pervasive atmosphere of preaching be the holiness of God.
Preachers must have a passion to produce people whose satisfaction in God is so solid, so deep, and so unshakable that suffering and death – losing everything this world can give – will not make people murmur or curse God, but rest in the promise, “In His presence is fullness of joy, at His right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Psm. 16:11).
The goal of preaching is the glory of God reflected in the glad submission of his creation.
The Supremacy of God in Preaching, Baker, p. 27.
Sin is what you do when you are not satisfied in God.
Future Grace, p. 9, used by permission, www.desiringGod.org.
Sin is what you feel and think and do when you are not taking God at His Word and resting in His promises.
This Momentary Marriage – A Parable of Permanence, Desiring God Foundation, 2008, p. 130, www.DesiringGod.org.
Sin is lawlessness. In other words sin is man’s refusal to submit to God’s law, that is, God’s Word. It is insubordination.
Jesus Christ is an Advocate for Sinners, Sermon, February 10, 1985, www.DesiringGod.org, Used by Permission.
Once upon a time tolerance was the power that kept lovers of competing faiths from killing each other. It was the principle that put freedom above forced conversion. It was rooted in the truth that coerced conviction is no conviction. But now the new twisted tolerance denies that there are any competing faiths; they only complement each other. It denounces not only the effort to force conversions, but the very idea that any conversion may be necessary. It holds the conviction that no religious conviction should claim superiority over another.
World Magazine, November/December, 2001, Used by Permission.
How do you glorify God through exercise?
1. It fosters gratitude for legs, heart, and lungs. The older I get the more keenly aware I am of how fragile I am. And every breath I take, if I were able to maintain consciousness of truth, I would give thanks to God that he has given me these.
2. What are your motives in doing it? [Is it] the desire to be both mentally and physically at peak performance for Christian ministry.
3. How [do] you do it? [Modest attire? Noisy? Too rough?]… In other words, are you exercising in a loving way?
4. Finally, do you have an eye to turning it into ministry? In other words, can you draw somebody in with you who needs some help with their discipline? Are you willing to stop along the way to help somebody, like the good Samaritan? Are you willing to do some evangelism along the way so that you stop and share Jesus?
Excerpted from: How do you glorify God through exercise? March 31, 2008, Used by Permission, www.DesiringGod.org.
Jesus indicates that the way to think about self-denial is to deny yourself only a lesser good for a greater good… In other words, Jesus wants us to think about sacrifice in a way that rules our all self-pity. This is, in fact, just what the texts on self-denial teach (Mk. 8:34-35)… Saint Augustine captured the paradox in these words, “If you love your soul, there is a danger of its being destroyed. Therefore you may not love it, since you do not want it to be destroyed. But in not wanting it to be destroyed you love it.”
Desiring God, 1996, p. 202, Used by Permission, www.desiringGod.org.
The twentieth century was the century of the self. Almost all virtues, especially love, were reinterpreted to put the self at the center. This means that almost all people are saturated and shaped with the conviction that the essence of being loved as a human is being treasured or esteemed. That is, you love me to the degree that your act of treasuring terminates on me… If they ask, “Do you treasure me or do you treasure Christ?” I answer, “I treasure Christ, and, desiring to treasure Him more, I treasure your treasuring Christ.” Without the miraculous work of the Holy Spirit removing human self from the center, this will not satisfy American people. They are so saturated with self-oriented love that they can scarcely conceive what true Christian love is. True Christian love is not my making much of them, but my helping them to enjoy making much of God. This is love. If my treasuring terminates on them I play right into the hands of the devil and their own self-centered destruction. But if my treasuring terminates on God and their treasuring God, then I direct them to the one source of all joy. And that act of directing them to God, their hope and life and joy, is what love is.
Feed My Sheep, ed. Don Kistler, Soli Deo Gloria Ministries, 2002, p. 261.
Few of us have had or will have the luxury of escaping the “worship wars.” The “wars” are usually waged over forms and styles, not over the essence of what worship is. But leading your people into the essence is all-important. So I want to call you to put your focus and energies in the most fruitful place for the glory of God. Focus on the essence, not the form. If you succeed in breeding a church that experiences the essence, they will probably survive the wars, and you will be able to lead them through to more peaceful waters
Brothers, We Are Not Professionals, Bethlehem Baptist Church, 2002, p. 229-230.
Theology:
1. What do you believe about…everything?
2. [What is your view on] various biblical doctrines.
3. Discover how you form your views. What is the reasoning-believing process?
4. How do you handle the Bible?Worship and Devotion:
1. How important is corporate worship? Other participation in church life?
2. How important is it to be part of a small accountability/support group?
3. What is the importance of music in life and worship?
4. What are your daily personal devotional practices? Prayer, reading, meditation, memorization.
5. What would our family devotions look like? Who leads out in this?
6. Are we doing this now in an appropriate way: praying together about our lives and future, reading the Bible together?Husband and Wife:
1. What is the meaning of headship and submission in the Bible and in our marriage?
2. What are expectations about situations where one of you might be alone with someone of the opposite sex?
3. How are tasks shared in the home: cleaning, cooking, washing dishes, yard work, car upkeep, repairs, shopping for food, and household stuff?
4. What are the expectations for togetherness?
5. What is an ideal non-special evening?
6. How do you understand who and how often sex is initiated?
7. Who does the checkbook – or are there two?Children:
1. If and when, should we have children? Why?
2. How many?
3. How far apart?
4. Would we consider adoption?
5. What are the standards of behavior?
6. What are the appropriate ways to discipline them? How many strikes before they’re…whatever?
7. What are the expectations of time spent with them and when they go to bed?
8. What signs of affection will you show them?
9. What about school? Home school? Christian school? Public school?Lifestyle:
1. Own a home or not? Why?
2. What kind of neighborhood? Why?
3. How many cars? New? Used?
4. View of money in general. How much to the church?
5. How do you make money decisions?
6. Where will you buy clothes: Department store? Thrift store? In between? Why?Entertainment:
1. How much money should we spend on entertainment?
2. How often should we eat out? Where?
3. What kind of vacations are appropriate and helpful for us?
4. How many toys? Snowmobile, boat, cabin?
5. Should we have a television? Where? What is fitting to watch? How much?
6. What are the criteria for movies and theater? What will our guidelines be for the kids?Conflict:
1. What makes you angry?
2. How do you handle your frustration or anger?
3. Who should bring up an issue that is bothersome?
4. What if we disagree both about what should be done, and whether it is serious?
5. Will we go to bed angry at each other?
6. What is our view of getting help from friends or counselors?Work:
1. Who is the main breadwinner?
2. Should the wife work outside the home? Before kids? With kids at home? After kids?
3. What are your views of daycare for children?
4. What determines where you will locate? Job? Whose job? Church? Family?Friends:
1. Is it good to do things with friends but without spouse?
2. What will you do if one of you really likes to hang out with so and so and the other doesn’t?Health and Sickness:
1. Do you have, or have you had any, sicknesses or physical problems that could affect our relationship? (Allergies, cancer, eating disorders, venereal disease, etc.)
2. Do you believe in divine healing and how would prayer relate to medical attention?
3. How do you think about exercise and healthy eating?
4. Do you have any habits that adversely affect health?
Questions to Ask When Preparing for Marriage, August 5, 2009, Used by permission. www.DesiringGod.org.
A covenant involves three things:
1. Promises, which God will perform if the people keep the covenant.
2. Commandments or terms, which the people must keep in order to receive the promises.
3. Warnings, of what will happen if the covenant is broken.
The Lord Whose Name is Jealous, October 28, 1984. www.DesiringGod.org. Used by Permission.
Staying married, therefore, is not mainly about staying in love. It is about keeping covenant. “Till death do us part” or “As long as we both shall live” is a sacred covenant promise – the same kind Jesus made with His bride when He died for her.
This Momentary Marriage – A Parable of Permanence, Desiring God Foundation, 2008, p. 25, www.DesiringGod.org.
The Word of God is creative. It is a hammer that crushes the hardness of our insubordination. It is medicine that heals the broken-hearted. And it is light that gives us guidance and hope on our way.
Jesus Christ is an Advocate for Sinners, Sermon, February 10, 1985, www.DesiringGod.org, Used by Permission.
God’s emotional life is infinitely complex beyond our ability to fully comprehend. For example, who can comprehend that the Lord hears in one moment of time the prayers of ten million Christians around the world, and sympathizes with each one personally and individually like a caring Father (as Hebrews 4:15 says He will), even though among those ten million prayers some are broken-hearted and some are bursting with joy? How can God weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice when they are both coming to Him at the same time – in fact are always coming to Him with no break at all? Or who can comprehend that God is angry at the sin of the world every day (Psalm 7:11), and yet every day, every moment, He is rejoicing with tremendous joy because somewhere in the world a sinner is repenting (Luke 15:7, 10, 23)? Who can comprehend that God continually burns with hot anger at the rebellion of the wicked, grieves over the unholy speech of his people (Ephesians 4:29-30), yet takes pleasure in them daily (Psalm 149:4), and ceaselessly makes merry over penitent prodigals who come home?
Are There Two Wills in God? January 1, 1995. www.DesiringGod.org. Used by Permission.
Suffering clearly is designed by God not only as a way to wean Christians off of self and onto grace, but also as a way to spotlight that grace and make it shine.
Desiring God, 1996, p. 223, Used by Permission, www.desiringGod.org.
Persistent yielding to the inordinate desires of the body against the voice of conscience is a life of misery!
I Will Not Be Enslaved By Anything, 1 Cor. 6:12-20, September, 1, 1985. www.DesiringGod.org. Used by Permission.
Some of us, over the duration of our lives, have been shaken to the foundations by this truth of God’s sovereignty over man’s belief and unbelief. We have run from it, pretended it wasn’t there, argued against it, wept over it, and finally bowed our heads and hearts before it, and then discovered it to be one of the most deep and firm and precious foundation stones in the house of our fragile faith. We see now, with trembling joy, that without it we would not have believed, and we would not endure to the end and be saved.
How Shall People Be Saved? Part 2. Romans 10:13-21, August 31, 2003. www.DesiringGod.org. Used by Permission.
I affirm with John 3:16 and 1 Timothy 2:4 that God loves the world with a deep compassion that desires the salvation of all men. Yet I also affirm that God has chosen from before the foundation of the world whom He will save from sin. Since not all people are saved we must choose whether we believe (with the Arminians) that God’s will to save all people is restrained by His commitment to human self-determination or whether we believe (with the Calvinists) that God’s will to save all people is restrained by his commitment to the glorification of His sovereign grace (Ephesians 1:6,12,14; Romans 9:22-23). This decision should not be made on the basis of metaphysical assumptions about what we think human accountability requires. It should be made on the basis of what the Scriptures teach. I do not find in the Bible that human beings have the ultimate power of self-determination.
Are There Two Wills in God? January 1, 1995. www.DesiringGod.org. Used by Permission.
God’s interest is to magnify the fullness of His glory by spilling over in mercy to us. Therefore the pursuit of our interest and our happiness is never above God, but always in God. God’s greatest interest is to glorify the wealth of His grace by making sinners happy in Him.
We are not saved by producing faith on our own and then making that the basis of our new birth. It is the other way around, which means that God is at the bottom of my faith; and when it disappears for a season from my own view, God may yet be there sustaining its root in the new birth and protecting the seed from destruction.
Waiting in Darkness 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. 38.
Faith is the evidence of new birth, not the cause of it (cf. 1 Jn. 2:29; 3:9; 4:2-3, 7). Since faith and repentance are possible only because of the regenerating work of God, both are called the gift of God (Eph. 2:5, 8; 2 Tim. 2:24-26).
Desiring God, Bethlehem Baptist Church, 1996, p. 64, Used by Permission, www.desiringGod.org.
“Sexism” is an explicit or implicit belief or practice that qualitatively distinguishes or values one sex over the other. This doesn’t mean that there are no differences between the sexes. Nor does it mean that these differences are insignificant. They are very significant! It means that the differences are valuable, and when all the differences are added up on each side of the male and female ledger, the quality-sum and value-sum at the bottom of the ledger is the same for male and female.
Abortion, Race, Gender and Christ, Sermon: January 23, 2005, www.DesiringGod.org. Used by Permission.
We must see and feel the incomparable excellency of the Son of God. Incomparable because in Him meet infinite glory and lowest humility, infinite majesty and transcendent meekness, deepest reverence toward God and equality with God, infinite worthiness of good and greatest patience to suffer evil, supreme dominion and exceeding obedience, divine self-sufficiency and childlike trust.
John Piper Desiring God, 1996, p. 94, Used by Permission, www.desiringGod.org.
The key to praying with power is to become the kind of persons who do not use God for our ends but are utterly devoted to being used for His ends.
Ask Whatever You Wish, Sermon, www.desiringGod.org. Used by Permission.
Some say pray and pray and don’t lean on the unspiritual work of human study. Others say, study and study because God is not going to tell you the meaning of a word in prayer. But the Bible will not have anything to do with this dichotomy. We must study and accurately handle the Word of God, and we must pray or we will not see in the Word the one thing needful, the glory of God in the face of Christ.
It is an amazing thing how many people consider themselves Christians who don’t consult Christ when making choices. So I feel the need to sound this warning: You cannot be saved from sin by the Christ of the Bible if you reject the Christ of the Bible. The Christ of the Bible is an authoritative Adviser as well as an atoning Savior. So if we try to receive Him as an atoning Savior and reject Him as an authoritative Adviser, all we receive is an imaginary Christ, while rejecting the Christ of the Bible. Therefore, since we can’t be saved by the Christ of the Bible if we reject the Christ of the Bible, we will never make it to heaven, nor enjoy the fellowship of God here, if we don’t aim to make the counsel of Christ decisive in the decision making process of our life.
The Goodness of God and the Guidance of Sinners, January 10, 1988, Used by permission. www.DesiringGod.org.
Suffering is intended by God to bring to our attention and make us feel what is true all the time, namely, that we are finite creatures absolutely dependent on God for absolutely everything. God’s will is that we know it, feel it, and live like it.
The Line of Prayer, 2 Corinthians 1:11, Copyright 1981, Used by permission. www.DesiringGod.org.
The reason for praying is so that God will be thanked when the blessings come. And God loves to be thanked. He loves to be acknowledged and praised as the giver of all good gifts. His great goal in history from beginning to end is to be glorified as the source of all blessing. Therefore, when we urge many people to pray for something that we need, we create a situation in which the provision of that need will produce many thanksgivings to God. And in that way we tap into a tremendous incentive that God has, namely, to glorify Himself by winning the gratitude of many people. God loves to be thanked by many people. Therefore, there is a power in church-wide prayer, because the more people there are praying for the spiritual life of our church, the more thanksgiving will ascend to God when He gives it.
The Line of Prayer, 2 Corinthians 1:11, Copyright 1981, Used by permission. www.DesiringGod.org.
Don’t equate peacemaking with peace-achieving. A peacemaker longs for peace, and works for peace, and sacrifices for peace. But the attainment of peace may not come. Romans 12:18 is very important at this point. Therefore Paul says, “If possible, so far as it depends upon you, live peaceably with all.” That is the goal of a peacemaker: “If possible, so far as it depends on you…” Don’t let the rupture in the relationship be your fault.
Blessed are the Peacemakers, Sermon: Matthew 5:9, March 9, 1986, www.DesiringGod.org. Used by Permission.
Gospel humility frees you from the need to posture and pose and calculate what others think, so that you are free to laugh at what is really funny with the biggest belly laugh. Proud people don’t really let themselves go in laughter. They don’t get red in the face and fall off chairs and twist their faces into the contortions of real free laughter. Proud people need to keep their dignity. The humble are free to howl with laughter.
if there is no personal God, then the concept of beauty dissolves into personal idiosyncrasy. That is, unless beauty is rooted in God’s mind rather than your mind, every time you say, “That is beautiful,” all you really mean is, “I like that.” Unless there is a God, your praise of beauty can be no more than expressions of your own personal preferences. But I think there is in every one of you a dissatisfaction with the notion that your judgments about beauty have no more validity than your preference for coffee over tea. And I think your dissatisfaction with pure subjectivism and relativism is a remnant of God’s image in your soul and evidence of his reality. It is an echo, however faint, of a voice that once called you into being.
Sermon: Jesus Is Precious Because We Yearn for Beauty, 2 Cor. 3:7-11, Used by Permission, www.DesiringGod.org.
The attributes of God derive their infinite beauty from their relationship to each other. Just as in paintings it is not the isolated color or shape or texture that is beautiful but rather their relationship with each other, their proportion and interplay; so it is with persons and ultimately with the person of God. It is the peculiar proportionality and interplay and harmony of all God’s attributes (together with their infiniteness and eternality) that constitutes God’s beauty, and makes Him the foundation of all the beauty in the world.
Sermon: Jesus Is Precious Because We Yearn for Beauty, 2 Cor. 3:7-11, Used by Permission, www.DesiringGod.org.
Why is it man and not the monkeys who decorated cave walls with pictures? Why is it that in every tribe of humans ever known there has always been some form of art and craftsmanship that goes beyond mere utility? Is it not because we long to behold and be a part of beauty?… There is in the human heart an unquenchable longing for beauty. And I am persuaded that the reason it is there is because God is the ultimately Beautiful One and he made us to long for Himself… Our desires are remnants of this urge for God because everything less than God leaves us unsatisfied. He alone is the All-Satisfying Object of Beauty. Only one vision will be sufficient for our insatiable hearts — the glory of God. For that we have been made. And it is for this we long, whether we know it or not.
Sermon: Jesus Is Precious Because We Yearn for Beauty, 2 Cor. 3:7-11, Used by Permission, www.DesiringGod.org.
The punishment of those who have not seen and loved the beauty of God’s holiness in this age will be utter exclusion from his all-satisfying beauty in the age to come (2 Thes. 1:9).
Sermon: Jesus Is Precious Because We Yearn for Beauty, 2 Cor. 3:7-11, Used by Permission, www.DesiringGod.org.
Preaching does not come after worship in the order of the service. Preaching is worship. The preacher worships – exults – over the Word, trying his best to draw you into a worshipful response by the power of the Holy Spirit. My job is not simply to see truth and show it to you. (The devil could do that for his own devious reasons.) My job is to see the glory of the truth and to savor it and exult over it as I explain it to you and apply it for you. That’s one of the differences between a sermon and a lecture.
The aim of this exposition is to help you eat and digest biblical truth that will make your spiritual bones more like steel,
double the capacity of your spiritual lungs,make the eyes of your heart dazzled with the brightness of the glory of God and awaken the capacity of your soul for kinds of spiritual enjoyment you didn’t even know existed.
What I Mean by Preaching, Copyright 2009, John Piper, Used by Permission. www.DesiringGod.org.
Expository means that preaching aims to exposit, or explain and apply, the meaning of the Bible. The reason for this is that the Bible is God’s word, inspired, infallible, profitable—all 66 books of it. The preacher’s job is to minimize his own opinions and deliver the truth of God. Every sermon should explain the Bible and then apply it to people’s lives. The preacher should do that in a way that enables you to see that the points he is making actually come from the Bible. If you can’t see that they come from the Bible, your faith will end up resting on a man and not on God’s word.
What I Mean by Preaching, Copyright 2009, John Piper, Used by Permission. www.DesiringGod.org.
Be encouraged that simply finding people interesting and caring about them is a beautiful pathway into their heart. Evangelism gets a bad reputation when we are not really interested in people and don’t seem to care about them. People really are interesting. The person you are talking to is an amazing creation of God with a thousand interesting experiences. Very few people are interested in them. If you really find their story interesting, and care about them, they may open up to you and want to hear your story—Christ’s story.
I am Sending You to Open their Eyes, 2 Cor. 4:1-7, www.desiringgod.org, Used by Permission.
People who don’t believe in Christ are blind. They can’t see Christ as supremely valuable, and so they won’t receive him as their Treasure and so they are not saved. A work of God is needed in their lives to open their eyes and give them life so they can see and receive Christ as Savior and Lord and Treasure of their lives. That work of God is called new birth.
I am Sending You to Open their Eyes, 2 Cor. 4:1-7, www.desiringgod.org, Used by Permission.
When it comes to killing my sin I don’t wait for the miracle, I act the miracle.
The Christian Gospel is about “the glory of Christ,” not about me. And when it is – in some measure – about me, it is not about my being made much of by God, but about God mercifully enabling me to enjoy making much of Him forever.
Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ, Crossway, 2004, p. 16.
My happy conviction is that pastors ought not to be experts on everything.
If God has no need, why did He create and redeem? The answer is simple: God created to glorify His goodness. He created a context to display and exercise His moral perfections. We exist for God’s glory. We exist because God’s goodness is constantly overflowing, and He wants to display it and share it.
God’s Passion for His Glory, Crossway, 1988.
Ten Reasons Why it is Wrong to Take the Life of Unborn Children:
1. God commanded, “Thou shalt not murder” (Exodus 20:13).
2. The destruction of conceived human life – whether embryonic, fetal, or viable – is an assault on the unique person-forming work of God.
3. Aborting unborn humans falls under the repeated biblical ban against “shedding innocent blood.”
4. The Bible frequently expresses the high priority God puts on the protection and provision and vindication of the weakest and most helpless and most victimized members of the community.
5. By judging difficult and even tragic human life as a worse evil than taking life, abortionists contradict the widespread biblical teaching that God loves to show His gracious power through suffering and not just by helping people avoid suffering.
6. It is a sin of presumption to justify abortion by taking comfort in the fact that all these little children will go to heaven or even be given full adult life in the resurrection.
7. The Bible commands us to rescue our neighbor who is being unjustly led away to death.
8. Aborting unborn children falls under Jesus’ rebuke of those who spurned children as inconvenient and unworthy of the Savior’s attention.
9. It is the right of God the Maker to give and to take human life. It is not our individual right to make this choice.
10. Finally, saving faith in Jesus Christ brings forgiveness of sins and cleansing of conscience and help through life and hope for eternity. Surrounded by such omnipotent love, every follower of Jesus is free from the greed and fear that might lure a person to forsake these truths in order to gain money or avoid reproach.
Ten Reasons Why it is Wrong to Take the Life of Unborn Children, Sermon: April 7, 1989, www.DesiringGod.org. Used by Permission.
A conservative estimate of unborn babies killed in the world each year is 30 million – about a third of those in Russia. Romania is reported to have the highest abortion rate in the world (3 out of 4 pregnancies). In America, since the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 made it legal to take the lives of an unborn baby for any reason, there have been about 43 million abortions. One baby aborted every 26 seconds, 151 every hour, 3,629 every day.
Abortion and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, Sermon: January 25, 2004, www.DesiringGod.org. Used by Permission.
At this time in American history, (this) is one of the most powerful sentences a person can speak: “I do not want a child at this time.” It’s powerful, because in a world without God, and without submission to His will, the will – the “want” – of a mother has become the will of a god. I say it carefully and calmly and sadly: Our modern, secular, God-dethroning culture has endowed the will (the “want”) of a mother not just with sovereignty over her child, but with something vastly greater. We have endowed her will with the right and the power to create human personhood. When God is no longer the Creator of human personhood, endowing it with dignity and rights in His own image, we must take that role for Him, and we have vested it in the will of the mother. She creates personhood.
Abortion and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, Sermon: January 25, 2004, www.DesiringGod.org. Used by Permission.
The offspring of the woman, Jesus Christ, came into the world to save women who have dethroned God, taken His place, defined personhood as tissue, and willed the death of their own child. It can’t be reversed, but it can be forgiven. That is why Christ died.
Abortion and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, Sermon: January 25, 2004, www.DesiringGod.org. Used by Permission.
It is evil to justify killing (unborn babies) by the happy outcome of eternity for the one killed. This same justification could be used to justify killing one-year olds, or any heaven-bound believer for that matter. The Bible asks the question: “Shall we sin that grace may abound?” (Romans 6:1) And: “Shall we do evil that good may come?” (Romans 3:8). In both cases the answer is a resounding NO. It is presumption to step into God’s place and try to make the assignments to heaven or to hell. Our duty is to obey God, not to play God.
Ten Reasons Why it is Wrong to Take the Life of Unborn Children, Sermon: April 7, 1989, www.DesiringGod.org. Used by Permission.
