Great Christian Biographies with John Piper: John Newton 3

Let me let me take another piece of the pattern of his tenderness It's language the use of language to make truth winsome healing and Tenderly effective in people's lives.

I want you to get this because we can all grow in this and I want us to grow in this Newton had the eye the heart and the tongue of a poet a spiritual poet

He wrote hundreds of hymns which were poems He wrote them for special occasions

He wrote them for his family Which means that He he did not engage in excessive abstraction, but in concrete word and illustration

Instead of generalizing He spoke of the specific bird flower apple shabby old man

Give you an illustration in other words the eye of the spiritual poet Which we all should want to have whether you can write poetry or not as matter but the eye of the spiritual seer poet that looks at the world in such a way that it it reads with the divine

The heavens are telling the glory of God Do you see it and does it move you and are you?

Taken up into it and feel it and bring it down through your brain and heart into language

So that people are made alive with it congregations come alive when language flows like that from what you saw in the sky or the night moon or the flower or the fish or the child or the bridge or the traffic or the

Hospital bed and you bring it through the dynamic of a great theology out with concrete language

Congregations live on word like that your mouth becomes a fountain of life

But if you abstract and generalize all the time they will die

They will just shivel up and you will be called a boring preacher And and they're just way too many boring preachers

He was watching an eclipse of the moon, this is what he wrote tonight I attended an eclipse of the moon

How great O Lord are thy works? With what punctuality do the heavenly bodies fulfill their courses.

I thought my lord of thine eclipse The horrible darkness which overwhelmed the mind when thou sets

Why hast thou forsaken me? Ah Sin was the cause my sins

Yet, I do not hate sin or loathe myself as I ought You ever experienced an eclipse of the moon like that?

What's wrong? Newton's language was full of this kind of thing most of us gravitate to abstractions we say men tend to choose lesser pleasures and reject greater ones

You can picture yourself saying that can't you that's an abstraction you can only say that so many times they'll be

Newton says same point

The men of this world are children Offer a child an apple and a banknote

He will doubtless choose the Apple talk like like that Don't generalize in abstractions.

Don't read that sentence and say huh now I got to distill that into a principle That's exactly backwards

You know the principles get that sentence into your mouth get the

Apple and the banknote in your mouth We say

Men are foolish to fret so much over material things when they will inherit eternal riches

Well, that's true and that can be moving maybe Newton says suppose a man was going to New York to take possession of a large estate and his carriage

Should break down one mile Before he got to the city Which obliged him to walk the rest of the way to the inheritance?

But fool we should think him if we saw him wringing his hands and Blubbering out all the remaining mile my carriage is broken.

My carriage is broken You get it you if you take principles and abstractions and theories and labor

With the eye of a poet he must have seen something like this a broken carriage on his way to church one day.

Oh That's good My carriage is broken my carriage is broken.

I mean my whole life is like that I don't have to look at anybody see my carriage is broken. I'm always complaining murmuring just get in front of the mirror

That's the main place you learn how to illustrate truth. He's standing in front of the mirror, especially sin

So this is not merely a matter of style Now I I experienced this last night

This is serious. Now. This is not a matter of style. This is a matter of life and death in your church

Here's what I mean last night a man Stood here to talk to us

And I'm sitting there Thinking now what kinds of things in counseling will break through break through in the darkness and give light

How do you get into people's darkness? Is there a human way to get into the darkness of a

Cooper or anybody in your office and give them light? Two things

I remember from last night that worked that way for me and Will come out of this mouth in the darkness of my study one is a

Two watt light bulb in a totally dark room changes everything

Because we got one of those for our little girl Talitha. I Look at that little thing it plugs into the socket on the wall in the bathroom

Little teeny teeny teeny little electric glowing coil

I Can see it from my bedroom around corners? It's just it

I would never stub my toe So here's here's the truth that just blew into my heart with that little image last night

What came into my heart was I labor under the sense that what I'm facing Colossal darkness.

I gotta have a big light solution Or I can't do anything for this person

And now I have been shown by the use of an image and a language that no

Two watts will do this afternoon. Thank you Just two watts will get me through another week

You got two watts in your battery pastor And here was the other one the hurricane wrong so much wrong wrong

Suffering in a situation say Sarah situation or the India earthquake of the

El Salvador earthquake or a church has been ripped apart right now in Your situation. It's just so complicated.

So huge so messy. I Gotta I gotta fix this hurricane

No, you don't You need to know two acts of obedience today

The eye of the storm is small compared to this thing you can live in it you do the next thing

Find some parents for your kids If you're gonna die in two months, just do that.

You don't have to fix the cancer You don't have to be there when they go to college Just do what you can do

Now that's an illustration Hurricane and to what light bulb of what I mean by this is not a style issue here.

This is life This is life for John Piper, this is life for you pastors It's life for your people you need to open your eyes

And if you don't have your eyes open to see the world like that You know what the problem is sin you are so wrapped up in yourself and your little problems

You don't trust in the providence of God enough to free you to see what

God's saying to you all the time in broken carriages and lunar eclipses and the glory of the

Lord shining down And yes, one last thing on this pattern of tenderness and yes, there's a place for humor

Many people ask me about that in his pattern of tenderness But not the contrived levity of so many communicators today who know how to work an audience but the balanced

Earthy experience of the way the world really is in its horror and its humor

There would be more real laughter in our churches If there were more tears

Ask yourself this question What is the quality of the laughter in a family?

Over the meal after the funeral is it jokes?

Are they saying in an uncomfortable ice -breaking kind of way?

Hey, did you hear the one about the guy? Everybody's gonna look at you and say

Leave the ministry That's not why they're laughing

Joanne who sat right right there on Sunday lost her dad last Sunday the whole family was there and I went to the funeral and participated in it on Thursday night and Everybody who got up testified to how much they'd been laughing together.

That is pure Health It's called health

It's just health It's just there because that's the way daddy was

That's the way daddy talked. That's the way he wore his sweater wrong buttoned up that that was daddy that Everybody knows if you can't laugh there, you're sick

Laughter is a mark health and the world rings with horror

I Look at these horrible pictures of those bodies crushed under that cement and I think about 60 hours and the water dripping into his mouth and Wondering will

I suffocate here and others who didn't have 60 hours and how many hours they survived knocking hardly

Stand what my imagination does at those moments and yet I'll walk home in an hour

It's absolutely Hysterical will happen on the bridge or at home with my little girl or something that's life and your people need to see the tears for India and Maybe to see you laugh till the tears run down your face because of that wacko thing that elder just said

So, yes, yes Tenderness I'm talking about how to be a tender habitually loved and loving

Shepherd there's a place for that and and let me see if I can just sum up these last few things on roots

The talk is about the tough roots of the habitual tenderness. I have three number one

Newton's realism about the limits of this life. Oh how helpful it is to hear his his

Realism only so much as possible in a fallen world We grown waiting for the redemption of our bodies and if we don't realize the limits of our ministry

We will absolutely go crazy trying to fix the world and fix everybody He said my course of study

Like that of a surgeon has been principally in walking the hospital.

He did not however become cynical as he walked the hospital and saw the

Irremedial diseases of bedlam, you know where bedlam comes from insane asylum hospital in his day

He said I endeavor to walk through the world as a physician goes through bedlam The patients make noise

Pester him with impertinence Hinder him in his business But he does the best he can and gets through I Read that last

November or somewhere and I just said, thank you. Thank you That's all I just do the best

I can get through Get through this mess get through that mess get through this mess.

Thank you Newton. Thank you for telling me That's the way you did your ministry. You just walk through an insane asylum And you're pestered by this person and grabbed by that person and and And you reach out you touch you pray you bless you call you do you want you get criticism

You didn't call soon enough. You didn't say it this and and you just look up and say Sinner, oh

I am I did the best I could I'm gonna keep going and that's the key Realism keeps you going

Perfectionism wipes you out So have Newton's realism. Here's the here's the picture.

You had to put it in a picture, right? It's so beautiful He's standing at his window looking out on the

Sun about to come up the day is now breaking How beautiful its appearance how welcome the expectation of the approaching

Sun it is this thought Makes the dawn agreeable That it is the presage of a brighter light

Otherwise if we expect no more day than in this minute We should rather complain of darkness than rejoice in the early beauties of the morning

Thus the life of grace is the dawn of immortality Beautiful beyond expression if compared with the night of thick darkness which formerly covered us yet faint and indistinct and Unsatisfying in comparison to the glory that will be revealed

And we heard that this morning. We heard that this morning that the only way that keeps us going in the ministry is when a man tells us that he's still doing his

Masturbation thing and can't seem to shake these fantasies is to ask him. Where'd you come from?

Remember that story compared with The present condition only there's a lot of darkness left

But the Sun's rising in your life. It's rising in your life and The the glory is going to be beautiful so be realistic folks we groan

Inwardly waiting our adoption of sons the redemption of our bodies are groaning in this life will never end

There will be mental illness. There will be physical illness. There will be church disputes.

There will be Marital stresses there will be wayward children till Jesus comes and if we can't

Model our way through the insane asylum of this world. We will quit Let's help each other not quit

Newton has helped me. I want to help you That's one route The next group is his humility and gratitude then the last one is his confidence in Providence Just one quick word about each.

Maybe he was overwhelmed by amazing grace How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me

I once was lost but now I'm found was blind but now I see till the day he died he never ceased to be blown away by the fact that he had been saved and Made a preacher of the gospel that he wants labored to destroy and mock

He wrote his own epitaph and read it on his Grave, which is now in only used to be in in London.

They moved it to a subway could go through underneath church John Newton clerk once an infidel and Libertine a servant of slaves in Africa was by the rich mercy of our

Lord and Savior Jesus Christ preserved restored Pardoned and appointed to preach the faith

He had long labored to destroy near 16 years at only in Bucks and and they left the number blank years at This church in st.

Mary's Woolnoth. He was overwhelmed by this and he wrote And he didn't see how anybody could know how he was saved and not treat others with kindness he said a

Humble humble under such a sense of much forgiveness to himself He finds it easy to forgive others if you're a hard pastor, you don't properly know

What's happened to you? If you're a hard pastor Your first reaction is a hard Reaction you are not duly

Feeling the wonder that you are safe Forgiven Accepted so dwell on it linger on it.

Let yourself Marvel at your own forgiveness and your own acceptance and all that implies about your relationship now and forever

And it will soften You he had to put him in a picture.

Here. It is a company of travelers fall into a pit one of them gets a passenger a

Passerby to draw him out Now he should not be angry with the rest for falling in For because they are not yet out as he is

He did not pull himself out instead therefore of reproaching them he should show them pity a

Man truly illuminated will no more despise others than Barnett Mayis Bartimaeus after his own eyes were open should take a stick and beat every blind man.

He met Don't you want to talk like that?

Come on, let's let's become that kind of life giving Why did you laugh at that?

See that's not a joke That's not a joke That's a vivid powerful pointed

Indicting words me who tends to Hit people because they don't see what they ought to see last root

He loved and rested in the providence of God and and I'll just say here that that if you don't feel confident that all of your miseries and Sadnesses and pain are going to work together for your good under the hand of a loving father.

You will eventually Cave and begin to Need the world

You will reach for pornography or you'll reach for money or you'll reach for the praise of men

Because you have felt beat up so bad That you said a little reward here.

I knew the reward here No, you don't you need your eyes open to the fact that you didn't get beat up You got handled wisely by a loving father who knows how to make you into the image of Jesus is your heart breaking right now?

You know why? So that you'll know how to handle broken hearts. You don't like that shouldn't be in the ministry.

God breaks our hearts For a reason and he's not mean he's not ugly.

He's not unwise. He's not unkind He's a surgeon. He knows how to turn us into pastors

Well The Last implication of that Providence thing is that if you're not confident that God will be your all -in -all

Through his wonderful overarching work for you. Then you will not have the power to resist the allurements of Inferior pleasures.

I'll read it. This is my Christian hedonism swan song by faith the believer triumphs over the world's smiles and Enticements he sees that all that is in the world suited to gratify the desires of the flesh or the eye is not only to be avoided as sinful but as incompatible with his best pleasures

So the roots of his habitual tenderness are one Realism that we will groan until our bodies are redeemed

You will always have a groaning church. You will always be a groaning pastor You will always have a groaning marriage and you will always have readings of groan about your children

Secondly the all -pervasive humility that he had came from an awareness that he had been wonderfully forgiven and Undeserved and Thirdly he trusted in the providence of God so that he wouldn't say all the way to heaven

My carriage is broken. My carriage is broken But instead would say to his grace has brought me safe thus far and grace will lead me home

Okay I'm happy to stay if you want to ask some questions. We'll start right there on that microphone.

I belong to a small Baptist Association Much like yours and Calvinistic thinkers are few and far between and for a lot of people in the

Association They're really hostile towards it and me and some other young ministers Coming up has seen it and it's just a beauty to us

It's just well enough inside of us But sometimes we feel like we have to walk so softly that we're not getting

Seeing any change not be able to present this beautiful thing What would your be your advice to a to a young minister about Jump maybe jumping ship or staying in there walking, you know as softly and trying to change things

I Don't want to be advocating messing splitting churches a

Split Armenian Church is no better off than a unified Armenian Church. And so I don't think

I want to encourage you to do that at all I want to encourage you to pray.

I want to encourage you to humbly love the flock that God has given you to love I want to encourage you to let the truth and sweetness of the

God that you know What you call a reformed vision of God to be the power that sustains you in your situation

To care I want you to be honest and teach what you see is truth and and teach it mixed in with all the

Nitty -gritty of life so that the kids grow in your ministry and I want the proof to be in the pudding so that the parents will look at these kids and say what are they getting and One themselves that would be the counsel

I would give and if that aborts Giving it your best shot over X number of years and I can't tell you how many

Then I think you'd sit down with your senior pastor you tell him your heart's desire you'd share the situation and ask him to give you counsel and if he says well

Maybe we do need to go our separate ways and and then you go but you don't you don't pull that trigger very very quickly

I don't think Dr. Piper there's several books been coming out on the wider readership on grace.

I There's so much being talked about by grace, but what is your how does grace relate to God's supremacy?

God's pleasures and and really what how does grace? Because most of what

I read is like water off a duck's back You know, what is what is your real understanding of of why we would see

Newton as a maybe a good portrait of grace grace is the overflow of God's self -sufficiency

So you can't have grace if you don't have an utterly infinitely gloriously self -satisfied all -sufficient overflowing

God who doesn't need you at all So you need it you need to test people's

Read of grace with I try to come up with new questions periodically to test

Myself and others to see if they're more American than they are biblical more 20th century or 21st century than they are first century

Christian and The one I've been using for the last couple of years is do you feel more loved when

God makes much of you or Do you feel more loved when God frees you?

To enjoy making much of him forever The former is not grace

The latter is grace Because it's God -centered.

I fear that for most Americans who have grown up on the self -esteem gospel

The only filter in their brain to understand grace is that which makes much of me

If it doesn't make much of me and thus help me feel good about being made much of I don't feel graciously treated

That's a fundamental flaw in their whole makeup and network

What our hardest job is to shift the categories of emotion and thought?

Such that God becomes the center of the universe around which all the planets

Circle so that the highest experience of Satisfaction is in making much of him not having him make much of us and so The way that happens is that you recognize him as an infinitely all -sufficient

Overflowing fountain that is worthy of your trust worthy of your delight worthy of your praise worthy of your allegiance and you begin to live that way and and grace is the utterly

Undeserved action of God to include you in that enjoyment If you don't define grace in terms of enjoying

God, I don't know how you can keep it from being Self -centered now we'll have to discuss this some more on the panel to see where I fit in with this need

Need stuff right that David Powelson has been talking about Because there's some fuzzy we need to think clearly about this

But I think God centeredness is

Preserved by making him the center of your desires. I Wonder if David would agree with that.

I don't think he's here, but he'll be here Lord willing tomorrow that the test of whether you get grace or not is is

The best thing God could do for you is give you God to enjoy If you don't think that's the best thing he could do for you.

You don't get grace if you think the best thing he could do for you is to give you a good marriage or believing kids or Healthy body or successful church.

You don't understand grace The the highest most loving most gracious thing

God could do for you is to give you God for your everlasting and ever -increasing Enjoyment If you don't get that you don't get grace

So I don't hear too many people saying that and so I don't think grace is I don't think we quite got grace yet Thank you for listening to this resource from desiring

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