Word That Comes Worshipping, The: Savoring What We Say of God — John Piper

Desiring God Ministry presents the following message by Dr. John Piper. Let me recap where we've been and then take you into this third and final, or I might say third and fourth and final, because really I'm going to give two lectures in this morning time, because as I got to the end of number three, there was a fourth one just begging, begging to be delivered.

Preaching Aims at Worship and Satisfaction in God

And so I'm going to outline it for you at the end. The aim of preaching is worship, which means that all preaching should aim to wean the human heart off of the breath of sin and fill it with satisfaction in God.

I'm assuming when I say that, and I say it like that, that the essence and the heart of worship is being satisfied with all that God is for us in Jesus. And there's a premise behind that assumption. And the premise is this, and it's the most important sentence in my life and in my theology and in my books.

And it's the one sentence that I would, that you remember. God is most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in him. Now, these are the two books in which I defend and elaborate that statement.

That's why these books are written. I dedicated this book to my sons. I have four sons. And to show you the importance of that sentence in my life and in my family, I want to just read the close of the introduction here.

Finally, a word to my son. This book is dedicated to you, Karsten and Benjamin and Abraham and Barnabas. If there is any legacy I want to leave you, it is not money or house or land. It is a vision of God, as great and glorious a God as one could ever see.

But more than that, I want to leave you the legacy of a passion for this God, a passion far beyond what any human can produce, a passion for God flowing from the very heart of God. Never forget, sons, that God is most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in him.

But even more, this is my prayer for you. In God's time, may your satisfaction in him be without measure as it becomes the very pleasure of God in God. I commend these books to you because they are the very heartbeat of my life.

They're what I believe in, stand for, live for, preach for, lecture for. And if three lectures didn't make it plain, I hope that the books will make it plain. Therefore, lecture number one was the aim of preaching is to bring people to be so satisfied in God that they are weaned off the breast of sin and that in being satisfied with God, God is magnified in that satisfaction, and that is worship.

The Matter of Preaching: Showing the Glory of God

Day one. Day two, actually lecture two, is the mission or the matter of preaching. That was the mission of preaching. The matter of preaching in lecture two yesterday was that if people are going to savor God, they have to see it.

You can't savor what you don't see, and therefore the preacher's task, the matter of his preaching, is to show the glories of God, that people might savor it, that is, be satisfied in it and thus magnify God and give him worship.

He must be seen concretely, specifically, compellingly as he is revealed in his word, and therefore the matter of preaching is the exposition of scripture. I called preaching expository exaltation, which brings us now to the third lecture.

Expository Exaltation as the Manner of Preaching

The first, the mission of preaching, worship. The second, the matter of preaching, the exposition of the glories of God as they're revealed in holy scripture. And the third, can you give me the third M?

Anyone want to venture? Manner. Yeah, you're bold. That's great. My sons wouldn't do it that loud. The manner of preaching and be thinking about what the fourth M might be that I don't have time to do and will only outline.

But now we must ask if that's the mission and if that's the matter, what should the manner be of the preaching itself? And I have said it is exaltation. Preaching is expository exaltation. And when those two things come together, teaching is translated into preaching.

That's my understanding of the difference between the two. Preaching should not only awaken in the people a sense of God's glory, but it should exhibit in the preacher a sense of God's glory. And one of the reasons I argued on the first day that the people are more engaged with God-centered lyric than they are with God-centered preaching is that there's music with the lyrics in the worship songs and there's no music in the pulpit.

But there should be the music of the preacher's heart, which I call worship or exaltation. And if they can't hear the music, if he's not singing over the truth he's preaching, why should they care? And many people don't care.

They come out of habit and duty and legalistic strivings, but they're not set on fire by the music in the preacher. You don't have to forsake the centrality of God, I argued. You don't have to have the piano or the synthesizer wooing people in the background while you preach in order to engage people's emotions, but there has to be a music in here.

Philippians 1 and the Treasure of Christ

Now, to talk about that a little bit, I want to direct your attention to a text. And so if you have a Bible, I want you to open it to Philippians chapter 1. I hope you have your Greek texts with you. If you've got those, open that.

This is real simple Greek in verses 20 and 21. And the main theological word here is going to be gar. And I had a great seminary teacher who said, by all means, let gar be gar. And that's one of the most important pedagogical words I ever heard.

Let gar be gar. And if you don't see the gars and the uns and the who-toses in scripture, you will not be a theologian and you will not be a preacher. They are as important as the big words on either side, like life and death and Christ and heaven.

That's not in the text either. That's just a little personal conviction I have. Philippians 1, 18 to 20. What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed. And in this, I rejoice.

So you know the situation here. He's in Rome. He's in prison. And the people that are glad he's in prison, I can hardly fathom Christians feeling this way. But it is possible that you can be glad when a church across town fails.

Is that awful? You can actually feel feelings of we didn't fail. That's awful. It happens now. It was happening then. They were magnifying his sufferings by saying he's in prison. We're not in prison, so we will make his suffering worse by gloating over our to preach.

That's awful. Well, Paul, in response to that, says they're preaching. Isn't that great? What a great, large heart. And I will rejoice, for I know that this shall turn out for my deliverance through your prayers and the provision of the spirit of Jesus Christ, according, and here we're coming to the main material, according to my earnest expectation and hope that I shall not be put to shame in anything, but that with all boldness, Christ shall even now, as always, be exalted, or you could translate it, magnified in my body, whether by life or by death.

Now, let's just stop there before we read the next verse. Ponder this for a minute. What is his mission here? His mission, his goal, his passion, and it's clear. Whether by life or whether by death, I want my body, whether I lay it down or whether it stands up, to magnify Christ, that Christ be exalted, that I demonstrate that Christ is great.

I want people to look at me dying and look at me living and conclude Christ is great. Not Paul is great. Christ is great. That's his goal. That's his passion in his life and in his dying. Now comes a verse connected with that all-important little conjunction, which explains how it is that Christ can be magnified in life and in death.

And so notice the link up of live with life and die with death between verses 20 and 21. And I pointed out yesterday that you're supposed to direct your people to the text. What I'm asking you to do right now is the way I preach every Sunday.

I tell people, look at verse 20. Look at the word life. Look at verse 21. Look at the word live. Look at the word death and look at the word die. Do you see the connection? And they don't read Greek. And so I don't fiddle with guards, but I look at four, which means I do not preach from the NIV.

It happens to be there in this text. The NIV is a paraphrase. It's hard to preach from a paraphrase if you preach the way I preach. I preach from the NASB. It's in our pews. It's not the best thing because it's got all these b's and vows in the Old Testament.

Lachman tells me they're coming along with something that finally gets into the 20th century. But I just put in a little parenthesis here that if you care about expository preaching, and I know I'm stepping on toes here because some of you probably worked on the NIV.

If you care about expository preaching, you will have misgivings about it because they leave out so many precious words. It's serious. Everything's serious. The NIV leaves out and paraphrases and decides so many exegetical issues for you that you have a hard time doing careful exegetical preaching.

Close parenthesis. Notice now the connection between verses 20 and 21. And it's a connection that accounts for how you magnify Christ in your living and in your dying. And the answer it gives is that you magnify Christ by treasuring Christ.

Verse 21 says, I hope to magnify him, whether by life or death, for to me to live is Christ and to die is gain. Gain, treasure, profit. Now, do you see the logical connection between those two verses?

In verse 20, he says that his expectation and hope is to show that Christ is great, to magnify Christ, to glorify Christ, which is what preaching is all about. Then verse 21 shows how that happens. First, let's talk about death.

How does it happen to death? How do you magnify God by your or Christ by your dying? And he says, the way you do it is to die in such a way that it is gain. That you experience death as gain. My desire is to depart.

Verse 23 explains this. My desire is to depart and be with Christ. That's why it's gain. So why is it gain? Death is gain because it's more of Jesus. Death is gain because it's more of Jesus, which means Jesus is the treasure.

Jesus is the gain. Jesus is the profit. Therefore, the logical connection, reading back through the four up to verse 20, is that Christ is magnified in my dying when in my dying I manifest that I'm gaining.

Prizing is the key to praising. If you don't prize him manifestly in your dying so that when you die and everything you love is taken away from you, you experience it as gain, he's not magnified unless you do it that way.

But if you die in such a way that when everything goes, wife goes, children go, health goes, money goes, preaching goes, church goes, books go, computer goes, everything goes, the hope for retirement goes, and you count it gain, there's only one conclusion.

Christ is great. Christ is great. He's magnified. And so what I'm doing right now is giving you a textual foundation for the sentence, God is most magnified or glorified in you when you are most satisfied in him.

Does that make sense? Do you hear where I'm moving? I'm giving you a textual basis for believing that sentence by showing you the logic of the gar between 20 and 21 and the link up of die and dying. Let's look at living.

Same thing. We magnify Christ. I say, I want to magnify Christ if I live in my body. And then the verse says, for me to live is Christ. Now what does that mean? Is. Is. Is. For me to live is Christ. How do you unpack that?

If you were preaching on this, where would you turn? If you just wanted to stay with those words and unpack that and use this book, where would you go? Here's where I went. 3, 8. Chapter 3, verse 8. I think this is his unpacking because the very word gain is used here.

Knowing Christ as Gain in Life

That's used in verse 21 with regard to death. And so I think the life part is also being unpacked. 3, 8. I count all things as loss. He's talking about his life now while he's still alive. I count all things as loss in view of the surpassing value, treasure, prize of knowing while I live Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish that I may, here it is again, gain profit from, get a treasure called Christ.

So when he says, I want to magnify Christ in my living for me to live is Christ unpacked by 3, 8, meaning while I live, nothing means anything to me but Jesus. The only conclusion you can draw if you watch a lifestyle like that and say, wow, he doesn't look like he cares about money.

He doesn't look like he cares about status. He doesn't look like he cares about his family as the ultimate issue. All he seems to care about is the magnificence of gaining Christ. So Christ must be great or he's crazy.

That's the way you magnify him in your living. The common denominator between living and dying is that Christ is the all satisfying treasure. And that's the way verse 20 shows how to magnify him in verse, I mean, verse 21 shows how to magnify him in verse 20.

Christ will be exalted and magnified in our living and our dying when Christ is our treasure. Prizing Christ is the key to praising Christ. The music, here we are, the music in the heart of the preacher is the pride he feels in knowing Jesus.

Can the people see when you stand before them to preach the glories of Christ that you have prized him, that he is all to you, that you have let goods and kindred go, that you count everything as rubbish, you count your house as rubbish, you count your neighborhood as rubbish, you count your family as rubbish, you count your salary as rubbish, that you don't need to make the budget to exalt.

You don't need to have a perfect small group system to exalt. You don't need to have, well, you fill in the blanks, whatever you're supposed to have today to be happy in the ministry. You people need to see that you at least are one person in the world whose heart is so linked up with an unshakable reality and an unstoppable triumph and an immeasurable treasure that when the church goes up and the church goes down and the people come in and the people go out, you're a rock because Jesus never changes.

Jesus is never bearish. The market never goes down with Jesus, ever, ever, ever. So why should you go down unless your heart is really in love with other things and that's where you're getting your stokes and your stability.

There is a song that you can play without a piano when you preach and you need to play it. It's called prizing Jesus, loving Jesus, cherishing Jesus, treasuring Jesus. The ministry therefore of preaching with all the pain and all the pressure is a great and happy work.

It's a great and happy work. J .A. Alexander, James Alexander, J .W. Alexander, get it right, one of these old Princeton preachers from 150 wrote a book called Thoughts on Preaching. Banner of Truth publishes, I recommend it to you.

He said, there is happiness in preaching. The declaration of what one believes and the praise of what one loves always gives delight and what but this is the minister's work. That's good. That's what I'm trying to say in this third talk.

The declaration of what one believes, exposition and the praise of what one loves, exaltation. Preaching is expository exaltation. And if you don't come to exalt in what you're preaching, people will know it and they won't care either.

John Owen on Experiential Preaching

You're doing your job, they'll leave and do their job and there'll be no fire. Now, John Owen, I got into him about a year ago on preaching and just immersed myself in his writings for months. And I want to draw things to a close of this third message by showing you that Owen knew these things and he is a great model of this third point of expository exaltation.

He warns us and I warn you now that we preachers are very prone to preach without penetrating into the things we say to the reality, to the reality, not just what's written there, not just the gar. Don't play with guards and think that you have made a clever case for some logic and go home and feel good about the sermon.

If the reality of savoring Christ in life and death is not tasted by the preacher, you haven't preached yet. And he says that words came easy for him, and when you've preached 10 years or so, words start to come easy.

And you can preach about mystery without feeling awe. And you can preach about purity without being pure. And you can preach about zeal without any passion. And you can preach about holiness without trembling.

And you can preach about sin without conviction and sorrow. And you can preach about heaven without eagerness. And you can preach about hell without any horror. And there's an awful deadness that can come into your life and preaching is depleted of its power.

And therefore, Owen said that he strove against this inauthenticity with certain strategies in his preparation. And I want to read you some of his strategies to help you. He said, I hold myself bound in conscience and in honor, not even to imagine that I have attained a proper knowledge of any one article of truth, much less to preach it unless through the Holy Spirit I have had such a taste of it in its spiritual sense that I may be able from the heart to say with the psalmist, I believe, and therefore I spoke.

Oh, I commend that to you. Don't enter the pulpit until you taste what you are about to proclaim. He wrote this great exposition of Psalm 130, 320 pages on eight verses. And his biographer said, when Owen laid open the book of God, he laid open the same time the book of his own heart, in his own history.

It is rich in golden thoughts and instinct with the living experience of one who spake what he know and testified what he had seen. Here's the way Owen himself describes this. A man preaches that sermon only well unto others, which he preaches, which preaches itself in his own soul.

And he that does not feed on and thrive in the digestion of the food, which he provides for others will scarce make it savory unto them. Yea, he knows not but that the food he hath provided may be poison, unless he have really tasted it himself.

If the word do not dwell with power in us, it will not pass with power from us. That's what I'm trying to get across. He said it well. He was a man whose life was laden with controversy, and he was a busy man.

He was a political man and a military man and an ecclesiastical man and a theological man. Richard Baxter called him the great doer. And if you knew that he produced these 17 volumes of theology that Roger Nicole says is the best theology in the English language, even I don't believe it better than Jonathan Edwards.

How in the world could he be such a busy man? How did he sustain himself? How? We pastors today, we think we're busy. We think we're busy. Well, when we write 17 volumes and we are the counselor for Cromwell and when we go on military expeditions to Ireland and when we become the pope of the independent movement and when we pastor a local church and when we have 11 children who die before we die, then we can complain in the 20th century.

We are not that unusual. How did he do it? In his book called Mystery of the Gospel Vindicated, he said, when the heart is cast indeed into the mold of the doctrine that the mind embraces, when the heart is cast into the mold of the doctrine that the mind embraces, when the evidence and necessity of the truth abides in us, when not the sense of the words only in our heads, but the sense of the thing abides in our hearts, when we have communion with God in the doctrine we contend for, then shall we be garrisoned by the grace of God against all the assaults of men.

So the key phrase in that to me is when we have communion with God in the doctrine we contend, do you commune with the living God in every doctrine you expound? Are you dissatisfied with exposition that is not living communion with God in the study of it and the delivery of it?

So that in the very moment that you commend it and defend it, you're communing with the glory of it in the living God. He ended his life at 77 in 1683 and he was working on a book called Meditations on the Glory of Christ.

The last thing he chose to write, Meditations on the Glory of Christ. And he had a friend named William Payne who was helping him edit. He was very old, very sick. And he said one day, I think just a few days before he died, Oh, brother Payne, the long wished for day has come at last in which I shall see the glory in another manner than I have ever done or was capable of doing in this world.

In other words, to die is gained. And yet, because he saw so much glory now, now he is known today as a holy man and his preaching is inflaming souls. 300 years later. Why? Because he communed with God in the doctrine that he expounded.

He saw and experienced the glory of Christ before he preached it. So his preaching was real because the mission was worship and the matter was the glory of God revealed in scripture and the manner was prizing Christ and exulting in him.

The Means of Preaching: Six Practices for the Preacher

Now, that's the end of lecture number three. I'm probably supposed to be done now, but I'm going to outline lecture number four. All right, fast. The third M begged, just begged. I got to this point. I'm sorry about this.

I know you're set up for three lectures, but I got to this point and had mission. I had matter and I had manner. And I knew that in the question and answer time, the questions would be, how? How do you become this kind of person?

Means is the fourth M, the means of preaching. And so I'm going to give you the fourth lecture in outline form in five minutes. The means of being this kind of preacher. Number one, you must be born again.

And I used to take that for granted. I think the pulpits are filled with unborn again. I don't think that now I think I'm becoming more skeptical and more pessimistic when I find that I do not resonate at big city pastoral gatherings.

And when I speak of spiritual things and there's this blank space and no resonance, I don't make any judgments finally about any individual. But Jesus said, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

If there is no life in the pulpit, you need to ask, is there life in the soul? Number two, turn off the television. It isn't necessary for relevance. It is a deadly place to rest the mind. And you're least capable of critical interaction.

It's pervasive banality, sexual innuendo, and God ignoring values have no ennobling effects upon the human soul. It kills the spirit. It drives away God. It quenches prayer. It blanks out the Bible. It cheapens the soul.

It destroys spiritual power. It defiles almost everything. I have taught and preached for 20 years. I've never had a television and nobody has said I'm irrelevant. Let me have an illustration just to follow.

And I risk personal testimony here at the cause of exalting my own self-control or whatever, but I'll do it anyway. I'll take the risk. You can say whatever you want. I went to Brazil two weeks ago. The hotel, the TV in my room, in the car driving to the hotel, we talk about billboards and culture and we talk about television and its influences in America.

And the man beside me said, yeah, it's probably worse here because the nudity, even in the advertisements, is really gross. 10 ,000 miles away from your wife, television in your bedroom, and you're already told you can catch it in the ads.

I never turned it on. I never touched it. And I would have liked to have seen what Brazilian television looks like. And I think I was free in Christ to do that, okay? I'm free to do that. It's not a legalistic thing.

I never touched it. One reason, I wanted power. I wanted power in those 13 messages I had to give. I didn't touch the TV over in that room at E7 either because I wanted power in this room. And I know that one single glimpse can hold me for days and kill me.

And it'll kill you. And some of you are dead because of it. Some of you live on it. Some of you are so broken and tired and despairing of your future, you souse on the TV every night. Don't do that. This preacher says, if you want power in the pulpit, turn it off.

Being Filled With the Spirit Through the Word

Number three, meditate on the Word of God day and night. Paul said, don't get drunk with wine, be, and he should have said drunk, but he guarded his language. He said, don't get drunk with wine, but be filled.

He meant drunk, be filled with the Holy Spirit. And so if you ask, how do you get filled with the Spirit in the pulpit? The answer is the same way you get drunk with wine. You drink a lot of it. One sip won't make you drunk.

One sip of the Spirit and then TV won't make you drunk. If you want to be drunk with the Spirit, you drink a lot of it. And then you have to ask, well, how do you drink the Spirit? It's pretty clear. First Corinthians 2 .14.

It's by welcoming the things of the Spirit. Or Romans 8 .5. It's by setting the mind on the things of the Spirit. Or what are the things of the Spirit? It's clear in Paul's language what the things of the Spirit are in the context.

It's the Word taught by the Spirit. Very simple. If you want to be filled with the Holy Spirit, read 52 chapters of the Bible without stopping. I got that from Wesley Duell in his book on prayer. He said, sometimes I'm so saturated with the world, I have to go away for a prayer retreat.

And before I can even commune with God, I had to read 50 chapters of the Bible before I was disconnected from the world and in tune with God. I mean, we are so saturated with the world, we cannot even talk about what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

To be filled with the Spirit, be filled day and night by meditating on the Word of God. Take the Word of God and put it like a lotion, like one of these. I got this awful throat problem. So I went down there and I charged to the school.

Well, you know, I charged this to the school. Hall's Cough Drop. I'm sorry, Dean Hunter, I used your card. I confess publicly, I used your card, not for breakfast, but for these Hall's Cough Drops. Take a word lozenge, take a word lozenge every day and put it on the tongue of your soul and let it dissolve all day long down into your soul.

Because if you don't, you don't even have to have a TV. The billboards will fill you. They'll put the lozenge there and the little radio thing will put a lozenge there and a grousing church member will put a lozenge there and you can become real bitter before the day is over and real worldly.

Cultivating Emotions That Match Biblical Reality

Number four, plead with God unceasingly for passions that match his reality. When you read that Bible, ask yourself this question. Is there an emotional response in my soul, in my spirit that accords with this reality?

If it's hell, am I trembling? Am I terrified? If it's heaven, am I flying? Am I full of gladness? If it's the crucifixion, am I broken with love and penitence? If it's, you name it. Is there an appropriate response here in my soul to this reality?

And if there isn't, don't say, oh, emotions don't matter. They're just the caboose on the end of the train and they're insignificant. And so I'll just do my duty and I will use my will and I will do what pastors are supposed to do.

Forget that. If those emotions aren't there, you get on your face and repent for hardness of heart. Repent for hardness of heart. You think emotions don't matter? Read your Bible. Read your Bible. They are commended everywhere.

Fear and joy and hope and gratitude and delight and tenderness are commended. They're not optional. And if you don't have them, you're hard and you need to repent and cry. Oh, God, I read it this morning.

It was just there. I'm reading Ezekiel for my devotions. And I got to chapter 11, verse 19, and this glorious new covenant promise. I will take out of you the heart of stone and I will give you a heart of flesh and you'll walk in my statutes and obey me.

I cry that every day. A renewed softening of my new heart that so easily begins to crest over and the capacities for emotion that are appropriate to truth. And we're not talking about worked up emotionalism.

We're talking about just if you're on hell, is there a hell kind of emotion? If you're on heaven, is there a heaven kind of emotion? If you're on the crucifixion, a crucifixion kind of emotion. If you're on adultery and fornication, is there a trembling kind of emotion?

If you don't feel those things, it may be that you're hard or maybe you should never be in the ministry. There are personality types that should not be preachers. I don't know if you agree with that here in the practical theology department, but there are personality types that are so incapable of translating what they feel in here, out here.

They shouldn't preach. They shouldn't. And there are perhaps too many of them in the pulpit. Don't conclude from that little sentence that you got to have my personality. Jonathan Edwards never did this because he never waved his arm.

His left elbow was on a cushion. His manuscript four by six inches was in his hand and he read it and he turned New England upside down. How? Intensity. You don't have to have my kind. You have to have your kind and it has to be real, manifest, discernible to your people that the song is being sung inside.

Learning From God-Saturated Preachers

Number five, linger in the presence of God besotted saints. Hebrews 13, seven. Remember those who led you, who spoke to you the word of God, considering the result of their conduct and imitate their faith, which is a biblical mandate for heroes, heroes.

Find a God saturated hero. Most of them are dead. Not good to choose living ones. Use dead ones. Find them and live with them. Live with them. Immerse your life in John Owen. Immerse your life in Charles Spurgeon.

Immerse your life in Jonathan Edwards, John Calvin, Martin Luther, John Wesley, Wesleyan though he be. Those old fashioned Armenians were different. They were, they were, they cared about God. So many pastors, so many pastors read more Barna, more Schaller, more Drucker.

You can't preach Barna, Schaller and Drucker. It won't cut it. I have to be careful there because I, it's just my own personal weakness that I, I get, I get dead reading those people. And, uh, I, I commend to you the possibility that there might be more life and more God and more power and more life changing vision in John Owen and Jonathan Edwards and Charles Spurgeon than in Barna, Drucker and Schaller.

Risking Comfort to Prove Christ Is More Valuable Than Life

You judge for yourselves who the writers are, who are saturated with God and live with them. Finally, I'm done. Number six, get up, leave your study, go to a hard place, take a risk for the kingdom and prove to your own soul at the airport or in the red light district or at Andrew house, where all the people who are mentally disturbed live in Cabrini green or go to a hard place and prove to your own soul that Jesus is more valuable than life.

Prove it, prove it. Because if you don't get up and leave and not just think about it, talk about it, read about it, pray about it, meditate on it and act on it, you won't even know if you're real, you won't even know.

And in the dark night, Satan will come to you and he'll say, you talk big, you talk big, you chicken. You wouldn't risk your house, you wouldn't risk your wife, you wouldn't risk your life, you wouldn't risk your health, you wouldn't risk disposition to anything.

You are fake. That's what Satan would say. He might be right. Not, he's usually not. He doesn't usually tell the truth. He's a liar. But you need to get ready and the best readiness is authenticity. And so I commend to you, make the mission of your preaching worship, make the matter of your preaching, the glories of God manifest in scripture, make the manner of your preaching and authentic exaltation in hymns and make the means of your preaching, a engagement with the word and prayer protected from the evil influences of a contaminating world.

Closing Prayer for Preachers and Churches

Well, Father in heaven, I commend these brothers and sisters to you for your blessing. And I ask that if I have in the heat of my own emotion here said anything ill-advised or perhaps overstated something, you'd give them the wisdom to recognize that and to take what is true and to live it and seek you in it.

I just pray that the ripple effect now in these lives and in their churches would be so wonderful that you would be honored, that your son, Father, would be exalted, that your spirit would be active and powerful, that your word would be elevated.

I commend these messages into your care. We ask that you would take them like little loaves and fishes and make them to feed far more than these, but through them, 5 ,000, 10 ,000 in Jesus name. Amen.

This concludes Dr. Piper's message. For information on other resources produced by Desiring God Ministries, contact us at the address or phone number printed on the tape label. We at DGM want to help you make God your treasure, because God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.