Feel — John Piper

Thank you Martin and the team that put this together and Honored me with the privilege of speaking to the most Important people in the universe under God. I think more important than angels Are the shepherds of God's flock so to speak to you and I know not all of you are pastors But that's who I have mainly in mind.

So it's an awesome thing for me to to address you. Thank you Stuart good to follow you around a little bit and I cannot overstate both in settings like this and week by week in my local church the enormity of the importance of corporate worship for my soul.

Corporate Worship and the Sanctification of the Soul

I Think that when I lay my head down to die It will be true still that the moments of my sweetest communion with God Will have been standing with my people in song to the Living God. I am sanctified More in worship than any other time.

I am brought low for my sin In Corporate worship more than any other time I am given hope from my marriage and my children and my church when I'm feeling despondent In corporate worship more than any other time I don't know how it is with you but the gift that God has given to the church in the last 30 years or so in a kind of awakening of Corporate God-centered worship in song that's very earnest very joyful is a gift to me personally and so those whom he has raised up to lead local churches and then to sharing events like this are Hugely important to me because God has ordained in my case anyway that those moments be Sanctified.

And I I generally feel grieved about myself because as I stand Sometimes with my hands lifted and sometimes with my eyes closed Articulating God's majesty in song I feel so foolish About the way I treat people Twelve hours earlier.

I just feel so foolish. I feel why did that become such a big deal? Why did I get so angry. Why did I get so discouraged over such a little thing and my world comes into? Focus in worship and I just wish Pray for me in this regard that I could just stay like that.

I Think you when you were introduced Your hope is that you? Help people Begin it and then it just continues. It just Continues we just worship all day. And so when we're when we're Upset that somebody said something.

We just say this is not big enough to Be mean about this is just small. We're a little vapor. We're gonna get blown away. Why am I so? So All of that to say we do have a great God he is worthy of song he's worthy of everything.

A Church’s Mission: Spreading Passion for God’s Supremacy

In 1993 I am I am leading into a message in in 1993 We went through the biggest crisis in our church, I've been at our church now for about 30 years and We went through the biggest crisis we've ever had huge huge moral crisis in some lives and then a big split in an attitude towards certain things and 230 people left the church and and We were brought to our faces and we we called the next year the year of tears and The next year the year of Self-searching and identity we didn't grow at all for four years flat no nobody wanted to be a part of this mess and and In that second year called the year of searching of our own souls and who we were God gave us I believe a Mission statement.

I don't think every church has to have a mission statement and all mission statements are inadequate and imperfect because they always leave important things out. But we have one and and now what is that 17 years ago?

It still burns inside of me. I Had been there at the time 13 years and so The church and I had grown together so the church's mission statement and my mission statement for my life are virtually identical and I want to say it to you.

Unpack it for maybe three or four minutes and make it the background of why I'm going to say what I'm going to say in this message the mission statement that What the church did what we did was we formed a group of you might want to try this some Crisis moment in your ministry the church was probably a thousand folks at that time I don't know and and and we took 23 people for staff and and the rest lay folks and and we met together every Two weeks maybe for a year or so just talking and praying about who we were everything under the Sun music identity ministry identity style identity.

Theological identity outreach identity all kinds of what do we want to do? What does God want to make us and they sent me away after months of that and said go draft a document a Statement and then some fleshing out then bring it back and we'll pick it apart and and refine it and because that's why I think things happen committees don't write documents and They just they just refine things that others do.

So I went away and and I brought this back and we tweaked it and and then a few years later We added another phrase, but here's what it is. We exist. And I could say I exist to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things.

For the joy of all peoples with an S on the end all peoples through Jesus Christ. That's our mission statement. So right up there at the top is we exist to spread. And that gives some people the willies like whoa, what about inside about us and of course you can't spread anything you don't have.

And so Children's ministries really matter to raise them up to have this passion so they can spread it. But the point of that is to say if everything we do terminates on me or on us not only is the world told to go to hell, but I Lose my biggest joy because a shared joy is a doubled Joy, you don't find your highest pleasures by isolating yourself in a room with God.

You Go from that room and speak his name and when another person is drawn into your joy in him. It gets bigger. I'm a Christian hedonist. I want Maximum joy, and I know it doesn't come to me by myself.

It comes when I am granted the privilege to talk to somebody about him. To sing with somebody about him. That's when this joy that's in there gets bigger and I want it to be bigger. So we exist to spread a Passion we don't just exist to spread a doctrine.

I am Reformed. I am Calvinistic. I like to be Biblical through and through more important than any other way of describing me and I regard that is absolutely Important, but it's not the end point which is one of the points of the two messages I have.

I'm going to talk more about doctrine and thinking this evening and I'm going to talk about passion. Mainly this morning, so I believe thinking rightly about God is Not an end in itself, but serves the hearts passion for God.

So we exist to spread. Yes by means of right thinking right teaching right doctrine, but we are after passionate hearts for Jesus. And of course you can hear how impossible this mission is you can't make any of that happen in anybody.

That's the Holy Spirit's work, but he calls us to be involved. So this is our goal. We exist to spread a passion for the supremacy of God. Matt who's traveling with me. We were sitting over there a few minutes ago.

Waiting and praying and I looked at him and I said Matt The most overwhelming thing in the world is that God exists and we just sat and just tried to let it sink in. God Exists. This stuff we think is so real, you know all this this is has nothing.

God is everything. God is absolute reality. He was there before any of this. In him we live and move and have our being he sustains it by the word of his power one Change in his mind. We go poof out of existence.

God is Reality. God is ten million times more important than you are. More important than your church more important than South Africa or the United States of America or all the galaxies. They are as nothing they are dust in the scales you put God in the universe in the scale.

It goes like that God over here. Just the sheer being of God is breathtaking. Humbling so we exist to spread a passion for his Supremacy, we want people to be stunned by the sheer Existence of Almighty God as he is revealed in this book.

Not the God they make up this God. We exist to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things. I don't want everybody to become a pastor. I want there to be homemakers and nurses and teachers and street sweepers and garbage collectors and carpenters and brick masons and computer programmers who do everything they do for the glory of God they regard him as Supreme in everything they do with their hands so that everything becomes an act of worship.

Which want to permeate life? With God supreme in all things in all the subjects of school absolutely supreme. So we exist to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples.

Missions Through Jesus Christ

So we want joy to spread and we'll just enjoy the rain. Okay, you hear it I hear it you need it, but I think I can make myself heard If they help me for the joy of all peoples with an s on the end because we're so I want I wanted so much in the crafting of this mission statement to have missions not just a vague sense of being missional or a vague sense of having some kind of Impact but rather there are thousands of Peoples ethnic groups that are on the planet that God means to reach the church is to be planted in every Ethnic group on the planet and we exist to that end so missions in the historic sense of Sending people across a culture learning another language going where there are no evangelists Ethnically and indigenously to do the work you've got to have Missionaries whatever you call them and they go there at the cost of their lives often and they plant God's church who says I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

And then we added at the end Through Jesus Christ because we know that without the gospel and without his Work, we can't do this. Nobody has a passion for God that honors God who doesn't come to God through Christ crucified and risen so Muslims and Hindus and Buddhists and Non-christian Jewish people do not honor God.

We exist to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ. Let me just say a word for my devotions this morning and then Tackle my topic for the remainder of the time through Jesus Christ.

What Christ did as you know? Was come from the Father as God live a perfect life, which we couldn't die in our place. In order to demonstrate Romans 5 8. The love of God for us while we were yet sinners.

Rise from the dead for our justification ascend and intercede forever before the Father for us when we were Absolutely and totally undeserving of this love. Nobody comes to the Father except through him and nobody can honor the Father if they dishonor the Son which all non-christians do by rejecting Jesus.

Election, Grace, and Being Counted Righteous in Christ

So Christ is absolutely essential this morning. I was reading in Jeremiah and I read these words Which spoke very very powerfully to me personally and I felt like perhaps I should put them up here at this point.

God says Concerning the exiles in Babylon. Thus says the Lord God of Israel. Like these good figs. He had just used an analogy of good and bad figs like these good figs. I Will regard as good the exiles from Judah.

They weren't good they hadn't become good and He says now after 70 years of punishment, and they're still not good. They rejected the Lord when he came. I Will regard them as good. And then verse 7 that's that's Jeremiah 24 5 then verse 7 I will give them a heart to know that I am the Lord and What is so precious about that is the order of those two statements?

All right, I will regard them as good. Then I will give them a heart to know me this is our only hope that God in election chooses to regard us as in Christ Is good and then he pursues us and makes us good.

The if that order were not true I would be undone if If I felt that I had to preach I had to be a perfect husband. I had to do fathering right in order to get God to regard me as good. I just so when I say through Jesus Christ Whose righteousness is counted as mine so that the father Rightly can regard me as good.

Because by faith, I'm united to Jesus and in him. I am Righteous good in God's sight so that now he can begin to make me good. And he's working really slow on me. Like maybe I mean, I really felt this morning, maybe it will be 70 years.

Maybe I'll become good at 70 like the exile and I'll come home. And I'll be a good husband and a good father to my 45 year old children. You laugh. Okay, all that's introduction. What I want to talk about in the two sessions why I Prioritize and I believe you should prioritize biblically it's right to prioritize Emotions Affections Passions as Highly as I've just spoken about and I'll show you how high that is.

Why? What. What will it do for us what will it do for your church? What will it protect you from and what will it win what biblically show. I want to show you from the Bible. Why this is so important that that the affections or the emotions are?

More Ultimate than thinking and then I'm gonna talk about thinking and how important it is this evening. So that's where I'm going and I want you to just go away feeling. Okay in my own soul and in my church my goal must be a Passion for God and joy in God and zeal for God delight in God satisfaction in God all these feeling like words.

Defining Biblical Affections and Emotions

Now give me let me give you four Qualifying Observations before I move into scripture proper on that number one a definition when I talk about emotions or affections I am NOT thinking primarily of physical phenomena trembling hands fluttering eyelashes wobbling knees butterflies in the stomach.

Tingling in the spine. You name it. I'm not talking about that. Those are great. I like them. They come they go. They're not of the essence when I think emotion or affection I am talking about a spiritual reality that is not identical with its Sometime evidences in the body.

I have in mind things like joy fear gratitude desire hate anger tenderheartedness peace loneliness sorrow regret shame hope and all those are from the Bible. The list goes on and on the Bible is just rich with emotional language and I don't mean that those emotions are Bodily.

Now, how do we know that they're more than bodily because we we're in bodies. We can't we can't deny that we're in bodies and these things are so interwoven with our bodies that Here and now in this body they feel often like bodily sensations.

How do I know that they are more than that deeper than that? And there are two reasons why we know this one God has them. And don't get bent out of shape here about the impassibility of God. I Don't think God is a victim of any of his emotions the way we are.

There is a mystery in this but I'm a Bible guy not mainly a systematics guy and the Bible talks endlessly about God's emotions and He has them and he gets Really happy and really angry. Hosea 11 8 my compassion grows warm and tender.

That's God talking or Jeremiah 4 8 fierce anger of the Lord is coming. God has no body. Therefore fierce anger and warm tender compassion Cannot be bodily at its ultimate root. That's first argument second argument.

We know it's not bodily is because you're going to have them after you die. And go to heaven. Otherwise, I can't make any sense out of Paul's words in Philippians that to die is gain. It is far better to go and be with Christ better with zero affections for him.

No way. My love for him my joy in him my satisfaction in him. My longings for him are going to be thousandfold Intensified when I meet him face to face and my body is lying in the grave. So for those two reasons, please when I talk about Affections or emotions don't hear me talking about physical sensations.

Why Truth Serves Holy Affections

That is the way we experience them largely here. But that's not what they are in their essence. That's qualification or clarification number one. Here's number two. Why do I rank these affections above.

Thinking and I just want to say briefly here why and then we'll talk about it more this evening. John 8 32 you will know the truth know the truth know the truth and the truth Will set you free from what?

Well in the context sin. Then what is sin. It's not just bad action, it's bad attitudes. It's bad feelings. It's bad Motives and therefore to to know rightly is to be set free from the bondage on our spiritual affections that cause them to go after illicit sex or money or Notoriety.

These horrible Bondages our affections live in while we don't know the truth. And so Jesus is saying if you know rightly You will then as a Consequence which means this is more ultimate. This is the goal is to have all those things set free for God.

Why Right Feeling Matters More Than Mere Religious Action

That's why I think they are more ultimate than right thinking. Right thinking is a means to right feeling. More on that later. Here's a third qualifying or clarifying observation at the beginning. Why do I rank right feeling over right doing?

It's a little more controversial. Maybe is you you sure you want to rank right? Feeling over right doing. Yes, I do. Matthew 15 8 this people honors me with their lips. But their heart is far from me.

Vein, do they worship me? So he's looking at a group of people singing or Reciting a liturgy or lifting their hands or hugging each other all physical manifestations. And he's looking at their heart and he's saying I don't like this.

I don't like what's going on here. I don't like these lifted hands. I don't like these hugs. I don't like these songs. I don't like this bodily action because their hearts are not with me which means Bodily action minus heart affections is worthless.

It's worse than worthless. It stinks to God. So Yes, I'm gonna rank this heart of mine over this body of mine in all of its doing doing doing. Doing good deeds without a heart for God is blasphemy. It's called it's got a name in the Bible if they're religious it's called Hypocrisy.

There is such a thing as hypocrisy. I wonder if we had a little vote here about what Jesus hated most as Revealed in the Gospels what our vote would be. My vote would be hypocrisy. He gets more bent out of shape about Hypocrites, I mean the language Jesus uses in Matthew 23 is just over the top towards hypocrites.

White washed tombs Vile inside like graves that people walk over they stink and he's talking about Religious people and they just stink to him so I tremble at the thought of my body my voice my hands and my feet doing right stuff with my heart a mile away from God Almighty.

So, yes, I'm ranking my heart and its affections for God as more Essential than doing more ultimate than doing imagine yourself in heaven. What will be or on the new heavens in the new earth? What will be the ultimate the?

Ultimate and the ultimate will be that our Thinking and our doing rightly expresses massive and unsullied Joy in God and the joy in God will be what makes the thinking and makes the doing as beautiful as it will be.

Affections, Satisfaction, and the Glory of God

That's clarification number three and number four. How does This prioritizing of affections and feelings so high relate to the glory of God which in the Bible is manifestly the most important reality in the universe.

So I'm totally with Jonathan Edwards In his book the end for which God created the world as the display of his glory. That it might be Reverberating back to him in all appropriate ways. So that all things are from him and through him and to him to him be glory forever.

There is no doubt that I am subordinate. I am dependent and God is majestically absolutely Important and I'm not. So, how does my prioritizing of the heart? So high relate to that and my life sentence to try to capture this is God is most glorified in me when I am most satisfied in him and therefore I think Prioritizing satisfaction in God as the ultimate goal of my life is The indispensable way of making much of him as much as I should now we need Bible under this and so I Think the outline that I have left is this.

I want to give you some biblical evidence for that last sentence. God is most glorified in me when I'm most satisfied in him. So all you lovers I hope you are of the glory of God will feel a sense not of some tension competition between the elevation of affections, but rather that that elevation is an essential essential necessary means of glorifying God.

So that's the first thing we're going to do next is give biblical evidence of that and then for implications for our people. For our pastoral work for our preaching and for the wider challenges of evangelicalism if we can do that in the next Little while.

Paul’s Joy in Life and Death: Philippians 1

Let's go to Philippians chapter 1. Philippians chapter 1 this was the text in chapter 1 that I preached on when I Candidated at my church in February of 1980 and It has not ceased to be for me pivotal.

For all of ministry and theology. Everything I do more or less flows from this and I'm starting at verse 19. Mmm. No verse 20 It is my eager expectation and hope That I will not at all be ashamed. And how many times I fail but that is my eager expectation and hope that I would not at all be ashamed but positively now.

That with full courage now as always Christ Would be honored the Greek Megaluno Megalune face a tie here. Magnified you can hear it mega mega. Made much of magnified that that Christ would be magnified.

Made much of in my body. Whether by life or by death. For in that little word for there has become all-important. For To me to live is Christ. And to die is gain and the logic. So here's you can see how thinking is functioning for me here in relation to affections.

Because I'm going after affections in this verse because they're here Massively, but I got a think to make this happen and the word for there forces me to think about why it's there. Because Paul didn't throw his words around under inspiration carelessly.

So why is that little word for at the beginning of verse 21? How does it support? Clarify what went before so let's read and try to get that. So he says his passion his aim his longing his eager Expectation is that Christ would be magnified or honored in his body.

And then he he says either way whether I live I want my life to be a magnifying of Christ or if I'm called to die in Rome I want my dying to be a magnifying of Christ. I want I want when I die I want Christ to look really good.

And when I live I want Christ to look really good. That's why I'm on the planet. That's why you're on the planet. You exist to make Christ look good. That's why you're here. That's why you exist. That's why the universe exists.

That's why you write that creation song. We just saying you taught us. Okay, that's why he wrote that song. Because the creation exists to make Christ look good and the linking of the old and the new creation is a great thing.

Now the question is How let's just take the death pair. Okay, you get two pairs right life and death and then verse 21 to live is Christ and to die is gain. So life corresponds in verse 20 with live in verse 21 and death in verse 20.

Corresponds with die in verse 21. You see that it's not an accident those pairs. And so we're supposed to learn from the word for that what he says about living. Sheds light back on how you magnify Christ in your life in verse 20 and what he says about dying.

Sheds light back on how you magnify Christ in your death and the death pair is the most Illuminating. We could unpack the life pair by going over to chapter 3 verse 8 where he talks about Life and Treasuring and valuing Christ above all things.

Christ as Gain in Suffering and Death

Now, but let's talk about the death pair. So let's just leave out the life pair and read it like this. My eager expectation and hope is that now as always Christ would be honored in my body when I die.

For to me to die is gain. Does that make sense? My passion is to magnify Christ in my dying. Paul knew he was going to die. You could smell it. I want to make him look good in my dying. For the support for that the explanation of that the ground for that is to me to die is gain.

That's how Christ is made to look good in your dying that is In the moment of your dying or the process the last hours. The last days the last year as life drains out of your body with some horrid disease.

Or some persecution or some imprisonment as the as the life is draining out of your body Christ looks good. If you are communicating gain gain gain. And people around you say how can this be gain. You're losing your wife.

You're losing your children. You're losing your job. You're losing your retirement. You're losing your plans. You're losing comfort. What do you mean gain. And and then to get answers like that you keep reading?

So let's keep reading. If I am to live in the flesh that means fruitful labor for me. Which I shall choose. I cannot tell. I'm hard-pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ.

Here it is for this is far better. With Christ is Better than wife. With Christ is better than grandchildren. With Christ is better than comfort. With Christ is better than retirement. With Christ is better than all my plans.

Bring it on death. Bring it on loss. Because I say gain. Now all my theology is there. When I say God is most Glorified in me when I am most satisfied in him. I'm getting that right there. That's there in my moment of dying.

God will be most magnified when I am so Satisfied in being with Jesus that I can let goods and kindred go this mortal life. Also, right the body they may kill God's truth. The bite is still his kingdom is forever make my day death and Would would that God would work in me and in you that that's just not words.

Right now it could just be words, right? I could be a fake. I Could come to my dying day and and Under the demonic power of the devil and the horrible Suffering of physical evil and mess it up big time, which is why do more do more do more.

Is not a good idea. God God God is the right thing to do because Piper Big talk Piper. We'll see. Would check you out when that day comes. So don't assume just pray okay. So there it is, that's my biblical foundation for saying That God is most glorified or to use this text Christ is most magnified in my body when I in my body at the point of death and most satisfied in him and I just want to make sure that you don't make this mistake.

Joy in God Amid Limited Experience of Suffering

Sometimes when you talk about joy or talk about satisfaction you talk about the affections. If you haven't suffered much in life, it sounds light and Superficial those words. And you might say well, yeah easy for a you know an American citizen nicely clothed and well fed and surrounded with Support socially and a good family and he drives a car and he lives in a house and he's got indoor plumbing and he's got Refrigeration he called 9 -1 -1 anytime he wants they're here to put the fire out or to rescue him from the robbers within five minutes.

I mean this guy is living in heaven already. What does he know about? What a what a about how to magnify Christ in dying or how to magnify Christ in? Suffering and I just want to say that I don't think I've suffered much in this life.

But I read sufferers and I read my Bible and I talked to sufferers. And all the testimony that comes back to me from godly sufferers is that I'm speaking truth. I Remember one time in seminary, I wrote a paper on first Peter which is all about suffering and Argued this I was just learning these things and I argued that those who suffer most Discover most of God and therefore have the deepest joy.

That's where I argued I'm here. I am 23 years old and I know nothing. I just I'm just trying to echo back what I saw and that professor was very upset with me. And he and he said what about Richard Wurmbrandt?

Like you've never suffered. There's somebody who was tortured for Christ. I don't know if you know the Romania I'm talking about. So I said, oh, okay. So I go to the library and I check out tortured for Christ and one or two other books and I find What I said, it's all over the place.

This is all over the place and and I wrote a little addendum to the paper. He'd given you a C-minus on the paper, okay. Below average and and and I wrote this little thing and I said professor blank I I know I'm an American.

I'm a Westerner. I don't know anything by way of experience. But when I when I read Wurmbrandt that you you said he says that in his sufferings in these horrible 14 years where he they hurt his feet so bad now He has to take off his shoes when he speaks that he met Christ so deeply there was joy Surpassing and there it is.

It's in the book and He raised my grade to a B-minus. I Guess there were other problems with it. So the point of that was please I know I know I haven't suffered as much as many of you have and I live in a very a very abundant land and it's Easier for me to talk about this maybe then it would be if I didn't have the leisure to study.

But I do believe what I'm saying is biblical and those who've suffered more could say it more authentically and It would be true. So that's the first thing I want to do in my little remaining Four-part outline or whatever.

I forget how I set this up. The next thing is implications for your people so if this is so if we rank emotions affections Satisfaction as highly as I'm commending for the glory of God because he's most glorified when we're there in him then What does that mean for your people?

Pursuing Maximum Joy in God as a Lifelong Vocation

I'm talking to pastors now and What it means is that you should? Tell Them that this is the 24 7 vocation of their life namely to pursue Maximum joy in God. This is their vocation at least when I was a Teenager I don't remember anybody telling me that I Was told do the will of God and Sometimes it brings happiness.

Nobody ever said to me pursue it like a hungry tiger Going after an antelope pursue it go for it. Don't let it get away from you pursue this joy and Watch out because other joys are Clawing for your heart all the time.

And if you don't set your face to pursue joy in God you will get it somewhere else. Because your heart is a desire factory nobody doesn't want everybody wants. We are a wanting being. Want want want want want that's who we are.

God made us that way we want and either we're gonna want God or we're gonna want me to look good in the mirror. And so if you don't set your people on this quest go for it. Pursue it chop your hand off if you have to to get it.

Gouge out your eye if you have to to get this there are all kinds of Arguments you can give to your people. Let me just give you a few. The Bible commands that we pursue joy. Rejoice in the Lord and again.

I say to you rejoice. That's a command. It's not a suggestion. Serve the Lord with gladness come into his presence with seeing. Don't serve the Lord any other way. It's bad advertisement. He's dishonored by gloomy servants or You could say the Bible threatens terrible things if we don't Pursue our joy in God.

Deuteronomy 28 47 because you did not serve the Lord your God with joy and a glad heart you will serve your enemies. That's a terrible threat so many arguments could be given. I'm gonna pass over those and go to implication number two so the implication number one was Teach your people model for your people that the quest for joy in God is their most important vocation.

It's very costly it will it will cost some of them their lives. Because God's gonna say to some of them. I want you to do this in Libya. And she'll do this in Afghanistan. I got an email the other day from one of our families in Afghanistan and You know the ten who were murdered a few weeks ago in Afghanistan one of them was on their team and another one was reading one of my books don't waste your life when when you shot and his mother Said at the funeral what she said to my friend Ryan that a Sermon doing missions when dying was gained that I preached 20 years ago or whenever.

Was sustaining her in this moment, and I just I read this with trembling. I thought I am NOT playing games. You think you're playing games? These people are dead dead. Because they loved like this. Because because they believed Afghanistan is where my maximum deepest knowing and loving of Jesus is going to be found as I spread this Through a dentistry ministry.

My deepest joy in their joy is going to be found there and it may cost me my life to pursue this. But I'm going after the maximizing of my joy in their joy. I Don't know if you think that way. That's the way I think and so when I commend this to my people I'm saying this will cost you.