Category Archives: John Piper

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What Do You Bleed?

basics-smAlistair Begg’s annual “Basics Conference” is, in my estimation, far too underrated as a pastors conference. Each year Begg invites a select number of pastors and scholars to encourage ministers in the work of preaching and prayer. If you’ve yet to feast on the resources from these conferences make sure to head over to Truth for Life and download mp3s to your heart’s delight.

A Pricking with Piper

Over the weekend I listed to a few messages from the 2009 Basics Conference that focused on preaching to stir minds, urge wills, and renew affections. During the panel discussion John Piper was asked, “What do you believe the number one challenge will be for pastors in the next ten years?” His answer started off with some simple wisdom, but a peroration was on the way to those of us who preach God’s word. Listen to the clip below and be challenge to consider what you bleed.

Piper’s Answer: Same thing it’s always been: staying red hot for God, knowing their Bible, preaching it faithfully. I don’t think the main things change, the forms of challenges change, but the main thing about keeping your heart for God and knowing this book well, and understanding the lay of the land that changes [so quickly] today. If I had message to pastors it would be read your Bible and pray a lot. And pray earnestly for God to open His word to you, and preach it faithfully. And, you know, if you live in the world and look at the internet, if you see advertisements you see what’s there . . . I don’t work real hard at being relevant, trying to know the latest anything, I don’t know the latest anything! Because as soon as it’s there it’s gone and I can’t stay on top of it. Some things are so eternally relevant; everyone’s gonna die, everybody’s gonna get sick, everybody who’s married is going to have a horrible experience, everybody who raises kids is going to suffer like crazy. I mean, there are a few basic things that all human beings all the time walk through. If you have something to say to about these half a dozen real big challenges in life the little things that change [will fade away.]

Look if you had asked me what little handful of doctrines are going to be on the front burner or something that would be another question. I really think I would just leave it there and encourage you . . . whatever is going to be red hot in the next ten years will be gone pretty quick and people will still be the same and their needs will still be the same. Don’t be stupid. Don’t be culturally stupid and keep your head in the sand, understand there is an internet, there are televisions, there is music in the world.

Here’s what I thought of the other day. We were in preaching class talking about Spurgeon and how you do allusions, [the stuff that comes] just off the cough in your default language. And you know Spurgeon, you prick him and he bleeds Bible, right? Well, prick a lot of young pastors today and they bleed movies. I just said to the guys, “He bleeds movies, he bleeds music, he bleeds TV . . .” I said, “That sounds hip, that sounds cool, but it’s thin and it won’t carry you thirty years, probably. And it won’t help people die. It won’t help them in their marriages crises.” There are just so many young pastors so eager to grow and attract a crowd that they bleed movies. And when those young twenty-somethings get married, have kids, lose their babies—that blood coming out out is just going to be thin. You won’t sound cool at a funeral! It probably will be weird at a wedding. We’ve just turned so much of Sunday morning into a hip, cool, and entertaining talk time in order to feel a certain way. People’s souls are going to languish under that.

So all of that just to say, go ahead and just so be saturated . . . with the Bible.

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Got 15 Minutes to Spare?

At the inaugural Together for the Gospel in 2006 John Piper preached on “Why Expositional Preaching is Particularly Glorifying to God.”

You may not have time to listen or watch the whole thing, but you should at least check out the first fifteen minutes. I do believe you will be helped. There Piper elaborates on his longing to see God raise up preachers “mighty in the Scriptures, aglow with the great truths of the doctrines of grace, dead to self, willing to labor and suffer, indifferent to the accolades of man, broken for sin, and dominated by a sense of the greatness, the majesty, and holiness of God.” Let us all long and pray for the same thing.

Click here if you want to read the manuscript.

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What Spurgeon Can Teach Us Today

Back in 2012 RTS-Orlando established the Nicole Institute for Baptist Studies in honor of Roger Nicole (1915-2010). Nicole, a founding editorial board member of Christianity Today, was a distinguished visiting faculty member at RTS from 1989 to 2000. The NIBS typically hosts an annual Spurgeon Lecture in April. The Spurgeon Lecture, named after the great Reformed Baptist preacher Charles H. Spurgeon, is designed to equip and inform the audience on a broad range of theological, historical and cultural issues.

In 2013 John Piper delivered the Spurgeon Lection with a message titled, “The Life and Ministry of Charles Spurgeon.” I think the Prince would have been pleased. Watch the lecture below, be amazed, and be encouraged.

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Why Piper Preaches From A Manuscript

Preaching from a Manuscript

If you listen to some of the earliest biographical sermons John Piper preached at the Bethlehem Conference for Pastors (which eventually took the name “Desiring God Pastors Conference”) you’ll notice each one has a Q&A session at the end. Evidently this was when only a small crowd attended and so the setting was right for reflecting together.

At the 1990 conference Piper delivered a message entitled, “Oh, That I May Never Loiter On My Heavenly Journey! Reflections on the Life and Ministry of David Brainerd.” During the Q&A time one attendee asked Piper about his practice of delivering a sermon — whether he preached with an outline, no notes, or a manuscript. Here’s what he said:

As one who preaches from a manuscript I especially resonated with his language of being “an intellectual cripple.”

You could check out my post “Some Merits of a Manuscript” for 3 reasons why I find it helpful to manuscript my sermons.

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Tethered Preaching

TSGJohn Piper’s The Supremacy of God in Preaching is probably my favorite book on the subject. When reading the book you can’t help but feel the gravitas of proclaiming God’s word loading your soul—in a wondrous way.

Twenty-five years after its original publication Baker just published a revised version that includes four brand new chapters representing Pipers thoughts on preaching after thirty-three years at Bethlehem Baptist. One of the new chapters is titled, “In Honor of Tethered Preaching: John Calvin and the Entertaining Pastor.” Let me whet your appetite for the new edition with Piper’s answer to the question, “What is an Entertainment-Oriented Preacher?”

The difference between an entertainment-oriented preacher and a Bible-oriented preacher is the presence or absence of a manifest connection between the preacher’s words and the Bible as the authorization of what he says.

The entertainment-oriented preacher gives the impression that he is not tethered to an authoritative book in what he says. What he says doesn’t seem to be shaped and constrained by an authority outside himself. He gives the impression that what he says has significance for reasons other than that it manifestly expresses the meaning and significance of the Bible. So he seems untethered to objective authority.

The entertainment-oriented preacher seems to be at ease talking about many things that are not drawn out of the Bible. In his message, he seems to enjoy more talking about other things than what the Bible teaches. His words seem to have a self-standing worth as interesting or fun. They are entertaining. But they don’t give the impression that this man stands as the representative of God before God’s people to deliver God’s message.

What then is a “Bible-oriented preacher?” Grab a copy today to find out!

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“An Awful Weapon”

From its inauguration John Piper has delivered a biographical message at the Desiring God Pastors Conference. I’ve personally found these talks to be the highlight of each conference.

This year’s DGPC doesn’t have a biographical talk scheduled, so if you’re clamoring for some stirring vignette of an oak of righteousness here’s a great one: “He Kissed the Rose and Felt the Thorn: Living and Dying in the Morning of Life: Meditations on the Life of Robert Murray M’Cheyne.”

M’Cheyne said, “A holy minister is an awful weapon in the hand of God.” His life proved that maxim true o’er and o’er, and continues to do so today. Listen here or watch below and let the young Scotsman inspire, challenge, and comfort.

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Sermon of the Year

I don’t get a chance to listen to many sermons outside of those preached by other brothers at Imago Dei. Thus, my sample size for a “Favorite Sermon of the Year” is quite small.

Even if I had listened to dozens – maybe hundreds – more sermons I’m convinced none would have moved me like John Piper’s “Persuading, Pleading and Predestination: Human Means in the Miracle of Conversion.”

This was my favorite sermon of the year.

HE WAS ON FIRE

When he stepped up to the pulpit to deliver the final message this year’s Together for the Gospel the crowd was noticeably diminished. Those who had to leave early could not have known how much they would miss. When Piper stepped down nary a dry eye was found in the building. Al Mohler eventually came up to close the conference and he wept from the stage. I myself struggled to stop the floodgates that stemmed from profound conviction and joy.

God used Piper in a powerful way.

WHAT I’LL REMEMBER

  • I will never forget how the Mt. Everest of Romans 9 became rocket fuel for evangelism.
  • I will never forget how the “somehow” of Romans 11:14 took on a whole new depth of meaning.
  • I will never forget his exhortation to lovingly say “I want you” to sinners.
  • I will never forget him singing “Softly and Tenderly Jesus is Calling.”
  • I will never forget his statement, “I love precision.”
  • I will never forget his channeling of Bill Piper asking, “Would you come? Would you come?”
  • I will never forget the rhetorical questions, “Will you be those arms?”
  • I will never forget singing “Softly and Tenderly” with thousands of brothers and sisters in response.

I will remember his sermon as being, up to this point in my life, the greatest embodiment of unction I’ve ever seen.

Do your life and ministry some good by listening or watching this God-besotted, Christ-exalting, and Spirit-powered “logic on fire.”

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The Soul-Stirring Spurgeon

As a young child I loved the newspaper; and when I say newspaper I mean the sports page of The Dallas Morning News.

Every so often, however, I would dare to venture beyond the league standings, players statistics, and bombastic opinions of columnists. One such venture was the weekly citizen profile in the metro section. The profile would take a notable citizen in the county and ask him or her several questions so readers could get to know them better. One of the most common questions was, “If you could invite any three people do a dinner party, whom would you invite?”

What would you say if I adjusted the question to ask, “If you could invite any one person from church history to a dinner party, whom would you invite?”

For me, the answer must be, “Charles Haddon Spurgeon.”

No man in church history stirs my soul like the Prince of Preachers. His energy, intellect, wit, and eloquence would make that dinner party one to remember for a lifetime. I have never read Spurgeon without finding my heart filled with the majesty of God and the glory of Christ. Have you ever experienced the lion of the Metropolitan Tabernacle?

If not, let the good Dr. Piper introduce you to him.

PIPER ON THE PRINCE

In 2012 RTS Orlando established the Nicole Institute of Baptist Studies and invited Piper to give the first “Spurgeon Lecture”, an annual message designed to equip and inform the audience on a broad range of theological, historical and cultural issues. And what a lecture it was!

Carve out an hour of your day and let the Prince stir your soul in ministry.

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He’s Got it Right

countedEvery once in a while I come across a section of a book that makes the given title worth its weight in gold.

John Piper’s Counted Righteous in Christhas just that kind of gold-layered section, one titled “Growing a Church without a Heart for Doctrine.” Spend the next 3-4 minutes and give some ballast to your understanding of the church’s worship:

[T]he older I get, the less impressed I am with flashy successes and enthusiasms that are not truth-based. Everybody knows that with the right personality, the right music, the right location, and the right schedule you can grow a church without anybody really knowing what doctrinal commitments sustain it, if any. Church-planting specialists generally downplay biblical doctrine in the core values of what makes a church ‘successful.’ The long-term effect of this ethos is a weakening of the church that is concealed as long as the crowds are large, the band is loud, the tragedies are few, and persecution is still at the level of preferences.

But more and more this doctrinally-diluted brew of music, drama, life-tips, and marketing seems out of touch with real life in this world–not to mention the next. It tastes like watered-down gruel, not a nourishing meal. It simply isn’t serious enough. It’s too playful and chatty and casual. It’s joy doesn’t feel deep enough or heartbroken or well-rooted. The injustice and persecution and suffering and hellish realities in the world today are so many and so large and so close that I can’t help but think that, deep inside, people are longing for something weighty and massive and rooted and stable and eternal. So it seems to me that the trifling with silly little sketches and breezy welcome-to-the-den styles on Sunday morning are just out of touch with what matters in life.

Of course, it works. Sort of. Because, in the name of felt needs it resonate with people’s impulse to run from what is most serious and weighty and what makes them most human and what might open the depths of God to their souls. The design is noble. Silliness is a stepping stone to substance. But it’s an odd path. And evidence is not ample that many are willing to move beyond fun and simplicity. So the price of minimizing truth-based joy and maximizing atmosphere-based comfort is high. More and more, it seems to me, the end might be in view. I doubt that a religious ethos with such a feel for entertainment can really survive as Christian for too many more decades.

Amen.

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How to Train Your Church to Laugh at Anything

john-piperBack in 2009 John Piper delivered a message to the American Association of Christian Counselors and it proved to be one of the strangest interactions between speaker and audience I have ever seen.

Piper, as you can see from the video, decided to be as clear as possible on his own sinful patterns in life. He thought it appropriate given the nature of his audience. I find his confession to be humbling and God-honoring. The audience found it hilarious. Piper eventually becomes flummoxed with their reaction and points out how “strange” an audience they were.

But were they really strange?

Greg Gilbert, in an excellent commentary, calls it “one of the most bizarre things I’ve ever heard,” and sees an “incredibly important and massively undervalued lesson” for preachers:

Do you see, at root, what had happened at that conference? Over the course of a couple of days, those conferees had been trained to expect humor from the speakers and therefore to react to the speakers with laughter–all the way to the point that they were incapable of seeing that John Piper was being serious in his confession of sin to them. You can quibble with whether the first couple of Piper’s statements were (unintentionally, it seems) kind of funny. I happen to think they were. By the time he gets to about the 3-minute mark, though, there’s nothing funny left, and he’s moved into very serious stuff. Yet the atmosphere of humor and levity at that conference was so thick–the training so complete–that the people were incapable of seeing it. So they laughed at Piper’s confession of his sin.

Apparently the conditioning of that audience to think everything is funny took no more than a couple of days.

How deep do you think that conditioning would be for a church who sat under a funny-man pastor every Sunday for fifteen years?

A preacher’s content and tone will condition how his church hears God’s word. Pastor, what kind of auditory conditioning will your church have after hearing you preach for a decade?

Let us not be masters at training our churches to laugh at anything. Rather, let us labor to train them to hear with “serious joy in a Sovereign Savior.”

– HT: Justin Taylor