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What is in a name like “Desiring God Ministries”? March 31, 2007

Posted by brian in : John Piper, Holiness , add a comment

“Father my hearts desire for us, and I am sure I speak for hundreds in this room is that we as a people would count you as our treasure and as a precious jewel, more valuable that anything else in this world. That our affections would awaken to this estimation of your value. I pray that we would move beyond decision to delight, beyond will power duty to satisfied desire. I pray that you would get the glory of right thinking, but even more the glory of fitting affections. I pray for those who are sitting there right now quite dead spiritually, who feel nothing of what we have just sung, and who look upon you as a truth to be agreed to and not as a treasure to be cherished. I pray that you would give them life and not leave them dead. So Lord, that is beyond my doing. I can try with words to portray a portrait of this Christ, but if you don’t open the eyes of the blind and cut the calluses away from the taste buds of the soul there is a ho hum response. If you would work oh Holy Spirit, sweet Holy Spirit, many would see and taste that you are good. So I ask for the miracle of regeneration, quickening, reviving this morning, in the name of Jesus, amen.”

“Two weeks ago I drew out of verses 11-13 a picture. Remember it? It goes like this. For those who trust in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, the body is like a castle. In this castle God reigns supreme as the rightful ruler. In this castle there are servant desires designed for our good, they are not bad. God put them there. Outside the castle, pretending through and into the castle to the throne trying to usurp authority and be a rebel is sin. His main strategy, I argued, is that he takes captive these desires, which intended to be good servants. He corrupts them. He sends them behind the castle walls back into the castle corrupted, Judas like, as traitors, to betray the King and take captive members of the body. This might be your tongue, this might be your arm, this might be your sexual organs, this might be your eye, this might be your ear, and to turn that into a weapon of unrighteousness against the rightful King and on behalf of this pretender sin in order that sin might reign in our mortal bodies. We are called upon not to let sin reign in our mortal bodies. What emerged from all of that was this truth… We are in a great battle. Roman 6 is all about how people who are justified by faith, apart from works of the law, defeat sin in their lives. That is what Romans 6 is all about. What we discovered from that picture in verses 11-13 is that the battle is a battle between desires. Verse 12 “Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal bodies so that you obey its desires”. In other words do not desire sin as much as you desire God. Don’t desire the lie of sin as much as the truth of God. When it comes down to the conflict between what sin can promise you and what God can promise you prefer God, prefer God. That is the Gospel message. Prefer God. Have desires stronger for God than for sin. The battle is a battle of desire. Oh that the Church, the poor, carnal, lukewarm, middle class, settled in, do what you feel like doing to get easy and comfortable, would understand and realize and taste that the Christian life, the only life that leads to Heaven, is a life of competing desires, not just competing decisions.”

“It is not an accident, it is not a fluke of history or anything else, that the name of the distribution branch of this church is called Desiring God ministries. That is not an accident. That did not come out of nowhere, that is not a clever title. That is a massive theology. That is a massive world view that comes right out of text like we are in right now. Verse 12 “Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal bodies so that you obey its desires”. In other words, we live the Christian life by not obeying the desires of the body, that sin has captured corrupted, distorted, and sent back in as Judas desires. If you choose not to obey a desire, it is because you desire something else more. What if you have learned a kind of Christianity, a kind of Christian life that is all will power and no desire? What if you have never invested any prayer, any meditation, and any conversation in cultivating stronger desires for Christ, than for sin? What if you only think of Christ as true and don’t desire him as a treasure? I tremble at how much Christianity there is like that I see it everywhere I go, and there is a lot in this room right now.


Imputation or impartation? March 29, 2007

Posted by brian in : John Piper, What is the Gospel?, Holiness, Pilgrims Progress, John Bunyan , add a comment

As I read through Pilgrim’s Progress with my son, I marvel at the clarity of the Gospel message that is in this book. What was at the heart of a man who wrote with such clarity about the great gospel of Jesus Christ? My answer is the truth of an alien righteousness that was his in Jesus Christ. I though of a great sermon by Piper when he says that the imputation of Christ’s righteousness is a…

“glorious, life giving truth. I don’t want you to be blown over by anything that comes to rob it from you. There is a difference between imputation and impartation. God does an imparting work, oh yes and it is great. By the power of the Holy Spirit He comes into our lives and He begins to impart to us the fruit of the Holy Spirit we call it, or holiness, or other names are given to it. Little by little we are brought into conformity to the image of Jesus Christ. That’s a glorious thing, but it isn’t the gospel. This work of God by which he imparts to us gradually holiness and love and joy and peace and patients and kindness and meekness and faithfulness and self control is grounded or built upon or founded on something deeper and more fundamental and more glorious and that is imputation. So if you have the two ideas of impartation of graces and gifts into your life and imputation of Christ’s righteousness to you get the order right. Because if you don’t you will miss out on the fullness of your peace with God. You may miss out on God entirely. The imparting work of God’s Spirit is built upon the imputing work of the Father. The righteousness of Christ is made over to us by imputation so that he can begin to impart to us graces and gifts. YOU MUST BE RECKONED PERFECT BEFORE YOU CAN MAKE HEADWAY IN BECOMING GOOD. YOU MUST BE COUNTED PERFECT BEFORE YOU CAN MAKE THE FIRST BABY STEP IN BECOMING GOOD. That’s awesome! And it happens by faith uniting you with Jesus Christ who wrought out a perfect righteousness for us, so that in the twinkling of an eye, in the first act of saving muster seed-like faith, God imputes to us the fullness of the Righteousness of Jesus Christ so that we are complete in him and now may make little steps of progress of becoming like him in this world.”

Then a little later he says…

“In the experience of God’s people throughout the centuries this teaching, this truth, this doctrine, of the imputation of the righteousness of God in Christ through faith for you, apart from works has been a great deliverance from bondage in many saints. Why should we be denied this? I don’t care what pragmatists say about how you are supposed to preach today. Why should we be denied a truth that tens of thousands of 17th and 18th century Christians were strengthened by to the stake? Why should you be denied to know this, to love this to cherish this, to live and die by this. Why should you be denied because we are told today that pragmatism reigns, nobody can listen to 30 minute sermons, you gotta do seeker sensitive stuff, theology 101, nobody can get these things anyway, so lets all be leaves and jellyfish. I don’t believe it.”

“In history, this doctrine has rescued generation after generation after generation from bondage.”

Then he goes into Bunyan’s experience…

“One example is John Bunyan, the writer of Pilgrim’s Progress, who struggled terribly before he came to a settled faith in Christ. Here’s what he wrote:

One day as I was passing into the field . . . this sentence fell upon my soul. Thy righteousness is in heaven. And methought, withal, I saw with the eyes of my soul Jesus Christ at God’s right hand; there, I say, was my righteousness; so that wherever I was, or whatever I was doing, God could not say of me, he wants [lacks] my righteousness, for that was just before [in front of] him. I also saw, moreover, that it was not my good frame of heart that made my righteousness better, nor yet my bad frame that made my righteousness worse, for my righteousness was Jesus Christ himself, “The same yesterday, today and, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8).

Now did my chains fall off my legs indeed. I was loosed from my afflictions and irons; my temptations also fled away; so that from that time those dreadful scriptures of God left off to trouble me; now went I also home rejoicing for the grace and love of God. (John Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, [Hertfordshire: Evangelical Press, 1978, orig. 1666], pp. 90-91)”

Listen to Piper’s sermon on this

Lionhearted and Lamblike The Christian Husband as Head Part 2 March 26, 2007

Posted by brian in : John Piper, Marriage , 2comments

Well, I am going to keep putting this series on the front page because it continues to challenge and bless me.

Father, help me to lead with spiritual protection. Help me to be aware of the spiritual dangers constantly assaulting my family, both the overt attack and the subtle. Make me to be a warrior, a lionhearted and lamblike warrior. Sounds contradictory, but make see what that looks like. Give me such a revelation of Christ that I can be that warrior with biblical discernment and courage!!!

Don’t Waste Your Life March 23, 2007

Posted by brian in : John Piper , add a comment

The following is an article from Desiring God about their effort to produce a short video series on Piper’s Don’t Waste Your Life book. I am putting these in the video section under Piper/Don’t Waste your life.

“Don’t Waste Your Life Video Podcast
February 23, 2007 | By: Lukas
Category: Don’t Waste Your Life

Starting this week and over the next 12 months we will be releasing short video podcasts designed to be a weekly encouragement and challenge to not waste our lives. As the Lord provides, our plan is to produce at least 100 hundred episodes. Every episode will take a theme from the book, Don’t Waste Your Life, and challenge us to think about what we are doing with the lives the Lord has given us. We are encouraging everyone with a website, blog, etc. to use any of these episodes to spread the message around the world. We are praying that many who would never read the book may be impacted in a significant way by watching one of these podcasts.

Subscribe to the video podcast. (You can also subscribe in iTunes.)”

They Sold Their Souls For Rock N’ Roll March 21, 2007

Posted by brian in : Cross TV, Holiness, Total Depravity , 3comments

This is an eye opening documentary by pastor, researcher, and former hard rock musician Joe Shimmel. It details numerous Pop/Rock/Rap musicians’ ties to the occult. The four part series is available on this site under the videos/cross TV section.

WARNING……………………..
Numerous parts of this video are unsuitable for younger viewers. The last five minutes of this video are intensely graphic and is not appropriate for younger viewers.