John Piper is the Pastor for Preaching and Vision at Bethlehem Baptist Church (Minneapolis, MN) and the founder of Desiring God.

After Jesus had fed both the 5,000 and the 4,000 with only a few loaves and fish, the disciples got in a boat without enough bread for themselves.

When they began to discuss their plight, Jesus said, “Why are you discussing the fact that you have no bread? Do you not yet perceive or understand?” (Mark 8:17). What didn’t they understand?

They did not understand the meaning of the leftovers, namely, that Jesus will take care of them when they take care of others. Jesus said:

“When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?” They said to him, “Twelve.” “And the seven for the four thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?” And they said to him, “Seven.” And he said to them, “Do you not yet understand?”

Understand what? The leftovers.

The leftovers were for the servers. In fact the first time there were twelve servers and twelve basketfuls left over (Mark 6:43). The second time there seven basketfuls left over—the number of abundant completeness.

What didn’t they understand? That Jesus would take care of them. You can’t outgive Jesus. When you spend your life for others, your needs will be met.

In March, 2008, Graeme Goldsworthy delivered a lecture at Southern Baptist Theological seminary titled “Biblical Theology and its Pastoral Application.”

In it he gave one of the clearest statements of why the Reformation was needed and what the problem was in the way the Roman Catholic church had conceived of the gospel.

Both Catholicism and allegorical interpretation of Scripture involved the dehistoricizing of the Gospel. The Reformation rehistoricized both the Gospel and the Old Testament.

The prime focus recovered in the Reformation was the justification of the sinner on the basis of the objective, historic work of Christ for us.

Catholicism had reversed the vision so that the prime focus was on the work of Christ or his Spirit within us.

This meant the reversal of the relationship of sanctification to justification. Infused grace, beginning with baptismal regeneration, internalized the Gospel and made sanctification the basis of justification. This is an upside down Gospel.

I would add that this “upside down” gospel has not gone away—neither from Catholicism nor from Protestants who equate our faithfulness (sanctification) with faith (understood as a receiving of Christ’s faithfulness as the sole ground of God being 100% for us).

When the ground of justification moves from Christ outside of us to the work of Christ inside of us, the gospel (and the human soul) is imperiled. It is an upside down gospel.

Now that the video of the Q&A at Advance 09 is available, I can look at it and feel bad all over again. Here’s what I regret, indeed what I have apologized for to the person who asked the question.

The first question to me and Mark Driscoll was, “Piper says get rid of my TV, and Driscoll says buy extra DVRs. How do you reconcile this difference?”

I responded, “Get your sources right. . . . I never said that in my life.”

Almost as soon as it was out of my mouth, I felt: “What a jerk, Piper!”...

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My father was the happiest man I have ever known. Not that he never grumbled (he was a golfer who lost a lot of balls). But he was rooted so firmly in the glory of God’s grace that nothing could keep him down for long.

He loved the promises of God. I just heard him say yesterday on an old recording, quoting William Carey, “The future is as bright as the promises of God.”

He really believed Romans 8:28. He prayed it and sang it and preached and lived in the joy of it.

And he led people to Christ in droves. Under God’s promises, he would have said this was the key to his joy. I asked him one time: What’s the key to joy. He answered without hesitation: Soul winning.

This is no mystery. It is more blessed to give than to receive. Freely you received. Freely give.

He and mother would sing in the front seat of the car while driving long distances with my sister and me in the back. “Isn’t He wonderful.” “Down at the Cross.” “Heavenly Sunshine.” “When We All Get to Heaven.” “Love Lifted Me.”

They were not performing. They were exulting.

I am still catching up.

What a legacy of Christ-exalting joy!

Thank you, Father, for my father.

In this year of John Calvin’s 500th birthday, I don’t know of a better place to read about his impact on America than Abraham Kuyper’s Lectures on Calvinism given at Princeton Seminary in October 1898. Kuyper was a pastor, a journalist, the founder of the Free University of Amsterdam, and Prime Minister of the Netherlands.

John Calvin and Martin Luther were the twin pillars of the Protestant Reformation. Why do fewer people speak of Luther’s culture-shaping impact on America, but for centuries Calvin has been seen in this light? Kuyper argues,

Luther’s starting-point was the . . . principle of justifying faith; while Calvin’s . . . lay in the general cosmological principle of the sovereignty of God. . . . [Hence] Lutheranism restricted itself to an exclusively ecclesiastical and theological character, while Calvinism put its impress in and outside the Church upon every department of human life.

It is the personal pervasiveness of God’s sovereignty that makes all the difference. This means that “the whole of a man’s life is to be lived as in the Divine Presence.” This “fundamental thought of Calvinism” shaped all of life. “It is from this mother-thought that the all-embracing life system of Calvinism sprang.”

For example, Calvin’s doctrine of “vocation” follows from the fact that every person, great and small, lives “in the Divine Presence.” God’s sovereign purposes govern the simplest occupation. He attends to everyone’s work. This yielded the Protestant work ethic. Huge benefits flow from a cultural shift in which all work is done earnestly and honestly with an eye to God.

Or consider how Calvinism breathed an impulse of freedom into modern history. The decisive principle was

the sovereignty of the Triune God over the whole Cosmos, in all its spheres and kingdoms, visible and invisible. A primordial Sovereignty which eradicates in mankind . . . a threefold . . . supremacy, viz., (1) the sovereignty of the State; (2) the sovereignty in Society; and (3) the sovereignty in the Church.

God’s sovereign claim on every person and every sphere of society relativized all other claims. It began with the churches.

The sovereignty of Christ remains absolutely monarchical, but the government of the Church on earth becomes democratic to its bones and marrow. . . No church may exercise any dominion over another, but . . . all local churches are of equal rank.

This impulse of freedom spread to the political sphere. Calvin and his heirs had a strong predilection for republican government—and an aversion to monarchy. A benevolent dictatorship would be ideal in a sinless world. But in a sinful world, it brings the horrors of tyranny. “Call to mind . . . that Calvinism has captured and guaranteed to us our constitutional civil rights.”

We ask: Why then did Calvin endorse the death of Servetus for heresy? How was this part of his liberating impulse? Kuyper’s answer is helpful.

I not only deplore that . . . I unconditionally disapprove of it; yet not as if it were the expression of a special characteristic of Calvinism, but on the contrary as the fatal after-effect of a system, grey with age, which Calvinism found in existence, under which it had grown up, and from which it had not yet been able entirely to liberate itself.

A thousand years of abuses are not thrown off overnight. But the impulses of liberty, flowing from the decisive principle of the all-embracing sovereignty of God, proved to be unstoppable. “Calvinism has liberated Switzerland, the Netherlands, and England, and in the Pilgrim Fathers has provided the impulse to the prosperity of the United States.”

Kuyper closed his lectures with a claim that for many today sounds preposterous. Do not write him off. Get the book Lectures on Calvinism, and test these words, spoken to Americans in 1898.

In the rise of your university education . . .; in the decentralized . . . character of your local governments; . . . in your championship of free speech, and in your unlimited regard for freedom of conscience; in all this . . . it is demonstrable that you owe this to Calvinism and to Calvinism alone.

(Originally published in World Magazine)

Most of us realize that enjoying anything other than God, from the best gift to the basest pleasure, can become idolatry. Paul says in Colossians 3:5, “Covetousness is idolatry.”

“Covetousness” means desiring something other than God in the wrong way. But what does that mean—“in the wrong way”?

The reason this matters is both vertical and horizontal. Idolatry will destroy our relationship with God. And it will destroy our relationships with people...

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Born today 116 years ago, Dorothy Leigh Sayers was an English scholar, playwright, and writer of detective novels. She studied medieval literature at Oxford, and was one of the first women to graduate (in 1915) from that university.

She may be best known for the detective novels featuring Lord Peter Wimsey. Her  translation of Dante's The Divine Comedy is considered unmatched in quality and readability.

My wife is the expert on her fiction. I never read any. But in February, 1968 I read The Mind of the Maker, and felt the holy fires of being a verbal creator with a small c in the image of God the Maker.

Just as good was the collection of essays, Creed or Chaos? In particular one is worth the price of the book just for the title: “The Dogma is the Drama.”

She never tired of deriding the delicate soft-pedaling of serious doctrine. For her it was the wild strangeness of the Biblical worldview that made it blood-earnest, interesting, and worthy dying for.

The dogma is the drama—not beautiful phrases, nor comforting sentiments, nor vague aspirations to loving kindness and uplift, nor the promise of something nice after death — but the terrifying assertion that the same God who made the world lived in the world and passed through the grave and gate of death. Show that to a heathen, and they may not believe it; but at least they may realize that here is something that a man might be glad to believe. (Creed or Chaos?, 25 or Letters to a Diminished Church, 21)

I have unanswered questions about how to navigate the new world of media-driven celebrity attention to pastors. As Advance09 started in Durham, North Carolina, the News & Observer ran the headline “Celebrity Pastors Visit for Conference.” One might wish they had printed: “Imperfect, Passionate Pastors Come to Serve.” But that’s not news.

When I say media-driven attention, I am not mainly thinking about radio, TV, and newspapers. They are almost irrelevant. I mean Internet media. Most churches have websites. Sermons and articles and books are available...

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I have tried to deal faithfully with curses in the Psalms, for example, in a sermon on Psalm 69.

Psalm 83, however, presents a different challenge. At the end there is a strange mixture of supplication and imprecation:

Fill their faces with shame,
that they may seek your name, O Lord.
Let them be put to shame and dismayed forever;
let them perish in disgrace, 
that they may know that you alone,
whose name is the Lord,
are the Most High over all the earth.
(Psalm 83:16-18)

Imprecation: The word “forever” in verse 17 is a prayer for utter and eternal defeat: “Let them be put to shame and dismayed forever.”

Supplication: But the phrase, “that they may seek your name, O Lord,” is a prayer for conversion: “Fill their faces with shame, that they may seek your name, O Lord.”

It is true, as Kidner points out, that there is “fruitless seeking”. But it would be very strange that the psalmist would be praying for “fruitless seeking.” If that’s the prayer why not just pray that they not seek the Lord?

I think David Dickson is right:

If any of the enemies of God’s people belong to God’s election, the church’s prayer against them giveth way to their conversion, and seeketh no more than that the judgment should follow them, only till they acknowledge their sin, turn, and seek God.... For the rest of the wicked, irreconcilable adversaries, when shame of disappointment and temporal judgments are come upon them, the worst of all yet followeth, even everlasting perdition. (Commentary on the Psalms, Vol. 2, 67-68)

I see two kinds of response to social Internet media like blogging, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and others.

One says: These media tend to shorten attention spans, weaken discursive reasoning, lure people away from Scripture and prayer, disembody relationships, feed the fires of narcissism, cater to the craving for attention, fill the world with drivel, shrink the soul’s capacity for greatness, and make us second-handers who comment on life when we ought to be living it. So boycott them and write books (not blogs) about the problem.

The other response says: Yes, there is truth in all of that, but...

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Andrew Klavan, 54, is a writer of thrillers. His latest novel, and his first aimed at "young adults" (grades 8-11) is The Last Thing I Remember.

He recently described his move from Judaism to Atheism to Christ. His interview with Marvin Olasky moved me, especially the mercy of God in his conversion. He recounts a “prideful arrogant little prayer.”

In keeping with the way my life has worked, I was reading a novel by the guy I think is probably the best English novelist in the last part of the 20th century, Patrick O'Brien, who writes sea adventures. I was reading in bed and got to the scene where one of the main characters, Maturin, said a little prayer before going to sleep. That's the one thing I'd never tried. So I said a very brief prayer of thanks and it went off in me like a bomb. There are really no words to describe it. I have always thought it was a tribute to the generosity of God that even such a prideful, arrogant little prayer in some sense would be answered.

Fourteen years on, I have re-read the poem you let me read on that good day.

I still mean it and love to see you live it.

Josh Harris has done us a good service. He explains why many of us think it’s a bad idea to “tweet” while participating in corporate worship. That is, we think you should use Twitter before and after corporate worship to say what you take in and take out. But when you are in corporate worship, Worship! There is a difference between communion with God and commenting on communion with God.

Don’t tweet while having sex. Don’t tweet while praying with the dying. Don’t tweet when your wife is telling you about the kids. There’s a season for everything. Multitasking only makes sense when none of the tasks requires heart-engaged, loving attention.

There is an assumption that Josh and I share, which is not understood or embraced by all. Preaching and hearing preaching are worship. Preaching is expository exultation. The preacher is explaining the Bible and applying the Bible and EXULTING over the truth in the Bible. The listener is understanding, and applying, and joining in the exultation. Hearing preaching is heart-felt engagement in the exposition and exultation of the Word of God.

This is a fragile bond. The fact that an electric cord is easily cut, does not mean that the power flowing through it is small. It produces bright and wonderful effects. So it is with preaching. Great power flows through fragile wires of spiritual focus.

Perfume can break it. A ruffled collar can break it. A cough can break it. A whisper can break it. Clipping fingernails, chewing gum, a memory, a stomach growl, a sunbeam, and a hundred other things can break it. The power that flows through the wire of spiritual attention is strong, but the wire is weak.

So read Josh’s six points and let’s pursue God with all our might and focus during corporate worship. Then tell the world what God did. If it’s God’s power, it can wait an hour.

In the Religious Affections Jonathan Edwards ventures this explanation of why there is song and poetry.

And the duty of singing praises to God, seems to be appointed wholly to excite and express religious affections. No other reason can be assigned, why we should express ourselves to God in verse, rather than in prose, and do it with music, but only, that such is our nature and frame, that these things have a tendency to move our affections.

For this to have the weight it does for Edwards we need to remember that 1) “true religion consists very much in the affections,” and 2) there is no true Christian faith without the affections being awakened, and 3) God is most glorified when he is affecting us and not just known by us.

This is mainly for husbands. I’ve seen a few more things since last Sunday’s message on John the Baptist and his crazy happiness. For example, I read this:

It is possible (but not right) for baptized believers to act in their lives as though the gospel were not true. How many conservative husbands are outraged if some liberal preacher says that Jesus did not rise from the dead, when their daily treatment of their wives makes the same statement? At least the liberal only states his heresy occasionally. (Douglas Wilson, Reformed Is Not Enough, p. 168)

Believing the gospel leads us to treat our wives differently than if we didn’t believe the gospel.

Now back to John the Baptist...

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In the parable of the tenants, the owner of the vineyard finally sends his son to collect the fruit that the tenants refused to give to his servants. The tenants had beaten and killed the servants. But the owner says, “They will respect my son” (Mark 12:6).

This sounds like God, who is represented by the owner, thinks his Son will not be killed but will be well received. This would contradict the truth that God sent the Son precisely to die (John 10:18; Isaiah 53:10).

So someone might try to argue that Mark 12:6 supports the view that God did not know what would happen to the Son of God when he came.

The usual way of defending the foreknowledge of God and the predestination of the death of Christ by God (Acts 4:27-28) is to say that parables are not allegories.

That is, every detail of a parable should not be pressed to have a counterpart in the general point the parable is making. True. But in this case we can go farther.

The parable ends, “Have you not read this Scripture: ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes’?” (Mark 12:10-11).

In other words, Jesus points out that already in Psalm 118 written hundreds of years before the sending of the Son, the plan was laid out: The Messiah will be rejected, killed, and raised from the dead. And this is all “the Lord’s doing.”

The death of the Son was not a surprise. It was a plan.

So in the parable itself we are told not to construe the owner’s words, “They will respect my son,” as part of the way God is being represented. That is what a human owner might say. It is incidental to the point of the parable.

What God said, in fact, was: “The builders will reject my Son and I will make him Lord and Christ.”

Here’s a great quote from Richard Cunningham, leader of University and Colleges Christian Fellowship, in response to the question whether the gathering New Word Alive is “narrow, schismatic, conservative."

It’s only as narrow theologically as the gospel demands, but as culturally broad and generous as the gospel permits.

At 9:05 PM, May 20, 2009 Ralph Winter, the founder of the U. S. Center for World Mission died.

Nobody in the area of missions had a greater impact on me. Others had a greater impact on me in the area of missions, like Jonathan Edwards, but no one actually in missions affected me more than Ralph Winter.

First, he was a professor of mine at Fuller Seminary and introduced me to the stunning works of God in missions in the last two hundred years. His vision of the advance of the gospel was breathtaking.

He wore a bow tie in those days, iconoclast that he was, and was fined by the seminary for not returning our papers on time. None of us begrudged him his scattered approach to life. It was thrilling in those days.

Second, in 1974 at the Lausanne Missions Congress Winter reached up and pulled the unseen rope called “unreached peoples” that rang a bell that reverberates to this day.

This concept, and the subsequent emphasis on unreached peoples (as opposed to unreached “fields”) has been globally seismic in the transformation of missions. It gripped me and shaped all we have done in missions at Bethlehem ever since the mid 1980s.

Third, in the 1980s he bought a 15 million dollar college campus with virtually nothing in his hand to start the U. S. Center for World Missions; and he paid for it by persuading enough of us (thousands) to give “the last thousand.” Brilliant! I think I sent $2,000. Couldn’t resist the vision.

The point of the U. S. Center was to trumpet the vision that there are unreached peoples in the world, and then equip the church to reach them.

Fourth, Ralph Winter was probably the most creative thinker I have ever known. I mean, on any topic that you brought up, he would come at it in a way you have never dreamed of. He saw all things in relationship to other things that you would never think of relating them to.

This meant that stalemates often became fresh starting points. If you were struggling with a tension in your church, he might say: “Well, think about the Navy.” Or if you were having a marriage problem, he might say, “Did you notice how that bridge was built?”

Fifth, Ralph Winter befriended me. He encouraged me. In my most restless early days, he would tell me to stay at Bethlehem because I could do more by sending than by going.

Finally, he did not waste his life, not even the last hours of it. He was busy dictating into the last days. He taught me long ago that the concept of “retirement” was not in the Bible.

What a gift he was to the church. To the world. Thank you, Father, for the legacy of this visionary, risk-taking, creative, encouraging lover of unreached peoples who lived unstoppably for the glory of God.

*               *               *

Watch Ralph Winter talk for four minutes about unreached peoples and what comes next:

See also RalphWinter.org.

The folks at Westminster Bookstore have helped set up a remarkable website with serious reflections on the kinds of scientific and religious questions raised by the Dan Brown blockbuster Angels and Demons.

It’s the kind of place you could send your unbelieving friends who have questions.

I am profoundly grateful that God has brought to Desiring God a team of directors and senior directors who are radically devoted to the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ. They are Christ-exalting, courageous, kind, and creative.

One of them is John Knight, Senior Director for Development. He read President Obama’s speech at Notre Dame and has a few questions for the President. John is concerned about abortion and speaks as a father of a deeply-loved son with significant disabilities.

I recommend his article, which he posted at Bethlehem Baptist Church's disabilities ministry site: “When do we get to talk about the other consequences of abortion, Mr. President?”

I would like to encourage all fundamentalists and former fundamentalists to feel a good breeze from the fevered landscape of controversy. It’s an article by Kevin Bauder (PDF), the president of Central Baptist Theological Seminary, across town from us here in Minneapolis.

If you are a younger fundamentalist and hope to stay one and be a good one, read this.

If you think you are not a fundamentalist and wonder what the best ones are like, read this.

If you read John Piper and think you have to stop being a fundamentalist, read this.

If you are wondering if you can be a Calvinist without an attitude and a fundamentalist, read this.

Here’s a waft of the breeze:

I am grateful to have been reared in a version of fundamentalism that was led by men who refused to become “giants.” You have probably never heard their names, because they were not trying to create or control empires. They were willing to stand up to bullies, however, and in some cases they were savaged by the very “giants” whom Pastor Sweatt identifies.

They were men of faith and strength, but also men of kindness and gentleness. They were genuinely and biblically meek. They fought the battles of their day, but they did it for the most part without losing the sweetness of their spirits or the freshness of their walk with Christ. They were honest and fair and charitable, but they had backbone when they needed it.

They revered the Word of God, and when they preached, they delighted to expound the Scriptures. As a young man I wanted to be like those leaders, and I still do. I chose their fundamentalism because it was a fundamentalism worth saving.

(via Andy Naselli)

Today is the 25th anniversary of Francis Schaeffer’s death. Lane Dennis, President of Crossway Books, has a moving and rich tribute at the Crossway Blog.

It's a magnificent thing: The only newly-originating life in the universe that comes in the image of God is Man. The only newly-originating life in the universe that lasts forever is Man.

This is an awesome thing.

And, as everyone knows, that reverence is not shared by our new President, over whom we have rejoiced.

He is trapped and blind in a culture of deceit. On the 36th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, he released this statement,

We are reminded that this decision not only protects women’s health and reproductive freedom, but stands for a broader principle: that government should not intrude on our most private family matters.

To which I say:

• No, Mr. President, you are not protecting women; you are authorizing the destruction of 500,000 little women every year.
• No, Mr. President, you are not protecting reproductive freedom; you are authorizing the destruction of freedom for one million little human beings every year.
• No, Mr. President, killing our children is killing our children no matter how many times you call it a private family matter. You may say it is a private family matter over and over and over, and still they are dead. And we killed them. And you, would have it remain legal.

Mr. President, some of us wept for joy at your inauguration. And we pledge that we will pray for you.

We have hope in our sovereign God.

(From the sermon: "The Baby in My Womb Leaped for Joy.")

The following is from the intro to last weekend's sermon.

Some of you may have little or no experience with what I mean by preaching. I think it will help you listen to my messages if I say a word about it.

What I mean by preaching is expository exultation.

Preaching Is Expository

Expository means that preaching aims to exposit, or explain and apply, the meaning of the Bible. The reason for this is that the Bible is God’s word, inspired, infallible, profitable—all 66 books of it.

The preacher’s job is to minimize his own opinions and deliver the truth of God. Every sermon should explain the Bible and then apply it to people's lives.

The preacher should do that in a way that enables you to see that the points he is making actually come from the Bible. If you can’t see that they come from the Bible, your faith will end up resting on a man and not on God's word.

The aim of this exposition is to help you eat and digest biblical truth that will

• make your spiritual bones more like steel,
• double the capacity of your spiritual lungs,
• make the eyes of your heart dazzled with the brightness of the glory of God,
• and awaken the capacity of your soul for kinds of spiritual enjoyment you didn’t even know existed.

Preaching Is Exultation

Preaching is also exultation. This means that the preacher does not just explain what’s in the Bible, and the people do not simply try understand what he explains. Rather, the preacher and the people exult over what is in the Bible as it is being explained and applied.

Preaching does not come after worship in the order of the service. Preaching is worship. The preacher worships—exults—over the word, trying his best to draw you into a worshipful response by the power of the Holy Spirit.

My job is not simply to see truth and show it to you. (The devil could do that for his own devious reasons.) My job is to see the glory of the truth and to savor it and exult over it as I explain it to you and apply it for you. That’s one of the differences between a sermon and a lecture.

Preaching Isn't Church, but It Serves the Church

Preaching is not the totality of the church. And if all you have is preaching, you don’t have the church. A church is a body of people who minister to each other.

One of the purposes of preaching is to equip us for that and inspire us to love each other better.

But God has created the church so that she flourishes through preaching. That’s why Paul gave young pastor Timothy one of the most serious, exalted charges in all the Bible in 2 Timothy 4:1-2:

I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word.

What to Expect from My Preaching and Why

If you're used to a twenty-minute, immediately practical, relaxed talk, you won't find that from what I've just described.

• I preach twice that long;
• I do not aim to be immediately practical but eternally helpful;
• and I am not relaxed.

I standing vigilantly on the precipice of eternity speaking to people who this week could go over the edge whether they are ready to or not. I will be called to account for what I said there.

That's what I mean by preaching.

Here is one of the most insightful and influential quotes on preaching I ever read. It’s from Jonathan Edwards:

I don't think ministers are to be blamed for raising the affections of their hearers too high, if that which they are affected with be only that which is worthy of affection, and their affections are not raised beyond a proportion to their importance, or worthiness of affection.

I should think myself in the way of my duty to raise the affections of my hearers as high as possibly I can, provided that they are affected with nothing but truth, and with affections that are not disagreeable to the nature of what they are affected with.