Sexual pleasure is too earthy. Enjoying delicious food is too unspiritual.

That’s a two-point outline for a demonic sermon that has no place in any church — so Paul tells us in 1 Timothy 4:1–5.

In fact, in a paradoxical twist of reality, the apostle says that sex and food were created by God with the intent that these gifts be received with thanksgiving. Positively, this means that marriage and food are properly used according to God’s design when believers accept these gifts with Godward thanksgiving. Negatively, this means unbelievers who are not thankful to God for these gifts have no right, in God’s economy, to food or to sex.

Or to say it even stronger: Unbelieving sex and unbelie…

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Brothers, we are not professionals.

That was John Piper’s plea to pastors for radical ministry a decade ago in the publication of the 2002 book of the same title. Since then, it’s become one of our most often quoted lines, along with “don’t waste your life,” “missions exists because worship doesn’t,” and “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.”

But as central as Brothers, We Are Not Professionals is to Piper’s vision of the nature of Christian ministry, we’ve never taken up this theme at our annual pastors conference — until now.

On February 4–6, 2013, we will gather at the Minneapolis Convention Center, God willing, under the banner

Brothers, We Are S…

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God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him. This idea, called "Christian Hedonism" by some, is a massive and pervasive biblical truth that changes everything.

Perhaps the apostle Paul makes it clearest in Philippians 1:12–26.

So, taking up this text — the same as his January 1980 candidating sermon — John Piper clears the table for the biblical feast of pursuing God's glory and our joy, concluding with 11 illustrations from Scripture on how this looks in real life.

It's an understatement to say this is a very important message.

Stream or download this week's sermon.

Today is the official launch of the New City Catechism, which is marked by an extraordinary combination of fortes.

Produced by The Gospel Coalition and Redeemer Presbyterian Church of New York, this new catechism has a lot to be excited about in the various strengths coming together in this project. The New City Catechism

• both draws from the riches of history (being adapted from three outstanding Reformation-era catechisms — Calvin's Geneva Catechism, the Westminster Shorter and Larger Catechisms, and in particular the Heidelberg Catechism) and takes care to address the kind of questions people are asking today

• is both substantive and conveniently sized — with 52 questions, one for each…

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As explained in my review of A Year of Biblical Womanhood, much of Rachel Held Evans’ book could be summed up, sadly, as an attempt to discount the validity of Scripture. I am hopeful that she does not intend for this to happen, but it is unfortunately what happens when she repeatedly speaks of the Bible as being outdated, useless in parts, and at times downright horrific — including at one point describing having a terrifying nightmare as she contemplated the texts (62). Tragically, that is her claim.

Evans is troubled by many things in the Old Testament, but especially by the harsh consequences in the law that follow from sexual sin — consequences that often required the death of men and…

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Chances are your church gathering isn't all you want it to be. . . This or that should be different, so and so should talk less, he and she should be on time — and why can't we just get some better aesthetics in here?

Actually, though, this mode of critcism says more about our hearts than it does our local church. Perhaps we've forgotten what the church is. Perhaps we've mistaken it to be just another social club. Or maybe we've confused this gathering to be just another event on the calendar. Or, quite possibly, we've assumed the worship of the Triune God is supposed to meet our consumer wants rather than our greatest needs.

Let Dietrich Bonhoeffer have a word:

If we do not give…

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In 2004 John Piper wrote the following in his article, “How God and Christians Treasure Christ”:

The central experience of the universe and the Christian life — namely, treasuring Christ — is sustained in churches.

God has ordained that when people find the “treasure hidden in the field [Christ!]” (Matthew 13:44) and are converted from world-treasuring to Christ-treasuring, they are sustained and strengthened and matured and transformed and refined and guided and mobilized in organisms of Christians called churches.

When Paul says, concerning the church, “Let all things be done for building up” (1 Corinthians 14:26), he means for deepening and intensifying and strengthening the expe…

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Marilynne Robinson, whose novels Gilead and Home have moved many of us deeply, has just published a new collection of Essays titled When I Was a Child I Read Books.

Here’s a caution. Her fiction is more easily understood than her nonfiction. She admits, “My style is considerably more indebted to Cicero than to Hemingway” (87). That means her sentences sound like translations of good Latin. In other words, she writes non-fiction like John Owen.

The preface puts the book under the banner of America losing Democracy. The lead essay puts it under the banner of losing our soul. She would say, it's the same danger.

If you are willing to dig, there are gems in this hard ground. For example:

…

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Do we really know what's going on when we pray? When we bow our heads at the dinner table? When we whisper quietly during our morning commute? Or when, like dragging our feet along a well-worn path, we ask again for God to do what he hasn't yet? Do we know what's happening?

The Bible tells us in Revelation 8:1–5.

Here's the picture: The seventh seal — the last page in the scroll of history — has been opened. And there is silence. Seven angels stand before God and each are given seven trumpets. Then another angel approaches the altar carrying a bowl (or censor). This angel is given incense to offer before the throne, with the prayers of the saints. Imagine, then, on this altar are piles o…

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It’s puzzling. When I speak on living by faith I often ask, "How many of you know that Jesus calls us to love our enemies?" Everyone nods and says they know this.

Then I ask, "How many of you know the reason Jesus gives for why we should love our enemies?" Almost always the response is the same — very few know the reason.

Why don’t we know the reason?

Are we so good at loving our enemies that we don’t need Jesus’ reason? Um — no. I’m not so good at loving my enemies. And I’m pretty sure we all need help in this. And yet we remember only the command — but not the reason Jesus gives to help us obey the command.

What is the reason?

Here’s what Jesus taught in Luke 6:35, "But love you…

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