I don’t know how it’s done, but I hope for my own people that the singing is on the tapes because what a marvelous sound it is to hear men lift their voices like that in song, especially when the truth is so magnificent. The steadfast love of the Lord is better than life (Psalm 63:3), or as Paul said, “To die is gain” (Philippians 1:21). Let me try to sum up where we came last night and then point the direction for tonight.

A Passion for God’s Supremacy

I’m here on a mission from my church. They release me to go out to do these things if I promise to fulfill our mission, I can’t go willy-nilly here and there doing my own thing. We have a mission statement and it says we exist to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples. Now, I have a very distinct Edwardsian twist that I put on this mission statement captured in the little rhyme God is most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in him.

Therefore, if my aim is that God be glorified, or that his supremacy spread and be gripped by all of you, I must seek to satisfy you in God. And if you were to embrace that mission statement and that Edwardsian twist, you would go home from this place making it then your ambition to satisfy the hearts of your people in God. And the implications of that for preaching are great. So, last night, the specific application of that Edwardsian twist was that we preach toward worship. I defined the authenticating heart of worship, as opposed to all of its manifold forms, as being satisfied in God.

Tonight, as you might predict, I simply want to apply the same Edwardsian twist on the supremacy of God to the matter of holiness or obedience. I preach toward holiness, or I preach in order to bring about, God helping me, radical obedience in the hearts of my people. And the twist on it now is that I believe, and would like to try to persuade you from the Scriptures tonight, that the authenticating heart of holiness is satisfaction in God. It’s very simple. It’s a broken record. I only have one thing to say and I will try to say it in as many ways as you give me time to say it. So that’s my aim for tonight.

Of course, the implication for preaching then would be if you want holy people in your church and you embrace this Edwardsian truth, then you would preach to satisfy their hearts because that would make them holy. The reason why it will is what we will devote most of our time to tonight.

The Root of Radical Obedience

Let me begin with a definition of what I mean by radical obedience. I’m using radical obedience and holiness almost interchangeably. I know that you could make fine distinctions, but when I use the word holiness among ordinary people, for whom it means almost nothing, I grope for other language and I like the word radical and I like the word obedience. And now, let me fill it up with some biblical illustrations.

What I mean by radical obedience is obedience that comes from a life that has its root radix planted in the grace of God and gets its power by drawing up from that grace hope and joy, and lives itself out through that hope and joy in very risky, life-threatening forms, if necessary, because the steadfast love of the Lord being drawn up is better than life.

And therefore, let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also. The body they may kill; God’s truth abideth still. His kingdom is forever. Let’s obey. To illustrate from Scripture the kind of obedience I mean, just call to mind the picture in Hebrews 10:32–34. We won’t linger over this so you need not look it up. But the Christians were split. Some had been put in jail, some were still free. And those who were still free had to decide whether to align themselves with those who were in prison and thus risk the plundering of their property. They had a little prayer meeting, I imagine, and they concluded, “The steadfast love of the Lord is better than life. Let’s go visit them. Let’s take them some food. Yes, they’ll know we’re Christians, but let’s do it because God is God and he’s more worthy than our possessions.”

And the text says, “They joyfully accepted the plundering of their property.” That’s what I call Christian Hedonism. If you don’t like the word, you don’t have to use it. Please embrace the reality. Joyfully, they accepted the plundering of their property. You find your words to get that across to the 20th century. I tell you, there’s almost nobody that can conceive of such a thing. Who in your church would rejoice if their house had rocks thrown through it and their kids were pushed off their bicycles and had them stolen because of the neighborhood they lived in? And in the middle of the night they would ring their house and chant them down and they’d sing. Are you begetting that kind of people through your preaching? Find the language that will arrest their attention and show the superior satisfaction.

Looking to the Reward

Consider Hebrews 11:24–26 and look at Moses, who left the fleeting (there’s the key word) pleasures or delights of Egypt in order to embrace a very recalcitrant people and lead them for the next many years. And it was because he looked at what? He looked to the reward, future grace. I’m outlining Future Grace. He looked to the reward and that freed him because of his grand confidence in the reward to leave Egypt. That’s the only reason anybody leaves Egypt in an evangelical way. There are legal ways to relate to leave Egypt, but the evangelical way is because of the joy set before you. Does that sound familiar? That’s the next chapter in Hebrews. I mean, Hebrews has an agenda. The book of Hebrews is a radical book about obedience and suffering from Chapters 10 to 12.

It’s all the same. It’s future grace freeing you to lay your life down for Christ, or it’s the kind of obedience that Paul performs day in and day out as he says, “To live is Christ and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21), and, “I count everything as loss for the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Philippians 3:8), and, “Gaining Christ Jesus my Lord” (Philippians 3:8). Or it’s the obedience Jesus talks about when he says, “Take up your cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23). And when you do, you get life. If you lose your life, you get life.

Those are illustrations of what I mean by radical obedience or holiness. That’s another goal of preaching. It’s really not different from last night’s goal because worship, as many of you pointed out, is not just what you do on Sunday morning. In fact, I think in Paul’s mind it isn’t mainly what you do on Sunday morning. It is your life. A life reflecting the superior value of God over things and people is worship.

An Outstanding Hope

Now, Jesus said, “If you want to glorify the Father, then let your light so shine that men may see your good deeds” (Matthew 5:16). That’s obedience, that’s holiness, that’s radical obedience. And if we want to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things,that is, we want people to glorify God, Matthew 5:16 says, “Let your light shine that men may see your good deeds.” So, there’s something about good deeds that shows the glory of God. How so? How is that? My deep conviction is that the only good deeds that can do that are the kind of obedience that abandon earth-satisfying pleasures, calling attention to the superior value of God’s satisfaction. Have you ever thought, why is it in 1 Peter 3:15 that it says, “Be ready to give a reason for the hope that is in you”? Why does he say hope instead of faith? He says, “Be ready to give a reason for the hope that is in you.”

I think the reason is that it’s hope. It’s like Moses looking to the reward that frees you from a lifestyle that looks just like the world, thinking, “I have to have the same house, I have to have the same boat, I have to have the same clothes, I have to have the same vacations, I have to have the same retirement plan, I have to have the same securities.” Well, why would anybody ask you about your hope? It’s the same as theirs — money. Your hope is the only thing that would cause people to knock on your door and say, “I don’t get it. Explain to me what are you living toward? What satisfies you? You seem to take a lot of risks with your life. Why don’t you leave hard countries where your life is threatened? Go to America. Nobody threatens your life in America. Why don’t you stay there?”

Until our people begin to embrace certain kinds of obedience that are costly, I don’t think Matthew 5:16 is going to work. Are your neighborhoods seeing in your people an all-satisfying God that frees them from Egypt and fleeting pleasures?

Preaching for Radical Obedience

That’s where we’re going tonight, the preaching. Here’s my thesis. I asked this question, what releases people into that kind of God-glorifying obedience? And then, secondly, what kind of preaching helps beget, by the power of the Spirit, that kind of life?

My answer to the first question is this: the most powerful and painful kinds of radical obedience are motivated by a supreme passion for pleasure in God and his superior satisfactions above television. My people are not ruined by grand, horrid sins. They’re ruined by the incessant, banal babel of television. They are numbed in their capacity to see and feel glory because of all this silliness. It isn’t the sex and violence. I think perhaps it is worse in Britain, but it’s bad enough, especially cable in America.

But that’s not my big concern as a pastor. I don’t think, “Oh, I have to get the men not to watch sexual things.” That’s awful, and I don’t want them to. We don’t even have a television in my house. For all the years of my married life, we haven’t had a television, which is simply a testimony to my weakness, not any great virtue. My worry is not that. My worry is banality, silliness, endless puerile talk that just drags the nobility of the human being down, which is made for God. And you don’t see any of that on television, not in America anyway. And so, the destruction of life, of Christian radical obedience, comes from the dribble of the world, not from the massive, big, life-destroying sins that might land you in jail.

And therefore, the answer to the second question — what kind of preaching would beget people who are radically obedient? — must be a preaching that is so calculated, thought through, dreamed up, and imagined over, and faithful to God as a delectable treasure. The word can win people away from fleeting pleasures that seem to them utterly compelling. That’s our task, and it’s no easy task. And unless the Holy Spirit falls in power, we’ll never do it. It won’t happen unless he comes and frees them from their attachments.

But our job is not to do the work of the Holy Spirit. Our job is to spread the banquet. His job is to give the appetite. If we don’t spread the banquet so that, were he to work, there is something to be eaten with joy, then we can’t expect him to fall. The Holy Spirit works in tandem with the Word of God. Do you know the answer to the question of why the Holy Spirit doesn’t win people in unreached peoples without humans going there? It’s because he honors his word. When he does the supernatural eye-opening, he means for something there to be seen.

The Superior Worth of Christ

That’s why you have to evangelize unreached peoples. It isn’t because the Holy Spirit is weak, it’s because he means to glorify Christ. And unless Christ is preached when he does his miraculous Lydia-like, heart-opening work, there won’t be anything there to glorify. So, evangelism, or preaching, and the work of the Spirit work in tandem. And if you ask, “How shall Christ then be preached?” My answer is that he must be portrayed as beautiful. He must be portrayed as superior to the Mall of America.

Have you ever heard of the Mall of America? The Mall of America is the biggest mall in North America and it is eight miles from my house. Airlines give $90 tickets from Las Vegas to fly to the Mall America (1,000 miles in the morning) and then fly back in the evening so that you can do all your Christmas shopping at the Mall of America. People worship money and everything else imaginable at the Mall of America. I preach in the shadow of that, and on four blocks on the other side is the Metrodome from my house, which is where the Vikings play football and where the Twins play baseball and the Gophers play. Sports is the religion of America right now, along with materialism.

And I often ask the people, why do you think it is that in our morning newspaper there is a massive section called “Sports” and there is no section called “God”? How will that play out at the judgment? Well, we must find a way to preach so that those sport lovers and those mall lovers at the end of the sermon say, “Why would I want to go to the mall this afternoon instead of gathering with a believer and contemplating Christ, or reading a bit of Edwards (or somebody more intelligible)? Well that’s what tonight is about. How should we do this?

Evangelical Contrition

Let me take you on a journey. I’ll tell you where the journey starts. I forget how many years ago this was — maybe four years ago. We have a yearly week of prayer at my church. It does not mean that we don’t pray the other 51 weeks, but just like birthdays and anniversaries are good, so are our prayer weeks, I believe. One of those nights we pray all night, which I had never done until I became a pastor, and now we do it yearly at least once. I was given the charge of a certain section of this meeting. The lay people lead it and the elders run it, and you pray on different topics every hour and you take breaks every 55 minutes or so if you need to go lie down on the bench or drink some juice or something.

I was assigned by the elders to do the 2:00 a.m. section on repentance and contrition. Well, to get ready, I thought I would go back and read a little bit of Brainerd and the reason I did that is because I knew that Brainerd had some remarkable awakenings among the Indians in Crossweeksung, New Jersey. They were not huge, earthshaking awakenings, but 130 Indians were weeping and crying out to the Lord under his preaching and finding peace through faith. That’s no small achievement for a man dying of tuberculosis.

So I went back and read and I found some amazing things, and it leads right into my topic on how you preach for radical obedience or for holiness. Now my assumption at this point is that contrition and penitence for sin is the beginning of all evangelical obedience. If you try to do an end-run around brokenheartedness for your failure to be holy, you will not arrive at true holiness. So, what I saw in these quotes that I’m going to read to you was how he preached so as to bring about the first steps of obedience, namely contrition and repentance.

Broken by Great Grace

Listen carefully and you might be surprised. This is August 9th 1745, and these were all taken from his journal:

There were many tears among [the Indians] while I was discoursing publicly, but no considerable cry. Yet some were much more affected with a few words spoken to them in a powerful manner which caused the persons to cry out in anguish of soul although I had spoken not a word of terror. But on the contrary, I set before them the fullness and all-sufficiency of Christ’s merits and his willingness to save all that come to him, and thereupon pressed them to come without delay.

There was no terror this time, just the comfortable word. On August 6th, he said:

It was surprising to see how their hearts seemed to be pierced with the tender and melting invitations of the gospel when there was not a word of terror spoken to them.

On November 30th, preaching on Luke 16:19–26 concerning the rich man and Lazarus, he wrote:

The word made powerful impressions upon many in the assembly, especially while I discoursed of the blessedness of Lazarus in Abraham’s bosom. This I could perceive affected them much more than what I spoke of the rich man’s misery and torments, and thus it has usually been with them. They have almost always appeared much more affected with the comfortable than the dreadful truths of God’s Word and that which has distressed many of them under convictions is that they found they lacked and could not obtain the happiness of the godly.

Peter’s Brokenness

When I was reading that in preparation for this session on contrition it really made me start thinking about my job at 2:00 a.m. in the middle of the night to help my people come to genuine evangelical contrition. I thought, how shall I do it? Now, before we analyze what God seemed to be doing there, let’s get a biblical illustration before us as well as a missionary, historical one.

Let’s just take Luke 5:1–10 very briefly. It’s a familiar story. You know what happened there. After teaching the crowds from a boat off the land there in the Lake of Gennesaret, Jesus told the fishermen to push out into the deep and let down their nets for a catch (Luke 5:4). In Luke 5:5, Simon protested. He’s going to regret this as he does many things that he says. My dad wanted to name me Peter, perhaps because he foresaw such things coming in my life, but my mother mightily intervened that Peter Piper would not fly in America.

So, they named me John and I’m doing my best to fill it up. Peter said, “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets” (Luke 5:5). And the result was a great catch of fish so that the nets began to break. And you recall Peter’s response. Luke 5:8–9 says:

But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’s knees, saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” For he and all who were with him were astonished at the catch of fish that they had taken . . .

What a way to beget contrition. There’s an act of great grace, bringing in more fish. It’s a miraculous intervention to bless him, and it breaks his heart. I think that’s what was happening in Crossweeksung, New Jersey 1745 and 1746.

The Cause of True Contrition

Now let’s analyze this for just a few minutes here. What’s happening? Why are these people being brought to tears? Why are they broken? Where is this contrition coming from? Well, all genuine evangelical contrition for sin is a sorrow for not having holiness, or to be more precise, not having the God of holiness and the holiness of God. But here, you have to be very careful, don’t you? Motives are so deceptive here. There are many criminals who are brought before the bar of justice and are told what their penalty will be and weep. You may not assume that the weeping is the weeping of contrition. You may not assume that they have suddenly hated crime.

In fact, it may well be that they so love crime that they are brokenhearted that they now will be kept from it for a season. Tears are very deceptive, are they not? Tears are no proof of contrition, neither is any other outward form a proof of anything, which is my main response to much of the charismatic carrying on. It may or it may not be. It’s just neither here nor there, though we love tears. There were some in my church last Sunday as I told you, and they meant much to me. I’m giving people the benefit of the doubt that God was greatly at work among us, but I don’t know that to be the case until I probe more deeply.

So, we must be careful about jumping the gun and assuming that crying or saying they’re sorry is genuine contrition and repentance. What would be a way to say it so that it is true? Well, I would put it like this: the only true sorrow for sin is a sorrow at not having holiness that comes from a love of holiness. It’s when the heart has been brought to a condition such that it is given now spiritual eyes to see the beauty of holiness, and seeing the beauty of holiness and realizing we have fallen short of it and do not embrace it and have not enjoyed it, is brokenhearted. In other words, what I’ve added to press the authenticity home is that in order for contrition and repentance to be authentic and evangelical, there must be a prior spiritual event in the heart. It has various names in theology, but let’s just call it coming to delight in holiness.

Grief Born of Delight

Now we have a paradox, don’t we? If you want to preach for contrition, you must beget delight in holiness, or else people will not evangelically weep over the absence of holiness. They will only weep over the penalty of the absence of holiness. If you preach hell, which you must do as I did last Sunday from Hebrews 10:26-31, and if you want to beget evangelical contrition, you must alongside judgment preach the beauties and the satisfying nature of the God of holiness. Otherwise, you will only produce legal contrition, as the Puritans would say — namely, out of fear and constraint people will seek to avoid hell.

Many people populate our churches because that was where they started their Christian life and have never — sometimes owing to defective preaching, and sometimes just owing to hardness of heart — moved beyond legal contrition to evangelical contrition, which is a grief born of delight. Now, there’s the paradox in a stark form. If we would beget tears, we must first beget joy. We have to handle these words very carefully because you would think, “No, no, no. It has to be the other way around because first the heart is broken and then the sights of forgiveness are given and joy comes.”

Please analyze it to the bottom with me. This is all an unpacking by the way. I will not get into it, but this is all an unpacking of John 3:19–21, if you want to meditate on it later. If we do not first see the Holy Spirit beget at least the glimmer of a spiritual apprehension of the delights of holiness, we will never see the subsequent brokenness of evangelical contrition.

Now, if you believe that first there must be granted a spiritual apprehension of glory, beauty, wonder, and delight that we have fallen short of, missed, do not have, and do not treasure, and therefore, we fall down like Peter, then there’s a certain way we must preach. I think what Peter saw was, “I am dealing with a man who is more than a man, and whose heart is such that to one like me who just resisted his command he lavished me with enough fish to feed me for a year (probably). And if that’s the kind of God with whom I deal, I have never known him nor tasted of his grace as he deserves, and I am utterly unworthy of him.”

It’s something along that line in which the mind would work in evangelical contrition, I believe. It may sound strange, and it did to me that night as I was getting ready for our all-night prayer meeting. It sounded strange that Brainerd would say their hearts were broken by the beautiful sights of Jesus. Something was happening. It may be in a split second that it happens, but if it doesn’t happen, the tears are probably not yet evangelical tears of contrition.

To Fall in Love with Holiness

Now, that’s only the first step toward my thesis here and the implication so far is that you must preach in such a way as to cause your people to fall in love with the God of holiness so that they may weep tears because they have failed to enjoy him as they ought. Now, the thesis that I’m moving toward — and that was the first step in trying to demonstrate it — is that the most powerful and painful acts of radical obedience must be motivated by a supreme satisfaction in and passion for pleasure in God. That’s the first half of the thesis. And the second half is that the preaching that helps that come about is to portray God as supremely and everlastingly satisfying. That’s the thesis.

So far, we have simply seen from Brainerd and from Peter’s experience that the first step of radical obedience, namely contrition for all of our failures, is itself elicited by a glimpse of the all-satisfying Christ and an experience of a taste of that joy such that you know you’ve missed it, and now you want to embrace it with tears.

Obedience Through Faith

Now, here’s my next step in the argument for that thesis, and we’ll unfold the Scriptures here a little more. All obedience, according to the New Testament — and I believe a careful reading of the Old Testament too, though it’s harder to see there and that’s intentional on God’s part, I believe — comes from faith. All obedience comes from faith — that is, the obedience which is more than faith. Faith is obedience. And so, all subsequent obedience to faith comes from faith. Faith is the root of it. Now, let me just quickly give you some Scripture from where I get that. No obedience is obedience that does not grow out of a heart of faith.

For example, Romans 9:31–32 are very seminal verses in my theology. It says:

Israel who pursued a law that would lead to righteousness did not succeed in reaching that law. Why? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were based on works.

That phrase “as though” or “as if” is a very crucial little Greek particle, a theology revolutionizing word — hōs. He says, “as though,” which means this is an unreal thing being spoken of here — “as though it were by works.” In other words, the law was never intended to be obeyed by works. The law was always intended to be obeyed by faith. That’s what Romans 9:31–32 teach powerfully, which gives wonderful unity to the covenants and to the Testaments. Or take, for example, Romans 14:23, which says:

Whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.

That’s pretty powerful and plain. Hebrews 11:6 says, “Without faith it is impossible to please him,” no matter what you do. Or 1 Thessalonians 1:3 says, “I am reminded of your work of faith and labor of love.” What is a “work of faith”? A work of faith is a work that comes out of faith. Galatians 5:6 says, “Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.” That’s another word I could use to summarize what I mean by holiness. I call it radical obedience, and you could add love. I take all of those. That’s my goal in preaching at the horizontal level for my people. I want them to be holy, I want them radically obedient, and I want them living the most enemy-loving life, laying it down. And Paul says, “Faith works itself out through love” (Gal 5:6). So where does love come from? Where does holiness come from? Where does radical obedience come from? It comes from faith.

Or consider 2 Thessalonians 1:11. I preached on this about 10 years ago and one of the most recalcitrant, anti-doctrines of grace people in my church took my hand at the door and I wondered, “Oh, what’s going to happen here?” And with a broken voice, he said, “That was the most important sermon in my life.” And he’s been on my side ever since. Let me read the verse to you:

We always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power . . .

I just unpacked that verse and said, “All of your works that are of any value whatsoever are performed by the power of God, apprehended by faith.” And that’s why none of your rewards will be of any credit to you even though they are in accord with your good works, because they are all born of grace through faith. Well, those are texts just to illustrate this second stage in my argument, namely that all obedience comes from faith.

Renewed Language for Timeless Truth

Now, I used to stop right there. In my understanding of preaching and in my understanding of mobilizing and motivating people, I used to just stop there and say, “Okay, if that’s true, what’s the implication for preaching?” And the answer would be to preach for faith. And that’s absolutely right. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ (Romans 10:17). So, preach for faith.

However, I don’t stop there anymore because in my context in Minneapolis, which is radically churched and wicked, is a city with, if you take the metropolitan area, 2,000 churches in the 2-million-person district and maybe hundreds of them are evangelical. I mean, this is a hotbed of good stuff. There’s a lot of preaching, though not enough Reformed preaching, but at least within the broader definition of evangelical there are some big churches — 3,000, 4,000, and 5,000 person congregations.

And therefore, everybody knows the spiritual language. Drunks say they believe, and prostitutes say they believe. I live in the inner city because my church is in the city, and I tried for years to do evangelism on the streets just because they stopped me and would say, “Help me out with 50 cents?” I’d say, “Well, silver and gold have I none. But what I have I give to you.” And then I would say the gospel and I’d say, “Do you want me to pray for you?” And they would say, “No, get out of here.” But basically, they’d say, “Jesus? Oh yeah, I know Jesus. I believe in Jesus.” Everybody believes in Jesus in Minneapolis, which means that the word believe ceased to be useful. That’s an awful thing to say, isn’t it? It’s a precious biblical word, but it wasn’t enough. It was no longer adequate to say, “Preach for faith” or, “Preach for belief.”

I had to say more. I had to dig and say, what is it? What’s at the root? You have to go in. So, I’ll take you little deeper into the way I now define faith. For those of you who can grab the books or want to read them, you can see why I talk this way. I was talking to this brother back here, Robert, over supper and we were talking about this language. He asked, “Why do you use this kind of language?” And it’s just an effort to get through in my situation, which I think is not all that atypical in the western world. My definition of faith goes like this. It’s very simple, and you’ll recognize the language. The essence of faith is being satisfied in God. Now, you may think, “Is that the only thing you ever say? Is it everything?”

Let me analyze the definition for just a minute and then give you a biblical verse or two for why I say that. And I do not limit faith to satisfaction in God, okay? It is a bigger concept than that. I’m just saying an essential component of it that helps get through to the bottom of it is being satisfied in all that God is for us in Jesus. That’s the longer version — being satisfied with all that God is for us in Jesus.

Satisfied in the Giver, Not Merely His Gifts

Now, there are two little pieces of it that are intentional and the first one is that it’s very, very God-centered — being satisfied in God. Notice I do not say “the promises of God,” though I often use that language. I love promises. But if you terminate on the gifts of God and not God, you’ve not yet become a Christian. It’s God himself in all of his glorious perfections and attributes that must spiritually be apprehended and satisfy the soul so that when there are none of his gifts anymore, including life, you will, with your last groanings, enjoy him and say, “To die is gain.” And in the pastoral ministry, if we don’t have that message, we’ve got little.

I had a woman die and couldn’t do her funeral yesterday because I was coming here. Her name was Jean Broberg, age 48, and her liver stopped working. I went to the hospital and she was in great pain. Praise God for morphine. I think of the nations that don’t have it and marvel at the horrors of death. The last thing she heard me do was pray with her and whisper sweet words about the glory of it all. And there were her three kids, all teenagers, and her crying husband. We’ve got good news at moments like that, glorious news at moments like that. It’s about God, not his gifts of life, including his gifts of family and health.

This morning, Conrad mentioned that some in his land bring a message of health and wealth when they come. It’s so deceptive and so misdirected in where the heart must repose because we’re all going to die and we should all be ready to die, indeed eager to die if obedience demands it. So, God-centeredness is claimed by this definition of faith, satisfaction in God.

Life-Giving Bread, Soul-Satisfying Drink

Secondly, the word satisfaction is simply meant to get beneath mental ascent to the work of the heart. Call it what you like, call it fiducia if you like. I don’t think even trust is enough to help people wake up to the fact that they have to be born again to have it. You see, until you land on a reality that is beyond them, they’re not getting it. Most people see they can turn on a decision, they can turn on acceptance, they can turn on receiving, they can turn on all of the evangelistic language that we traditionally use like a faucet. They think, “Oh okay, I can do that.”

Americans are the best evangelists in the world because we can make it happen. We design evangelism that we can make happen and we market it. We are consummate marketers and make-it-happen people. And when the Americans get hold of the gospel, if you don’t get converted under it, we get you converted by simply getting the gospel to a place where you can do it. Isn’t that awful? I could name names but I won’t. I’m not into naming names. When you land on satisfaction or certain other affectional terms, people start to shake in their pew because they’re saying, “You’re telling me something is essential here over which I have no control. You’re telling me that something has to happen in my heart like delight or joy or satisfaction. Pastor, I can’t do that.”

And my response is, “I know. Unless a man be born again, he can’t enter the kingdom. And the Spirit blows where he wills.” This stuff is very Calvinistic. I mean, it may not sound Calvinistic, but this has some roots and some profound convictions about what it takes to get saved. So, those are two pieces in the definition of satisfaction in God. Now, here’s a verse to hang it on, just one maybe. John 6:35 has moved me deeply over the years.

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes (there’s our cherished religious, biblical, glorious word for faith) in me shall never thirst.

Now if you just take that verse and ask for Jesus’s definition of saving belief, what would it be? Let me read it again and let the parallelism have its effect.

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger (then the parallel), and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.

My definition is this: believing in Jesus is a coming to him in such a way as to have your soul-hunger satisfied. That’s where I get it. Believing in Jesus is a coming in such a way that you find in him your soul’s hunger and thirst satisfied, so that you know you’re at the end of your quest and you do not step on him to get to something else. He’s the end of your search.

Promises of Superior Satisfaction

Now, having defined faith like that, we are on the brink of seeing why it is that faith yields obedience, are we not? If the heart is satisfied with all that God is for us in Jesus, then the power of sin is broken. Nobody sins out of duty. Nobody gets up in the morning and says, “I really don’t want to sin today, but I guess I should, so I will.” There’s only one reason people sin. Sin makes promises of happiness and the only way to break the power of those promises in the long run is with promises of superior satisfaction.

You can beat people up and break them away from sin legally for a season; you can scare them good or get them to try to please other people, which just changes sin from one kind to another. But if you want people to be free and in love with righteousness, hating sin, you must (this is the preaching application) so portray a life of communion with God and a life of fellowship with Christ and a life of obedience even unto death as wonderfully more satisfying than a life of lust or prestige or power or anything else.

Brothers, we have the news with which to do it, and one of the reasons we don’t is because it hasn’t touched us either, I fear. I don’t know you men, so I feel some boldness to say that in general. I know many pastors who don’t know what I’m talking about and can’t preach it because they haven’t tasted it. They have learned a duty religion, and that’s what they lay on their people week after week. And their people taste it and it doesn’t taste like gospel. Righteousness doesn’t taste freeing, it doesn’t taste satisfying, it doesn’t taste glorifying. It tastes heavy, it tastes weighty, it tastes like a burden. There’s nothing beautiful about it. And they go home and everything in their heart, God-given, is crying out for this void to be satisfied. And so, they turn to the broken cisterns of the world. And God says he is, according to Jeremiah 2:13, “Appalled.”

Be appalled, O heavens, at this;
     be shocked, be utterly desolate,
     declares the Lord,
for my people have committed two evils:
they have forsaken me,
     the fountain of living waters,
and hewed out cisterns for themselves,
​​     broken cisterns that can hold no water.

And the preachers are only saying, “Stop drinking that, stop drinking that. It’s bad.” Instead of spending almost all their time saying, “Don’t you see the fountain?” and lavishing the fountain on their people until the people, like the Indians in Crossweeksung and like Peter on the boat, fall down and say, “What have I done with my life? I’ve wasted it when there’s been such a glory, such a beauty, such a wonder, such forgiveness, such freedom, such hope, such fellowship, such perfections designed to fill this part of my heart and that part of my heart. There’s such healing for my soul.”

Radical Obedience by Faith

Hebrews has been a great help to me. Let me draw this to a close by rehearsing what I mentioned earlier, just a little more. Look at Hebrews 11:24–25, which I referred to earlier. It’s Moses’s obedience. Let me read it just so you remember. And note the words by faith. I’m still illustrating this faith as more than intellectual ascent or even more than trust, if you limit trust so that it does not include the emotions:

By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated (there’s radical obedience) with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin.

Now, if you stopped right there you might say, “Ah, see. It’s his choice of duty rather than yielding to enjoyment.” Wrong, wrong, wrong. You have to keep reading. So many people stop reading in verses. I often get asked the question, “Oh, what do you do with the duty of cross bearing? Don’t you believe in cross bearing? Jesus says, ‘Unless a man takes up his cross and follows me, he can’t meet my disciple’ (Matthew 16:24).” I just say, read the rest of the verse because it says, “He who loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 16:25). That’s the way Jesus argued. Do you want life? Lose it. Die. Take a risk.

Young people are so eager for this message. Goodnight. They’re so ready. They’re so ready to be told to lay down their lives for something, and you give them something like that to lay down their lives for. I embrace almost all university opportunities to speak to students. I spoke to a big Campus Crusade group down in Indianapolis last Christmas, about 1,300 students. Then I got on a plane and I flew to a town in Texas. I can never remember the name, and I spoke to another 2,000 students.

I’ll tell you, I lay on them the hardest gospel I can think of. And then I put on the other side the most glorious promises, and they eat it up and they’re ready to just sell their everything and go to the hardest place of the world, which is why I believe in missions so much and why I put the little title on this message, though I haven’t said a word about missions tonight. I put the little title at the end there and the goal for missions because if you’re hearing what I’m saying and you want to beget missionaries in your church, read them Hebrews 11:24–26, which says, “By faith, Moses left.”

Subverting the Fleeting Pleasures of Sin

Now again, I just stopped in the middle of the verse. Let’s get the rest of it here. It says:

By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin (Hebrews 11:24–25).

Why do you think he wrote that word? Why did he write the word “fleeting”? Because he knew inside he’s offering him a non-fleeting pleasure, which he’ll refer to in just five seconds. He considered abuse for Christ as greater wealth. He suffered for the Christ. He thought, “Let us go with him outside the camp and suffer abuse with him,” like Hebrews 13:13 says. So, this book is calling for the embracing of abuse. But how did he consider abuse and suffering for the Christ as greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt? It was because he looked to the reward, and I add, which is not fleeting. So, you have a kind of wealth, and you’ve got a reward. And brothers, when you preach, you preach those things. And if you don’t taste the glory, get on your face until you do, because if the people don’t see you exulting in it, why should they believe it? Why should they not go home and turn on the television?

Oh, I loved that message this morning. It just strengthened my hand so much to go home and finish my long series on Hebrews. I’m in Chapter 10 and I’ve been in there for a year and a half. I think my people are liking it, but I needed that encouragement this morning. But my definition — just another little thing that I come up with — of expository preaching is expository exultation. And you were doing it this morning.

What that simply means is you not only explain the glory, you exult over the glory. Preaching is an act of worship and it is a delighting in the truth of the text. Hebrews 11:1 says, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for,” which is why faith liberates from the pleasures of this world for radical obedience. It is the assurance of things hoped for. The way you tie this in for your kids, for your people, is toward the end of the term of school. When there’s a month or two or three of vacation coming, ask them how they feel on the Friday before the vacation. Ask them whether they murmur more on Monday or Friday, the beginning of term or the end of term.

Why do we murmur less the day before vacation than the day after vacation? The reason is hope, and it has mighty power to liberate us from the need for immediate gratification. If you cross my will when I have no hope, I’m in your face. If you cross my will when on the other side of that, when I know in 10 minutes something good is going to happen to me, I can handle that no problem. I think, “Go ahead, cross my will. I have hope.” Just blow that up to eternity, folks. Blow it up to eternity and you’ll see what was liberating Moses from sin, and what will liberate your people from sin. It’s hope in reward, in glory, and God is it. It is not streets of gold, not even an eschatological health, wealth, and prosperity theology, though I believe we will be done with sickness in the age to come. That’s not the main point. I’d rather be sick for eternity with Jesus than healthy without him.

Portraying God as Superior to Every Human Delight

Well, I think I’m done here. Let me just make sure. Let me try to sum it up. Falling in love with the all satisfying riches of the glory of God creates brokenheartedness. You don’t weep over an estrangement until you’re in love. And estrangement from holiness will be wept over when, by the Holy Spirit, you are granted or your people are granted to fall in love with holiness, God’s holiness and beauty. That was the first step in my argument.

Growing in that satisfaction or delight in holiness is the power that breaks the power of sin because sin only has power by making promises of pleasure. Nobody sins out of duty. They only sin because they think (dead wrong) that it will produce more pleasure, at least for the short run, even if it’s drunkenness or illicit sex or cutting of their arms. You know the condition I’m talking about. There are certain kinds of depressive and awful situations of young women who have eating disorders and will cut themselves.

When you get in their lives and you go to the emergency room where she is for the 10th time with big gashes across her stomach and you say, “What are you doing?” she looks up to you and knows you. She knows your theology. You’ve talked many times, and she says, “They touch me when I cut myself. I get touched, I get handled. I feel cared over.” Now, that’s a sickness. That’s a profound sickness. That need too can be overcome. That is a superior satisfaction in the God who embraces; it’s the Father who runs out.

Do you want to have this kind of person cry on a Sunday morning? Preach the Prodigal Son for all it’s worth. Picture the Father, this dignified old man, maybe he was British. Do the British run? Well, I’ve heard they play soccer. But the British reputation is stayed and dignified, and your language is beautiful. We Americans just stumble all over our language. We can’t talk. Our words don’t come together. We say “um” and “er” all the time, but listen to the BBC. It’s so clear. So, maybe he was dignified and British, and he reached down and he pulled up his garment between his legs and tucked it in. When he saw this rascal, no count, lousy kid of his coming home and the tears started down his face and he ran. The old man was running. It says in the Bible that he’s running (Luke 15:20). You unfold this, and so many of you can. I’ve heard it already here. And that girl, when this father throws his arms around that boy and kisses him, will cry.

It may not be an immediate healing, but oh, the picture of that kind of God, a mighty God, helping her, may free her from this pleasure of cutting herself and thus being stitched and touched by a bunch of people showing attention to her. And there are thousands of applications like that. Therefore, the preaching that yields radical obedience is a preaching that lures people to God by portraying him as infinitely superior to every human delight.