Kennystix's podcast
A Passion for God’s Supremacy and Compassion for Man’s Soul
The following message is by Pastor John Piper. More information from Desiring God is available at www.desiringgod.org. Thank you very much, Rick. And thank you all for your encouragement. And what I want to do before I pray is to finish last night's message. Because I realized, just struck me that I told you there were five elements in the gospel and I got lost in number four. And all I talked about was number five, but I never called it number five. So here's the review and the completion. If you just focus on the gospel at its center, what happened in and around the cross and the resurrection, there are these five elements. Number one, an event Christ died, no event, no gospel, and He rose. Number two, there's the achievement of the event. That is, wrath was absorbed, sin was covered, righteousness was consummated, eternal life was purchased, those things happened objectively outside of you, an achievement of the cross. And the third is the free offer. If there's no event, no gospel, if there's no achievement in the event, no gospel. If it's offered on the basis of works rather than faith, no gospel. So the offer matters and is essential to the gospel being the gospel. And the fourth was the application. You do not benefit from the event or the achievement or the offer unless you receive the offer and are united to Christ. When you're united to Christ, that wrath, absorption becomes yours. And that covering of sin becomes yours. And that righteousness performed becomes yours. And that eternal life purchase becomes yours. And until that happens, all that objectivity is no good for you at all. So for the gospel to be the gospel, there has to be an application of it in your own case as you receive and embrace the free offer. And I unpacked all that, said it was all pointing to God being the gospel and didn't simply name that the fifth element of the gospel is that there's no gospel unless all of that gets you to God to enjoy him forever. So that's the fifth point, the fifth point is simply that all those four will not be the gospel. I mean, who cares if we're justified, who cares if we're forgiven, who cares if we have eternal life, if there's no God to enjoy. Well, a lot of people do and that's why they think they're Christians when they're not. And so it really matters that we get all the way through the benefits of the gospel to the final benefit. And lo and behold, I realize I never quoted at the beginning, I never quoted at the end, the main verse which has driven me and comforted me that I'm on to the right track here, namely 1 Peter 3, 18. So write that down. The main verse for last night's message never was quoted, isn't that amazing? So here it is, Christ suffered once the righteous for the unrighteous that He might bring us to God. There it is. No fancy exegesis needed at all. He died the righteous for the unrighteous for that purpose and there is no more ultimate purpose. And if you stop short of that purpose, all the talk of gospel ceases to be gospel. End of last night's message. Now where are we going now? Where are we going now? Here's where we're going. How does all of that, God being the gospel, relate to world evangelization, world missions, and the question I'm posing, and I'm going to answer with Jonathan Edwards' help, going to pose the question with his help, going to answer it with his help because he's helped me more than anybody, you get this problem solved. If you don't have this problem, well, I hope you can benefit in some way anyway from my solution of it. But I had a problem, namely, on the one hand I know from the Bible that the supreme motive for missions is the glory of God. God is not loved, honored, believed, glorified among the nations and he ought to be. His honor should be established in the hearts of all human beings and therefore we should for his sake move on the nations and proclaim his glory and pray, "Thy kingdom come." And I also know from the Bible that when Jesus looked on the fields white unto harvest, it said he felt compassion for them and said, "Pray the Lord of the harvest to send forth laborers." Well, compassion means he doesn't want them to perish. He doesn't want them to go to hell and therefore thousands of missionaries have been driven by love for people. I would like to relieve suffering, especially eternal suffering and there they are, a passion for the glory of God driving us to the nations or a passion to rescue people driving us to the nations. And I just want to know how they relate to each other. You have to choose. You're a compassionate person. You do that one. If you're a worshipful person, you do this one, or are they somehow one? And if so, how? That's the point of this message. I want to answer that question. I want to figure out how my heart, longing that people not perish and my heart, longing that God get the glory he ought to have fit together. Because emotionally they don't always feel like they fit together. And many people are one or the other and compassionate types will hear me talk about God's passion for God and they kind of, "I don't think that's the way you should talk." And others who love to hear me talk like that don't like me talking about them feeling compassion for lost sinners and getting down on the ground and stop being so uppity and high-falutin in their theological talk about the glory of God. Get down dirty with lost people and hold them back from destruction. So I just want us to get this together. This generation needs to get this together. Now I've got some other dreams for you. Not just getting it fixed in your head. Some people like to get things fixed in their head and then act with more passion than others they don't need to. As I look out on you last night and then prayed last night and this morning about what God might be pleased to do out of this conference and out of this last message. Here's one thought that came to my mind is what is this an Asian conference? Now I don't think it's an accident that Asian Americans are all over the place in Southern California and a lot of you are here. Here's what I believe. This is as I sought the Lord about this, I believe there's a calling on your life that may be unique, that this may be an Asian American moment in world missions. I'm thinking Philippines, I'm thinking Korea, I'm thinking Singapore and Hong Kong and Malaysian and Indonesia, I wish I would think in Japan. May God do a mighty work in Japan, may God rock Japan like he has done Korea. Strange is it not? A hundred years of Christianity and Korea and look what God has wrought. In Japan, oh how our hearts should ache for God to move across Asia and here you are. God has a plan and my longing for this message for all of you, Asian and every other kind of American in this room. My longing is that hundreds of you will go to the nations, hundreds. I'm not talking a dozen, I'm talking hundreds of you will go. We have a saying in our church there are only three kinds of Christian in relation to missions. Number one, goers, number two, passionate cinders and number three, disobedient. So nobody is left out here if you have any passion for Christ at all, namely you'll either be a goer to the unreached peoples or you'll be a passionate rope holder and cinder or you'll settle into the American way of disobedience and prosper your head off. And I'm longing that the effect of resolved is that out of this conference on Edwards would come missionaries like out of Edwards came Brainerd. Read the journal of David Brainerd edited by Jonathan Edwards. Many people have been driven to the nations by that book, probably the most influential thing Edwards did. So my heart is that we don't just figure out this motivation piece in our heads, but that it land on you, perhaps on the Asians among you with this is the moment in world history, perhaps when the decisive breakthroughs in the world will be granted to the goers with a face different from mine, my face is hated much around the world. Your Asian face is hated less around the world. I say it carefully because Jesus said you will be hated by Ponta Ta'ethne. We like to talk about the Ponta Ta'ethne as the ones we're supposed to reach, that's all the nations. Well, it's very interesting that Jesus used that phrase both therefore go and make disciples of Ponta Ta'ethne and you will be hated by Ponta Ta'ethne. So I don't mean Asian faces won't be hated, I just mean God in his unusual providence. In the Muslim world, for example, my western face is satanic, yours is not yet as satanic. There may be a window of time, I don't know, it may be that the black face will finish the job from Africa. It may be that the hispanic face from Brazil and Argentina will finish the job. We will all be involved, nobody, there are no mistakes in God's ethnic work and therefore I just look out on you last night and I thought, God what are you doing? What are you doing in our country and around the world? Let's pray. Father, as we try to now take a few minutes to tackle these two motives, I pray that beyond all of our imagination, the nations would be rocked by this conference. C.J. has laid a foundation in a humble church, I pray. Now out of that death to self, may we love the nations and love your glory and see how those together can finish this job. Come Lord Jesus, come now by your spirit and come triumphantly in your mission and come decisively on the clouds we pray. In Jesus' name, amen. Here's the first paragraph in my mission's book and I explain where it came from. Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exist because worship doesn't. Worship is ultimate not missions because God is ultimate not man. When this age is over and the countless millions of the redeemed fall on their faces before the throne of God, missions will be no more like marriage will be no more. It is temporary necessity, worship abides forever. That's the first paragraph. Now where did that come from? It came straight from Jonathan Edwards and I say amen to the word about church history. No dead teacher outside the Bible has influenced me more than Jonathan Edwards. I'm tempted to say no live teacher but who knows how much our parents influence us. We would not want to be disrespectful to my father by saying that because probably I am who I am because of him more than Edwards but Edwards is huge for me. So what you hear of Edwards is this quest for the ultimate. Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. I am driven because I have this Edwardian shape to my brain towards pushing things to the end to the ultimate. I don't want to just know what's here, here, here, I want to know what's the last thing. I want to be shaped by the last thing and if you discover the ultimate reason why you exist. The ultimate reason why the church or family or marriage or anything exists it shapes your life and so I'm pushing on the ultimate purpose of the church and I said here it's worship. Now Edwards say it quite like that. He wrote a book called The End for which God created the world. The most important book I've ever read by Edwards which is why I issued my own addition of it in God's passion for his glory. That's the most seminal work anybody could read by Jonathan Edwards. The End, the goal for which God created the world and what he does in that book is pile is half of it philosophical, half of it biblical. He piles text upon text upon text for 50 pages, hundreds of texts. It just blew me away in 1971. I've never seen anything like it arguing for God's God's centeredness. Nobody had ever talked to me like that. My father hadn't used that language. White Oak Baptist Church in Greenville, South Carolina hadn't used that language. Wheaton College hadn't used that language and only one man at full of seminary was using that language and he was the man that directed me to Jonathan Edwards. God's radical God's centeredness is all over the Bible. God doing everything for the glory of God and that's what that book was. Here's a sentence. All that is ever spoken of in Scripture as an ultimate end of God's works is included in that one phrase, the glory of God. The ultimate end of God's works is God's glory. The ultimate end of God's works is God's glory. Not just, see I was told over and over again, my dad, Johnny, whatever you do, word or deed or whatever you do with the eat or drink, do all to the glory of God. I knew that was my duty. I never dreamed it was God's commitment to do that also. There in his fatherhood or his incarnate sonhood, everything God does is for God's glory and Edwards made that plain to me in the book. Then Edwards wrote this, God had respect to himself as his highest end or goal in his work of creation because he is worthy in himself to be so, being infinitely the greatest and best of beings. All things else with regard to worthiness, importance and excellence are perfectly as nothing compared to him. And he quoted texts like this, Romans 11, 36, from him through him and to him are all things. For Colossians 1, 16, all things were created through him and for him he bruised to ten, for it is fitting that he for whom and by whom all things exist in bringing many sons to glory should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through suffering. Proverbs 16, 4, "The Lord has made all things for himself and he does that for fifty pages of Bible." It's overwhelming. You come away from the experience of the end for which God created the world and you simply stand amazed at how man centered you are. So that was illumining for me, transforming for me, 1971. What he means, what God means in saying that he does all things for himself, that's an ambiguous phrase. It doesn't mean that he has efficiencies, he needs to fix. So I'm doing things for myself, that way. It means he has magnificence, he wants to display. God doing all things for God doesn't mean God working to get God to be better. It means he's so infinitely, perfectly glorious, he's on a crusade to display himself, to make himself known. The heavens are telling the glory of God, Psalm 19 1, well who set it up that way? Dawkins, God set it up that way. The heavens are telling the glory of God because he the Creator designed them to display his glory, same thing in redemption. For my namesake I defer my anger, for the sake of my praise, I restrain it for you. Behold, I have refined you, I have tried you in the furnace of affliction, for my own sake, for my own sake I do it, how should my name be profaned, my glory I will not give to another. The glory of God is the chief end of missions, because it's the chief end of God. However, that isn't the way I set it in the first paragraph of my book. Remember, I said missions is not the ultimate goal of the church, and then I did not say the glory of God is. I said worship is, why did I say it that way? The reason is this. The reason missions is demanded not by God's failure to show his glory, but man's failure to see and savor his glory. This doesn't take the glory of God to people who have never seen it. The heavens are telling the glory of God, the law is written on the heart. What's the problem? Revelation is not the problem. Everyone will be held accountable. Ever since creation of the world, his invisible nature, namely his eternal power and deity, have been clearly perceived in the things that have been made so that they are without excuse, all the peoples of the world are without excuse and are perishing. The problem is they're not worshiping him for his glory, because the text goes on and says for although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or give thanks to him. That's why missions is necessary. People are seeing the glory of God, they're hearing the echoes of his law written on their hearts and they're in stark rebellion against him. They suppress the truth. There is no salvation apart from the name of Jesus. They're all perishing. They don't worship him, and we love his glory. We believe it should be established in every human heart created in the image of God, and therefore we're on our way. Missions exist because worship doesn't. Even among religious people, Jewish people, you remember the apex of the criticism? That Paul gave of his own people, Jewish people? He said in Romans 2.24, the name of God is blasphemed among the nations because of you. They were as religious as you could get, and their religion was based on that. The Word of God, and they were blaspheming, which empowers me, enables me, emboldens me, to say of all the nations without Christ, the glory of God is not honored, the holiness of God is not reverent. The greatness of God is not admired, the power of God is not praised, the truth of God is not sought, the wisdom of God is not esteemed, the beauty of God is not treasured, the goodness of God is not savored, the faithfulness of God is not trusted, the commandments of God are not obeyed, the justice of God is not feared, the grace of God is not cherished, the presence of God is not prized, the person of God is not loved. God is not worshiped, he's despised, he's disbelieved, he's disobeyed, he's dishonored, he's disregarded the creator of the universe. The opposite of that disrespect, dishonor is worship. That's what ought to be happening among the nations. Let me say a word about what I mean by worship. Worship is not a service. It's not, well, here's the question, is what we did when the music was playing and we were singing, is that worship? Be careful. The answer is maybe, and maybe not. Because worship is not singing per se or playing instruments per se or preaching per se. This people honors me with their lips and their heart is far from me. In vain do they worship me? That is their worship is zero non-existent while they sing. While they play, while they preach zero, which means worship in its essence must be something in the heart. In fact, let's give you a little summary here, biblically of worship. You've got the heart piece, the head piece, and the body piece in worship. I'll give you the text for each one. I've already quoted the heart piece. These people honors me with their lips at Matthew 15, 8, and 9. Their heart is far from me. In vain do they worship me? So where there is no heart-treasuring, heart-valuing, heart-esteeming, heart-embracing of the beauty and glory of God, I don't care what's happening with the mouth, it isn't worship. And here's the one on head, John 4, 23. The hour is coming, and now he is. When true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. For such the Father seeks to worship him. What does that mean? It means that the affections of the heart must accord with truth in the head. If you do an in-run around the head to try to produce emotions in the heart that accord with God, they won't be worship, which is one of the dangers of music. Music is so glorious, I love what we do here, I love what we do in our church, I love preaching into singing. But I'm aware of all kinds of ways that preachers and musicians have of trying to stir the heart minus truth, that's not worship. So now you've got the two pieces. If your heart is not moved and you're just lipping it from doctrine in your head, it's not worship. And if your heart is stirred and moved by something and you don't have right ideals about God in your head, it's not worship, and here's the third piece, Matthew 5 16. Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father so evidently there is a way to live with our hands in serving people the salt and light I talked about last night where we're rejoicing in suffering and serving people out of the overflow of grace. And they can actually see good works and who do they glorify you if they do, you can get it right, they didn't get it right, rather they glorify God. So evidently there's a way to display the worth of God that makes him worth glorifying with our bodies. So we've got heart, we've got right thinking and we've got bodies and there's a flow to that and worship is all of that which is why we do sing, we do play, we do lift our hands, we do feel energy, we do leave here and go serve the poor. This is your spiritual service of worship when you present your bodies as a living sacrifice. So, when I say missions exist because worship doesn't, I don't mean they're missing worship services in those cultures, that's not the point. I care very little about services. I care tremendously about will their heart prize Christ? Will their head understand the gospel and will their bodies be devoted to obedience? That's worship. The heart moved by right ideas about God yielding lives of sacrificial service that the world sees and gives glory to our Father. That's what's missing. That's what we should do missions to bring about among all the peoples. And I use the word peoples to the nest on the end, as you know, very consciously because you were slain and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and tongue and people and nation, tribe, tongue, people, nation. You ransomed them. So go to them, don't think geography, don't think China, think one of the thousands of people groups, don't think India, think one of the thousands of people groups, otherwise you may say, there are lots of Christians in India, they can evangelize, I don't need to go there. What do you mean they met a guy named Vijay last week at our conference, he gave me a list, he said, I'm an evangelist in India, and he gave me a list of 24 people groups. He knows five of these languages and he's training people to cross cultures who are Indian to Indian, crossing cultures, crossing hostility cultures, crossing language cultures from India to India, and sometimes it works better from America to that people group rather than this tribe to that one. Don't think geography, think peoples, Panta Taethi, after the nations, there's thousands of them, and hundreds big unreached, yet to go, and I just pray, oh God may it be that this would be the moment, the American moment, the Asian moment, the Black moment, the Red moment, the Brown moment, may there be such an amazing work, as Philip Jenkins has been teaching us about the shifting of the center of gravity from west and north to south and east, and the massive movements of God beyond anything, anybody dreamed a hundred years ago of what he's up to, and you can be a part of that. All of that to say the Bible made plain to me by Jonathan Edwards says that a supreme, a supreme motive for missions is one way to say it, the glory of God, the subjective way to say it, worship. Now here's the question, how does compassion relate to that? How does love for lost people relate to that? They're all guilty of treason everywhere in the world, we've all dishonored the king, which means everybody is under a death sentence of everlasting punishment. With mutiny comes eternal misery, unbelief not only dishonors God, it destroys the soul. Everything that discredits God damages man. Every assault on God's holiness is an assault on human happiness. Every thought or feeling or action that makes God look wrong or irrelevant increases man's ruin. Everything that decreases God's reputation increases man's suffering, which means that everywhere God is dishonored, people are perishing, and they're perishing into hell. Now everybody knows that Jonathan Edwards is famous for preaching about hell, sinners in the hands of an angry God, indeed he was. He knew his heaven as well as he knew his hell, and the reason he knew his heaven so well is because he knew his hell so well, and vice versa. He quoted in that sermon, Revelation 14-15, "So now I've shifted," are you with me? I just spent the first part of the sermon talking about passion for the glory of God, driving us to nations that do not worship him in order that we might bring them to worship him through the preaching of Christ among the nations. All for his glory, and now I'm shifting over to another kind of thinking, another kind of motive, people are perishing that we care. Can we rescue them? Edwards quoted Revelation 14-15, which is one of the most horrific texts in the Bible about future torment. It speaks of the wine press, of the fierceness, of the wrath, of Almighty God. Now that's a lot of words piled up to say this is horrible. The wine press of the fierceness, and the wrath of Almighty God. Here's what Edwards wrote, spoken that sermon. The words are exceedingly terrible. The fierceness of the wrath of God. The fury of God. The fierceness of Jehovah, oh how dreadful must that be. How can, who can utter, or conceive what such expressions carry in them, consider this, you who are here present, that you remain in an unregenerate state. Now God stands ready to pity you. This is a day of mercy. Edwards would have been appalled in our day at the people who call themselves evangelical who minimize and deny the existence of hell. It is rampant. Emulationism is embraced as a form of divine eternal punishment. Edwards knew annihilationists in his own day in the 1740s, and he wrote about them, and he said the most obvious thing about them, namely this, wicked men will hereafter earnestly wish to be turned to nothing, and forever cease to be that they may escape the wrath of God. Emulationism is not a form of the wrath of God. It is escape from the wrath of God, which God does not allow. And it's rampant, which is one of the reasons pulpits are powerless. There's not but at stake, let's just fix our marriages. Let's just get a better job. Let's just have a little more psychological equilibrium. You wonder why there's an epidemic of powerlessness in the pulpit. We don't believe anything is at stake. You get a few big spokesmen who try to make it sound big with global kingdom talk, and you think it through, you say, matter very much, this matters, this matters infinitely. Hell is not pretty, it's not short, it's not comfortable, it's horrific. This is driven by a longing to rescue people from suffering. We get arguments at our church among the evangelists and the world mission folks on the one side and the social action folks on the other, the lovers of the pro-life movement, the lovers of those who want to work the homeless, the lovers of those who are into recovery ministries, and so on, in our church, whom I love. And I breathe on their fire with as much oxygen as I can, and they kind of feel some tension sometimes. One of the ways that in my pulpit, I have tried to keep us all together, because I believe in both so much, is to say, look. Here's what we all are passionate about. We're all passionate about relieving suffering, all of it, especially eternal suffering, right? Social action people, right? Yes, right. Evangelists, world missionaries, yes. If you can say it that way, then you can go and dig wells to the glory of God praying earnestly that as they drink this water, they'll taste the eternal water, and they will not only escape all the diseases that come from the dirty water, but the horrific disease of hell. If you don't care about that other disease, this is a lie. This isn't love, this clean water. So many evangelicals today who are selling out to unlove, calling it love. It's not loving. If somebody has a cancer that you can take out with a deep, deep scalpel work, which then has to be sutured over with patches of skin, and you just put a band-aid on it and call it love, it is not love. Hell is real. Edwards knew it. I pray you know it, and it should be a motive. It should be a motive. Jesus looked out on the crowds, and he felt compassion for them. Edwards wrote a book on love. Do you know the name of it? Charity and its fruits. I don't recommend it as one of the top books, because it's pro licks. You don't even know what that word means, probably. I read it with my wife. We read it out loud to each other, and we both thought, this is pro licks. It's wordy. But it's very good. Everything he writes is amazing to me. It's got a chapter on verse 4, and it's an exposition of 1 Corinthians 13. Love suffers long, and his kind is verse 4. And in it, he says this in that chapter, "A Christian spirit disposes persons meekly to bear ill that is received from others, and cheerfully freely to do good to others." So here's the lover of the glory of God telling us about what love does as it moves out from the church. I'll keep reading, "Men may do good to the souls of vicious persons by being the instruments of reclaiming them from their vicious courses. They may do good to the souls of secure and senseless sinners by putting them in mind of their misery and danger, and so being the instruments of awakening them, and persons may be the instruments of others' conversion of bringing them home to Christ." We read in Daniel 12, 3, he says, of those that turn many to righteousness. So love, charity, bears the fruit of warning people, bringing people, rescuing people, and bringing them out of danger into heaven. Mark 634, "Jesus went ashore, saw the great throng, and had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And what sheep do without a shepherd is starve to death or fall over cliffs." He cared about that. Or Luke 1520, "The father in the parable of the prodigal son." His son, Rose, came to his father, and while the father, while he was at a great distance, his father saw him and had compassion and ran and embraced him and kissed him. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes him should not perish. Love pursues perishing people. So here's my question, finally, and I'll try to answer it in five statements. How did these fit together? I don't know which you are. You may have it together. No problem. Why is he belaboring this? It's not a problem. Well, a passion for the glory of God to see his name exalted among all these wicked people who love themselves and idolize gods that are no gods. That's one way to talk about missions. And then over here, people just by the thousands every day plummeting into everlasting suffering because they have never heard the gospel. Here are my five statements to try to sum it up, and these all come from Edwards. Five steps how the two fit together. Number one, compassion pursues the rescue of perishing sinners. I don't need to belabor that. I've said it already. The way they escape wrath is by being pursued by the gospel. We preach the gospel. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of Christ. God has ordained that the nations be saved by the preaching of the gospel. That's why the story of Cornelius is in the Bible. These folks down there were not saved until Peter got there with the gospel. Number two, fear of hell by itself saves nobody. You can scare people away from hell. You cannot scare them into heaven. People who love sin, fear, and sometimes weep over sin's consequences. Nobody wants to go to hell, but very few people want to go to heaven. Except the heaven they create, virgins, you know, fresh virgin to have sex with every day for the rest of eternity, or golf, eternal golf, or mom, or a brother you loved going before you. Just not Christ. There are all kinds of heavens that you want to go to, and you won't go to the real one, wanting to go to the one you want to go to. It is natural to hate pain. There's nothing supernatural about not wanting to go to hell. You don't have to be born again to want to go away from hell. You do have to be born again to want to go to God, to love God, to delight in God. To embrace God, that you have to be born again to do. Nobody loves God. As God, nobody loves the cross, nobody loves Christ. Nobody can say Jesus is Lord, apart from the Holy Spirit. And if you don't love Christ, you go to hell, 1 Corinthians 16-22. He who has no love for the Lord, let him be damned. The reason that you can't scare anybody into heaven and preaching hell by itself doesn't save anybody is because saving faith is more than fear of hell. Saving faith is not just embracing Jesus as a deliverer and then saying to him, thank you very much, but I don't want to spend time with you. If you say I want out of hell, Jesus can get me out of hell, I will say whatever I need to say and believe whatever I need to believe about Jesus that I get out of hell, but the thought of spending eternity making much of him instead of being made much of, I'm not interested. You're not saved. Saving faith doesn't embrace Jesus as a deliverer and stiff-arm him as a treasure. It doesn't. Test yourself. Are you in the Lord? Do you love the Lord? Is he precious to you? Have your affections been transformed so that he is more to you than those things? That's number two. Have number one, compassion pursues, the rescue of parishing sinners. Number two, fear of hell by itself saves nobody. Step three, therefore compassion must not merely warn people about the pains of going to hell, but must lure people to the pleasures of knowing Christ. Sometimes if people are only responding out of fear, they haven't seen anything necessarily in Christ that they find delightful. They just know fire is hot, hurts, don't want to go there, can he help, fine? But he himself, I don't find anything particularly attractive in him, I wouldn't want to spend eternity with him, I certainly wouldn't want to deny myself a lot of things in order to serve him, but hell, I'll use him, I'll use him for that. So preaching must not only warn, but woo. We must display Christ to the nations in order to get them out of hell. That's number three, number four, and we're almost done. The key from Jonathan Edwards how to put together passion for glory of God, passion for loss sinners is this, and it comes from last night. Satisfaction in Christ and all that God is for us in Christ is the essence of saving faith that rescues us from parishing and satisfaction in all that God is for us in Christ is what glorifies God, and there it is. We want them out of hell and we want God magnified. They get out of hell by saving faith. Saving faith is not simply the embrace of a ticket holder. It is the wanting to be with this glorious Christ and trusting all he's done to get us there. It is being satisfied with all that God is for us in Christ and thus being satisfied in him. He is magnified and they're the same. These motives come together in a right understanding of worship or a right understanding of saving faith. And here's the key quote from Edwards. This is the most important sentence from Edwards I have ever read. Although God glorifies himself toward the creature in two ways, by appearing to their understanding and in communicating himself to their hearts and in their rejoicing and delighting in and enjoying the manifestations which he makes of himself, God is glorified not only by his glory being seen but by its being rejoiced in. God is glorified not only by his glory being seen but by its being rejoiced in. God is glorified when we are satisfied in him and being satisfied in him is what escapes hell and therefore the motive for him to be glorified. These people to be saved are the same. That helps me tremendously. Leads us to the last number five. The aim of compassion to rescue sinners out of everlasting pain and the aim of our passion to see God honored are not different in the way they come about. Sinners escape hell and honor God with the same act, treasuring all that God is for them in Christ God does not get the honor he should and man does not escape the pain we would if Christ is not our treasure. It's by treasuring him that God is honored and we escape. I wonder if you got it let me just say it one more time in the no close. My question has been a heart that loves the glory of God wants to see God magnified among the nations wants to re-establish the throne of the glorious God and the hearts of rebellious people so that they render honor and praise and thanks to their maker forever. That's one kind of motive it is supreme. And then there's the heart that God from the cross pours into us as we see what it took him to do to get us to be like that and we are broken we are devastated we are unpuffed up we realize everything is a gift we go low get under others and we say I'll do anything I'll do anything to give you happiness forever I want you to be happy I don't want you to perish all you need to do is have a son who goes away from the Lord to test this motive. Isn't it sad that we can feel such heart wrenching night spending tear shedding knees wearing out longings for our own children not to go to hell but not for others something deeply wrong but there's the motive and may God granted to be deeper and stronger I want you to be saved I want you to be rescued I don't want you to perish I want you to be everlastingly happy now there they are and here's what I'm saying makes them one. What magnifies God is being satisfied in God all the behaviors minus treasuring God delighting in God embracing God being satisfied in God all the behaviors minus that gets him no glory but when we love him delight in him or satisfied in him treasure him cherish him embrace him he is honored and what I'm saying is that is right at the heart of what saving faith is and it's saving faith that rescues people from destruction so when we preach for this or this it's the same message know him standing all of him embrace him love him delight in him Psalm 67 3 let the nations praise you God let all the nations praise you let the nations be glad and sing for joy say it again so you hear it let the nations praise you God let all the nations praise you let the nations not go to hell let them be glad forever well God I pray now that you take these 3000 folks and burn both these motives into their hearts and if they don't feel them right now if they're not rising up with some measure of intensity I pray that they would not stop their quest on their face before you over your word until those motives are red hot and then Lord I pray that hundreds God would you come and do it even now I am sure that in this room there are hundreds who from the time they were about four years old until now there are hundreds who entertained at some point some strange and wonderful inclination to be a missionary they have come now to this place and heard all these messages that now come together with the conflagration that says yes to that calling you know who they are Father help them to know who they are make it plain oh God I pray that I would hear stories if God gives me life I pray that I would hear stories in ten years stories coming from people groups I've never heard of an email thank you Pastor John and all the other speakers that resolved it was there that the line was crossed and I said I'm gone I am gone for the glory of God and the rescuing of the lost to this people group thank you for listening to this message by John Piper pastor for preaching at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis Minnesota feel free to make copies of this message to give to others but please do not charge for those copies or alter the content in any way without permission we invite you to visit desiring God online at www.desiringGod.org there you'll find hundreds of sermons articles radio broadcasts and much more all available to you at no charge our online store carries all of pastor John's books audio and video resources you can also stay up to date on what's new at desiring God again our website is www.desiringGod.org call us toll free at 1-888-346-4700 our mailing address is desiring God 2601 East Franklin Avenue Minneapolis Minnesota 55406 desiring God exists to help you make God your treasure because God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him [BLANK_AUDIO]
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