Kennystix's podcast
The Spring of Persistent Public Love
The following message is by Pastor John Piper. More information from Desiring God is available at www.desiringgod.org. Let's pray. Father, if all those who name the name of Jesus and claim to be His followers were to obey verse 12, 10,000 racially oriented and all other kinds of sins in relationships where we don't love each other but hurt each other would be taken away. So Father, I ask that through the exposition of this text, by the power of Your Spirit, you would awaken obedience from the heart. Maybe you become obedient from the heart to this standard of teaching. Whatever you would that others would do to You, you'd do that to them. This is the law. This is the prophets. What a Copernican revolution of priorities that would mean for us, with others moving to the center and ourselves moving out of the way. Pray in Jesus' name. It's a long title, it's like a 17th century title. The spring of persistent public love marking the 200th anniversary of the abolition of legal slave trading in Britain, a sermon on Martin Luther King weekend. So there are three strands to be woven together. Strand number one, a biblical portrayal of the origin of persistent public love. Where does it come from? What is it based on, how is it sustained year after year, especially if it's not reciprocated? Second strand, a tribute to the abolition of the slave trade in Britain, February 24, 1807. Third strand, a connection with the ethnic challenges of our own situation in honor of Martin Luther King weekend. So first we go to the Bible, God's Word, both William Wilberforce and Martin Luther King would be inexplicable without the Bible. William Wilberforce 200 years ago battling the slave trade in his own nation and Martin Luther King 50 years ago battling the injustice of Jim Crow behavior and laws in the civil rights movement. I don't mean that these two men understood and applied the Bible in the same way. Wilberforce was an evangelical doctrinally orthodox Anglican. King did not, as far as I know, make his mature doctrinal views explicit as a preacher. His early papers lean toward a kind of liberalism that would not be called orthodox. So my point is not that they were the same in the way they came to the Bible or came from the Bible, but that without the Bible neither men is explicable. Who they were wouldn't be explainable. What they didn't, wouldn't be explainable Wilberforce being the key instrument under God of the abolition of the slave trade and King being the key instrument under God of the replacing of those Jim Crow racial discriminatory actions and laws with laws supporting equal rights for all Americans regardless of race. Their lives, their work, their achievement would be unexplainable without their dependence on the Bible. Virtually every time King opened his mouth you heard Bible. And Wilberforce said explicitly that his whole life privately and publicly was built on what he called the peculiar doctrines of the Bible, of the Christian faith. We'll see what some of those are shortly. So the Bible has a way, being the powerful Word of God, it has a way of working through remarkably diverse hands and sometimes in spite of those hands. So here we are at Matthew 7, verses 7 to 12, the same text that we used two weeks ago. And let me tell you what we saw there, two weeks ago. We saw eight encouragements to come to God through Christ in Christ dependent prayer expecting that our Father in heaven would give good things to us when we ask Him. Verse 11, "If you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him? He will give good things. He's our Father. How do you know He's your Father?" He asked. And the answer came in two stages. First, Matthew 2028, Jesus said, "The Son of Man," the name of Himself, "did not come to be served but to serve and to give His life a ransom for many." So Jesus must die, give His life, how, why, a ransom. Who needs a ransom? We do because we're sinners. We're under God's wrath and we must be ransomed. Jesus says, "I came for that. If you don't have Me as your ransom out from under God's wrath, then He's not your Father. He's your angry judge alone." That was stage one in the answer. We must have a ransom and He came to give us the ransom if we will have it. The other stage was John 1, 12, "To all who receive Him, to them He gave power to become children of God." Not everybody is a child of God who's created by God. We are dead in our trespasses, we're alienated from God, we stiff-farm God, we don't love God or submit to God's law. We are so wired as to hate God and want to be God and for us to be the children of God requires a change. He comes to give us that, pay our debt, provide a ransom, take away the wrath, and there He stands and He says, "If you'll have Me, you will be the child of God." It's all two weeks ago. So you come to verse 11, "If we, being evil, know how to give good gifts to our children, how much more will our Father give good things to those who ask Him, and you need to deal with God right now as to whether or not you're His child because you certainly may be, it's a free offer if you would be. But if you don't want to be, if you don't like the implications of becoming a chip off the old block and being God-like and Christ-like, then you will push that offer away. And therefore you won't be able to claim verse 11 for yourself or verse 12. So what we saw two weeks ago was that verses 7 to 11, "Through Jesus Christ our ransom, the mediator between sinners and God, who enable sinners to become children of God, through Jesus Christ God becomes our Father so that when we come to Him it is far more likely that He will do good things for us than we, being evil, do good things for our children, which means He means to encourage us, 'Come to Me, I'm ready to bless you. I will deal with you in grace and only mercy. There'll be no wrath in Me at all towards you. If you come to Me as a Father through my Son, Jesus Christ." And then we qualified and we said, "That does not mean that the only things you get when you come are comfortable things. A little child may need to take some very bitter medicine because his mother loves him. The child doesn't ask for bitterness, he doesn't ask to get well. And God knows that sometimes hard things must come into our lives. And so don't take verses 7 to 11 to mean when it says good things, that they're easy things. In fact, I've never heard anybody say, "I got to know God and became more like Jesus through the easy times rather than the bad times." I've never heard anybody say that in 26 years of ministry. But I hear continually that the hard times brought people close to God, the hard times revealed sin, the hard times humbled the pride, the hard times made them strong, the hard times showed his grace and tenderness. And therefore it would not be surprising to me if the application of verse 11 is that when you come to God asking for what you need, you often get hard times. That would not surprise me. So that's a summary of two weeks ago and we stopped. People ask me, "Why did you stop?" I just wanted to talk about prayer, that's all, that's what was the point of the sermon. It was a sermon about prayer. But Jesus doesn't stop, it goes on to verse 12, "Willberforce didn't stop, King didn't stop, they didn't stop reading." So we shouldn't stop reading either. But it's good to review it because so many people isolate verse 12. Every pagan under the sun likes verse 12, don't have a clue where it comes from or what it's based on or what power can sustain it when it's not reciprocated. Now you've heard it, blood, bought, ransom, mediated fatherhood, offering you what you need including hard times, embracing all of that takes you right into verse 12. So do you see the first word in verse 12? I'm not sure what version you have in front of you. Most of them, King James, NIV, ESV have either the word so or the word therefore. They mean the same thing. In other words, everything in seven to eleven is taken of somewhere, it's taken of somewhere. Third prayer is taken you somewhere, having a father and heaven is taken you somewhere, having a redemption and a son of God who bought you and made the father, your father is taken you somewhere. You say it and then you say, "Therefore," you say it and then you say, "So we what?" And that's where verse 12 is going, verses 7 to 11 are all about enabling you to do 12. That's my main point. If you got that and you understood how that was, you would have the message if you applied it to ethnic relations earnestly. That's the golden rule and it goes like this, so since he's your father, since you're bought by the blood of Jesus, since he always gives good things to those who ask him and never gives them a stone, never gives them a snake, therefore so whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them. This is the law and the prophets. So what's the meaning of the word so? I see three meanings of the word so here, you say them and see if you agree, I hope you do. One, you can't live the golden rule, you can't treat others. The way you'd like to be treated. In every situation, cross ethnic lines, age lines, sex lines, you can't treat others the way you'd like to be treated consistently, especially when they don't reciprocate, without experiencing verses 7 to 11. Without a deep confidence that your father will meet all your needs, they don't have to meet your needs, they don't have to reciprocate. You've got a father in heaven, you come to him through Jesus Christ, the ransom and he gives you good things, no snakes, no stones, good things, hard things, things that are always right best for you, he loves you, no wrath, only mercy. If that's your God, the therefore will work, therefore put others first. You don't need to be first anymore. You've got God on your side. You can humble yourself and be a servant of others because 7 to 11's got you safe. That's the first meaning of therefore. Here's the second one. If you really experience verses 7 to 11, he's really your father. He really meets all your needs. If you're really blood bought, cleaving to Jesus, going to God through Jesus, confident that every need will be met, you will obey the golden rule. The first one was, you can't obey it if you're not there and the second one is, if you're there, you will obey it. They're not the same. The second one's a little more pressure, a little more of a test. The first one was enablement. Take heart. There's ability there. Let's do this. And the second one is, you claim to be a child of God. How are you doing with racial harmony? Ever said anything that you wouldn't want sad about you, if you were there? So the test is, is he our father? How are we resting there? Is he our treasure, our all? Have we been redeemed? Is it our glory to have been redeemed? Or is that Christian stuff just kind of a, got it in my back pocket? If I need to show you a card, I'll show you the Christian card. Nothing in your heart, no passion. I've got a father. Here's every prayer, only does me good, meets my every need. I've got a Savior, covers all my sin. That who you are, loving that above all things, defining you. If it is, you're going to, you're going to love people like the golden rule. That's the second meaning of the word so. The third meaning of the word so relates to the law and the prophets. You may have wondered, I did, really? You and the others, as you'd have them doing to you, is all the law and the prophets. Excuse me, what about God? The golden rule fulfills the law, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and the prophets? Not without the therefore. Not without the therefore. If you understand the therefore, you understand the law and the prophets. Because the therefore is saying, there's a life that the prophets and the law are calling for. It's the life of non-self-centered, other oriented, do unto them as you would have them do unto you. That is the life that the law and the prophets are calling for, but not abstracted from verses 7 to 11. Do you have a brother, do you have a blood-bought relationship with the king of the universe whose wrath has been removed by the son who, according to his own words, came into the world to remove our wrath in order to make us one with the father, that will fulfill the whole, the God parts and the man parts, the vertical parts and the horizontal parts, the first commandment and the second commandment. If you don't see the therefore, you can't make any sense out of this is the law and the prophets, period. So those are three meanings of this massive word, S.O. You can fulfill the golden rule if you experience verses 7 to 11. You will fulfill the golden rule in a growing way, not a perfect way, a growing way if you experience verses 7 to 11 and the whole law and the prophets are fulfilled in the golden rule if it is flowing from verses 7 to 11. So when I titled this message, the spring of persistent public love, now I hope you see why, the spring is verses 7 to 11, it's having a father like that, it's knowing that he only gives you mercy and meets all your needs, never gives you any wrath, might give you some hard times, but they'll always be good for you. You can always bank on him, always count on him, every need will be met, not always in the ways we expect, and we have that all through Jesus Christ, who's saying these words and who later says he had to come into the world to pay ransom to make that true. That's the spring of persistent public love and persistent public love is the golden rule. So that's where the title came from. You have a father who meets all your needs, therefore meet other people's needs. Live for others because God has put himself at your disposal to conquer all sin in your life and meet every need that you have, that's the way it works. If you have that kind of God, you can be free to live for others. If you don't have a God like that, you're probably always going to be using others to fill what he's supposed to be, filling, that's the way it works. Now before I unpack the golden rule in relationship to racial relations, let's make sure why it is so crucial that verses 7 to 11 support the golden rule, persistent public love. And the reason is this, I think a lot of people take up the golden rule because they assume that if they do that for others, others will do that back to them, and life gets smooth then. Do it in a family, I'm going to treat you the way I'd like to be treated, and I'm expecting that you will do the same. If on the recess, if on the playground at school, I treat you the way I'd like to be treated, I'm expecting you're going to do that back. You know what? Jesus never promised that would happen. He promised the opposite. In the Sermon on the Mount, blessed are you, this is chapter 5 verse what, 11 or so, blessed are you when others revile you, persecute you, utter against you all kinds of evil falsely on my account. In other words, you're trying to obey me, you're following me, you're saying what I once said, you're doing golden rule kinds of things, and you're taking it on the chin. That's what he promised would happen. Not all the time, just lots of times. Which means that if your motive is sustained by, I will do this golden rule thing as long as it works, makes things better, makes the family better, makes the office better, school better, then I'll do it. I mean, if it works, I'll do it. Jesus says, half the time it ain't going to work. If work means get back the good treatment that you're giving. Jesus said, you follow me, you live for me in this fallen world, full of selfish people, they're going to take advantage of you. You love them, give to them, spend time with them, pour your life out for them, treat them the way you'd like to be treated. They'll say, yeah, keep on giving. I ain't coming back. That's the way it's going to work a lot of the time. So how does persistent public love get sustained? Answer, verses 7 to 11. Not any payback on earth. The next verse was in verse 12, chapter 5. Rejoice in that day when they're persecuting you. Rejoice in that day and be glad for. Great is your what? Where? Christians know that song, that Negro spiritual, this journey is almost over. 80 years is almost over. We live for another payback, Christ, to see Him. It will be worth it all. We don't live for payback here. So that's why the therefore is so important to see because the motive structure for living the golden rule cannot be your expectation that it's going to make things better. It is so empowering for marriages, for recessed playgrounds at school, for offices, to know that efforts of love do not need to be reciprocated in order to be a blessing to you, them, and eternally. He calls us to live this way, payback or no payback on earth. He loves to see the golden rule implemented. It's the only spring verses 7 to 11. Having the Father who meets every need satisfies our deepest longings is the answer to how you keep on doing the golden rule when it doesn't get reciprocated. During the 19th century, three million Africans had been carried to America on British ships. Stolen, kidnapped in Africa, taken to the Americas on British ships. It was a profoundly racial issue because they were all black to a man, woman, child. The only people being stolen, stripped of all human dignity, ripped apart from families, tortured on the way to work as subhuman beings were black. It was a profoundly, not only mega economic issues going on, profoundly racial issue, the attitudes, the heart that enabled it and sustained it didn't die in 1807. They're alive today all over the world in America and in churches. The attitudes, the deeper, deeper things that would enable such a thing to happen, the manifold rationalizations that got argued on the floor of Parliament for thirty years of battle. Those things did not disappear and therefore there's always a need. Don't ever think that we don't need to be exhorted to treat people different from us the way we'd like to be treated. Don't ever think we don't need help with that. There are all kinds of differences. Ethnic ones are not the only ones. Male, female, tall, short, skinny fat, smart, dumb, rich, poor. Just one way, not one way, hair one way, not one way. Hundreds of differences. We never outgrow on this ethnic score the need to be exhorted with the golden rule. Wilberforce, William Wilberforce, with many others in his day became absolutely convinced the traffic on the seas was a great moral evil. For many reasons, not the least of which was its absolute inconsistency with the golden rule. The golden rule was cited by abolitionist preachers over and over again. One example, Abraham Booth, Calvinist, Baptist, London preacher, 1792. This is what's going on in 1792. That date should strike some of you with joy because it was the William Carey head for India, birth of the modern missionary movement. God was doing amazing things at the end of the 18th century. Socially, evangelistically. These people didn't separate the two. We've gone through a century or so where it's hard for evangelicals to get it together. Social engagement, evangelistic zeal for lost people. You hear people talking about evangelistic zeal for lost people? That kind of person, that kind of talk that way, blood bought, evangelistic zeal, reconciliation, propitiation, justification, sanctification. They don't care about issues. And then you've got this other kind of people. Kingdom, movement, justice, righteousness, peace, kind of hug a tree. They can't, they can't believe anything biblical. Both of those should be faults. I hope, I hope it best for him, we help make those two incompatibilities faults. Abraham Booth, Calvinist, Baptist, London pastor, January 29, 1792, preached a sermon entitled This. Commerce in human species and the enslaving of innocent persons is inimical to the laws of Moses and the gospel of Christ. You know the word inimical? Won't fit. Won't fit. You can't follow the law of Moses, gospel of Jesus and do commerce in the human species and enslave innocent persons. One of the most moving parts of the sermon, read it online, parts of it online yesterday, was when he took the golden rule in hand and he said, "Suppose the ships land at Bristol, Liverpool, move to London and take your children and your wives, sons, daughters, kidding at them and take them away in chains, never to be seen again. How would you then deal?" You can feel the force of a 1792, it's perfectly legal to steal black people from Africa, put them in chains away from their families and haul them three decks deep in boats and throw them overboard if they get sick to the Americas. Three million of them, perfectly legal, essential to the industry. And there you have a pastor standing up in London, a Calvinist, believes in the full-blooded Bethlehem elder affirmation of faith preaching with all his heart against the commerce in human species. Five years earlier, October 28, 1787, Wilberforce wrote in his diary at the age of 28, 1787, "God Almighty has set before me two great objects, the suppression of the slave trade and the reformation of morals. And for twenty years he fought that battle as a member of Parliament, House of Commons. Persistent public love he was defeated eleven times, never gave up. February 24, 1807, 4 a.m. The bill passed. It became illegal to deal in slaves. You can still own them. That took another 1833, the illegalization of slave ownership in Britain happened. So this is the man who set the tone and the pattern. February 23, 2007, the movie will come to the theaters. You may have seen it. The reason we published this book was to go with the movie. The chief historical consultant for the movie wrote this blurb inside. And our deep desire is that God would use this like he did the passion book. As you talk to people about the issue and about the Lord and about the kind of people the Lord produced 200 years ago to overcome that. Because so many people today see right-wing Christians. It's just you people. You've got one issue, and you don't care about anything. And you just, if you had your way, this would be a theocracy, blah, blah, blah. It's just not true. It's not true historically. It's not true today. There are fringe people everywhere, but you could help clarify. Five years ago I called William Wilbur for us a coronary Christian instead of an adrenaline Christian. I said, "Where are the coronary Christians at Bethlehem?" And I just, you know, used the analogy. Adrenaline is a good thing, but not every day, not every hour of every day. Adrenaline comes in for a moment when you need it. It gives you a lot of strength and bang. You're flat on your back. Dog tired. The heart, friend, heart. You need a good friend. Your heart. Never stops. Never changes his tune at all. He's just always there befriending you every day, every minute of every day. Till the day you die, he never lets you down. Never, never, never lets you down. Till the day you die is boom, boom, boom, boom. He's always doing what needs to be done. Works his tail off round the clock. Isn't that amazing? I love my heart. Go to bed at night. I just feel it because he may decide to stop tonight. That's totally up to God. And I would just like to be ready. When he's done his work, I want to be done with my work. So the analogy is, yeah, we need adrenalin, but good night we need coronary Christians. So you young people grow up to be coronary Christians. You're going to take hold of right justice, truth, and you're not going to be a flash in the pan. We're going to try it for about two years. We're going to make an effort. And if we can't get this thing changed in two years, three years, five years, ten years, we're done. We're going to suburbs, good by a big, nice, tall vehicle, and drive over other cars. Or at least watch people do. So let's apply now the golden rule to this issue. And very simply, some parents here, some young people here. If you're single, do this in a small group, do your roommates. If you're married to just couples, if you're married with kids, do it with the children, a little exercise, how do you apply the golden rule to this issue? And very simple. You know how to do it. This is no difficult thing. You sit down and you make a list. The list would be what attitudes, behaviors, words, could you think, say, do, which if another person gave them back, you wouldn't like it. You wouldn't want it. Make a list like that. Make a list. Here are the things I could say, I could think, I could do. And if I did them and another person did them back to me, I wouldn't want that. So make that list. So here's my list from just starters. There's dozens and dozens of these, and I'm sure mine are very limited and show my limitations. Would I want to be made fun of because of the way I look? Two. Would I want to be shunned by others? Three. Would I want to be talked down to as an inferior? Four. Would I want to never be invited over for dinner? Would I want to never be considered for a job I'm qualified for? Would I approve if people didn't want to be my neighbor? Would I approve if no one would consider me for a home loan, though my credit is good? Would I approve if I was never considered for a promotion at work that I'm qualified for? And the list goes on. Make that list. And then as a family, pray that God would grant you the grace. Never retreat anybody that way. So easy. I mean, it's easy to understand. Easy to understand. Not easy to do. If God is your father through the ransom of Jesus, if he paid for everything with his blood, if your father is meeting all your needs, the answer to those questions will result in a persistent public lifestyle of love. Persistent public love, persistent public love, persistent, persistent, persistent. You're in. You're out. We're going to do MLK weekend. You're in. You're out. We're going to do sanctity of life weekend. And we're going to pray that it'd be more than a weekend. You're in. You're out. We pray for more, more, more. Wouldn't it be wonderful to see the day in your lifetime or mind where abortion and racial injustice were not just not done or illegal, but unthinkable? There are ways to move toward that. You might live to see a February 24, 1807. We'll be forcing his friends around out in snow five o'clock in the morning and leaped and threw snowballs like the boys and said to each other, "What shall we defeat next, William?" After this 20-year battle. Or, you might be gunned down at age 39, April 4, 1968, Tennessee. Go either way. Move before us, lived to be an old man and saw two great victories. King was cut down in the middle of the battle. Could go either way with you. But in either case, you will not have wasted your life. Which is what we want to avoid. We will have persisted in the life of loving publicly. So I close with this prayer and exhortation that this is not the only instrument that God might be pleased to use, but here we are. And all year long it is 2007. All year long it's 2007. Which means you would not be speaking nonsense to say that all year long is the 200th anniversary of something that happened in 1807. So you've got a whole year. The movie will come and go, you know, it'll last a week or two and then be gone. And you can get the DVD probably. But there will be ways this year to get into people's lives that has never existed for you before on this issue. And this is just one possible way. So get your free copy. Get your free copy when you go and then you can decide how useful it is. And we'll just try to make them as cheap as we can for any you might like to use. And the idea is that it become a conversation piece and that God would use it to wake people up to the seriousness of the issue and that it would result in stirring people up to love more persistently and across ethnic lines and that it would display the glory of Christ. Let's pray. I want to thank you father for creating red and yellow black and white in your image. All of us human beings in your holy image. Amazing. I want to praise you that when you called Abraham as the father of the Jewish people, you said to him in you Abraham, all the families of the earth will be blessed. I want to praise you that you set your son into the world to fulfill that promise as the seed of Abraham and that when he died, he reconciled not only Jew and Gentile, rich and poor, wise and foolish, highborn and lowborn and every ethnic group to you who would trust you, but he reconciled them to each other and reconciling them to you. That's why this is such an urgent thing for the church Lord. We claim to believe in a reconciling Christ. We want it to look that way. Would you help us? I pray that we would in America triumph over ethnic hostilities and around the world your people would be a means to reconciliation, not alienation, but a tragedy in Christian tutsis and Christian Hutus slaughter each other. Would you cause us not to slaughter each other with words or deeds or patterns of behavior? Grant that we would tend well to our own house before we point any fingers. We don't make any claim at Bethlehem to have this figured out or be an ideal church of racial harmony. We want to love better and we ask for it. We repent of all sin, of attitude and speech and action. We ask for help in living the golden rule at Bethlehem and beyond. We pray that you would give us a heart to reach out in Bethlehem to people less like us than those we most easily hang out with. We pray for greater diversity in our church, on the staff and in the eldership and in the pews. Not in any coercive way or artificial way. This is the hip modern thing to do, but just because Christ died so that there might be every people and tongue and tribe and nation made into priests to our God who worship together. And I pray that you would give great wisdom to leaders in our land and leaders in our church and that you would magnify your name as the one name above all other names and without whom there is no salvation. 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 or 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]
Marking the two-hundredth anniversary of the abolition of legal slave trading in Britain.