Kennystix's podcast
Word of Promise, Spirit of God, Hope of Man
The following message is by Pastor John Piper. More information from Desiring God is available at www.desiringgod.org. Our scripture reading for this evening is in Romans 15 verses 7 to 13. Therefore, welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you for the glory of God. For I tell you that Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God's truthfulness. In order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. As it is written, "Therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles and sing to your name." Again it is said, "Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people." And again, praise the Lord, all you Gentiles, and let all the peoples extol them. And again, Isaiah says, "The root of Jesse will come, even he who arises to rule the Gentiles, in him will the Gentiles hope. May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit, you may abound in hope." Father, as we're gathered across the room here and across about 15 hours or so, Lord's Day Morning, Lord's Day Eve, I pray that you would come and meet us in all four of these services in this room. And I pray that nothing will stand between you and your people. That I won't stand in any way as an obstacle that my presence or the video will not be a barrier between the heart of the saint and his or her God, or the heart of the sinner, not yet saved, and the Savior. So come, Lord, and do a triumphant work of grace through this service, we pray, and this message, and awaken hope. I asked this in Jesus' name. Amen. So this is where we ended last time with the question, so how does it work? You remember, as we focused on verses 9 to 13, the first question was, is it really the point of this text that God's purpose for us is to have hope? And I give you three reasons that the answer was yes, and as we came to the end of the message, I asked, well, how does God, through the apostle and the writings called Scripture, do it? And that's where we are now in this service. Now, in preparation for this message, I read the pastoral email on Friday that comes periodically to us with the needs of our church, which included these. A mom of six dealing with chemotherapy for breast cancer. Another mom will have abdominal surgery this Wednesday and be in the hospital over Christmas. A couple trying to adopt two children from Russia and need thousands of dollars quickly. A woman recovering from radiation therapy at home. A young wife with unexplained fever for weeks. A woman recovering from painful inner ear surgery. A family whose son may have surgery in January for seizure activity. In fact, we have two families like that. And then I had written here a 92-year-old saint hospitalized with pneumonia, who now is in heaven. An awesome thought. And of course, hundreds of people not on the list with their various pains. And what made that list more immediately relevant as I pondered this message was that I got sick two days this week with one of those quick shivering under-the-cover 12-hour deals. And my mind during those hours was working on this message asking, "Now, how does it work now, now?" Because I think that's the rubber meets the road question. If you want to talk about how does hope get produced, then it better work now when you're shivering from fever and don't feel like doing anything. A couple of things came clear to me in those hours, as they have before during those times. One is that there were seasons there where I could not read. All I could do was close my eyes, hold still, and try not to throw up. I hate to throw up. Therefore, reading the Bible wasn't going to happen. Neither my mind nor my body in those hours were able to read or think in anything extended. However, there were thoughts in my head and they made a difference. They did not make me feel good physically. These good thoughts that I had did not alter the misery of the physical sensations of nausea and weakness, shivering. However, these thoughts were there. Christ died for me and my sins are forgiven. This misery is not the wrath of God. Christ has all authority over this sickness and over all germs, over all viruses and bacteria. He has promised to work everything together from my good. And if I die, to die is gain. Those thoughts were in my head. They went in, they went out, they came, they went. They did not change the misery of the moment physically, but they changed everything spiritually and emotionally. Because they were like, this is the analogy that came to my mind, they were like an anchor of my boat that was over the edge keeping me. Have you ever watched a really strong tide moving out of a harbor that comes to a narrow place? It's really moving fast. It's really strong. You don't want to get in that tide, suck you right out into the ocean. That's where my boat is, right? It's in the harbor. The tide is going out. My anchor held while I'm throwing up because of seasickness on the boat. That's the analogy I had in my head, miserable on the boat, knowing the anchor holds. I'm not going over the abyss. That makes a lot of difference, folks. It makes a lot of difference. I hope you can make that distinction. The reason I'm sharing all this is because I want you to know that as I unpack for a few minutes in this short message how hope is produced by God's strategy, you won't think I'm naive about these kinds of moments when you can't read the Bible. Because I'm going to make a big deal out of the Bible. I'm going to make a big deal out of the Word of God because Paul makes a big deal out of it, and yet I don't want you to think it's kind of mechanical like, oh, have a little problem with hope. Open your Bible, read it, fix it, close the Bible on your way. That doesn't work when you've gotten pneumonia and you're going to die in three hours. Here's the way I'm thinking. For almost every one of you, for almost every one of you, God in your life provides seasons of relief and seasons of suffering. That's not a mistake. There's a reason for both. They both have a function. We would just pray in downstairs. And the thought came into my mind of Psalm 119 verse 71. It was good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn by statutes. That's the way David talked about his afflictions. So there are seasons of relief and there are seasons of suffering. They're not portioned out evenly. Some have what seems like a way to big share of suffering and some who are wicked people have what seems like a way to big share of relief. And yet everybody has both. And God means for us to use the seasons of relief to prepare for the seasons of suffering. So when you hear me talking now about how does God produce hope, I'm not having a naive notion that all this could be packed in under the covers with a fever while you're shivering, trying not to throw up. That's not the point. The point is I feel pretty good today. What am I going to do with it? So there are six steps and we're going to move very quickly through these because I've already preached one of my two sermons. Six steps for God's method of awakening hope in you. Number one, God himself is step one, identified as the God of hope, verse 13. May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. It all originates with God. If you are going to have any hope in the glory of God based on the person of Christ, then it will have to be founded on God. That's step number one, the God of hope. Number two, the God of hope speaks words of promise. So move from God of hope to words of promise. There are four of them in this text. In verse nine, in the middle, the line of text begins with the words as it is written, and then he quotes Psalm 118, verse 49, "Therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles." Remember, he has just said Christ came into the world as a Jew to serve the Jews so that the Gentiles would be included and would glorify God for his mercy, and now he's giving Old Testament texts, all of them referring to Gentile, Gentile, Gentile, Gentile, Gentile, so that we, non-Jews, would know we're included in the plan of the Messiah to save. So the first one is Psalm 18, 49, in verse 9. The next one is a quotation from Deuteronomy 32, 43, in verse 10, "Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people." The next one is in verse 11, and he quotes Psalm 117, verse 1, "Praise the Lord all you Gentiles, and let all the people extol him." And the last one is Isaiah 11, 10, quoted in verse 12, "The root of Jesse will come even he who arises to rule the Gentiles and him with the Gentiles hope." Now the main point there, oh, there's so many details I would love to take time, but I won't. The main point is that this is scripture. Here is Paul in his mind, and he's got the inspired mind from God, on his way to verse 13. That's where he's going. And at verse 13, he's going to reach up, take hold of the God of hope, and pull him down in power by prayer to create hope in the church. Now if you were on your way to do that for somebody, if you were on your way to take hold of the God of hope, the God of power, to pull him down and produce hope in the church, what would you do on the way there? Paul quotes Bible. Bible, Bible, Bible, Bible. Four times he quotes Bible. Why does he do this? First step, God of hope, second step, the God of hope speaks words of promise for Gentiles, and Paul catalogs four of them for Gentiles who are about to be prayed for. Very significant in how God produces hope. The word of God is essential. If you pull out verses 9 to 12 and just skip over them and say, "Let's just pray. Let's just pray that God will produce hope in this church." And don't give them Bible, Bible, Bible. You're doing something the Bible doesn't do. That's not the way hope gets produced. Hope gets produced through the word. So step number three. First, God of hope, second word of promise, third spirit of power. Verse 13, "May the God of hope fill you with joy and peace in believing so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope." I hope you believe what I'm about to say. If in this room your heart hopes for the glory of God, the new heavens, the new earth, a new body free from pain, free from sin, loving Jesus forever based on the cross alone, if that's your hope, you didn't create it. I hope you believe that. The Holy Spirit produced it and you experienced it by the power of the Holy Spirit we abound in hope. Now why do I say that? Sweepingly. It's because the whole biblical truth is this. We are born rebels against God, depraved sinners. We come into the world with our little hand, clinched against hoping in God. You know what the essence of our fallenness is, the essence of our sin and our depravity, the essence is self-exalting, self-reliant, self-determination. That's the essence of it. I'll say it again. The essence of John Piper's native rebellious nature, what I am, apart from grace, apart from the Spirit of God, apart from the cross, what I am, what you are, and what we have been from day one is self-exalting, self-reliant, self-determination. That's the essence of my sin. Therefore I'm not going to hope in God and grace. I'm going to hope in me. Thank you. My financial savvy, my intellectual savvy, my looks maybe, my brawn maybe, whatever it is, whatever God has fitted me out to do by nature, I'm going to make that my boast. And that's who we are. And therefore if there's going to be hope in God like a little child, unless you turn to me, come like a little child and hope in mommy and daddy to carry you in the stroller to heaven. Unless there's the Holy Spirit to do that, it won't happen. So the third step on our way to hope is the work of the Holy Spirit producing new birth. So first, the God of hope, second, word of promise, now third, the Spirit of power. Do you notice something in common of all those three different from the next three I'm going to say? Well, I haven't said the next three, so you don't know what I'm going to say. But I'll bet if we did a little test here, you'd get them all just from the text because they're all right there in verse 13. These three so far are objective realities outside of me, God, word, Spirit. I don't shape them, I don't make them, I don't create them. They shape me, they make me, they determine me. If I don't exist, they exist just fine. There's so much of religious life in modern western culture that is totally subjective. Doesn't have any objective realities that it deals with outside itself at all. Whatever goes on in here is reality. I'm saying there are three massive realities that we deal with. God, word, Spirit, they're there, absolute, whether I'm there or not. Now here come the next three and all the next three are experiential. They are in here. Number four, step number four, I'm going to use one word, faith. And I use the one word simply because Paul seems to say it so simply in verse 13. He says, May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace. Here it is, in believing. The God of hope works joy and peace in by through believing. So here's the key question. How does the Holy Spirit, step three, connect us to the word of promise, step two, so that it produces a bounding hope, joy, peace? And the answer is, the Holy Spirit creates faith in the promises. I have a picture in my mind. See if I can put it in the air for you. Here's my heart before Christ, before the Holy Spirit, dead spiritually, Ephesians 2, 5, 1 Corinthians 13, 2, 13, Romans 8, 7. I'm dead. I don't love God. I don't have a spiritual whimper for him. I'm callous, cold, disinterested in religion, unless it's my own self-exalting religion. And that's me. And here comes by the providence of God, a Billy Graham television show or a show on the radio or a track I pick up on a bus seat or somebody gives me a Bible or takes me to church or I remember something Mama said one time, a word, a word of promise confronts me. Now what happens here? One answer is, nothing. And I go to hell. Another answer is that the Holy Spirit comes and he takes this dead heart and he says, live, just like the bones in Ezekiel or just like Lazarus in the tomb, Lazarus come forth. And what is the son of life in this heart? And it is that it sees truth and beauty in the Christ of these promises and it is drawn out in what do we call this? Faith. That's the way we get saved. You're going along in your life just fine. You have no interest whatsoever or you're using religion as part of your self-justification. And then God in his mercy comes to you, breaks your heart that you've been treating this word so badly all your life and sinning so much. Your moral self-righteousness or your lechery and he opens your eyes to see Christ in the Word as true and beautiful and compelling and desiring and you are drawn out to connect, to close with, to join with, to receive all those are words for faith, aren't they? As many as received him to them gave you power to come, the children of God. We receive him and that's called faith. So faith is the spirit wrought channel, conduit by which the joy producing, peace producing, hope producing, power of the word comes to your heart and produces those things. How does that connection happen? It happens by the Holy Spirit and it's called believing. So you see the important connection, don't you, between step two and step four, word of promise and faith wrought by the Holy Spirit in the connection. Now number five, very briefly. Step five, in this believing there is an awakening in the hearts of joy and peace. May the God of hope, verse 13, may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing. The word of promise becomes joy producing and the word of promise becomes peace producing in believing and believing comes from the power of the Holy Spirit. Step six and finally, a bounding in hope. And I said this was surprising last time because you've got hope at the front of verse, God of hope doing all this and then you've got hope at the back of the verse. Let's read it. Verse 13, may the God of hope, there's hope at the front end, it looks like it's part of the cause, may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. How's that work? It looks like hope is both cause and result of joy and peace in believing. Can it be both? Can hope in the word of promise, verses 9 to 12? Yes. The root of Jesse is coming. My king will rule the Gentiles. The Gentiles will hope in him. Yes, I hope in him. So you've got word of promise and out of that word of promise, hope is rising in my heart as a Gentile. I'm included. I'm included. Therefore joy is abounding and peace is rising. So it looks like hope is the cause and the foundation of joy and peace. And it is. It is. I could show numerous texts where that's the case as well as God of hope preceding it here. But then he says, so that, so that you may abound in hope. May peace and joy rise up in your heart in believing so that you may abound in hope. Here's my effort to understand this and experience it. The fullness of hope never in this life. I don't think ever in the life to come. It reaches a limit. It can always grow. It can always abound more and more. And Paul is pointing out, listen to this very carefully because I'm almost done. Paul is pointing out that one of the ways that hope grows and abounds is by feeding on its own fruit goes like this. By the virtue and the power of the Holy Spirit, the God of hope awakens you to see the beauty and the truth and the compelling value of Christ in the word of promise. As you connect with it by faith, joy and peace rise up. I'm saved. My sins are forgiven. I'm included with the people of God. I'm going home when I die. I can have a meaningful life here. I can serve. I'm saved. Hope was the ground of that. But now hope looks at that. Hope looks at joy and peace as evidences of my new birth. And when hope sees that I have increasing evidences that I am truly born again, hope is yes, yes, you're real, unreal, and it grows more and more. And as hope grows more and more, joy and more peace abound, which are increasing evidences that I am really Christ's and really born again and hope sees the evidence's feeds off its own fruit and grows more and more. And frankly, my own take on heaven is that happens forever. And there's no limit to how much joy you can have and how much hope you can have. The graces of God continue abounding more and more forever and ever. So, Bethlehem, in this Advent season, my pastoral exhortation to us is that we will give ourselves to the word of promise. That's the one thing that we can take in our hands. I can't take God in my hands. I can't take the Holy Spirit in my hands. I can't take faith in my hands. I can't take joy, peace, or hope in my hands. But this I can take in my hand and I can open it. And I can give myself to this. I can put myself in verses 9 to 12. And then I can say with the apostle, O God of hope, buy your Holy Spirit now as I read and meditate on you, O Bethlehem, are too little to be among the clans of Judah, for you from you shall come forth. One who for me shall be a ruler in Israel. His origin is from of old. When I meditate on these things, would you open my eyes that I may see the beauty, the power, the truth, the value, and thus seeing there? Would you quicken hope and joy and peace and quickening these? Would you grant me to abound with more and more graces? You can do that. Let's pray. O Father in Heaven, make us, I pray, a people of this book. It is so precious. The word of promise, four of them in verses 9 to 12, to model for us how to move into prayer for ourselves and our family and our church and our nation. Put Bible in your heart, put Bible in your heart, and then pray the God of hope to ignite it. Put the kindling on the fireplace so that when the fire falls, there'll be something to burn. Thank you, Lord, for Bethlehem. Thank you for Advent and all that Christmas means to us. Thank you for your holy word. In Jesus' name. Amen. 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, 55-406. Desiring God exists to help you make God your treasure, because God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.
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