Kennystix's podcast
Abhor What Is Evil; Hold Fast to What Is Good
The following message is by Pastor John Piper. More information from Desiring God Ministries is available at www.desiringgod.org. Let's pray together. Gracious Father, we have in these services sung great and glorious things about you and your son and his coming and his lordship and his saving. And I want to so preach now in a way that honors Christ. I want Christ to be exalted. So would you show us in our hearts and in our minds tonight in a very deep and compelling and self-authenticating way that Jesus Christ is the greatest good in the universe. He is an objective good and he is good for us. He is the best thing, the best person, the best beauty, the best truth, the best reality there is. Come. Display Christ as we continue in worship over your word, I pray, in his name. Amen. It is a wonderful thing that if you know the word and simply believe and teach to yourself and your children the simple, straightforward sentences of the Bible, you will spare yourself hundreds of follies in every generation. If you just take simple sentences of the Bible, believe them and build them into yourself and your family or friends, you and they will be spared so many detours, so many rabbit trails. And what is so remarkable about this, the reason it hits me the way it does is that for this to happen, for this kind of liberation of your life in every generation to happen, you do not need to be an expert in the latest philosophical fad or the latest psychological angle on behavior or the latest trend in morality. You don't need to become an expert on all the contemporary challenges and thus figure them out and then avoid them or join them. All you need to do is read and apply some really simple, straightforward sentences in the Bible. So ordinary Christians, I'm arguing, if they just read their Bibles, meditate on their Bibles, teach their Bibles to their kids, apply their Bibles to their friends with simple, straightforward sentences in the Bible, they will be spared many trendy detours that sound so up to date and so compelling and like everybody is getting on the bandwagon and lead to death for many people. And I find this so encouraging because if I had to figure out every new fad that came along in every academic sphere or all morality or all entertainment or all media or all academia so that I could posture myself appropriately with regard to each one, I just go under. There's no way you can't keep up with all the error in the world. So how do you live your life? There ought to be some Christians who keep up. That's why there ought to be Christian colleges and universities and book writers and scholars that will be keeping up, that will be reading, that will be responding, writing books, writing articles, but the vast majority of Christians have to have another way, we can't do that. And I'm saying it is wonderful that if you take the simple, straightforward, everybody can understand these sentences and believe them and teach them, you will build into your mind and the mind of your loved ones, especially your kids I'm thinking about, a vision of reality, a world view that frees them from a thousand errors they never had to get to know. Let me kind of illustrate that now with this message. Here we are at verse 9 in chapter 12. We looked at the first half of the verse last time and we're going to look at the second half of the verse this time. So let's read the whole verse. Let love be genuine, this is Romans 12.9, let love be genuine, that's what we talked about last week. Abhor what is evil, hold fast to what is good. So now my point is that if you think, pray and obey your way down into that phrase, Abhor what is evil, hold fast to what is good, you will be liberated from a hundred follies, dead end streets, detours, poisons of every age that comes along. So let's do that together tonight. Let's sink our minds down into this phrase. I have five observations. And let me stop here and say again, the great thing about being an ordinary Christian is that you don't have to be an expository preacher in order to benefit from sentences like this. I think my job, my job in this pulpit is not to do what you can't do, but to hasten it and deepen it. In other words, if you just took this verse and dwelt on it for a few minutes or let's just say, a lifetime, it would have an effect in your life that would be God's appointed effect. It would be wonderful if nobody exposited it for you. That's the way the word of God is. And so you might say, well, why do we need to come here and hear you then? Well, you don't have to. But I think God has ordained that there be a preaching ministry which simply ramps up or hastens that effect of the word and sends it deeper. And that's worth my job, I think. I wouldn't do it if I didn't think it was worth it. So let's go. I've got five observations. Number one, there is such a thing as objective good and objective evil outside of myself. That's first observation I see. When Paul says, abhor what is evil and hold fast and brace what is good, he's rejecting the notion that evil is defined by what I abhor. And he's rejecting the notion that good is defined by what I like and hold on to. He's rejecting that kind of subjectivity that makes me the definer of good. What I like is good. What I don't like is bad. He's rejecting that very clearly by saying abhore, bring your emotions into conformity to what's out there called evil. And so if you teach these verses or this verse right here to your children, they will absorb a worldview that says there is such a thing as evil and there is such a thing as good. And I promise you that will spare them a thousand tragedies. That's simple. I mean, you may not even think to say to your kid at any point, Jonathan, there is such a thing as good and there is such a thing as evil. You do not need to say that. That would be a good, profound philosophical thing to say. But that will be so clear if you just read this verse. Abhore the evil, hold fast to the good. You say that often enough to a kid over the years, the kid just absorbs. There's such a thing as evil. There's such a thing as good. That is massively important. In our day, that is massively important, so simple and so massively important. We call it a world view, right? You are building a world view into your children or yourself as you simply say and meditate upon biblical sentences like that. Evil is not what you want it to be. Good is not what you want it to be. Liking something doesn't make it good. Hating something doesn't make it evil. There is reality out there called good, called evil. You don't make it that way. Hugely important view of reality that is woven into the Bible and so a simple mom and a simple dad reading this truth over and over again to the family will build a world view that will be so helpful for the living of your life. Now I see this in the phrase, abhore what is evil, hold fast to what is good. In other words, evil doesn't change and good doesn't change. We change. He's talking to my heart here. He's saying, Piper heart, if you like what is evil, change. Abhore it. And if you don't like what is good, change. Cleave to it. You see what he's doing? He's saying, you, you are the subject. This is the object. It's out there. It doesn't change. Get yourself changed into conformity with that. That's a world view. Millions of people in America do not embrace. Oh, if you don't embrace that, you can't make any sense out of the Bible, out of reality, out of good and evil. And now let's ask this. What makes good, good? Or ask it another way. How does it come about that there is such a thing as good out there, objective? You said, that's good. I don't like it or that's good. I like it. It's there. It doesn't change. My likes don't affect it. It's there. It's good or evil. Where did it come from? Now this verse does not tell us that, but you don't have to look far. Verse two, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. See, we're the ones who get changed. Reality is reality. We have to adjust to God and reality. We don't create it. Make it that by testing, I'm in the middle of verse two, that by testing, you may discern what is the will of God. What is good? There it is. So that's where I'm going to get my answer to the question. How does it come about that there is such a thing as objective good that I should conform to? And if I don't like it, I got to change. It doesn't change. How do I get that idea? Answer. I get it right there. There is such a reality as good because there's such a reality as the will of God. Or this would boil down, be real simple, real profound, real earth-chaking. There is such a thing as objective good outside of me because there is such a thing as God outside of me. God is the ground. God is the foundation. God is the definition of all that is objectively true and beautiful and good. Therefore, he defines the opposite as well. You see the massiveness of this worldview by just reading ab-hor what is evil cleave to what is good. The reason there is such a thing objectively out there to cleave to an evil out there to reject is because there's an objective absolute reality called God and he's the great definer. He's the great creator. He makes things to be the way they are. We conform or perish. There's no point in arguing with this God. There's no point in fighting with this God. You can either conform to him in reality or you perish. Period. There's no negotiation. Americans are like that. We like democracy. Let's all get together and decide who should be God here. It won't ever work that way. He's God. Absolutely. Therefore, there is good and there is evil. Absolutely. If there were no God, no self revelation of God in Jesus Christ, no Bible to display the Christ who is the God. Truth would be subjective, not objective. That means I, the subject, would make it. What I like, good. What I don't like, bad. And we would all be kings in our little sovereign realm, which is called anarchy. Everyone doing what is right in his own eyes. And guess what happens? Might makes right when there's no objective standard. You think this worldview is important or not? This means, listen very carefully now, this means that the simplest peasant in Russia or the simplest Jew in Germany or the simplest slave in Georgia or the simplest Christian prisoner in Rome can say to the most powerful Stalin, the most powerful Hitler, the most powerful plantation owner, the most powerful Caesar. Excuse me. No, sir. This is wrong. Your power does not make it right. There is a God above you and there is a right and a wrong outside of you and your might does not make this right. No, sir. No, sir. This is massively important. This is just massively important to get it right in America where people are just making light of truth, making right of good, making light of the beautiful as though anything I want it to be. That's the precursor to Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Paul Pot, Milosevic Hussein. You want that? Go ahead. Play games with truth. When there's not an objective standard out there rooted in God, the might will make the right sooner or later and there will be no recourse because you've said it yourself. Whatever you want to be is true. And if you're stronger than me, your truth wins. Oh, don't play that game. You don't want to go there no matter how many university professors think it is cool to be a relativist or a postmodernist. I promise you, you don't want your children to go there. That's observation number one. When you simply read this sentence to your children a hundred times in their youth, you give them a massively important worldview that could save their nation and their souls. Observation number two. Choosing against evil and for good is not enough. Inner intensity is required. Choosing good is not enough. Inner intensity is required. Some of you have personalities that are just putting up your defenses really fast here because you're not wired that way and you're going to hear me coming on and saying, "I'm going to be that way." And that's offensive to you. Well, I just asked that you listen and look here. Paul says, "Abhor, what is evil? Hold fast to what is good." He did not say, "choose against the evil and choose." These words are very, very strong. "Loth" is another good translation of apostaguentes, "Abhor." "Be disgusted with" is another good translation from L'Adele and Scott's lexicon. The other one, "Hold fast to the good" means "embrace it." It's used in 1 Corinthians 6, 16 for sexual intercourse. Be united with the good. Get on the good. Love the good. Hang on to the good. Embrace the good. Cherish the good. Have sex with the good. That's the idea. So I draw the conclusion. God is not mainly interested in willpower religion. As we saw this last time, God is not mainly interested in an external morality by which we screw up our willpower and choose right behaviors, which we don't like. That's not Christianity. Christianity is a change of the heart with regard to evil and it's a change of the heart with regard to the good. Christianity moves from the inside out. Its alternative is called from last week. What? That's a complicated question, isn't it? Hypocrisy. The alternative to changing from the inside out is hypocrisy. And he starts this first by saying, "Let's have our love be non-hypocritical, genuine, and now he's boring in. He's boring in to how that can be, and it can be if we don't just choose, but abhor. And we don't just choose, but embrace." So my second observation is choosing the right is not good enough. We must be changed deeply so that we abhor evil and love the good. Christianity is not set of behaviors. It's a transformed heart. Number three, observation number three. The Bible commands that our emotions be changed even though we don't have immediate control over them. The Bible commands that our emotions, affections, be changed even though we don't have immediate control over them. If you like what is evil, I mean it really feels good, and you've been doing it a long time, and along comes somebody and says, "Awhore that. You can't make that happen." You can't just snap your face and say, "Oh, it's bad. I'll abhor it." You've been liking this thing in a long time. You do not have in your immediate power to snap your finger and change a love affair with evil into abhorring of evil. That does not happen without God. Paul says, "Abhore what is evil. Hold fast to what is good, and in that he is commanding the emotions to be one way and not another way." Don't ever fall into the mistake of saying, "God can't command the emotions. He can only command behavior and will." The Bible commands the emotions all over the place. God has requirements for our emotions, whether we can control them immediately or not. He commands not only that we choose the good, but that we love the good, not only that we reject the evil, but that we reject it with intensity and abhorrence and disgust and loathing. How are you doing? I mean, this, I am the book that I wrote when I don't desire God. The more I think about that book and what's in it, the more important it becomes to me because it's all about the inner life and how you get it changed because it's not changeable in our real power. You can't just snap your finger and get yourself fixed. If you like what is evil and you go out here tonight and like what is evil, you've got to have a way. What can I do? What can I do? So I ask myself here, "What if your heart is in such a condition that you love evil and hate good? How you can obey the command to hate the good if you love the good?" And the answer is you must be born again. That which is born of the flesh loves the things of the flesh and that which is born of the Spirit loves the things of the Spirit. John 3, Romans 8, 1 Corinthians 2, if we had time. Here's the second thing. Rather, it's the same thing said another way. I'm asking the question, "What must happen if you're here to tonight, this morning? What must happen if you love the evil and hate the good and you're told, abhor the evil and cleave to the good and you're feeling helpless? What must happen?" The second way to say it besides the new birth is the new covenant promised in the prophets must happen and it was bought for us for you, if you would have it, by the blood of Christ. This is the new covenant in my blood. He holds up the cup which is in his blood. He says, "This is the new covenant. When my blood is spilled, new covenant reality is purchased." Well, what is that? What is the new covenant? And I'll just read you one of the many Old Testament promises. God says in Ezekiel 36, 26, "I will give you a new heart and I will put a new Spirit within you." That's got to happen. You can't make it happen. God's got to make it happen. I will put a new heart within you that loves the good and hates the evil. I'll put that in you. I'll write it on your heart. It won't be merely external on stone coming at you, damning you anymore. It'll grow from inside of you because I'm going to give you a new heart and a new Spirit. What can you do? Very interestingly, just a few verses after that one. That was verse 26 in Ezekiel 36, five verses later it says, "Get yourself a new heart." Get yourself a new heart. So God gives the new heart. Get yourself a new heart. I put those together and I say, "Okay, what it means is right now, you can do this right now where you're sitting." You can say, "I spare of all self-change." I just can't make myself new. A leopard cannot change his spot. I can't make myself love what I don't love. That's a good place to start. Really good place to start. You just despair of self-change and then in your self-dispiring, you cry out for mercy to God for the miracle of the new birth. And you look away from yourself as you find faith rising in your heart in Christ crucified and risen to cover all your sins and give you a new life. You look away to Christ and you embrace Him. And if you embrace Jesus, you knew because you wouldn't have if you weren't. It's a miracle to embrace Jesus as your Savior and Lord and the treasure of your life. I don't mean it happens overnight. Please don't elevate the stakes higher than they should be. I don't mean you can walk out of here, hate and everything you came in loving and loving everything you came in hating. It's a process, right? I've been fighting this thing for 52 years. I'm 58. I've been fighting this thing for 52 years and it's a war to the grave. It's a war to the grave to love what you should love and hate what you should hate. Believe me, you will not arrive tomorrow unless you die. Then you arrive tomorrow, which is okay to die's gain. But if you live, you fight. And you see some progress. You see some backsliding. But that's your fighting, is evidence of life. That's observation number three. Here's number four. To sum three up again, God isn't interested just in choosing evil, wants you to abhor it, not just choosing the good. I said and say that right. Not choosing evil, abhor it, choosing good, embrace it. Objective four, objective moral good is good for us. And objective moral evil is bad for us. Now, that may seem obvious to you. It's not obvious at all to a lot of people. A lot of people say, yep, that's good. And if I did that, my life would be ruined. Like don't commit fornication or don't divorce. If I did that, my life would be absolutely hell. So the good is not good for me. A lot of people believe that. Well, where do I get that idea? I get it from the connection between the first half of the verse and the second because he says, let love be genuine. And then in the original, there's no new sentence here. It's just a part of simple. Let love be genuine at whoring what is evil, holding fast what is good. And they're so closely connected. Let love be genuine at whoring what is evil and holding fast what is good. Now, wouldn't you all agree that love does what's good for people? I just think that's a common denominator that everybody would agree with. When you love somebody, you do what's good for them. I mean, really good for them. Not just what they think is good for them, really good for them. And if that's true, then when he says love genuinely abhor the evil, he must mean the evil is bad for people and cleave to the good. It's good for people because I just told you to love people this way. And he wouldn't say that if it was bad for people to embrace the good or good for people to embrace the bad. It's pretty plain, I think, that the great good, the great good is good for people and the greatest good is Christ. Isn't it? Let's just be Christian for a moment here. I'm so eager that this sermon not be mere morality. Jews can do it, Hindus can do it, Muslims can do it, Buddhists can do it, Christians can do it, and we've all just done it. That's not a Christian sermon. What's the greatest good that we're to embrace? My answer to that is Christ, the God-man, the Advent-focused God-man. He is our good, and so you can see, don't you, that the good is good for us? Christ as the good combines good for us in Christ, the good, and the good for us come together like no other place. Christ is good, and He's good for us. Other things are good for us indirectly. I think this is really important. All the goods in the world, all the things you can identify as good that are not Christ are good indirectly for you, good for you indirectly. If they lead you to Christ, if they compete with Christ, if they distract you from Christ, if they diminish your delight in Christ, if they obscure your display of Christ, they are not good for you. Therefore, all goods in the world are indirectly good for you. If they lead you to Christ, there is one good that is directly good for you, and that is Christ. He leads you nowhere. He's the end of the quest. When you arrive at Jesus, you don't say, "Where can we find something good to do?" He is the good. You've come to the end when you've come to Christ, and all other things are pointing to Him. He alone is good directly and supremely. So that's number four, and it leads to number five. Number four was objective good is good for you, because it's the will of God, and it's ultimately Christ. Lastly, number five, genuine love must hate. Genuine love must hate in order to be loved. If there were a universe in which there was no evil hurting people and dishonoring God, that statement would be false. In fact, there would be no such thing as hate in such a universe. It would not exist. There would be nothing to hate. We do not live in that universe. Paul says, "Let love be genuine, comma, abhorring what is evil. Let love be genuine, abhorring, love abhorring, love abhorring." One commentator I read, defined, abhorring as an intense inward rejection. That's good. It's rejection, it's inward, and it's intense. That's called abhorring. And the point here is, my point is that in this world, fallen world where there's evil hurting people and dishonoring God, you've got to hate that, or you can't love people. You cannot be a wishy, washy, lovey, dubby, greasy, relational, non-hating anything person and be a loving person. A lot of people have that notion that love is always smooth, love is always easy, love is always gentle, love doesn't speak in negatives, love doesn't get on any case, love is just so soft and warm. No way. Not in this world. If you don't hate anything in this world, you can't possibly love because things are killing people. Things are destroying people. Things are dishonoring God. If you can't hate, you can't love. Love has hate in it. If love is the doing of good for people, love is the hating of a destroyed people. We're not, we're not light around here about abortion, for example. Come back in January, and I'll talk about that some more. And I know that there are complexities in life. But once you decide what really hurts people, you hate it. And once you decide what dishonors God, you hate it. One last caution, don't make the mistake as you sit there thinking about your life and what you love. Don't make the mistake of saying, "I like a few evils, but they only hurt me, and so I'm not unloving to like them." What do you think about that? I like a few evils, but this is private. I'm not hurting anybody else with my favorite evils. It's just me, and so I'm not under the indictment of being an unloving person. That is, stated clearly, false, absolutely and totally false. The only reason it would commend itself to you is that you don't understand the nature of good and the nature of love this way. You were made to display the worth of Christ to others. Every human being was. You were made to display first to enjoy the worth of Christ. Counting everything is lost compared to him. And then to display mouth, body, display Christ and his beauty and his worth to others. Therefore, anything in private that you cleave to, that corrupts your enjoyment of him, or obscures your display of him is unloving to other people even though they know nothing about it. Christianity is not a game. It's all about what you do when you go home tonight when nobody's watching. And I don't just mean because God is a giant Santa Claus. Right down, well, it's good and bad. It's because love means displaying the highest good for people to enjoy with the unique personality and life that God has given you. And when you say my private sins, my private love affair with evil is ticking skin off. Nobody knows. If you don't understand love, you were made to become holy, beautiful with Christ spilling over and every private love affair with sin diminishes your enjoyment of Christ and obscures your display of Christ. And is that unloving? Or what? It's because Christ is at the center. Why conclude? This is Christmastime. And we're thinking about gifts. And I just want to say in closing, remember that one of the greatest gifts to yourself, to children, to the people you love is to speak simple, biblical sentences such that they explode with a worldview that changes everything. What is in this sentence? Abhor, what is evil and cleave to what is good is a world of truth. A world view of how to approach life. Oh, what a world of precious truth there is in these words. And the sum of truth and the sum of good and the triumph over evil is Christ himself. So this Advent season, hold fast to Christ, hold fast to Christ, and abhor everything that dishonors him. Let's pray. Father, I ask that you would now do in the hearts of those who've been watching and listening. Lord, please come and sow yourself powerful to change our hearts by drawing us out of ourselves, fixing our affections on Jesus who loved us and gave himself for us, and liberating us from our love affair with the evil and awakening the embrace of all that is good above all Christ. In his name, I pray. Amen. Thank you for listening to this message by John Piper, pastor for preaching at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota. 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There is such a thing as objective good and evil outside ourselves.