Becoming Unshakable in a World of Pain

00:00:00.000 | Welcome back. On Monday we looked at whether or not life has morally neutral areas, those

00:00:10.040 | gray areas, areas in life where we make decisions that are not necessarily sinful or holy. And

00:00:16.560 | in that first episode of the week, ABJ 1846, Pastor John defines sin for us. He defines

00:00:21.960 | sin with Romans 3.23, saying, "Sin is first the disposition of the human heart to prefer

00:00:28.500 | human glory, especially self-glory, over God's glory." We exchange God's glory for something

00:00:38.080 | we prefer more. We sin by exchanging the glory of God with another glory. That's verse 23.

00:00:47.200 | Then verse 24 gives the solution to the sin that we must be "justified by His grace as

00:00:52.880 | a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus." That's Romans 3.24. This pair of glorious

00:01:02.040 | verses, Romans 3.23, Romans 3.24, one verse defining sin, the other defining God's response

00:01:08.520 | to that sin, holds the key to how we become unshakable people in this world. Those verses

00:01:17.340 | are, according to Pastor John, more important than 10,000 books written by man to help you

00:01:23.900 | solve your problems. So much so, Pastor John says, if you build your life on these two

00:01:30.040 | verses, make them the foundation of your life, you will be strong and stable in a hundred

00:01:34.820 | crises of life. That's the bold testimony of John Piper, who makes those very claims

00:01:40.680 | in today's sermon clip, a clip from a 1999 sermon. Here's Pastor John to explain.

00:01:47.260 | Verse 23 describes the universal need of every human being, and verse 24 gives the all-sufficient

00:01:56.040 | remedy for that need. These two verses are more important than 10,000 books written by

00:02:04.380 | man about how to solve your problems and make your future better. These are the words of

00:02:11.420 | God through the Apostle Paul, and they tell us about our true condition, and they tell

00:02:18.700 | us about what God has done to remedy that condition. If you will build your life on

00:02:26.940 | these two verses, if you will make them the foundation of your life, you will be strong

00:02:33.140 | and stable in a hundred crises. If you will put these verses and the truth of them at

00:02:40.020 | the center of your life, like the sun at the center of the planets of the solar system

00:02:49.300 | of your life, then this truth will hold the orbiting planets of all the concerns and aspects

00:02:58.860 | of your life in place. But if you allow this truth of Romans 3, 23 and 24 to begin to marginalize

00:03:09.440 | and slip out to the rim, say where Neptune and Pluto are out there, you know what would

00:03:15.920 | happen if the sun moved from the center to the periphery of the solar system. Everything

00:03:23.860 | would be destroyed. Everything would be in chaos. Everything would be confusion and perplexity

00:03:30.540 | and weakness, which is why so many professing Christians coast and amble through life, wondering

00:03:38.620 | why their lives are so strangely perplexed, so out of sync and out of kilter and out of

00:03:46.860 | order and nothing seems to be working right. It's because the truth of this magnificent

00:03:55.140 | gospel that I'm going to try to articulate is not at the center anymore. It's not the

00:04:01.980 | sun that's holding everything in place. It doesn't have the weight of gravity to pull

00:04:09.820 | all things. Something else is at the center. You should be asking yourself right now, what's

00:04:17.940 | that in my life? Something really grips me in my life. Something I come back to again

00:04:27.660 | and again and again. I go there in the morning and I go there at noon and I go there at night

00:04:36.060 | and it pulls on me. What is it? Verse 23 says that the universal need in the world of every

00:04:49.580 | person has to do with sin. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. No exceptions.

00:05:04.340 | There's no distinction. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. We saw that

00:05:11.500 | from verse 18 of chapter 1 to verse 20 of chapter 3. And now he tells us a little something

00:05:20.180 | about this condition by saying, if you've sinned, your present condition is that you

00:05:28.020 | are now falling short of the glory of God. Literally, the word is, you are now lacking

00:05:35.940 | the glory of God. What does that mean? All have sinned and are lacking the glory of God.

00:05:47.180 | Does that mean that we were supposed to be as glorious as God and we fell short and didn't

00:05:55.340 | arrive at that divine glory and so we have fallen short? I don't think that's what it

00:06:03.820 | means. You were designed to be as glorious as God. The best way to put meat on the bones

00:06:10.220 | of this simple verse is to go back to Romans 1 and look at the discussion of glory in the

00:06:16.660 | context of sin and see what a lacking might mean in Romans. So if you notice in Romans

00:06:26.220 | 1 verse 18, Paul said, they are suppressing the truth in unrighteousness. Everybody in

00:06:35.580 | the world is a truth suppressor until God gets a hold of us. We suppress the truth in

00:06:43.260 | our sin, in our unrighteousness. And then look at verse 23. They exchanged the glory

00:06:52.380 | of God, of the incorruptible God, for an image. In verse 28, they disapproved of having God

00:07:04.380 | in their knowledge. That's a literal translation. They disapproved of having God in their knowledge.

00:07:12.540 | So the picture you get is that sin is a failure to embrace the glory of God and God Himself

00:07:22.340 | as our highest treasure and make Him the center and foundation and supreme value of our lives.

00:07:31.940 | And thus to exchange that glory for some other treasure in this world and thus lack that

00:07:43.100 | glory as our treasure and thus bring great dishonor upon God. That's what sin is and

00:07:52.940 | does. Sin is mainly about God. It's not mainly about hurting people. Sin hurts people. Sin

00:08:03.220 | hurts people. It'll hurt you in the end. But it's not mainly about hurting people. It's

00:08:09.460 | mainly about God and trading, bartering, throwing away His supreme value and glory in order

00:08:23.460 | that we might put something else at the center and in the bank and in the treasury of our

00:08:28.340 | lives that we love and we lean on and we find satisfaction in. And thus He is belittled

00:08:38.460 | and despised, sometimes wittingly and sometimes unwittingly, with the same effect in both

00:08:48.020 | cases. Now that's a great guilt. That's a great guilt. The reason it's a great guilt

00:08:56.420 | is because God created this universe, the whole universe, to display His glory so that

00:09:05.180 | we might see it and value it and love it and enjoy it and reflect it in the world. That's

00:09:16.420 | why the universe and you were created. It should not, therefore, be surprising to us

00:09:25.580 | that the world will go haywire when the world is in rebellion against the design of the

00:09:36.580 | world. If God designed the world, according to Isaiah 43, 7, to display His glory and

00:09:46.900 | you are choosing to dispense with His glory, to put something else at the center of your

00:09:54.260 | life and love it and live for it and think about it and dwell on it and value it, it's

00:10:00.380 | not surprising that the design of God for a beautiful, holistic world would be destroyed

00:10:06.980 | in your life. There is dysfunction and chaos and misery all over the world because the

00:10:17.460 | whole world is in rebellion against valuing the glory of God above all things. That's

00:10:24.740 | why the world and your life is in the condition that it's in. Sin is contemplating God as

00:10:37.060 | the supreme value and rejecting Him as the supreme value and thus exchanging the glory

00:10:45.540 | of God for some kind of substitute image. Think of what it is. And thus lacking the

00:10:55.540 | glory and thus dishonoring the glory of God. And that is a great guilt. And that's the

00:11:05.820 | universal condition of humankind in verse 23. It's a massive problem now that we have.

00:11:15.140 | And the problem is, since we've all done this, how can we get right with God when we

00:11:21.580 | have so belittled Him? And that's what verse 24 is about. This verse is so rich. A great

00:11:31.340 | turn has come in Romans in verse 21, "But now apart from the law, the righteousness

00:11:36.860 | of God has been manifested. Some great event has happened now." You hear that word now?

00:11:42.740 | But now, but now some great event has happened. And something new is happening in the world.

00:11:51.580 | No other religion, no other religion knows of this great now. Because it's the now of

00:12:04.140 | the arrival of Jesus Christ and the redemption that is in Him. So let's read verse 24. "Being

00:12:16.100 | justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus."

00:12:28.700 | Glorious truth, profound text, and high reminder. This clip was taken from John Piper's sermon

00:12:35.100 | titled "God's Free Gift of Righteousness Part 2," which was preached on May 16, 1999.

00:12:41.580 | Check it out on the site at DesiringGod.org. "God's Free Gift of Righteousness Part 2,"

00:12:47.140 | preached on May 16, 1999. If you have a sermon clip to share, email me. Give me your name,

00:12:53.420 | hometown, the sermon title, the timestamp of where the clip happens in the audio, and

00:12:56.980 | make a note of what stands out to you. Put the word "clip" in the subject line of an

00:13:01.180 | email and send it to me at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org. That's our email address, AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org.

00:13:11.340 | Well how do we learn to receive criticism from others? It's an important question. It's

00:13:17.020 | an important skill. And it's up next time. I'm your host, Tony Reinke, and we are rejoined

00:13:21.840 | again with Pastor John on Friday. We'll see you then.

00:13:25.020 | [END]

00:13:25.520 | 1. What is the most important gift you can give to someone? (A) The gift of forgiveness. (B) The gift of understanding. (C) The gift of mercy. (D) The gift of forgiveness. (E) The gift of forgiveness. (A=20points B=30points C=20points D=30points E=10points)

Becoming Unshakable in a World of Pain

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