What Does Piper Mean by ‘Satisfied’?
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | Welcome back on this Thursday.
00:00:05.800 | Well, if you were to sit down
00:00:07.400 | with John Piper's collected works,
00:00:09.160 | his 13 volume collected works,
00:00:12.320 | published back in 2017,
00:00:14.200 | and if you read the entire thing beginning to end,
00:00:17.080 | you'd come across the word satisfy or satisfied
00:00:20.160 | nearly 1500 times.
00:00:23.600 | Satisfy, satisfied, those loaded terms
00:00:27.720 | are all over those works,
00:00:29.360 | and they're all over your ministry, Pastor John,
00:00:31.400 | but we rarely, if ever, read a definition
00:00:34.200 | of what you mean by the term
00:00:36.400 | leading to Ralph's question today.
00:00:39.040 | Pastor John, hello to you.
00:00:40.020 | I thank God for your ministry in my life.
00:00:41.760 | I have read many of your books
00:00:43.240 | and listened to many of your messages,
00:00:45.200 | especially those on Christian hedonism.
00:00:47.440 | That idea revolutionized my relationship with the Lord.
00:00:52.440 | You have spoken about being satisfied in God
00:00:57.120 | thousands and thousands of times in your life,
00:01:00.000 | but I cannot find any reference in your works
00:01:01.880 | to where you have defined that term.
00:01:04.280 | To you, what does it mean to be satisfied?
00:01:09.280 | This is good for me to be pressed
00:01:14.000 | to ponder a term that I ordinarily use
00:01:18.720 | because I consider it self-explanatory.
00:01:21.920 | Sometimes those are the very terms
00:01:25.300 | that would be most fruitful to at least try
00:01:28.120 | to put into words or to relate to real life experiences
00:01:33.000 | so that we don't just speak with empty phrases.
00:01:35.880 | So thank you for the question.
00:01:37.520 | Yeah.
00:01:38.520 | I think the first thing to say is
00:01:41.500 | that it doesn't really matter very much
00:01:43.160 | what John Piper means by satisfaction,
00:01:46.480 | but it matters a lot.
00:01:48.600 | I mean, it's hard to exaggerate how much it matters
00:01:51.880 | what God means by it.
00:01:55.520 | When his inspired spokesman in the Bible used the word,
00:02:00.520 | for example, Psalm 90,
00:02:03.760 | satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love
00:02:06.980 | that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.
00:02:09.380 | Psalm 63, my soul will be satisfied in the Lord
00:02:15.280 | as with fat and rich food.
00:02:17.320 | Psalm 65, we shall be satisfied
00:02:21.720 | with the goodness of your house,
00:02:24.160 | the holiness of your temple.
00:02:26.260 | Psalm 103, the Lord satisfies you with good
00:02:30.280 | so that your youth is renewed like the eagles.
00:02:33.280 | Psalm 107, he satisfies the longing soul.
00:02:37.240 | Matthew 5, verse six,
00:02:40.560 | blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness
00:02:43.460 | for they shall be satisfied.
00:02:46.560 | Philippians 4, I have learned in whatever situation I am
00:02:51.020 | to be satisfied or content.
00:02:54.560 | I know how to abound and I know how to be in need satisfied.
00:02:59.560 | Hebrews 13, keep your life free from the love of money
00:03:05.040 | and be satisfied, be content with what you have
00:03:10.040 | for the Lord has promised never to leave you.
00:03:12.960 | So it's not so much what I think satisfaction is matters,
00:03:21.480 | but rather what do texts like these mean?
00:03:25.360 | What did God intend when he called us
00:03:28.640 | in all those passages and others to be satisfied?
00:03:33.640 | What kind of experience are we talking about?
00:03:37.000 | So let me try to get at what satisfaction in God
00:03:41.080 | or satisfaction in all that God is for us refers to.
00:03:47.940 | First, notice that the experience of satisfaction
00:03:52.940 | corresponds to desire and longing
00:03:59.140 | and yearning in the human heart.
00:04:02.120 | There would be no such thing as satisfaction
00:04:06.820 | if there were no such thing as desire.
00:04:09.360 | God created human beings as desire factories.
00:04:15.900 | Everybody has desires, longings, yearnings, wantings.
00:04:20.900 | God made us that way.
00:04:25.020 | And our problem as sinners is not that our desires
00:04:28.080 | are too strong, but that they are directed
00:04:30.660 | toward the wrong things.
00:04:32.360 | That's the essence of sin.
00:04:35.460 | That's the essence of evil.
00:04:37.820 | Jeremiah 2, 13, my people have committed two great evils.
00:04:42.820 | What is that?
00:04:44.860 | They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters.
00:04:49.540 | Number two, they have hewed out for themselves cisterns,
00:04:54.660 | broken cisterns that can hold no water.
00:04:57.820 | That's evil.
00:05:00.020 | Evil is to turn away from being satisfied
00:05:03.060 | with God as your fountain.
00:05:04.660 | All our desires are designed by God to be Godward desires,
00:05:12.060 | to move toward the fountain of living water.
00:05:15.100 | Even when we desire earthly things like food or friendship
00:05:19.900 | or praise or beauty, all these things are tastes
00:05:24.900 | of God's goodness and pointers to God
00:05:29.260 | as the final satisfaction.
00:05:30.980 | - Yes.
00:05:31.820 | - So the first thing I would say about the meaning
00:05:35.080 | of satisfaction in God is that it refers to the experience
00:05:39.540 | of having our desire, longing, yearning, wanting filled.
00:05:44.540 | And filled means not too little and not too much.
00:05:53.180 | Satisfaction in God is the experience where God is enjoyed
00:05:58.900 | as the perfect fullness that corresponds
00:06:03.940 | to the God-shaped desires of our hearts.
00:06:09.460 | Number two, sometimes I use the phrase all satisfying,
00:06:14.460 | like the all satisfying God.
00:06:18.100 | And by this, I mean that there are no desires
00:06:23.100 | which in the end, God will not purify
00:06:27.300 | and satisfy with himself.
00:06:30.300 | Even sinful desires have some vestige of legitimacy.
00:06:39.180 | And God will rescue that fragment of legitimacy
00:06:44.020 | and cleanse it of all that is destructive
00:06:49.100 | and fill it up in the age to come.
00:06:53.060 | When this sinful age is over and the kingdom has fully
00:06:58.060 | and manifestly come, there will be no unmet longings,
00:07:03.580 | no unfulfilled desires, no dis-satisfaction.
00:07:09.860 | Number three, there are many mysteries
00:07:14.860 | about what our experience will be like
00:07:18.700 | when we are totally perfected in the age to come.
00:07:22.180 | But for now, I want to stress that to say Jesus
00:07:27.180 | is all satisfying does not mean that when he becomes
00:07:34.300 | our satisfaction, our desiring ceases.
00:07:39.300 | That would be a mistake to say that our desiring ceases.
00:07:44.820 | Jesus says in John 6.35, "I am the bread of life.
00:07:49.820 | "Whoever comes to me shall not hunger
00:07:53.660 | "and whoever believes in me shall never thirst."
00:08:00.380 | Now, I don't think he means that when we are born again
00:08:05.380 | and receive him by faith, we never desire him again.
00:08:10.900 | - Right.
00:08:11.900 | - I don't think he means that.
00:08:13.460 | I think he means finding Jesus to be the bread
00:08:19.340 | and the water that our souls have always longed for
00:08:24.340 | means our quest is over.
00:08:27.620 | We no longer look for a better drink or a better food.
00:08:32.620 | We have found our all satisfying treasure.
00:08:38.060 | But in this sinful age, and I'm including myself now
00:08:44.180 | as a sinner, remaining corruption within me
00:08:48.420 | that needs mortifying in this sinful age
00:08:51.940 | where the heart of faith is always embattled
00:08:55.740 | and the heart of faith is always embattled.
00:08:58.980 | Our experience of the satisfaction of Christ
00:09:03.620 | will always be imperfect, fragmentary, ever-changing,
00:09:08.540 | renewable, greater and lesser.
00:09:12.660 | Christ remains who he is, right?
00:09:15.300 | He doesn't change.
00:09:16.420 | He remains who he is, all satisfying.
00:09:19.140 | And our new birth with new spiritual taste buds
00:09:24.860 | who know he is the all satisfying one
00:09:28.300 | remains attached to him.
00:09:31.940 | We don't lose him and then find him
00:09:33.780 | and lose him and then find him.
00:09:35.100 | He holds onto us.
00:09:37.780 | We do not run away after some new fountain or new bread.
00:09:42.780 | But for now, our experience is up and down.
00:09:48.700 | It won't be like that in the age to come.
00:09:51.900 | How desire and satisfaction will be related
00:09:56.900 | in the age to come, frankly, I can't answer that fully.
00:10:02.540 | Number four, and finally, and this is really important.
00:10:09.180 | The reality of love for other people
00:10:13.340 | and especially compassion for those who suffer
00:10:18.460 | demands that our satisfaction in this age of pain
00:10:23.460 | and sorrow be a dissatisfied satisfaction.
00:10:28.660 | Almost 40 years ago, when I wrote the chapter on love
00:10:32.980 | in the book "Desiring God," I said this,
00:10:37.220 | "The weeping of compassion is the weeping of joy,"
00:10:42.220 | or you could say, "The weeping of satisfaction,
00:10:46.020 | impeded, hindered in the extension of itself to another."
00:10:51.020 | Close quote.
00:10:55.700 | Now that sounds paradoxical.
00:10:57.300 | - Yeah.
00:10:58.140 | - Weeping satisfaction, an odd phrase.
00:11:01.660 | But what it means is that when God grants me to know him
00:11:06.660 | as satisfying to my soul's deepest needs,
00:11:11.060 | and then I look on a suffering person,
00:11:16.140 | my God-given satisfaction at that moment
00:11:20.700 | has in it the impulse to expand
00:11:23.980 | and include the other person in it.
00:11:26.340 | I want them in it.
00:11:27.620 | I want them to share it.
00:11:28.940 | Satisfaction in God is not indifferent
00:11:32.900 | to those who don't share it.
00:11:34.540 | If we could, we would fold them in
00:11:39.460 | and into our satisfaction in God.
00:11:42.380 | But if we are hindered from that,
00:11:46.820 | it is our very joy, our very satisfaction,
00:11:50.340 | impeded in the extension of itself that grieves.
00:11:54.900 | It is a peculiarly Christian form
00:12:00.740 | of dissatisfied satisfaction.
00:12:04.620 | So Ralph, that's my effort to clarify
00:12:08.860 | what I mean by satisfaction in God.
00:12:13.580 | One, it is a filling up of God-given, God-shaped desires.
00:12:18.580 | Two, it will in the end leave no desire unfilled
00:12:24.580 | for God's children forever.
00:12:27.660 | Three, for now the satisfaction in God
00:12:31.540 | is embattled and variable, and desires must be rekindled.
00:12:38.380 | Four, for now even the best experience of satisfaction
00:12:43.380 | in God is a dissatisfied satisfaction
00:12:47.420 | when we are surrounded by the pain of those
00:12:51.300 | who don't yet have it and the sorrows of this fallen world.
00:12:56.300 | - Wonderful summary and definition here, Pastor John.
00:12:59.660 | Thank you for walking us through all those Bible texts.
00:13:02.820 | And Ralph, thank you for the excellent
00:13:04.540 | foundational question today.
00:13:06.460 | No one has asked this question to this point
00:13:08.500 | in the podcast that I can remember.
00:13:10.260 | If you have a great question like Ralph did
00:13:12.820 | that you wanna ask Pastor John,
00:13:14.620 | maybe one that no one else is asking, email me,
00:13:18.220 | askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.
00:13:21.100 | Next week we're gonna launch into a mini-series of sorts,
00:13:25.660 | apologetics questions on the person and work of Christ.
00:13:28.820 | Questions like, why did Christ leave after Easter?
00:13:32.380 | Couldn't he have just stayed with us?
00:13:34.660 | Or why didn't his redemption of us
00:13:37.100 | cost him eternal suffering?
00:13:40.300 | Isn't that the price?
00:13:42.460 | And why isn't there more archeological
00:13:44.420 | or historical written evidence
00:13:46.660 | for the death and resurrection of Christ?
00:13:48.660 | Those types of questions, big questions,
00:13:50.940 | up next and over the next couple of weeks.
00:13:53.860 | I'm your host Tony Reinke.
00:13:54.780 | We'll see you back here on Monday.
00:13:57.180 | (upbeat music)
00:13:59.780 | (upbeat music)
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