Correcting My Mistake with Money, Sex, and Power
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | - This week, Pastor John, your new book launches.
00:00:07.000 | It's titled Living in the Light, Money, Sex, and Power.
00:00:11.120 | It's short, it's to the point, it's 150 pages,
00:00:13.680 | a really good book.
00:00:14.760 | My copy is highlighted all over the place
00:00:16.940 | and we will be talking about it this week.
00:00:18.580 | It's published by our good friends
00:00:19.740 | at the Good Book Company in England.
00:00:21.580 | It's available on Amazon now.
00:00:23.700 | And of course, the full digital book
00:00:25.200 | can be downloaded at desiringgod.org.
00:00:28.520 | Pastor John, early in the book,
00:00:30.440 | you admit that in the process of writing this little book,
00:00:32.680 | you say that you experienced a fundamental change
00:00:34.980 | in your thinking.
00:00:36.280 | What happened and how do you think differently
00:00:39.060 | about these categories of money, sex, and power
00:00:40.980 | now after writing the book?
00:00:43.100 | - There was an encounter and it happened to be
00:00:45.700 | with you and the editorial team.
00:00:49.200 | I don't know if you remember it,
00:00:50.640 | but it was one of those aha moments for me
00:00:55.280 | or as I look back on it,
00:00:57.240 | it really was a duh moment.
00:00:59.920 | Like what's wrong with my head
00:01:02.080 | that I have to be made to see by other people
00:01:05.800 | what I should see on my own.
00:01:07.760 | We were talking about the book
00:01:10.000 | and about my plan for it over lunch one day.
00:01:15.000 | And I think it was David Mathis who brought something up
00:01:18.320 | that was just so obvious that I had sidelined.
00:01:23.320 | But let me put it in the context of the flow
00:01:26.480 | of thought how the book was coming into being.
00:01:30.120 | I started the book as I was first conceiving it
00:01:34.000 | with definitions.
00:01:36.120 | And an image came to my mind as I was peeling away
00:01:41.120 | the layers and going deeper and deeper
00:01:43.360 | with the meaning of money, sex, and power.
00:01:45.780 | And the image was of an iceberg.
00:01:48.480 | And you can see what a 10th of an iceberg above the water,
00:01:53.200 | but it's the nine tenths below
00:01:55.680 | do all the damage to your boat.
00:01:58.840 | And what I found over the years
00:02:01.160 | is that the effort to define things at the beginning
00:02:05.240 | almost always reveals that what we thought
00:02:10.240 | we were dealing with is like the tip of an iceberg.
00:02:15.800 | We thought we were dealing with that
00:02:17.720 | and really there's way more to it.
00:02:20.880 | We thought we were dealing with money, for example,
00:02:24.980 | paper currency, coins, there it is in my hand.
00:02:27.960 | But in fact, underneath we're dealing with pleasures
00:02:32.760 | and advantages that money can buy
00:02:36.240 | or status that money can signify.
00:02:39.040 | And then we realized, no, that's not the bottom
00:02:43.880 | because underneath that is covetousness and greed
00:02:48.120 | and fear and cravings for safety and prestige and control.
00:02:53.000 | And then we realized, no, that's not the bottom
00:02:57.080 | either because the Bible teaches us
00:02:59.420 | that there's another reality
00:03:01.560 | called the condition of my heart,
00:03:04.160 | deeper than covetousness that gives rise
00:03:06.720 | to all those things like a bad tree
00:03:09.040 | giving bad fruit on its limbs.
00:03:12.240 | And so as always, it seems to me,
00:03:16.400 | I realized just by trying to define
00:03:20.880 | what we were talking about, what I was thinking about,
00:03:23.900 | this money, sex and power appeared to be
00:03:30.120 | like the fraction of an iceberg above the water
00:03:34.440 | and the dangerous part was underneath
00:03:38.080 | was jagged sawtooth ridges that can slice a gash
00:03:42.680 | in your Titanic and there it goes
00:03:45.040 | to the bottom of the ocean.
00:03:48.200 | And that's where I had come when we had our editorial lunch.
00:03:53.200 | And there we're sitting and talking
00:03:54.880 | and David Mathis just mentions almost in passing
00:03:58.600 | that money, sex and power are good gifts of God
00:04:03.600 | that may be used with great love and effectiveness
00:04:09.440 | in serving other people and glorifying God.
00:04:12.720 | And it hits me like a thunderbolt
00:04:15.240 | that my iceberg image is true
00:04:20.240 | but it's only true on the negative side
00:04:22.720 | and it was holding me hostage as it were.
00:04:26.200 | It was keeping me from seeing that other side of,
00:04:31.200 | no, no, these things are not just dangers.
00:04:34.960 | Money, sex and power are not just dangers.
00:04:37.720 | They are potentials, they are gifts,
00:04:40.500 | they are opportunities to make God look great
00:04:44.200 | in the world and advance his cause in the world.
00:04:47.240 | So I went home thinking, oh my goodness,
00:04:50.240 | I gotta restructure everything here
00:04:52.440 | and make sure this gets done in a more biblical way
00:04:55.760 | because I was lopsided in the way I was thinking.
00:04:59.720 | So it's not just an iceberg, I need another image
00:05:03.280 | like floating islands of glorious food
00:05:07.480 | and fuel and the rarest fruit.
00:05:10.820 | So in other words, what I realized is that
00:05:14.300 | we have to deal with another foundational reality,
00:05:19.140 | namely these are God's gifts.
00:05:21.700 | And if they sink us, it isn't because God gave us bad gifts,
00:05:26.700 | it's because something happened inside of us
00:05:31.700 | that turned gifts of grace into instruments of sin.
00:05:37.680 | And this totally altered the way I went at the book.
00:05:41.560 | So yes, we need definitions and I do start,
00:05:45.120 | chapter one is definitions.
00:05:47.080 | What are the depths of these three realities
00:05:49.880 | we call money, sex and power?
00:05:52.120 | And yes, we do need chapters on
00:05:56.100 | the pleasure-destroying dangers of sex
00:05:59.920 | and the wealth-destroying dangers of money
00:06:03.280 | and the self-destroying dangers of power.
00:06:06.700 | And you can see in those very titles
00:06:08.820 | how I tried to catch the positive
00:06:12.380 | even when I was dealing with the negative.
00:06:15.740 | But when we turn away from those dangers to the potentials,
00:06:20.260 | we ask, why did God give us these gifts in the first place?
00:06:25.020 | Not just to test us, not just to tempt us
00:06:27.660 | to be fornicators or covetousness or power mongers,
00:06:32.900 | money, sex and power all have a unique potential
00:06:37.900 | to magnify the worth and beauty of Christ.
00:06:40.320 | So that's the new structure of the book.
00:06:42.880 | Define, defeat, deploy.
00:06:45.920 | So define, go deep with what are these things after all
00:06:48.800 | and defeat the dangers and deploy the potentials
00:06:52.080 | when God takes his place as our true treasure
00:06:55.280 | and pleasure and sovereign.
00:06:56.720 | - Yeah, so there's really,
00:06:59.320 | I mean, when we talk about takeaways in principle,
00:07:01.640 | there's three, kill the sinful habits of life
00:07:04.440 | that misuse God's gifts.
00:07:06.160 | Number two, praise the giver for the good gifts itself.
00:07:09.280 | And then three, you take it one step further and say what?
00:07:12.760 | - I go further and say, actually take hold of power,
00:07:16.920 | take hold of money and make them a means
00:07:21.920 | of advancing the cause of the giver.
00:07:25.320 | And more than that, see in the actual gift of sex
00:07:31.240 | and money and power, see in them dimensions of God's goodness
00:07:36.240 | that when you enjoy them rightly, you are enjoying him.
00:07:40.800 | - That's brilliant, thank you, Pastor John.
00:07:42.120 | The new book is titled "Living in the Light,
00:07:43.960 | Money, Sex and Power."
00:07:45.040 | It releases this week.
00:07:46.520 | And tomorrow we're gonna press into the topic
00:07:48.080 | of the power of pleasures,
00:07:49.440 | godly pleasures versus sinful pleasures.
00:07:52.200 | Can delight in God really compete with the pleasures
00:07:54.780 | and allure of pornography, for example?
00:07:57.800 | And how should we think of those competing pleasures?
00:07:59.960 | That's tomorrow.
00:08:01.080 | I'm your host, Tony Reiki.
00:08:02.120 | Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John Podcast
00:08:04.000 | with author and long time pastor, John Piper.
00:08:06.640 | (upbeat music)
00:08:09.220 | (upbeat music)
00:08:11.800 | [BLANK_AUDIO]