Money, Mardi Gras, and Something Far Better: Stories from South America
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:04.000 | Pastor John is back in the studio with us again.
00:00:07.000 | Listeners, thank you for your weeks of prayers and your weeks of patience as well as we navigated this busy season of travel for Pastor John.
00:00:16.000 | As a result, we have a backlog of questions to catch up on soon, but I wonder if it would be best for us to start with a brief update from your travels and ministry in South America.
00:00:26.000 | Pastor John, how did it go? What did you want to share with the podcast listeners about your recent travels?
00:00:31.000 | And can you just give us a debrief of your trip for us here?
00:00:35.000 | I'd love to.
00:00:36.000 | From 24 February to March 6 this year, 2019, Noel and I and some others were in Brazil and Argentina at the invitation of Fiel Ministries in Brazil and the local gospel coalition and the leaders of a Bible conference in Argentina and the leaders of a week-long Christian celebration in Campina Grande in northern Brazil.
00:01:01.000 | So that was kind of the cluster of people who said, "Would you please come and minister here?"
00:01:07.000 | And I want to underline that idea of invitation because the way we look upon these kinds of international trips, and this came clearer to me on this trip than ever, and I feel really happy about it, is not as a way of spreading what you might call, I suppose, the desiring God brand or the Bethlehem College and Seminary brand or John Piper brand.
00:01:31.000 | That's just not the mindset at all.
00:01:34.000 | We didn't foreground those ministries.
00:01:37.000 | Instead, we're not marketing a brand.
00:01:40.000 | We're encouraging local indigenous movements that God's already doing on the ground, and he's doing it all over the world.
00:01:59.000 | I mean, I think I could name—in fact, I did write down 23 countries I know of where there are resurgent, reformed, evangelical, gospel-centered, exposition-oriented, lovers of the sovereignty of God happening.
00:02:04.000 | So this was just two of them, one in Brazil and one in Argentina.
00:02:09.000 | The key biblical text that gets at it for me is Romans 1:12 where Paul has never been to Rome, and he knows God raised up the church in Rome.
00:02:19.000 | He didn't raise up that church in Rome, and now he's coming, and he writes like this, "I long to see you."
00:02:25.000 | He's never met these people.
00:02:26.000 | "I long to see you that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you."
00:02:31.000 | And then he pauses, and he says a little differently. He says, "That is, that we may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith, both yours and mine."
00:02:41.000 | That's exactly the way I feel.
00:02:44.000 | I do have something I want to say, and yet when I pause and I look back on it, there was a mutuality of encouragement.
00:02:51.000 | At least I know it came my way.
00:02:53.000 | I hope it went the other way.
00:02:55.000 | So all over the world, God is creating these indigenous movements.
00:03:02.000 | And when I think of the movement, I want people to have a sense of what I mean.
00:03:07.000 | It's a fresh awakening to the power and the preciousness of the sovereignty of God in salvation and providence,
00:03:16.000 | which is a message very different from man-exalting views that give the human willpower the power to thwart God's omnipotent wisdom.
00:03:26.000 | And secondly, it's a fresh awakening to the sweetness of his omnipotent care in suffering, a message very different from the prosperity preaching.
00:03:38.000 | And that's probably the note that people came to me most often with thankfulness, is the note that we strike about God's sweetness and care and omnipotent power in suffering, not escaping from suffering.
00:03:54.000 | And third, a fresh awakening to the glories of the gospel of free grace, which is a message very different from the sacramentalism of the Roman Catholicism, say, in Brazil or Argentina.
00:04:06.000 | And lastly, a fresh awakening to the depth and wonders of Scripture experienced by God's people through powerful expositional preaching.
00:04:18.000 | It's those four pieces that I see all over the world, these outcroppings of renewal movements like that rising up at God's bidding.
00:04:30.000 | And what I think I'm called to do with the team at Desiring God is to simply discern as best we can with the help of people on the ground.
00:04:41.000 | And Rick Denham here is just a gift at this. He's such a helpful person.
00:04:46.000 | What I'm called to do is to discern authentic indigenous movements and then serve them in whatever way they think would be most helpful with the message God has given us.
00:05:00.000 | And you can hear, at least I hear in that attention, like you think I need to serve, and yet I have a message that I'm not going to compromise.
00:05:10.000 | I've seen it in the Bible. I love it. I would say it anywhere. Anybody wants me to say it.
00:05:17.000 | So there's this tension. And the solution to the tension is these people who invite us to come know us.
00:05:26.000 | In other words, the web has created the possibility of watching and listening for years so that they can grow in their confidence.
00:05:35.000 | Well, here's a person who, if he says what he believes, would probably serve us well.
00:05:40.000 | So let's invite him to come do that now.
00:05:43.000 | And another thing I felt so strongly is I just feel no illusions in going into a place like this and a movement like this.
00:05:52.000 | No illusions of supervising or controlling what God is doing on the ground around the world.
00:05:59.000 | My picture is something like this. God is preparing a great loaf of bread in these various ethnic settings, and he's kneading the dough with his fingers.
00:06:13.000 | And Piper's role for those few days he has, Piper's role as one of the co-workers with God is to contribute a certain kind of biblical leaven and some theological spices that I hope and pray might add just a little nutriment to the bread and a little flavor to the dough that would make it even more nourishing to the church and to the world.
00:06:42.000 | But God's the baker, and he's doing the kneading, and he decides what goes into this bread and what doesn't, and he decides what the loaf looks like when it comes out.
00:06:51.000 | So I don't think we should have illusions when we do ministries like online work like at DG, like we're going to shape and control the world.
00:07:00.000 | That's just ridiculous. The world is huge, complex, and God is running it, not us.
00:07:06.000 | So in Brazil and Argentina, that included messages focused on God is the gospel, God himself is the greatest, best, final good of the good news, leading to messages on Christian hedonism.
00:07:20.000 | Well, if God is the gospel, if he's the greatest good, how does that impact the way we worship and the way we love people?
00:07:27.000 | And that led to, okay, if God is the gospel and this is the way you glorify him through being satisfied in him and loving people, then how do you preach?
00:07:37.000 | With expository exaltation.
00:07:39.000 | That was kind of the package or the cluster of truths that we laid out.
00:07:44.000 | And of course, it should not go without saying, I suppose, that the tables are always turned and I go to encourage them and to nourish them and to make my little contribution of spices and nutriments into the loaf.
00:08:01.000 | And I leave probably more affected and more encouraged than I gave or than I influenced.
00:08:10.000 | And here's just, here's one example. I met a Muslim convert to Christ from Morocco who feeds daily on solid joys, which is translated into both Portuguese and Spanish.
00:08:26.000 | And he feeds on that for his faith.
00:08:28.000 | I met two women, both of whom asked to see me and have cancer and with tears thanked me for the note of help in suffering, not escape from suffering.
00:08:41.000 | They felt like they were sinking in the teaching of prosperity in their particular situation.
00:08:49.000 | And I met this is the last and probably was for me the most moving one. Three teenagers asked to see me in the green room before I spoke one night.
00:08:59.000 | And their story was that their parents were earlier this year, I think, I'm not sure how long ago, maybe six months ago, in the last recent time, were about to get divorced, which was breaking their hearts.
00:09:11.000 | And they heard a message or they read a message I couldn't quite discern from me about marriage, not being mainly about being in love, but being covenant keepers.
00:09:24.000 | And it revolutionized their attitudes and they have resolved to work it out.
00:09:29.000 | And the kids wanted to thank me and the 14-year-old girl had tears in her eyes, gave me a little piece of paper written in Portuguese.
00:09:37.000 | I know you can't read this, but maybe you can get it translated.
00:09:41.000 | So I've been praying. I've been praying, Tony, since I've been back. The end of Psalm 90.
00:09:46.000 | I just, you know, I scattered my seed. I put my leaven in the loaf. I tossed my spices in and I met a lot of people.
00:09:55.000 | And I'm now praying, oh, Lord, establish the work of our hands. Establish thou it.
00:10:02.000 | Amen. Yeah. Anecdotally, looking back, is there anything you take away, any striking settings or environments or experiences that you'll never forget from this trip?
00:10:13.000 | If I think back on one of the most striking things, it would be being a part of the conference in Campina Grande in the north of Brazil, where I spoke twice.
00:10:24.000 | And what made that so amazing, it's a huge tent that holds about 12,000 people and about 100,000 people come through this conference in the week that it's held.
00:10:34.000 | And what's so striking is that 20 years ago, that city was totally dominated at this time.
00:10:42.000 | You know, this is the Mardi Gras time and what they call it Carnival.
00:10:46.000 | And it's pretty bleak. Like, like, here's a woman walking around in scanty clads, a little sign around her neck.
00:10:52.000 | She's got horns, she's got devil horns. And the sign around her neck says, "Are you still afraid to go to hell?"
00:10:58.000 | Meaning, "I'll be there. Cool. Come." So that's the kind of thing.
00:11:02.000 | Well, this conference grew from a little teeny apologetics conference to offset things that were being said about the occult.
00:11:12.000 | And now has become the event and Carnival has been pushed out of the city.
00:11:18.000 | So all of those, which I would call godless, cultic, satanic influences are still there, but they're marginalized.
00:11:27.000 | I saw them walking around the lake where our hotel was.
00:11:30.000 | But as far as the center city that used to be filled with these influences, it's now filled with gospel preaching.
00:11:38.000 | And so I was blown away by my experience of standing before this sea of people hungry for the word of God.
00:11:48.000 | The expulsive power of the gospel.
00:11:50.000 | Yeah, that was the effect. And the man who leads it is just a powerhouse of vision and energy.
00:11:58.000 | And here's another little note.
00:12:01.000 | He's probably, I can't remember exactly what his background is, but he would be, you know, just broadly, big heartedly, Bible evangelical guy who loves Jesus and wants to see the gospel triumph.
00:12:14.000 | And yet when when things started to grow, he looked around for counsel as to who he should invite to these events.
00:12:23.000 | And he began to trust, this is my understanding anyway, to trust the key leaders of this Reformed awakening who gave him names.
00:12:33.000 | Like he doesn't know me from Adam.
00:12:35.000 | And he trusted them to let me address what he has grown up under God's hand to address there.
00:12:44.000 | And so there's a stream of very Bible oriented and Reformed spokesmen, not only, but largely who are coming to that event.
00:12:54.000 | Excellent. Campina Grande. Grande? Is that how you say it? I've been butchering that big time.
00:12:59.000 | Well, it's spelled Grande, G-R-A-N-D-E. And they said, oh, that's fine. You can say it that way.
00:13:05.000 | But everybody who said it in Brazil said, "Grande."
00:13:08.000 | Well, I'm taking that to be the right way.
00:13:10.000 | So sorry to those in Campina Grande. Folks, you prayed for Pastor John's trip.
00:13:16.000 | You're hearing about some of the fruit and hopefully the Lord will use this trip to bear a lot of fruit in the coming years and decades to come.
00:13:24.000 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:13:26.000 | We're back in the studio on Friday to begin working through the great questions you have sent to us.
00:13:30.000 | And next up, we will address your most asked about chapter in the Bible, Romans 9.
00:13:36.000 | No chapter has inspired more questions in the inbox from you, the listeners.
00:13:42.000 | Next time, we'll look specifically at that "what if" statement Paul uses in Romans 9.22.
00:13:48.000 | Isn't he just theorizing about predestination and election as a hypothetical scenario?
00:13:54.000 | It's a really good question. What else would you expect from APJ listeners except really good questions, right?
00:13:59.000 | For more about this podcast, go to DesireandGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:14:05.000 | I'm your host, Tony Reiki. We'll see you on Friday.
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