What’s the Last Thing You Would Tweet?
00:00:00.000 | Welcome back to a new week on the Ask Pastor John podcast.
00:00:06.360 | Pastor John, here's the question.
00:00:08.360 | What do you want to be as your final words on Twitter?
00:00:14.000 | And 140 characters, Brittany writes in to ask it, "Dear Pastor John, if you could
00:00:18.480 | say one last thing to this world, what would your message be to us?"
00:00:21.800 | In other words, what is the one sentence message, the one last tweet that is the
00:00:27.360 | most important thing we need to hear from you and why?
00:00:30.160 | I took Brittany seriously when she suggested it be one last tweet.
00:00:34.560 | So here's my 140 character, exactly, final tweet.
00:00:42.840 | The most important thing I think the world needs to hear, tweet size.
00:00:49.560 | It goes like this.
00:00:51.320 | And I had to drop a comma, frankly, too.
00:00:56.840 | But you can't see that, so it doesn't really matter.
00:00:59.400 | This is 140 characters, including one comma and one period.
00:01:03.680 | "Jesus, God's son, died in the place of sinners and rose so that all who love him
00:01:14.840 | supremely might be forgiven all and have eternal joy in God."
00:01:23.200 | Now, I thought about saying instead, "Read your Bibles and pray for insight."
00:01:29.480 | Because there is so much that needs to be known about God that cannot be put into
00:01:38.960 | one sentence, and the only reliable source for all that needs to be known is the Bible.
00:01:46.880 | So maybe the most important thing to do is not to try to sum up the Bible in 140
00:01:53.160 | characters, but to cry out to the world, "Go read, go read, go read, pray as you
00:01:59.760 | read so that you see everything that's there."
00:02:02.440 | Maybe that's the most important thing to say.
00:02:04.520 | But then on second thought, there are millions and millions of people who
00:02:11.480 | don't have access to the Bible, so that the last thing I should say to them is
00:02:18.440 | probably more specific than, "Go read your Bible."
00:02:21.760 | And I think the Bible itself would want me to talk mainly about, not about the
00:02:28.760 | Bible, but about what the Bible talks about.
00:02:31.000 | So that's why I wrote what I wrote.
00:02:33.680 | And the reason I chose to focus the way I did was because the Apostle
00:02:37.960 | Paul already wrote that tweet.
00:02:41.560 | In 1 Corinthians 15, 3 to 4, I didn't count his characters, it's close.
00:02:46.720 | He said, "I deliver to you as a first importance," and I presume that
00:02:51.640 | would mean last importance also, "what I also received, that Christ died for our
00:02:58.480 | sins in accordance with the Scriptures and that he was buried, that he was raised
00:03:01.960 | on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures."
00:03:04.280 | So Paul says that of first importance is that Christ died for our sins and rose again.
00:03:13.800 | Now, if that's a first importance for Paul, then I'm standing on firm ground
00:03:20.400 | in making it my last tweet, my most important thing that I say finally.
00:03:28.600 | So here it is again.
00:03:30.960 | I'll read it again and then just say a couple of comments about why
00:03:34.440 | I structured it the way I did.
00:03:36.240 | "Jesus, God's son, died in the place of sinners and rose so that all who love
00:03:42.720 | him supremely might be forgiven all and have eternal joy in God."
00:03:48.480 | It seemed good and needful in our day to identify who Jesus is.
00:03:57.280 | So I said, "Jesus, the son of God," or God's son, and instead of saying, "died
00:04:03.280 | for sinners," I said, "died in the place of sinners" to make explicit what I think
00:04:08.640 | Paul means, namely that this is an act of substitution, not just an exemplary act
00:04:15.920 | or an act of advocacy, but that he really took the place of sinners when he died.
00:04:21.720 | And I included "and rose," not just died, but "and rose" because Paul did in his
00:04:29.120 | summary and because if Christ is not raised from the dead, we're still in our
00:04:32.760 | sins, there's no victory over death or wrath or the devil, there's no gospel
00:04:36.560 | without the resurrection.
00:04:38.120 | The most controversial thing in my sentence, I think, is that I said the
00:04:44.880 | beneficiaries of this death are "all who love him supremely," rather than saying
00:04:54.120 | "all who trust him" or "all who believe in him."
00:04:57.080 | And I certainly don't mean to set this up as a way everybody should
00:05:03.960 | always present the gospel.
00:05:05.360 | I might be wrong in choosing to emphasize loving Christ supremely instead of
00:05:13.640 | believing Christ.
00:05:15.160 | I certainly don't want to diminish the importance of trusting him and all he
00:05:21.720 | promises to be for us, but in view of 2,000 years of church history and millions
00:05:29.440 | and millions of nominal Christians who would say they believe in him and have
00:05:34.400 | not experienced the slightest heart change or the slightest change in their
00:05:39.120 | lives and are lost, I wanted to stress the necessity of the kind of faith that
00:05:46.040 | really transforms people at the level of our deepest affections so that Christ is
00:05:52.160 | our supreme treasure, not just a belief ticket out of hell, which he is for so
00:05:56.800 | many people who think they're believing.
00:05:58.800 | Paul says everything works together for the good of those who love God.
00:06:04.720 | Love God.
00:06:07.560 | Not just believe things about God.
00:06:09.200 | He says at the end of 1 Corinthians, the very last verse of 1 Corinthians, "Those
00:06:14.560 | who do not love the Lord, let them be accursed."
00:06:18.120 | Not love the Lord, let them be accursed.
00:06:22.440 | And James says, "The crown of life will be given to those who love him."
00:06:27.320 | And Jesus himself said, "Whoever loves mother or father more than me is not
00:06:32.720 | worthy of me."
00:06:34.680 | So I wanted to capture that.
00:06:38.280 | And then I summed up the benefits of Jesus in saying, "Forgiven all."
00:06:45.400 | I didn't say, "Forgive all sins," just because I couldn't fit it in the 140
00:06:49.880 | characters.
00:06:50.680 | "Forgiven all and have eternal joy in God."
00:06:56.240 | I wanted to say the negative side, all your problems, all your sins, all your
00:07:01.720 | failures are going to be canceled because Jesus died for them.
00:07:06.480 | And then I wanted to capture the positive side, namely that once our sins are
00:07:12.120 | forgiven, we're not left in limbo.
00:07:14.120 | We're given eternal joy that's not merely an extension of worldly happiness, but
00:07:20.800 | something far, far greater, namely joy in the all-satisfying God.
00:07:27.400 | So Tony, I give you hereby formal permission that if I die before we get
00:07:34.760 | too many more of these recordings made, you may say, "John Piper said this
00:07:41.200 | should be his last tweet."
00:07:44.000 | Will do.
00:07:46.080 | There it is, a preview of the capstone tweet.
00:07:48.960 | And the most important thing in the universe, may we never get calloused
00:07:52.760 | to how awesome these things are.
00:07:54.080 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:07:55.040 | And thank you for the question, Brittany.
00:07:57.200 | And speaking of the most awesome things in the universe, we have just entered
00:08:01.640 | Holy Week 2017 as we move from Palm Sunday to Maundy Thursday, and then to
00:08:07.840 | Good Friday, all leading up to Easter Sunday, which is coming up soon.
00:08:12.200 | It's my favorite day of the year.
00:08:13.680 | This special week is set aside for us to focus our eyes and our attention on the
00:08:20.080 | death and the resurrection of our Savior.
00:08:22.040 | And on Wednesday, we're going to do that very thing.
00:08:25.000 | We're going to take a very candid look into the horrors of crucifixion from its
00:08:29.280 | historical descriptions and physical dimensions.
00:08:33.040 | And then on Friday, we're going to look at Calvary from its spiritual meaning
00:08:36.560 | and theological consequences.
00:08:38.920 | That's coming up on Wednesday and Friday of this week.
00:08:42.360 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:08:44.080 | Thanks for listening to the podcast and we'll see you next time.
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