Finding a Life of Gospel Boldness

00:00:00.000 | Well, we are approaching Halloween.

00:00:06.400 | It will be here on Sunday.

00:00:08.360 | And for many, it's a day about ghosts and ghouls and goblins and pumpkins and candy.

00:00:14.160 | But for some of us, the day serves as an annual reminder of the Protestant Reformation.

00:00:19.840 | Reformation Day reminds us how Paul's epistle to the Romans ignited a fire in Martin Luther's

00:00:25.240 | soul, a fire so bold that he stood against an entire religious system that wanted to

00:00:30.600 | shut him up and shut him down.

00:00:33.480 | It didn't.

00:00:34.480 | It couldn't.

00:00:35.480 | Luther gave his life to preach the gospel of justification before a holy God through

00:00:40.320 | the vicarious substitution of Jesus Christ.

00:00:45.200 | This reformer epitomizes lion-hearted boldness.

00:00:49.920 | So where does such boldness come from?

00:00:52.160 | And why are sinners so fearful?

00:00:55.000 | As we move towards Reformation Day, this is a great clip from a 1993 John Piper sermon,

00:01:00.160 | a sermon on Proverbs 28.1 of all places, which reads this, "The wicked flee when no one pursues,

00:01:07.560 | but the righteous are bold as a lion."

00:01:12.320 | It begins with Pastor John mentioning Proverbs 14.16 and talking about the guilty conscience.

00:01:18.040 | Here he is.

00:01:19.040 | "The fool rages and is bold."

00:01:25.920 | And the word "bold," "be bold," is the same word as verse 1 of chapter 28, "The righteous

00:01:32.620 | are bold as a lion."

00:01:35.320 | So fools can be bold and the righteous can be bold.

00:01:39.400 | Which causes me to think, like with so many Proverbs, you find this, that what is being

00:01:44.880 | said here in this verse is that in general there's something about wickedness that kindles

00:01:52.840 | fear and there's something about righteousness that kindles boldness, but it's not so absolute

00:02:00.960 | that there isn't a kind of boldness that the wicked can have and there isn't a kind of

00:02:04.960 | timidity that now and then the righteous can have.

00:02:07.620 | And we all know that from experience and we know it from the Bible, that there is a reckless

00:02:12.960 | boldness that the wicked have, especially in the pursuit of their wickedness.

00:02:20.120 | Dirty needles, promiscuous sex, speeding, reckless crime.

00:02:29.100 | It takes a lot of stupid boldness to do what many wicked do.

00:02:35.700 | They are not cowardly often in the pursuit of sin.

00:02:40.520 | They take manifold risks with their lives and their freedom and their eternity.

00:02:48.580 | So there is a kind of boldness that the wicked have.

00:02:51.520 | It's just not the kind that's being talked about in verse 1.

00:02:54.680 | The kind of boldness that's being talked about here is the boldness that's required in the

00:02:59.580 | atmosphere of justice.

00:03:02.760 | And there's something about wickedness that in the atmosphere of justice flees even when

00:03:09.400 | there's no one pursuing.

00:03:12.240 | There's something about the righteous that is bold as a lion for the cause of justice.

00:03:21.320 | What is it about the wicked that makes them flee when no one is pursuing?

00:03:29.240 | I think you know the answer to that.

00:03:31.960 | We can find it from the Bible.

00:03:33.440 | We can find it in our experience.

00:03:34.880 | The answer is a bad conscience, a guilty conscience, an evil conscience makes a person flee when

00:03:42.520 | no one is pursuing.

00:03:45.960 | When you see a police car, is your first response gratitude that there are law keepers?

00:03:54.880 | When you played basketball or did play basketball or soccer or football, did the way you play

00:04:03.640 | affect the response you felt every time the whistle blew?

00:04:09.480 | When you're in a conversation, do you begin to defend yourself even before there's been

00:04:16.280 | any accusation or anything clearly said against what you think?

00:04:22.640 | Fleeing because you can hear an accuser where there may even be none?

00:04:27.120 | We flee when we're not being pursued because we have a bad conscience.

00:04:33.120 | There are a lot of things stored up in our lives, bad things that we have done that we

00:04:39.240 | have not made right and a voice inside is telling us that someone is after us even when

00:04:47.600 | they are not.

00:04:51.400 | Guilt is the parent of fear and our conscience is very creative.

00:04:58.400 | Conscience creates pursuers where there ought to be some and are not any.

00:05:07.720 | The breeze turns into a burglar, the shadows turn into ghosts, police turn into adversaries,

00:05:17.760 | parents turn into police, God turns into an enemy when they are not.

00:05:26.560 | Verse 8 says, "And the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God

00:05:32.200 | among the trees of the garden."

00:05:33.800 | He wasn't pursuing.

00:05:34.800 | He didn't have a gun.

00:05:39.000 | And he said, "Where are you?"

00:05:41.580 | And Adam said, "I heard the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid."

00:05:49.280 | And we've been afraid ever since.

00:05:52.480 | We've been afraid of him ever since.

00:05:56.360 | A guilty conscience will turn shadows into phantoms and ambulances into police cars and

00:06:05.960 | innocent inquiries into indictments and doorbells into threats and mailmen into warrant officers

00:06:14.920 | and school teachers into wardens and parents into cross-examiners and friends into traitors

00:06:24.600 | and simple office memos into termination papers.

00:06:29.960 | The conscience is almost infinitely creative and the wicked flee where there is no one

00:06:39.880 | pursuing but there ought to be.

00:06:45.320 | The conscience makes up for what isn't by creating out of nothing the pursuers we need

00:06:52.480 | to have to bring us to justice and repentance and reconciliation, forgiveness with people

00:07:00.520 | we've wronged.

00:07:03.600 | A guilty conscience creates pursuers where there are none unless you drown it with alcohol

00:07:12.840 | or numb it with drugs or blast it with constant loud music and constant escapes from solitude

00:07:24.960 | or endless denials.

00:07:28.280 | It isn't there.

00:07:29.280 | It isn't conscience.

00:07:30.280 | It doesn't count.

00:07:31.280 | It's not important.

00:07:32.280 | I can live without talking to them until you go so far in hardening yourself against this

00:07:40.360 | God-given voice that it ceases and you can no more hear the steps of God in the garden

00:07:49.820 | and that is a dreadful place to be.

00:07:52.880 | Potent.

00:07:53.880 | Okay I'm going to fast forward in the sermon to get from the conscience section to Martin

00:07:57.400 | Luther.

00:07:58.400 | Here we go.

00:07:59.400 | "The righteous ones are the people who trust in the Lord and not in themselves and their

00:08:05.120 | own merit and their own deeds and their own righteousness.

00:08:08.520 | They trust in the Lord and His mercy and His steadfast kindness and then they are the ones

00:08:15.560 | who according to verses 1 and 2 have their sins covered and their iniquities are not

00:08:21.840 | imputed to them.

00:08:23.640 | They simply are not counted because they trust in the Lord.

00:08:29.440 | Now that's who the righteous are in the Old Testament, the New Testament and everywhere

00:08:34.280 | in this universe.

00:08:36.040 | The righteous are people who trust in the Lord and bank on Jesus Christ for everything

00:08:42.200 | they have and need and they are as bold as a lion.

00:08:50.120 | If you can have that kind of boldness with God like Martin Luther had so that you know

00:08:56.200 | as you look the almighty, holy, infinitely wise and beautiful God in the face, you know

00:09:04.360 | He imputes no iniquity to you, you will be as lion-hearted as can be with men.

00:09:14.960 | Fear with men is rooted in the fear of not being right with God.

00:09:21.600 | If you knew God was standing at your right hand with infinite power, with His right hand

00:09:27.920 | on your shoulder, you'd be bold.

00:09:34.120 | You'd be bold as a lion.

00:09:37.320 | Now I want to take Martin Luther as an example of that.

00:09:40.640 | In 1521, the lion-heartedness came out.

00:09:45.000 | His whole life was one of incredible courage.

00:09:47.000 | Let me close with one illustration of his boldness.

00:09:50.900 | It was the fall of 1521.

00:09:53.840 | It was in the city of Worms.

00:09:56.360 | Charles, the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, biggest empire since Charlemagne, was there

00:10:03.860 | in the cathedral.

00:10:06.280 | Frederick the Wise, the local governor, was there.

00:10:09.600 | The bishop, the archbishop of Trier was there named Eck, and in a room this size, at least,

00:10:16.600 | it was filled with lords and nobles, every one of them against Martin Luther, and all

00:10:21.560 | of them having the capacity to sentence him to death for heresy and treason if he did

00:10:27.820 | not recant his criticisms of the Holy Catholic Church.

00:10:33.120 | Eck said, "Do you or do you not repudiate your books and the errors which they contain?"

00:10:43.760 | And first in German, and then they asked him to repeat it in Latin so that it could go

00:10:48.660 | down in the official register.

00:10:51.880 | He responded like this, "Since then, your majesty and your lordships desire a simple

00:10:57.360 | reply, I will answer without horns and without teeth.

00:11:02.320 | Unless I am convicted by Scripture in plain reason, I do not accept the authority of popes

00:11:08.480 | and councils, for they have contradicted each other.

00:11:12.960 | My conscience is captive to the word of God.

00:11:16.640 | I cannot and I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right

00:11:23.960 | nor safe.

00:11:25.960 | Here I stand.

00:11:28.000 | I cannot do otherwise.

00:11:30.360 | God help me.

00:11:31.920 | Amen."

00:11:32.920 | The righteous are as bold as a lion.

00:11:39.920 | They are as bold as a lion because they are righteous in Christ.

00:11:45.600 | They look into the face of God and they see a smile which imputes to them no iniquity,

00:11:51.880 | but rather makes him who knew no sin to be sin, that they might become the righteousness

00:12:00.480 | of God.

00:12:02.040 | And standing clothed with the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus, they are as

00:12:07.760 | bold as a lion before God and before men.

00:12:12.920 | And my prayer for us in these days as a church is that God, by the gospel, by the gospel

00:12:20.120 | of the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ through faith, might deliver us from fear

00:12:26.880 | of God and fear of men and make us valiant for the truth in this city.

00:12:34.720 | So good.

00:12:35.720 | So where do you find gospel boldness?

00:12:37.280 | You find it in the gospel itself.

00:12:40.020 | The boldness is the product of the gospel, of the cleansed conscience.

00:12:44.240 | Amazing.

00:12:45.240 | This clip was taken from John Piper's sermon preached on May 2nd, 1993, titled "The Righteous

00:12:49.160 | Are Bold as a Lion," a sermon on Proverbs 28.1.

00:12:52.880 | You can find the whole thing at DesiringGod.org.

00:12:56.200 | Thanks for listening to today's clip.

00:12:57.640 | These are crowdsourced normally.

00:12:59.600 | You tell us what bits of Piper's sermons changed your life, and we share that clip

00:13:02.280 | with the APJ audience.

00:13:03.280 | If you've got one, email me.

00:13:04.520 | Give me your name, hometown, sermon title, the timestamp of where the clip happens in

00:13:08.160 | the audio, and tell me how it impacted you.

00:13:10.320 | Put the word "clip" in the subject line of an email and send it to me at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org.

00:13:15.600 | That's an email address, AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org.

00:13:19.440 | Well on the morning after the crazy November 2020 election here in the States, several

00:13:25.500 | culture commentators observed that amid all the confusion over who won the presidency,

00:13:31.120 | there was no mistaking who won the night.

00:13:34.400 | Marijuana.

00:13:36.200 | Four additional states passed ballot measures to legalize adult-use pot for recreational

00:13:40.580 | use, and none of the votes were even close.

00:13:44.860 | As recreational use gains widespread support in red and blue states, it's raising new

00:13:49.200 | issues for pastors and parents in churches.

00:13:51.240 | We're going to look at those issues next time.

00:13:53.520 | I'm your host Tony Reinke.

00:13:54.520 | We are rejoined in studio with Pastor John on Friday, and we'll see you then.

00:13:58.160 | [END]

00:13:59.160 | 1

00:13:59.160 | Pastor John, I'm so glad you're here.

00:14:00.160 | I'm so glad you're here.

00:14:01.160 | I'm so glad you're here.

00:14:02.160 | I'm so glad you're here.

00:14:03.160 | I'm so glad you're here.

00:14:04.160 | I'm so glad you're here.

00:14:05.160 | I'm so glad you're here.

00:14:06.160 | I'm so glad you're here.

00:14:07.160 | I'm so glad you're here.

00:14:08.160 | I'm so glad you're here.

Finding a Life of Gospel Boldness

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