General Session 4: Triumph through Pleasure - John Piper
00:00:00.000 | So the subordinate goal of this message, the one down from the ultimate, is that I would
00:00:11.120 | be able to make plain and defend the claim that truth triumphs through pleasure.
00:00:19.320 | The ultimate goal of the message is that you and your people through you would feel that
00:00:29.240 | pleasure in God more intensely than you feel it in anything else.
00:00:38.040 | Now to say that the goal of a message is that a people or a preacher would experience enjoyment,
00:00:50.160 | experience pleasure in God, is not a contradiction to saying what the Bible says everywhere,
00:01:00.680 | that the ultimate goal of all things, including this message, is the fullest possible exhibition
00:01:09.560 | of the glory of God in the age to come.
00:01:15.520 | And the reason it's not a contradiction is because in the age to come that fullest exhibition
00:01:22.880 | of the glory of God is simply not going to happen if his people do not find their greatest
00:01:29.920 | pleasure in him.
00:01:31.840 | It's not.
00:01:37.880 | Huge things are at stake in the pleasure of your people in God.
00:01:42.640 | I'm an Edwardsian lover of the glory of God down to my toes, and I want to read you a
00:01:50.920 | paragraph for why that's so.
00:01:54.280 | This is Edwards at his best.
00:01:57.000 | It appears that everything spoken of in the scriptures as an ultimate end of God's works
00:02:05.280 | is included in that one phrase, the glory of God.
00:02:10.680 | In the creature's knowing, esteeming, loving, rejoicing in and praising God.
00:02:20.680 | The glory of God is both exhibited and acknowledged.
00:02:24.880 | His fullness is received and returned.
00:02:28.840 | Here is both emanation and remanation.
00:02:32.200 | The refulgence shines upon and into the creature and is reflected back to the luminary.
00:02:39.240 | The beams of glory come from God and are something of God and are refunded back again to their
00:02:46.200 | original so that the whole is of God and in God and to God.
00:02:52.040 | And God is the beginning and the middle and the end in this affair.
00:02:58.200 | I love Edwards and his God.
00:03:03.400 | Now, I can't imagine a more God-centered, God-exalting, God-entranced paragraph than
00:03:11.160 | what I just read.
00:03:12.160 | And tucked away in the middle of it is a statement worth a life.
00:03:19.120 | It has shaped everything I do since I discovered it about 50 years ago.
00:03:28.560 | Here's the sentence.
00:03:30.440 | In the creature's rejoicing in God, the glory of God is exhibited.
00:03:40.040 | That's life-changing.
00:03:41.920 | That's ministry-changing.
00:03:42.920 | It alters the way you preach, alters the way you parent, alters the way you live.
00:03:51.560 | In your rejoicing, in finding pleasure in God, God's excellencies are exhibited.
00:04:01.960 | And if you don't have it, He isn't.
00:04:07.000 | This is huge.
00:04:09.000 | It's huge for how we preach and how we live, what we seek to create by God's grace in our
00:04:16.480 | people.
00:04:19.680 | So here's what I'm going to do to try to make the case that truth triumphs through pleasure.
00:04:26.880 | I'm going to make the connection with four things.
00:04:30.280 | One, the connection between truth and ultimate reality.
00:04:35.560 | Second, the connection between ultimate reality and God.
00:04:40.720 | That's easy.
00:04:41.920 | Third, the connection between God and preciousness.
00:04:48.280 | And fourth, the connection between preciousness and pleasure.
00:04:54.160 | That's where we're going.
00:04:55.320 | Number one, the connection between truth and ultimate reality.
00:05:01.500 | So the biblical words for truth, emet and almunah in Hebrew, aletheia in Greek, are
00:05:08.340 | used so many different ways, all kinds of nuances.
00:05:12.840 | So you know, I'm sure you've all been well taught that you don't take a definition from
00:05:17.340 | Piper or MacArthur or anybody else and take it home and then lay it on a text and say,
00:05:23.380 | "This is what that word means."
00:05:25.620 | No, no, you don't do that.
00:05:27.580 | Because the word is used in so many different ways, you let the text have its say about
00:05:34.920 | what angle on truth is being meant here.
00:05:38.720 | So I'm going to draw out two of those, two angles or two aspects, two ways the Bible
00:05:44.580 | talks about truth.
00:05:45.940 | The first one is patently obvious, and we've heard all of them so far in this conference.
00:05:52.060 | Number one, the Bible often speaks of truth as a characteristic of the things we say.
00:05:58.340 | We say things that are true or false.
00:06:01.620 | I think Mike even quoted this text, Proverbs 12:17, "Whoever speaks the truth gives honest
00:06:07.660 | evidence, but a false witness utters deceit."
00:06:12.020 | So when we think of truth this way, it's a characteristic of our statements about reality.
00:06:20.500 | When we talk of truth this way, truth is a true statement and corresponds to reality.
00:06:28.940 | But here's the second way, the one that I'm most interested in.
00:06:33.380 | Not only does the Bible speak of truth as characteristic of statements about reality,
00:06:39.940 | but it talks about that reality as the truth.
00:06:44.180 | So statements can be true and the reality is the truth.
00:06:48.820 | There's two different ways of using the word truth.
00:06:52.780 | For example, Acts 12, Peter is getting out of prison by the miracle of the angel, and
00:06:59.060 | it says, "Peter went out and followed the angel.
00:07:03.260 | He did not know that what was being done by the angel was alethes."
00:07:08.740 | True, meaning I'm not dreaming.
00:07:15.540 | It's real.
00:07:16.540 | It's really happening.
00:07:18.940 | Or 2 Corinthians 6:8, "We are treated as impostors and yet are alethes."
00:07:30.580 | We're true.
00:07:31.580 | We're not impostors.
00:07:32.580 | We're real.
00:07:34.300 | So that's the meaning I want to take hold of in this particular connection here and
00:07:39.700 | press into it.
00:07:41.420 | The truth not only states the truth, that reality is the truth.
00:08:09.640 | So those two things are the statements can be true and the things about which they speak
00:08:17.760 | as true are the truth.
00:08:20.940 | I am the truth.
00:08:22.140 | You serve a true God.
00:08:23.180 | So that's connection number one.
00:08:26.700 | The connection between truth and reality is that reality is called often in the Bible
00:08:34.120 | truth.
00:08:36.580 | And that points to ultimate truth, because Jesus says, "I'm the truth.
00:08:41.740 | This is the true God."
00:08:42.900 | So we've got to now deal with the question, secondly, what's the connection between ultimate
00:08:50.780 | truth and God?
00:08:53.180 | I said that was the easy one.
00:08:56.700 | What is ultimate truth/ultimate reality?
00:09:01.100 | And I think the most fundamental response to that question in the Bible is probably
00:09:07.020 | Exodus 3, 13 and 14.
00:09:09.340 | I'll read it for you.
00:09:11.180 | Moses said to God, "If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, 'The God of your
00:09:19.460 | fathers has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is his name?'
00:09:26.460 | You shall say to them, 'God said to Moses,'" I didn't read that right, "They asked me,
00:09:36.340 | 'What is his name?
00:09:38.240 | What shall I say to them?'
00:09:40.660 | God said to Moses, 'I am who I am.'
00:09:45.180 | And he said, 'Say this to the people of Israel, 'I am sent me to you.'"
00:09:54.100 | Now the very least you can say about what that means is first, "I am I."
00:10:04.140 | I'm a person.
00:10:05.340 | I'm talking to you right now, I.
00:10:09.060 | Not it, not a wind, not thunder, I, a person, am talking to you.
00:10:16.340 | I am who I am.
00:10:18.340 | Second most obvious thing, I think, is I exist.
00:10:22.540 | I am.
00:10:23.780 | I'm real, not a myth, not imagined, not a Freudian projection, not a wish fulfillment.
00:10:30.700 | I am more real than the ground you stand on, more real than the skin on your bones, more
00:10:37.140 | real than the galaxies at the end of the universe.
00:10:40.360 | And the reason I'm more real is because all of those realities depend on my reality.
00:10:44.820 | I am ultimate reality.
00:10:50.440 | Only I, God, can say, "I am who I am."
00:10:55.400 | Everything else must say, "I am because He is."
00:11:00.820 | So this is the way ultimate truth talks.
00:11:03.440 | I am who I am.
00:11:05.120 | Nobody made me this way.
00:11:07.220 | I simply am.
00:11:08.880 | Never had a beginning, never had an ending.
00:11:11.280 | I never became.
00:11:13.240 | I simply was from all eternity.
00:11:15.360 | I will never end.
00:11:17.440 | I depend on nothing, no cause, no support, no counsel.
00:11:22.640 | Everything depends absolutely on me.
00:11:25.520 | Everything is secondary to me.
00:11:27.480 | The universe is infinitesimally small to me.
00:11:32.480 | I carry it around like a peanut in my pocket.
00:11:37.840 | I never develop.
00:11:38.840 | I cannot be improved.
00:11:40.960 | I'm absolute fullness and perfection.
00:11:43.840 | I conform to nothing outside myself.
00:11:46.960 | I am the standard of all perfection, all beauty and truth and goodness.
00:11:55.120 | There are no constraints on me from outside.
00:11:57.960 | My good pleasure always holds sway.
00:12:01.640 | My actions are absolutely free.
00:12:03.460 | I'm never dictated to by anybody from outside myself.
00:12:10.400 | I am who I am.
00:12:13.880 | And for many years, I have circled back to this text every chance I get like a lightning
00:12:19.480 | bug looking at the sun.
00:12:22.760 | I find it absolutely electrifying that God is.
00:12:28.320 | You just need to lie down some night outside and look up and think he is, he was, he never
00:12:41.280 | began.
00:12:43.320 | This all began.
00:12:45.120 | He never began.
00:12:47.360 | Just absolute reality.
00:12:52.120 | That's my answer to the second question, which is easy to give.
00:12:56.080 | The connection between, so question number one, the connection between truth and reality
00:13:02.720 | is that the Bible often uses the word truth to refer to reality and now ultimate reality
00:13:09.400 | and that ultimate reality second is God.
00:13:12.520 | Now we turn to step three, the connection between God and preciousness, preciousness.
00:13:20.580 | These next two, preciousness and pleasure, are the heart of the matter and I hope they
00:13:25.240 | sink in.
00:13:29.200 | Is ultimate reality valuable?
00:13:35.520 | Is ultimate reality of infinite worth?
00:13:40.440 | Is ultimate reality precious?
00:13:45.400 | Now those three questions I'm going to restate because I want to get at something and I can
00:13:52.000 | force it if I restate those questions slightly differently like this.
00:13:59.160 | Is ultimate reality ultimate value?
00:14:04.280 | You hear the difference, not ultimately valuable but is ultimate reality ultimate value?
00:14:14.160 | Is ultimate reality infinite worth?
00:14:18.160 | Is ultimate reality infinite ultimate preciousness?
00:14:23.320 | So I'm going beyond saying God has value, has worth, has preciousness and I'm pushing
00:14:32.880 | it in to say, "No, no, it is Him, it is part of who He is," even though the word part is
00:14:43.360 | a heresy, the word part is a heresy, but we grope, right?
00:14:51.840 | I'm pushing it in to say God is value, God is worth, God is preciousness.
00:15:01.280 | Now why would I do that?
00:15:02.280 | Why am I pushing on that?
00:15:06.800 | Here's the reason.
00:15:12.040 | Most people in the world are not born again.
00:15:16.760 | Our calling is to, like Jesus said to Paul, "I'm sending you to open their eyes that they
00:15:23.100 | may turn from darkness to light and the power of Satan to God that they may have forgiveness
00:15:27.200 | of sins."
00:15:28.200 | But you, you pastors are going to go out and through your ministry the miracle is going
00:15:35.000 | to happen and people are going to be born again.
00:15:37.320 | That's what we're called to do.
00:15:38.640 | We want people to be saved.
00:15:41.400 | We don't want to be the agent of people's destruction, we want them saved.
00:15:47.640 | So they're out there, your people are talking to them, they come to your church, they're
00:15:51.920 | not yet born again, and if you were to ask any of those unregenerate people, "Is ultimate
00:16:00.760 | reality valuable?
00:16:04.880 | Is God valuable?"
00:16:08.220 | They might say, "Well, because they don't have any mental categories for being God-centered.
00:16:20.600 | The mind of the flesh is hostile to God, does not submit to God, it cannot submit to God."
00:16:26.560 | You're asking them a question they cannot answer truly, so what are they going to say?
00:16:32.520 | They're going to say something like, "Well, I would hope that he or she or it, whatever
00:16:39.500 | ultimate reality is, would help me with my marriage and my job and my health and my children
00:16:49.520 | and my finances, that would be valuable."
00:16:54.480 | In other words, they would measure God's value by whether he's useful in helping them experience
00:17:04.580 | the pleasures that this world offers, that they can conceive of.
00:17:09.480 | Now, some of those people come to your church and your people are hobnobbing with those
00:17:16.120 | people all the time, and here's what I'm suggesting.
00:17:18.760 | I'm suggesting that a new set of questions just might shock them awake, might shock your
00:17:25.680 | people awake.
00:17:30.480 | Is God ultimate value?
00:17:33.720 | Is God infinite worth?
00:17:36.640 | Is God ultimate preciousness?
00:17:41.600 | Not just, does God have value or become useful to me in accomplishing the purposes that I
00:17:49.520 | have before I'm regenerate?
00:17:54.840 | I think if we don't answer that question correctly, namely, is God infinite preciousness?
00:18:03.840 | Our theology, our worship, our obedience is going to go off the rails.
00:18:09.640 | Certain things are at stake here in the way we live, in the way we do ministry.
00:18:14.360 | So let me go to the scriptures now and try to answer this question.
00:18:17.880 | In other words, are there scriptures that warrant this way of talking about preciousness?
00:18:24.880 | Is God infinite preciousness?
00:18:28.400 | Matthew 13, 44, very familiar, one word, one verse, parable.
00:18:33.760 | The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered
00:18:42.520 | up and then in his joy, he goes and he sells everything he has and buys that field.
00:18:55.840 | So if the kingdom of heaven is a precious treasure, it's because the king is the treasure.
00:19:04.480 | Heaven will be heaven because God is there.
00:19:09.480 | There is an ultimate promise.
00:19:14.600 | Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.
00:19:20.240 | He will dwell with them.
00:19:22.360 | They will be his people and God himself will be with them and be their God.
00:19:32.360 | That's Revelation 21, 3.
00:19:34.840 | So that's the consummation of the kingdom, God with us.
00:19:43.180 | So the kingdom is a treasure and it's a treasure because the king is in the kingdom and he
00:19:50.960 | is the treasure, 2 Corinthians 4, 6 and 7.
00:20:00.420 | God has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the
00:20:04.040 | face of Jesus Christ.
00:20:05.560 | We have this treasure.
00:20:09.000 | I think that refers back to what he just said.
00:20:12.460 | So God has spoken.
00:20:14.320 | Our eyes have been opened.
00:20:16.300 | We see the cross now and the gospel as a magnificent treasure.
00:20:23.080 | The glory of God in the face of Christ.
00:20:26.680 | We have this treasure in jars of clay so that the surpassing power belongs to God and not
00:20:33.600 | to us.
00:20:35.040 | So the glory of God in the face of Christ, tasted, experienced in our hearts is the treasure
00:20:42.560 | in the jar of clay.
00:20:44.520 | The presence of God is the presence of treasure, infinite preciousness.
00:20:52.260 | First Peter 1, 3 and 4.
00:20:58.500 | God has granted to us his precious and very great promises.
00:21:04.460 | Why are they precious?
00:21:06.620 | They are precious because they ultimately hold out to us the presence of God.
00:21:10.680 | I don't know if you have a verse you go to bed with every night, but I'm old now, not
00:21:17.340 | as old as MacArthur.
00:21:22.100 | I hope I can live as long as you have, which is only a few more years.
00:21:29.940 | But when we get old, we think about death a lot, I do anyway, and what it will be like
00:21:35.880 | and how to get ready for it, and I think about going to bed at night and not waking up, I
00:21:42.460 | think about that almost every night, and so I have a verse.
00:21:46.860 | And it goes like this, "God," and I picture God saying it to me very personally, lay my
00:21:53.860 | head down on the pillow, I usually start on my left side, no right side like this, I can
00:22:00.300 | get my wife that way, and it says, "John Piper, God has not appointed you for wrath, but to
00:22:11.940 | obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for you, so that whether you wake
00:22:19.340 | or sleep, you will live with him."
00:22:25.180 | That's the salvation.
00:22:26.180 | You live with him!
00:22:27.180 | You're going to live with him!
00:22:29.380 | That's the treasure.
00:22:30.500 | That's the preciousness.
00:22:32.820 | That's the hope.
00:22:33.820 | You go to bed, you don't wake up, great!
00:22:41.540 | With him, with him.
00:22:46.740 | First Peter 1.18, "You were ransomed from the feudal ways inherited from your forefathers,
00:22:53.820 | not with perishable things like silver and gold, but with a precious blood of Jesus Christ
00:23:00.740 | like that of a lamb without blemish or spot."
00:23:03.420 | The blood of Jesus is not precious because it saves us.
00:23:10.580 | It saves us because it's precious.
00:23:15.140 | In itself, the blood of the Son of God is precious.
00:23:21.380 | He is preciousness.
00:23:25.200 | First Peter 2.4, "You come to him, a living stone rejected by men, but in God's sight
00:23:31.260 | chosen, precious.
00:23:34.220 | It stands in Scripture, 'Behold, I'm laying in Zion a cornerstone chosen, precious.'"
00:23:41.820 | God's evaluation of the Son of God is that he's precious, which means preciousness is
00:23:48.220 | in the Trinity.
00:23:52.260 | That's why I say it's in God, it's in God.
00:23:57.780 | It's not because of what he does.
00:24:00.900 | He is precious.
00:24:03.380 | He regards his Son as precious, the Son regards the Father as precious.
00:24:06.780 | The Holy Spirit communicates the preciousness.
00:24:10.040 | This is where preciousness gets started, only that's heretical, too, because nothing starts
00:24:16.780 | in God.
00:24:18.620 | It's just always there.
00:24:22.860 | That's where it comes from.
00:24:24.860 | The whole reality of preciousness is God, it's in God.
00:24:31.180 | Revelation 21.1, "He showed me the holy city coming down out of heaven from God, having
00:24:38.740 | the glory of God, its radiance like a most precious stone."
00:24:45.220 | The glory of God filling the New Jerusalem is the city's preciousness.
00:24:51.020 | Maybe that's enough on that point.
00:24:55.860 | So from those texts, and many more, I conclude that infinite worth, infinite value, infinite
00:25:04.820 | preciousness are in God, intrinsically in God, forever in God.
00:25:12.500 | God the Father enjoys God, the Son, and therefore the preciousness of the Son is in the Trinity
00:25:22.580 | and the preciousness of the Father, and together in all their perfect harmony, they are preciousness.
00:25:29.700 | It belongs to the nature of God.
00:25:32.940 | That's point number three.
00:25:36.100 | So point number one, the biblical facet of truth as reality.
00:25:43.940 | Point number two, that reality ultimately is God.
00:25:50.020 | And point number three is that God is infinite preciousness, which leaves one last connection
00:26:01.420 | or question.
00:26:03.500 | How does pleasure relate to preciousness in the Bible, not just in your head, but in texts?
00:26:15.980 | And I think we see the answer pretty clearly if we ask the question, what is the fitting
00:26:21.180 | human soul response to preciousness as the Bible presents it?
00:26:27.540 | So here's some, I've got three clusters of texts.
00:26:30.700 | I think by clusters I just mean two in each group.
00:26:35.980 | Number one, Matthew 13, 44, let's go back there.
00:26:40.200 | We passed over a word too quickly because it wasn't time for it yet.
00:26:44.260 | The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure, hidden in a field, a very precious discovery,
00:26:51.260 | which man found and covered up, and in his joy he sells everything and buys that field.
00:27:01.420 | That's why so many missionaries have said, "I never made a sacrifice."
00:27:08.380 | In his joy, he's left it all to have the treasure.
00:27:15.580 | So what's the answer to the question that corresponds to preciousness?
00:27:19.260 | Joy, pleasure, okay?
00:27:22.540 | That's number one.
00:27:25.180 | That's fleshed out now in Hebrews 10, 34.
00:27:30.300 | You had compassion on those in prison and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your
00:27:38.340 | property since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one,
00:27:49.460 | more precious, more lasting.
00:27:54.700 | The human response that corresponds to a better, lasting, more precious reward is you joyfully
00:28:04.260 | accepted the plundering of your property.
00:28:08.900 | You can see almost immediately how radically transformative this will be for your people
00:28:16.040 | if they experience what this sermon is designed to help happen.
00:28:22.620 | Do you make the pleasure of your people in God a goal?
00:28:28.300 | You know, gentlemen, you said last night, "What are we after in our people's lives?"
00:28:35.340 | And everybody said, "Obedience."
00:28:38.780 | So did I.
00:28:39.780 | Amen.
00:28:40.780 | But you had already quoted, "If you love me, you will obey me."
00:28:45.100 | So I'm thinking, "I'm after love, folks."
00:28:48.560 | And you are too.
00:28:50.220 | And because that love, that love is not equal to obedience and that love is not equal to
00:28:54.540 | agape.
00:28:55.540 | That love is erotic to the core.
00:28:58.100 | That's an overstatement.
00:29:00.620 | Eros means, "I find pleasure in you, Jesus.
00:29:06.580 | I find pleasure in you, Jesus.
00:29:08.940 | You are my preciousness."
00:29:11.320 | And there comes obedience, which is why I loved every word in that sermon.
00:29:15.820 | And it is so needed because John is so right.
00:29:18.180 | He's fighting that battle with the gospel according to Jesus.
00:29:21.980 | Back when I loved that book when it first came out, and we're still fighting it today
00:29:24.900 | because there's less interest in holiness today than there ever was, as far as I can
00:29:30.060 | remember.
00:29:31.060 | So, amen.
00:29:32.060 | Let's do it.
00:29:33.140 | And let's go to the root of the matter.
00:29:37.460 | Second cluster of texts.
00:29:38.460 | So that's Hebrews and Matthew for the first cluster, and now here comes Philippians and
00:29:42.580 | Habakkuk.
00:29:46.720 | Twice in Philippians, Paul says, "Rejoice in the Lord."
00:29:50.140 | 3.1, "Rejoice in the Lord."
00:29:52.660 | 4.4, "Rejoice in the Lord."
00:29:54.180 | And again I say, "Rejoice in the Lord."
00:29:56.820 | Why is that a fitting way of responding to the Lord?
00:30:03.260 | And he told us in chapter 3, verse 8, "I count everything as loss because of the surpassing
00:30:09.660 | preciousness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord."
00:30:15.460 | I look at everything and count it as rubbish.
00:30:19.020 | I look at Jesus and say, "Joy, precious, beyond words, I'll lose everything for that."
00:30:30.220 | That's why joy is fitting, pleasure is fitting in Jesus.
00:30:36.980 | Here's Habakkuk.
00:30:37.980 | Now Habakkuk, I said I go to sleep on a text.
00:30:41.860 | I got married on this text.
00:30:46.460 | I'll bet not a single person in this room, unless they copied me because they're young,
00:30:52.260 | used this text at your wedding.
00:30:54.020 | If you come up to me or send me a note or something, I'd love to know if you did.
00:30:58.620 | This is Habakkuk 3, 17, "Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines,
00:31:08.120 | the produce of the olive fail, and fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the
00:31:16.380 | fold, and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will take
00:31:25.240 | joy in the God of my salvation, and starvation is just over the horizon."
00:31:32.060 | There's nothing there.
00:31:38.160 | There is no food.
00:31:43.280 | You have any idea why we would build our marriage on that?
00:31:51.400 | We have been through really hard times, and we could see them coming.
00:31:56.760 | My Sunday school teacher told me, "John, you and Noel will never make it.
00:32:01.880 | You'll never make it.
00:32:06.160 | You're analytical to the core.
00:32:08.980 | She's carefree as a bird.
00:32:11.880 | It won't work."
00:32:12.880 | Well, it has, 55 years worth.
00:32:18.280 | Because of that text, we'll go through hell to stay married.
00:32:23.880 | We will stay with Jesus who says, "Divorce is not an option, and he will be sufficient
00:32:29.440 | for you no matter what."
00:32:31.960 | That is a great verse to build a marriage on, or anything else, for that matter.
00:32:39.020 | Just think of it.
00:32:40.020 | How could he possibly talk like that?
00:32:42.680 | "I don't have anything to eat.
00:32:47.040 | There's no animals.
00:32:48.420 | There's no vines.
00:32:49.780 | There's nothing coming in.
00:32:51.240 | I've got no income.
00:32:55.720 | I will rejoice in the Lord," because he's infinite preciousness.
00:33:00.800 | He's 10,000 times better than anything.
00:33:03.600 | The steadfast love of the Lord is better than life.
00:33:06.360 | Come on, if you don't know that verse, you're in trouble.
00:33:11.520 | That's Psalm 63, 3.
00:33:14.000 | Let's try it again.
00:33:15.000 | The steadfast love of the Lord is better than life.
00:33:18.420 | Thank you.
00:33:21.240 | Third cluster of texts.
00:33:22.980 | That one was, what did I say, Habakkuk and Philippians with a little Psalm 63 thrown
00:33:29.000 | in.
00:33:30.000 | Finally, Hebrews and Psalms, third cluster.
00:33:36.680 | Hebrews 11, "Moses chose rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting
00:33:44.380 | pleasures," fleeting pleasures, like they only last 80 years, "the fleeting pleasures
00:33:55.460 | of sin.
00:33:56.880 | He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth," preciousness, "than the treasures
00:34:05.120 | of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward."
00:34:08.720 | Moses is saying, "I've got pleasures.
00:34:17.860 | I've got the whole court of Egypt at my disposal.
00:34:21.500 | I'm his adopted son or grandson, and I've got all the pleasures I want."
00:34:31.780 | And he reasons, "Well, they'll only last a lifetime, and I've got a better wealth
00:34:41.800 | following the Lord and leading this cantankerous people through the wilderness, and I think
00:34:49.260 | I'll go with infinite preciousness rather than what Egypt has to offer."
00:34:55.240 | Now, Psalm 1611, it's the last one we'll look at.
00:35:02.960 | Psalm 1611, kind of a life verse along with a few others, is a Psalm that does not hesitate
00:35:10.520 | to use the word pleasure.
00:35:11.520 | Now, some of you might be kind of wobbly about, "Joy is fine.
00:35:16.200 | Don't talk about pleasure though.
00:35:18.660 | Joy is good.
00:35:19.660 | Joy is Bible.
00:35:21.040 | Pleasures is not Bible.
00:35:22.120 | That's world."
00:35:23.120 | No, it's not true.
00:35:24.880 | If you do a word study on trying to figure out which words for joy or pleasure or delight
00:35:30.920 | fit the Christian heart, they're all over the place.
00:35:34.040 | Every one of them do.
00:35:35.520 | Just do your study.
00:35:36.520 | Just look them all up, and the Bible is utterly discriminant for words that apply to sinful
00:35:42.080 | pleasure and words that apply to godly pleasure.
00:35:44.720 | They're the same words.
00:35:49.320 | You just got to decide that it's okay to delight in God.
00:35:52.880 | I mean, a lot of Reformed people are scared to death that Piper talks this way.
00:36:00.500 | I can't even get into some places, they're so scared.
00:36:06.000 | This is risky for MacArthur to have me here, like probably the only person in the room
00:36:11.600 | raising his hand, you know?
00:36:16.160 | I didn't want to turn around.
00:36:28.860 | And I know that MacArthur standing beside me with both his hands beside his body has
00:36:35.080 | as much pleasure in Jesus as I do.
00:36:43.840 | My heart is glad and my whole being rejoices, for you make known to me the path of life.
00:36:50.300 | In your presence is fullness of joy.
00:36:53.040 | At your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
00:37:00.360 | So the gladness of the heart that we know now, which is so weak and so partial and so
00:37:05.500 | inadequate, is a foretaste of that, and it will be fulfilled someday.
00:37:13.840 | So which brings us now to one last text, I think I said that was the last one, it's not
00:37:17.360 | the last one, this is the last one.
00:37:20.400 | So 2 Thessalonians chapter 2, this is a most provocative text in so many ways.
00:37:28.180 | It's talking about the man of lawlessness, right?
00:37:32.380 | And here's what Paul says about that last time about the man of lawlessness, "The coming
00:37:40.160 | of the lawless one," this is verse 9, "The coming of the lawless one is with all wicked
00:37:48.700 | deception for those who are perishing because they," and then here the translations are
00:37:57.540 | all over the place, "They did not welcome a love for the truth."
00:38:05.100 | They didn't welcome a love for the truth.
00:38:11.060 | Now that love, that doesn't mean self-sacrificing love, that means cherishing love, delighting
00:38:20.740 | love, embracing love.
00:38:22.300 | I love the truth.
00:38:27.940 | And so be saved, verse 11, "Therefore God sends them a strong delusion so that they
00:38:37.300 | may believe what is false," he's done, he's handed them over, "in order that all may be
00:38:45.340 | condemned who did not believe the truth," that's why I wrote a whole book on what is
00:38:51.540 | saving faith because of that verse, "believe the truth," that's another issue, leave that
00:38:56.700 | over there, "did not believe the truth, but," what's the alternative, "had pleasure in unrighteousness."
00:39:03.060 | So you've got, "They didn't love the truth, they had pleasure in unrighteousness," which
00:39:12.980 | is just what John was getting at with John chapter 3, the light is coming to the world.
00:39:20.740 | People loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil, they loved righteousness,
00:39:26.540 | unrighteousness, and they did not love the truth, which I take to mean they didn't have
00:39:34.780 | pleasure in the truth because that's the word used for the opposite, they had pleasure in
00:39:40.300 | unrighteousness.
00:39:43.060 | They didn't delight in the truth, they didn't find pleasure in the truth as precious and
00:39:51.700 | so they did not believe the truth but instead had pleasure in unrighteousness.
00:39:56.860 | The truth here is the word of God, the gospel especially, and it's the gospel of the glory
00:40:03.420 | of Christ and therefore not to find pleasure in the word of truth, the gospel is not to
00:40:08.700 | find pleasure in Christ and his glory.
00:40:14.020 | Now conclusion, see if you can put the pieces together with me.
00:40:23.020 | When in the final glorification of the bride of Christ, when in that final glorification
00:40:31.820 | of the saints, the bride of Christ experiences, now these are your people I'm talking about
00:40:39.140 | and the day is coming very soon when they'll be in this condition and then finally all
00:40:44.060 | of us in the kingdom, when in that final glorification of the saints, the bride of Christ experiences
00:40:53.620 | her supreme pleasure in the infinite preciousness that is God, then infinite preciousness in
00:41:05.140 | God will be exhibited.
00:41:11.460 | The goal of the universe, as Edward said, as so many texts say, the goal of history,
00:41:16.860 | the goal of redemption, the goal of creation is the fullest exhibition of the glory of
00:41:24.020 | God in the new heavens and the new earth.
00:41:27.220 | And I'm saying that absolutely will not happen if the bride does not find her fullest pleasure
00:41:38.000 | in the bridegroom.
00:41:39.780 | It won't happen.
00:41:41.380 | And if you believe that, that the fullness of the bride's pleasure in the bridegroom
00:41:49.380 | is an absolutely essential component of the fulfillment of the purposes of the universe,
00:41:56.020 | it's going to affect your ministry.
00:41:58.700 | It's going to affect what you're after.
00:42:01.260 | And when that happens, truth, ultimate reality, God, ultimate preciousness will be vindicated
00:42:13.100 | and truth will triumph through pleasure.
00:42:17.940 | Let's pray.
00:42:20.980 | Father in heaven, this is a miracle I'm asking for, for myself, for our churches, for these
00:42:28.340 | pastors.
00:42:29.340 | We long to taste as fully as fallen, justified, sanctified people can do, to taste as fully
00:42:42.380 | as we can taste the pleasures at your right hand manifest in the word through Jesus Christ.
00:42:49.380 | So God worked that miracle in these brothers.
00:42:52.300 | Some of them are so emotionally broken, so lame, so limited, so constrained that this
00:42:59.540 | sounds like a foreign language.
00:43:03.760 | And that's true of all our people.
00:43:06.580 | And like John said this morning or last night, compassion is that first prerequisite.
00:43:14.060 | If we're going to call our people to do the impossible, namely experience Christ as so
00:43:19.140 | satisfying they're willing to let everything else go and still rejoice, a miracle has to
00:43:24.620 | happen and we need to be patient while you do it.
00:43:27.620 | So help us, I pray in Jesus' great name.
00:43:30.500 | Amen.
00:43:32.060 | (gentle music)
00:43:34.640 | [BLANK_AUDIO]