Sneak Peek of John’s Next Book
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | - Welcome back to the Ask Pastor John podcast
00:00:07.040 | with author and longtime pastor, John Piper.
00:00:09.840 | Pastor John, you've just completed
00:00:11.380 | an eight week writing leave.
00:00:12.720 | It's been a fruitful one from what you've said.
00:00:15.040 | Can you give us a window into how it went
00:00:17.520 | and perhaps maybe more importantly,
00:00:19.360 | give us a sneak peek as to what you wrote
00:00:21.760 | and what you expect to come out of it.
00:00:23.560 | - Tony, I really want to thank any of our listeners
00:00:29.520 | who prayed for me during that leave.
00:00:33.560 | Here's a little example of the kind of merciful providence
00:00:38.560 | that I received and I believe it's 'cause people
00:00:43.600 | cared enough to pray.
00:00:45.860 | So you start to write at the beginning
00:00:47.920 | of an eight week writing leave,
00:00:49.440 | you have a general idea of the kind of book
00:00:52.200 | you want to write.
00:00:53.080 | I wanted to write a book about how to read the Bible
00:00:56.920 | in the most Christ exalting, God-centered,
00:01:00.880 | life-changing, mission advancing way possible.
00:01:05.880 | I had no idea how long this book would be.
00:01:10.000 | I had no idea how many chapters it would have.
00:01:13.100 | I only had the vaguest idea of the several focuses
00:01:18.100 | I wanted it to have and so I just started
00:01:20.840 | gathering material and pondering and thinking
00:01:23.340 | about structure and doodling down ideas
00:01:25.660 | and finally getting to work on pounding out chapters
00:01:30.620 | and lo and behold, on the very last day
00:01:35.620 | of the eight week writing leave,
00:01:39.440 | 130,000 word book is finished on the very day.
00:01:44.440 | - Nice.
00:01:46.160 | - Now to me, that is astonishing.
00:01:49.280 | It's just astonishing.
00:01:51.160 | I didn't plan that.
00:01:52.540 | I had no idea how long the book would be.
00:01:54.800 | At any given point, I didn't know whether
00:01:56.700 | I was halfway done or three quarters done.
00:01:59.400 | I didn't have any idea and so the entire project
00:02:04.400 | lands on that last day.
00:02:07.680 | So that, to me personally, that just felt
00:02:10.820 | like an evidence of the kindness of God
00:02:14.820 | and the power of God to take those eight weeks,
00:02:18.440 | take people's prayers, take some ideas
00:02:21.320 | and perform what felt to me like a marvel.
00:02:25.760 | So as far as going about how you go about it,
00:02:30.120 | the answer is sitz fleisch.
00:02:32.520 | The Germans call it, you gotta have sitting flesh.
00:02:36.000 | You gotta care about sitting all day long.
00:02:38.320 | So I get up at six in the morning,
00:02:41.080 | I exercise, I shower, I eat my cereal,
00:02:44.240 | I read my Bible, I pray, I sit down
00:02:46.640 | and I get up at seven o'clock in the evening
00:02:48.680 | and you do that every day for five days
00:02:51.280 | and at the end, actually I did it on Saturday
00:02:53.840 | as well for a couple of weeks, but I think only two.
00:02:57.680 | And that's the sneak peek.
00:02:59.080 | There's nothing magical about it.
00:03:00.840 | You chop down a tree with lots of chops
00:03:05.840 | and you sit down and you try not to get discouraged
00:03:09.800 | that one day wasn't so fruitful and another day was.
00:03:13.280 | But what I'm really excited about sharing
00:03:15.880 | with the folks is the content.
00:03:18.600 | So let me just quick give a preview
00:03:20.520 | into what I hope it's gonna be.
00:03:22.720 | I don't know for sure what the title will be,
00:03:25.320 | but my suggested title right now
00:03:28.240 | is "Reading the Bible Supernaturally,"
00:03:32.080 | subtitle, "Seeing and Savoring the Glory of God
00:03:35.600 | in Scripture."
00:03:36.760 | So it's a big book, probably 350 pages.
00:03:39.720 | It's not a technical book.
00:03:41.840 | It's not written mainly for scholars.
00:03:43.840 | It is a serious book.
00:03:46.080 | It's mainly biblical explanations and applications.
00:03:50.480 | And my hope is that it will inspire people
00:03:55.160 | to love the Bible and to give their most serious
00:03:58.680 | mental, spiritual attention to the Bible.
00:04:02.840 | I've been more deeply impressed than ever
00:04:05.800 | on this writing leave with the wonderful truth
00:04:09.760 | that the creator of the universe has communicated
00:04:14.120 | so fully to us about himself and his purposes
00:04:18.360 | for the world and his great salvation
00:04:20.120 | and his future plans for us and the world
00:04:23.320 | in a book, a book that we have.
00:04:25.860 | Just think of it, the God who made and rules the world
00:04:29.720 | has given us a book about himself
00:04:32.320 | and about the way he does things.
00:04:34.320 | That's simply staggering to me.
00:04:37.160 | And oh, how I want to be faithful to the sacredness
00:04:41.080 | of that deposit in our world and in our lives.
00:04:46.080 | So my fallible book about his infallible book
00:04:51.280 | has three parts.
00:04:53.120 | And the first part is called,
00:04:55.240 | "The Ultimate Goal of God in Reading."
00:04:58.240 | And there I try to make the case that the ultimate purposes
00:05:01.440 | of God in the universe will fall to pieces
00:05:05.200 | and abort if Christians don't read their Bible
00:05:10.200 | the way God intends.
00:05:12.280 | And that's shocking when you say it like that.
00:05:15.680 | But of course, God's purposes will not fall to pieces
00:05:20.480 | and abort because Jeremiah says,
00:05:23.320 | "He is watching over his word to perform it."
00:05:28.040 | God doesn't set out his word in the world
00:05:31.360 | and then walk away and watch from a distance
00:05:34.240 | to see what's gonna come of his word.
00:05:36.720 | He watches over his word to perform it.
00:05:39.760 | He's in his people by his spirit.
00:05:42.960 | And those who are truly his people will in fact
00:05:45.520 | read their Bibles and will be changed by that reading.
00:05:49.200 | And so the ultimate purpose of God in the universe,
00:05:52.720 | I argue, is that he be worshiped with white hot affection
00:05:57.720 | as the supreme excellence and value of the universe
00:06:03.360 | by a people gathered from all the nations
00:06:06.480 | and tribes of the world.
00:06:08.000 | So the Bible is the place where people see God
00:06:11.640 | clearly enough that the Holy Spirit might be moving them
00:06:15.880 | to savor him supremely enough that they'll be changed enough
00:06:20.880 | into his likeness so that he will get the white hot worship
00:06:25.760 | that he deserves.
00:06:27.120 | So Bible reading is a necessary, indispensable instrument
00:06:33.040 | in the hand of God to bring about the ultimate purposes
00:06:36.840 | of the universe.
00:06:38.040 | That's part one.
00:06:39.280 | Part two is called the supernatural act of reading.
00:06:44.280 | And the point is that if we have to see the glory of God
00:06:50.480 | in scripture, and if we have to savor the glory of God
00:06:53.600 | above all things, that's a miracle.
00:06:56.720 | Because by nature, John Piper and nobody else
00:07:01.520 | reads the Bible and sees the glory of God
00:07:05.240 | and savors it above all things.
00:07:06.980 | That's contrary to fallen human nature.
00:07:09.860 | So a miracle has to happen.
00:07:11.460 | Something super natural has to happen
00:07:14.440 | in the reading of the book, or the book is going to abort
00:07:17.560 | in its ultimate purposes.
00:07:20.220 | For example, one of the chapters that moved me most
00:07:23.600 | was the one I did about the Pharisees
00:07:25.280 | and the Jewish leaders.
00:07:27.680 | Jesus said six times to them, "Have you never read?"
00:07:32.380 | And I thought, what?
00:07:36.040 | That's all they do is read.
00:07:38.300 | They are professional Bible readers.
00:07:41.080 | That's what they do.
00:07:42.620 | They knew this book by heart.
00:07:44.920 | And Jesus looked at them and said,
00:07:47.100 | "You talk like you've never read the Bible."
00:07:49.760 | That makes me tremble.
00:07:51.560 | I mean, will he look at me someday?
00:07:54.100 | Will he say, "Piper, when you act like that,
00:07:56.400 | "when you talk like that,
00:07:58.080 | "when you have those kinds of discouragements or feelings,
00:08:01.420 | "you act like you've never read the Bible."
00:08:04.200 | So I need to know what did those Pharisees miss?
00:08:08.720 | Goodnight, how can you spend a lifetime reading the Bible
00:08:12.160 | and miss it?
00:08:13.380 | Because Jesus said, "Seeing you do not see."
00:08:15.720 | They didn't see.
00:08:17.280 | So my aim in this book, for my sake and for others,
00:08:21.480 | is to figure out what did they do wrong?
00:08:24.200 | I wanna see what they didn't see.
00:08:27.640 | And it takes a miracle for that to happen.
00:08:30.280 | This is called supernatural reading of the Bible.
00:08:32.960 | And the last part is called the natural act
00:08:36.800 | of reading the Bible supernaturally.
00:08:38.880 | And it's supposed to sound paradoxical
00:08:41.160 | because reading the Bible is both natural and supernatural,
00:08:46.160 | just like the Bible itself is divinely inspired
00:08:50.040 | and yet in human language.
00:08:54.100 | And this is where I try to give my most practical help
00:08:58.440 | of what is good reading.
00:09:00.480 | And I try not to get too bogged down
00:09:02.080 | in hermeneutical details,
00:09:04.600 | but keep it at the level of habits of mind
00:09:07.760 | and habits of heart that apply to all the passages
00:09:11.440 | of the Bible to make them as transformative
00:09:15.400 | in our reading as they can be.
00:09:16.840 | And the last thing maybe it would be helpful to say
00:09:20.460 | is just to quote a scripture that perhaps,
00:09:23.800 | I don't know, I didn't do the count.
00:09:25.880 | I quoted more than any other scripture,
00:09:28.400 | namely 2 Corinthians 3, 18.
00:09:32.040 | "We all with unveiled face beholding the glory of the Lord
00:09:37.040 | are being changed from one degree of glory to another
00:09:42.680 | into the same image."
00:09:44.920 | So beholding or seeing God,
00:09:47.800 | seeing his glory in Christ especially
00:09:51.360 | is the key to being changed into the likeness of Christ
00:09:56.360 | that moves the church toward the consummation of all things.
00:10:01.680 | So we have to behold the glory of the Lord
00:10:05.240 | and that happens decisively in the reading of the Bible
00:10:10.240 | or the hearing of the revelation of the glory of God
00:10:13.640 | in the face of Christ as it's told in the Bible.
00:10:16.880 | And that's what I'm praying God will do with this book.
00:10:21.120 | - That is beautiful.
00:10:22.160 | Thank you Pastor John for the update.
00:10:23.560 | And so how does John Piper get so much done?
00:10:27.080 | That's a question I wanna ask you Pastor John next week,
00:10:29.300 | actually on Monday.
00:10:30.620 | We'll talk about personal productivity.
00:10:32.280 | But first tomorrow I wanna talk about
00:10:33.800 | the American cultural phenomenon.
00:10:36.440 | For the first time in America,
00:10:38.460 | unmarried women outnumber married women.
00:10:41.760 | What does that mean for Christians?
00:10:43.040 | What does that mean for the church?
00:10:45.300 | We'll talk about that tomorrow.
00:10:46.840 | I'm your host Tony Reinke.
00:10:47.680 | Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast.
00:10:50.240 | (upbeat music)
00:10:52.820 | (upbeat music)
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