God Takes Away to Display Christ’s Beauty
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:06.000 | The Lord gives and the Lord takes away.
00:00:09.000 | And it's His active role in the taking away that we often fail to reflect on.
00:00:14.000 | The Lord takes away by His own initiative.
00:00:16.000 | It's His wisdom, His act of sovereignty in our lives when we feel the sting of personal loss.
00:00:22.000 | But why? Why does God take things from us?
00:00:26.000 | This was the question taken up by John Piper in a recent sermon.
00:00:29.000 | And here's one precious answer.
00:00:31.000 | The reason this world of calamity, conflict, misery, suffering, and death exists
00:00:39.000 | is so that the followers of Jesus Christ would be able to experience and display
00:00:47.000 | the profound God-honoring truth that Christ is more precious to us than everything we could lose in this world.
00:01:00.000 | A world of loss exists so that you and I, by not murmuring or complaining or getting angry at God,
00:01:15.000 | but rather resting in Him and trusting in Him, could show the world and testify to our own consciences
00:01:23.000 | that God is more precious to us than everything that we just lost.
00:01:27.000 | That's why the loss exists.
00:01:30.000 | I'll read the verse from which I get that.
00:01:33.000 | This is Philippians chapter 3, verse 8.
00:01:36.000 | "I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.
00:01:45.000 | For His sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as refuse in order that I may gain Christ."
00:01:55.000 | All loss is meant to show in the heart of believers that Christ is more precious than what is lost.
00:02:08.000 | You've got two options every time you experience a loss.
00:02:13.000 | You can hate God or you can hate sin.
00:02:19.000 | Because all loss enters the world through sin and is intended to portray the horrors of sin.
00:02:33.000 | My wife and I were married in 1968.
00:02:37.000 | I was 22 and already the Lord was showing me as I was making the transition from college to seminary,
00:02:46.000 | the pain of the world. Not sure why I was just so burdened and sensitive.
00:02:52.000 | So I anticipated the exquisite pleasures of sex in marriage.
00:02:58.000 | Who wouldn't?
00:03:00.000 | And I felt the horrors of disease in the Vietnam War.
00:03:09.000 | Fiasco. 50,000 of my friends dead.
00:03:16.000 | So in our wedding, the text that my dad, I asked to read, who did our wedding,
00:03:25.000 | was Habakkuk chapter 3, verses 17 following that go like this.
00:03:30.000 | "Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail,
00:03:39.000 | and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold, and there be no herd in the stalls.
00:03:50.000 | Yet I will rejoice in the Lord. I will take joy in the God of my salvation."
00:03:59.000 | We've been married 46 years and it's been very hard.
00:04:04.000 | Still is. For reasons you don't need to know.
00:04:09.000 | Some of which I'd be happy to tell you, others I would not be happy to tell you.
00:04:14.000 | And I'm so thankful that the Lord put that foundation under us.
00:04:18.000 | I don't believe in walking away from a spouse for any reason.
00:04:22.000 | "Though the fig tree should not blossom, no fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail,
00:04:28.000 | the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold, there be no herd in the stalls."
00:04:33.000 | That means you're dead. There's nothing to eat.
00:04:36.000 | "Yet I will rejoice in the Lord. I will take joy in the God of my salvation."
00:04:42.000 | That's why famine exists, among other reasons.
00:04:47.000 | So that Christians who are swept away in the famine will bear witness,
00:04:55.000 | God is better than food.
00:04:58.000 | God is all satisfying to my soul as I die of starvation.
00:05:04.000 | Yes, He is.
00:05:06.000 | And what a tribute you pay to Him when that happens.
00:05:11.000 | Murmuring is a great sin.
00:05:16.000 | Philippians 2.15 says, "Do all things without murmuring,
00:05:20.000 | that you may shine like lights in a dark and crooked generation,
00:05:26.000 | and show yourself to be pure and blameless sons of God."
00:05:30.000 | Oh, how many times have I failed, even in the last 24 hours.
00:05:37.000 | I'm a born murmurer.
00:05:40.000 | Murmur, murmur, murmur.
00:05:42.000 | I hate myself when I murmur.
00:05:46.000 | Because it's a statement that God is not better than what you're murmuring about.
00:05:55.000 | Oh my, that is humbling.
00:05:57.000 | This clip was taken from John Piper's recent sermon,
00:06:00.000 | "The Pain of the World and the Purposes of God,"
00:06:03.000 | a sermon he preached in Vancouver on April 26th.
00:06:06.000 | And you can find the full sermon at DesiringGod.org right now.
00:06:10.000 | Well, how do I know if the love of money rules my heart?
00:06:15.000 | I'll ask author Paul Tripp that tomorrow as we continue talking about his book,
00:06:19.000 | "Sex and Money."
00:06:20.000 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:06:21.000 | Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John Podcast.
00:06:24.000 | [ Silence ]
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