Plan for Something Greater Than Retirement
00:00:00.000 | The last chapter of life is not retirement. No, something greater is to come and we need
00:00:10.180 | to start planning for something far beyond the reach of our 401ks. It's a suitable
00:00:14.440 | word from John Piper to upper class Americans and it's a suitable word to prisoners serving
00:00:19.080 | life sentences at Angola, the largest maximum security prison in the US. That's the setting
00:00:25.520 | for today's clip. Angola, a Louisiana maximum security prison home to 6,300 inmates, only
00:00:32.160 | murderers, rapists, armed robbers, and habitual felons. The average sentence is 88 years with
00:00:38.080 | 3,200 people in one place serving life sentences. 90% of the inmates die here. John Piper traveled
00:00:47.440 | to Louisiana and preached in Angola's chapel on November 20th, 2009. About 800 prisoners
00:00:52.820 | packed in to hear a message from him on John 6 on Jesus' feeding of the 5,000 and his walk
00:00:58.040 | on water. "I preached with all my heart to those who could fit in the chapel," Piper
00:01:01.940 | recounted later. "I pulled no punches." Hundreds of other prisoners heard the sermon through
00:01:07.400 | closed circuit television, including those on death row like Gerald Borderlin, a convicted
00:01:12.160 | rapist and child killer we met in episode 1445. Piper pulled no punches and the result
00:01:19.480 | is one of my all-time favorite sermons. Here's a clip from the closing of that Angola sermon
00:01:23.800 | and Pastor John's final spoken pleas to Gerald. Have a listen.
00:01:28.840 | Let me say a word about this verse, 27. It's so important. The Father has set his seal
00:01:34.120 | on Jesus. I think that means God sent Jesus into the world. He ordained for Jesus to live
00:01:40.940 | a spotless life, no sin. He sent his son to the cross to die for our sins. He raised him
00:01:48.200 | from the dead and vindicated that perfect work of substitution and redemption. He raised
00:01:53.960 | him to the right hand. He's going to send him again. In that great redemptive work by
00:01:59.640 | which our sins are covered and we're clothed with Christ's righteousness, God sealed his
00:02:05.760 | son as the Son of Man and the only qualified mediator between God and man who can give
00:02:12.640 | eternal life. So the Son of Man, Jesus Christ, gives eternal life because the Father said,
00:02:18.640 | "That's who he is. That's my son. I sent him for that. He accomplished it perfectly."
00:02:24.760 | Secondly, we're still in verse 27 here. It says, taking the second phrase there, "Labor
00:02:34.260 | for the food that endures to eternal life." Labor for the food that endures to eternal
00:02:44.360 | life. That sounds terrible. Why does that sound terrible? You can't labor for eternal
00:02:52.360 | life. It's a gift. Well, what does Jesus mean? I mean, when you read the Gospel of John,
00:03:00.240 | we bump into things like this all the time. Jesus seems to say the opposite of what he
00:03:04.600 | means, but he doesn't leave you in doubt very long. You just keep reading, so let's keep
00:03:10.440 | reading. The answer is given in verses 28 and 29. "Then they said to him," after he
00:03:17.160 | said, "Labor for the food that endures to eternal life." You want eternal life? Labor
00:03:21.720 | for the bread that endures to eternal life. "And then they said to him, 'Well, what must
00:03:25.440 | we be doing to do the works of God?'" So you're telling us to labor? Tell us what works to
00:03:29.880 | do. This is classic salvation by works. False. So they're asking, "Okay, you said labor for
00:03:40.360 | the food that endures to eternal life. We're asking you, just like the rich young ruler
00:03:44.120 | when he came, 'What must I do, do, do to inherit eternal life?'" And Jesus now gives the answer
00:03:50.280 | in verse 29. "This is the work of God, that you believe in him." So he turned the table
00:04:02.760 | upside down. They were working and working and working to seek him, have him, because
00:04:08.720 | he was useful to them. And to make a point, he says, "Don't seek me that way. You want
00:04:15.680 | to seek me and labor for bread? Labor for the bread that endures to eternal life." And
00:04:20.920 | he hooks them with that, and they say, "Okay, what's the labor?" And he says, "The labor
00:04:25.160 | is faith. The labor is stop laboring. The labor is stop working and trust me." It's
00:04:34.680 | like I'm standing here as the bread of life, okay? This is Jesus talking. I'm standing
00:04:39.160 | here as the bread of life, freely offering myself to you. I'm going to lay down my flesh,
00:04:45.560 | for the world, it says later in verse 51. I'm standing here as the bread of life. I'm
00:04:50.160 | standing here as gold and silver and treasure, everything you've ever needed, I am for you,
00:04:57.400 | and I'm free. And they're there saying, "What do we have to do? What do we have to do? What's
00:05:02.760 | the deed we have to do to have you?" And he would say, "I think, if I don't look to you
00:05:11.460 | as a treasure..." You listening, Gerald? "If I don't look to you as a treasure, if you
00:05:21.320 | don't see me as a treasure, no amount of work is going to make me precious to you." Paul
00:05:29.400 | said, "I count everything as loss." Now, you guys have lost so much. You've got such a
00:05:37.040 | head start here. If God would just grip you with this. Paul says, "I count everything
00:05:42.680 | as loss for the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, that I may know him
00:05:51.460 | and the power of his resurrection, that I may share his sufferings, becoming like him
00:05:56.260 | in his death, if by any means I might attain the resurrection of the dead." Next stop after
00:06:01.500 | Angola, heaven, if he's precious. If he's precious beyond anything in this world that
00:06:09.020 | you've already had to lose. When you eat of the bread of life, two things change. You
00:06:17.140 | get eternal life, that is a new chapter is added to your life. Angola is not the last
00:06:24.940 | chapter, it's the next to the last chapter. Eternity is the last chapter and it lasts
00:06:31.380 | forever and it is infinitely happy. So many Americans work their fingers to the bone to
00:06:40.860 | have 20 years of so-called retirement, thinking retirement is the last chapter. It isn't.
00:06:51.900 | It's the next to the last chapter. And if we believe that, this little puny, fragile
00:06:59.860 | hope that as an old, wrinkled, aching, aged person, you're going to go golf somewhere
00:07:07.060 | for 20 years? You're going to fish somewhere for 20 years? When you can have absolute certainty,
00:07:14.820 | you too, of an everlasting cabin by the lake with Jesus? An everlasting ocean cruise with
00:07:23.780 | Jesus? An everlasting evening by the fire with a good book and Jesus? You men don't
00:07:31.420 | dream that way and that's very good. I hope all that dreaming that you thought one day
00:07:37.940 | you might have for that shifts onto the last chapter. I'm going there real quick. Mary
00:07:45.340 | and my church will be there in two weeks, maybe. And Gerald, his life is very short,
00:07:53.140 | brothers, very short. It may seem long, it's short. And eternity, it's really long. It's
00:08:01.460 | really long and it's really good. Ten thousand times will you be rewarded for every kind
00:08:10.020 | deed you ever do, every act of faith that ever comes forth from you. So I think my closing
00:08:16.340 | admonition, brothers, is it's free. Christ died in our place. He rose again from the
00:08:22.500 | dead. He lived a life of perfect righteousness. He stands freely available to everyone who
00:08:28.180 | will have him and start working for him and start eating the bread of heaven and finding
00:08:34.500 | him to be more precious. I said to Gerald this afternoon, who won't live out next year,
00:08:45.220 | probably, I said, "What I would like you to do is to open your Bible, not because reading
00:08:52.860 | your Bible saves you. We're not into working here. Open your Bible to Matthew, Mark, and
00:08:58.980 | Luke and just get to know Jesus better every day so that when you meet him, there won't
00:09:04.620 | be too many surprises. Fall in love with him, Gerald. Fall in love with him now. You need
00:09:11.740 | to love him now. Know him now. Trust him now. And I would say that to all of you. I'd say
00:09:17.460 | it to me. My task on this planet is to eat the bread of heaven and be satisfied and overflow
00:09:28.900 | for others."
00:09:29.900 | So deeply moving. Pastor John promised to write follow-up letters, and he did. He sent
00:09:34.580 | two in December 2009. "Oh, Gerald, I want to see you in heaven with Jesus," Piper wrote.
00:09:40.980 | "I want to see his glorious grace magnified in your salvation. It doesn't depend on your
00:09:45.660 | merit or your worth or your good deeds or the quality of your piety. It depends on whether
00:09:50.780 | you see Jesus as what you need and want more than anything and freely receive him. It is
00:09:57.020 | possible because of Jesus that in the very moment you die at the warden's side, you will
00:10:02.380 | be in the presence of Jesus. But it's also possible that you will be in hell. The difference
00:10:09.460 | will not be whether you are guilty of sin and crime. The difference will be whether
00:10:13.140 | you receive Jesus as your guilt-bearer. He suffered immensely as the Son of God so that
00:10:18.260 | your crimes could be wiped out. He lived a perfect life so that his perfection could
00:10:22.900 | be counted as yours. Be amazed at this. I love you and plead with you to turn to Jesus
00:10:29.380 | every day, not just once, turn to him every day. I want to see you in heaven. It won't
00:10:35.740 | be long till I get there."
00:10:36.980 | Affectionately, John Piper.
00:10:40.900 | In the second letter, Pastor John said this, "You shed innocent blood, that is true, and
00:10:45.820 | that is why God shed the infinitely precious innocent blood of his Son Jesus, so that you
00:10:50.740 | and I could be forgiven. Gerald, I love you and want to see you again with Jesus in heaven.
00:10:57.860 | Trust him."
00:11:00.800 | Is Gerald in heaven or in hell? It's not clear. What we do know is seven weeks after Piper's
00:11:05.560 | sermon, Bordelon was executed. On January 7, 2010, he was led into Angola's lethal injection
00:11:12.660 | chamber wearing a white t-shirt and a gold-crossed necklace from his daughter. Witnesses say
00:11:17.500 | Bordelon's eyes were red-rimmed from crying as he haltingly said his final words, "I'd
00:11:22.620 | like to apologize to my family and tell them that I love them." He was strapped down, IVs
00:11:27.700 | inserted in his arms, three drugs put him to sleep, stopped his breathing, and stopped
00:11:31.540 | his heart all quickly. A moment later, Warden Kane said, "We now pronounce Gerald Bordelon
00:11:37.340 | dead, who sent his soul for final judgment." To this day, Bordelon remains the last prisoner
00:11:43.900 | to be executed in Louisiana.
00:11:47.220 | You can listen to or watch the full sermon at DesiringGod. It's titled, "Jesus Came Not
00:11:51.580 | to Give Bread, but to Be Bread." It's a fantastic sermon.
00:11:57.580 | We return on Friday, Lord willing. I'm your host Tony Rehnke, and we'll see you then.
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