Would I Trust Jesus More If I Had Seen Him?
00:00:00.000 | I recently attended a mega-conference for Christians in Media, and among the hundreds
00:00:09.000 | of booths included a huge display of costumes and props from a current TV show based on
00:00:15.480 | the life of Christ.
00:00:16.480 | It was quite fascinating.
00:00:18.480 | All the costumes and the props and the set pieces were scattered all throughout this
00:00:23.560 | open walk-through display.
00:00:27.040 | It really pulled you into first-century Jerusalem, giving you a little tangible taste of what
00:00:32.000 | life was like in the time of Christ.
00:00:35.000 | After walking through it, it made me wonder, and I think it makes a lot of people wonder,
00:00:40.040 | wouldn't it have been better to have lived in a generation that could have seen Christ
00:00:44.640 | with our own eyes, to know him face-to-face?
00:00:49.080 | I think this is one reason why we're attracted to television shows and movies about his life,
00:00:53.960 | because for us, we're stuck many years after his earthly ministry with just a written account
00:00:58.560 | of his life in the Gospels.
00:01:00.800 | So is that to our disadvantage?
00:01:04.240 | With a very definitive no.
00:01:07.520 | Pastor John explains why believers today are not at a disadvantage, and he does so by preaching
00:01:12.040 | from a great text on this very topic, 1 Peter 1, verses 8 and 9.
00:01:18.240 | Here he is in 1993, first talking about the nature of joy.
00:01:23.520 | Here's Pastor John.
00:01:25.840 | You rejoice in this faith and love.
00:01:29.260 | You rejoice with a joy that is unable to be expressed, and which is literally, the word
00:01:38.320 | is glorified, translated "full of glory" here in NASB.
00:01:44.960 | Now, I think the way we have defined joy goes a long way to helping us understand why it's
00:01:51.760 | inexpressible and why it is glorified.
00:01:56.040 | I'll ask this question to make the connection for you.
00:01:59.440 | Where does joy get its moral quality?
00:02:03.400 | Not just its intensity.
00:02:04.800 | We're talking about quality here.
00:02:07.040 | Inexpressible and glorified.
00:02:08.600 | Not just big, not just strong.
00:02:10.920 | There can be a lot of strong emotions without Jesus.
00:02:14.200 | We're talking here a joy that is not only very great, but it has a glory dimension to
00:02:21.920 | it.
00:02:22.920 | It's got glory on it, in it, somehow.
00:02:26.720 | Where does joy, let's ask the general question, where does joy, your joy, get its moral dimension?
00:02:33.720 | And the answer to that question, I believe, is your joy gets its moral quality from what
00:02:38.680 | you are enjoying.
00:02:40.600 | So, if you enjoy dirty jokes, you've got dirty joy and a dirty heart.
00:02:48.600 | If you enjoy bathroom language, that really makes you laugh.
00:02:54.360 | Or lewd pictures, that really makes you happy.
00:02:58.600 | You have a dirty heart and dirty joy.
00:03:03.080 | Joy gets its moral quality from what you enjoy.
00:03:08.320 | Or if you enjoy cruelty and arrogance and revenge, and there are a lot of movies and
00:03:15.200 | TV programs that cultivate that kind of joy to get you to be real happy in the revenge.
00:03:21.800 | "Oh, that felt good!"
00:03:24.880 | That's dirty.
00:03:26.360 | That's the kind of heart, your heart will be shaped, you become what you crave.
00:03:35.280 | Where you get your joy, you get your moral dimension to joy.
00:03:41.480 | Or if you just love things, if you find your life, your joy increasingly happy in more
00:03:50.040 | and more material things, you know what happens inside?
00:03:55.240 | You die.
00:03:57.400 | Your heart was made for God and love and faith and joy, and if you find this computer
00:04:05.720 | just so satisfies me, "I have tasted that.
00:04:10.400 | Wow!
00:04:11.400 | Computers are incredible!
00:04:13.640 | Dan Lane got me this new America Online thing, which connects you up with 10 million billboards
00:04:19.560 | and stuff.
00:04:20.560 | It is absolutely addicting, at least for a week or two.
00:04:25.160 | It is.
00:04:26.160 | There is great danger from, I mean, you just name it, there are 10,000 material things
00:04:31.440 | in the world that can so enamor you and capture you, and you come to the end of the day off
00:04:36.600 | at the screen of this computer, and say, "I'm dead!
00:04:45.360 | I'm dead!
00:04:47.120 | Deader than I was when I started this thing.
00:04:49.480 | I'm smaller, I'm drier.
00:04:52.440 | What have I done?"
00:04:53.440 | And some people have spent their whole lives like that, and they will say that on their
00:04:57.200 | deathbed, unless they're so dead they can't feel it.
00:05:01.360 | We're made for joy and Christ and relationship and love and the big unseen realities.
00:05:08.440 | So my answer to the question, "Where does joy get its moral component?"
00:05:11.560 | It gets its moral component from the thing enjoyed.
00:05:15.880 | Now back to where we are.
00:05:19.440 | Christian joy, I would argue then, is inexpressible and glorified because the Christ who is precious
00:05:30.160 | to us is inexpressibly precious, and the Christ who is reliable to us is inexpressibly reliable,
00:05:38.480 | and even though we never attain to the maximum joy we will have someday in this life, nevertheless
00:05:45.640 | our joy is hooked in, it's tied in to an inexpressible treasure, Jesus.
00:05:51.440 | He is inexpressibly glorious.
00:05:53.880 | He is inexpressibly beautiful and reliable and precious, and if your joy is in Him, that
00:05:59.800 | preciousness, that inexpressibility comes from the thing enjoyed into you, and your
00:06:05.680 | joy leaps up from time to time with inexpressibility.
00:06:10.520 | And the same thing now with glory.
00:06:13.640 | I think he is saying that in the process of loving and believing and rejoicing, the goal
00:06:21.040 | of that, namely salvation, is happening in part, in measure now, namely the glory of
00:06:28.400 | the one we love is precious and the one we trust is reliable is streaming back through
00:06:33.160 | our joy into our hearts, and our joy is in measure right now, glorious.
00:06:39.600 | It partakes in glory because you always participate in what you enjoy.
00:06:45.280 | You become what you crave in large measure.
00:06:50.760 | Final question, how can all of this happen when we don't see Him?
00:06:56.960 | Twice he says that.
00:06:57.960 | Isn't that interesting?
00:06:59.800 | So you have not seen Him, you love Him, and now though you do not see Him, believing,
00:07:09.800 | you rejoice in Him.
00:07:11.960 | Why does he stress that twice?
00:07:14.360 | Evidently some people were saying something like, "But we've never seen Him."
00:07:16.800 | You saw Him, Peter.
00:07:19.800 | Sure, you can have that kind of joy, but we've never seen Him.
00:07:25.220 | Some people, I mean obviously most weren't, because he's saying you are rejoicing without
00:07:30.840 | seeing Him.
00:07:32.160 | Now how?
00:07:34.360 | Surely the answer is there is a seeing with the heart that is not a seeing with the eyes
00:07:41.220 | that I want to argue this morning in closing is more important than seeing with the eyes.
00:07:46.800 | More important than seeing with the eyes is seeing with the heart.
00:07:51.200 | I'll try to persuade you of that in these last few minutes.
00:07:55.240 | Paul said that his mission to unreached peoples in Romans 15-20 was this.
00:08:01.800 | Listen to this.
00:08:02.800 | These are people now out there in the Roman Empire who like us have never seen Jesus.
00:08:08.200 | I aspire to preach the gospel not where Christ was already named, but as it is written, "They
00:08:14.000 | who had no news shall see Him, and they who have not heard shall understand."
00:08:26.840 | The preaching of the gospel is the means by which those who have never seen Christ see
00:08:32.600 | Christ in the gospel.
00:08:35.200 | Here's another way of saying it that Paul has in 2 Corinthians 4-6.
00:08:40.080 | The God who said, "Light shall shine out of darkness," has shone into our hearts to give
00:08:47.800 | the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.
00:08:57.840 | In your heart, the light of God goes on and you see His glory in Christ's face.
00:09:07.440 | That's the moral.
00:09:11.000 | There were hundreds and hundreds of people who saw Jesus during His lifetime on the earth
00:09:16.960 | who did not see Him.
00:09:19.040 | They didn't see Him.
00:09:21.120 | They were blanked out.
00:09:22.240 | They were totally confused.
00:09:23.800 | They were totally adrift.
00:09:25.160 | They didn't know who this Jewish carpenter rabbi was.
00:09:29.000 | He made no sense to them whatsoever, and they saw Him hour after hour after hour.
00:09:33.640 | Is that valuable?
00:09:35.080 | That sends to hell.
00:09:38.640 | Don't exalt seeing with the eyes.
00:09:40.520 | Don't begrudge that you live in the 20th century with only a Bible.
00:09:44.480 | Now, listen carefully now.
00:09:47.160 | We're almost done, and this is really crucial.
00:09:50.760 | We were at a Michael Card concert on Friday night, and he sings this song about childlikeness
00:09:57.000 | that captures this paradox of seeing and not seeing.
00:10:00.040 | "To hear with my heart, to see with my soul, to be guided by a hand I cannot hold, to trust
00:10:13.400 | in a way I cannot see."
00:10:19.280 | That's what faith must be.
00:10:23.520 | There is a seeing with soul, or the heart, that is not a seeing with the eyes.
00:10:30.760 | And it happens through the Word of God in the Gospel, and it happens through the reading
00:10:35.840 | of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
00:10:39.320 | When you read those Gospels - and oh, I commend the Gospels to you - read the Gospels day
00:10:44.800 | in and day out.
00:10:46.400 | They are the living Christ to you.
00:10:50.080 | Read them with an openness to Christ, and you will see Him better than Nicodemus saw
00:10:54.600 | Him, better than the Syrophoenician woman saw Him, better than the centurion saw Him,
00:10:59.840 | better than the widow of Nain saw Him, better than the thief on the cross saw Him, better
00:11:04.800 | than the thronging crowds who got snatches and pieces saw Him.
00:11:09.720 | Think about this in closing.
00:11:11.280 | Think.
00:11:12.280 | The Gospels are better than being there.
00:11:17.680 | The Gospels are better than being there.
00:11:22.640 | Why?
00:11:24.520 | In the Gospels, you are welcomed into the inner circle where you never could have gone
00:11:29.480 | with the apostles had you been there.
00:11:32.500 | In the Gospels, you can go with Him to Gethsemane where you couldn't have gone.
00:11:36.640 | In the Gospels, you go to Him with the trial where you couldn't have gone.
00:11:40.100 | In the Gospels, you go all the way through the crucifixion.
00:11:42.860 | In the Gospels, you go in and out of the tomb with Him.
00:11:45.760 | In the Gospels, you are with Him with every meeting after the resurrection.
00:11:49.780 | In the Gospels, you hear whole sermons, not just little snatches and pieces because you
00:11:54.440 | were way back there in the back of the crowd and there's a baby crying beside you and you
00:11:57.520 | couldn't figure out what was going on up there and you only heard, "Blessed are the blablabla."
00:12:01.120 | What was that?
00:12:02.220 | And you couldn't hear it.
00:12:03.560 | You got the whole thing.
00:12:04.560 | And not only do you have the whole big sermons and big discourses, you've got them with God-inspired
00:12:11.880 | contexts to give them interpretations which those poor peasants didn't have a clue about.
00:12:17.400 | They didn't know what was going on.
00:12:19.800 | You see Him in His freedom from anxiety as He has no place to lay His head.
00:12:24.940 | You see His courage in the face of opposition.
00:12:28.060 | You see His unanswerable wisdom when He's peppered with questions.
00:12:32.200 | You see Him honoring women and His tenderness with children and His compassion towards lepers
00:12:38.200 | and His meekness in suffering and His patience with Peter and His tears over Jerusalem and
00:12:44.520 | His blessing on those who cursed Him and His heart for the nations and His love for the
00:12:49.560 | glory of God and His simplicity and His devotion and His power to still storms and heal sicknesses
00:12:57.000 | and drive out demons.
00:12:58.920 | They didn't have a clue compared to what you have.
00:13:03.380 | The Gospels are better than being there.
00:13:06.560 | If the Holy Spirit, who was needed just as much in that day as now, will simply open
00:13:13.880 | your eyes to see the glory on His face.
00:13:19.880 | Incredible clip.
00:13:20.880 | That is from John Piper's sermon on November 14, 1993, titled "True Christianity, Inexpressible
00:13:26.400 | Joy in the Invisible Christ."
00:13:28.880 | A sermon that articulates the beautiful promises of 1 Peter 1, verses 8 and 9.
00:13:33.640 | It's great text.
00:13:34.640 | Thanks for listening to today's clip.
00:13:36.760 | Most of them are now crowdsourced.
00:13:38.280 | This is one of my favorites.
00:13:40.320 | I'm personally sharing this one with you, but if you have one, tell us what bits of
00:13:43.520 | Piper's sermons changed your life.
00:13:45.800 | And we will share that clip with the APJ audience.
00:13:47.680 | If you've got one, email me.
00:13:49.040 | Give me your name, your hometown, the sermon title, the timestamp of where the clip happens
00:13:53.120 | in the audio, and tell me how it impacted you.
00:13:54.920 | Put the word "clip" in the subject line of an email and send it to me at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.
00:13:59.600 | That's an email address, askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.
00:14:02.600 | Well, a lot of our emails come from Christians who are feeling extra pressure in life.
00:14:08.480 | And that's true.
00:14:09.480 | Next up, in an email from a young mom, "Are these new pressures of motherhood making her
00:14:14.840 | more holy or more unholy?
00:14:18.200 | And how can we tell which direction the pressures in life are pushing us, towards holiness or
00:14:22.840 | away from it?"
00:14:23.840 | This is a huge question that we all face.
00:14:25.840 | I'm your host Tony Reinke.
00:14:26.840 | We are rejoined in studio with Pastor John for that on Friday.
00:14:30.160 | We'll see you then.
00:14:30.560 | [END]
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