Look at the Book — New Chapter in Piper’s Legacy
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:05.000 | Listeners to this podcast and readers of the Desiring God blog will have probably
00:00:10.000 | heard something about "Look at the Book." Pastor John, can you explain what "Look at the Book" is,
00:00:15.000 | how it works, and what you're working on?
00:00:18.000 | I love to talk about it because I'm having a great time working on it.
00:00:25.000 | I've been working on it for over a year, but we finally got the technology to the point
00:00:30.000 | where we can actually produce the kinds of things that we are going to put on the Internet,
00:00:35.000 | probably starting sometime in the fall as we rolled it out with our annual conference.
00:00:41.000 | "Look at the Book" is rooted in my sense of calling to take people from the banquet to the kitchen.
00:00:50.000 | I've spent the last 30-40 years of my life mainly serving meals to people in sermons,
00:00:59.000 | meaning I've spent hours in the kitchen cooking.
00:01:04.000 | And then I set the table in a manuscript, and I stand in the pulpit, and I feed the people a finished meal.
00:01:13.000 | And I believe in that with all my heart. I think that's what preaching is.
00:01:17.000 | But what will happen when I'm gone if people haven't learned to make meals for themselves?
00:01:25.000 | Now, there will always be preachers. Praise God. Amen.
00:01:28.000 | But as I come to the end of my life, I'm thinking, "You know, I would like, in addition to serving meals,
00:01:37.000 | take people into the kitchen and show them how I cook, how I get food, how I get meaning from biblical text."
00:01:47.000 | People ask me all the time, "How did you see that?" or "Where did you get that?" or "How do you study?"
00:01:53.000 | or "How do you prepare a sermon?" or "How do you read the Bible?"
00:01:59.000 | People are hungry to read the Bible for themselves and find meaning.
00:02:04.000 | I'm hungry to help people gain confidence in reading the Bible for themselves.
00:02:10.000 | So that's the idea, that the kitchen is where the meals are made and where spiritual culinary arts are taught.
00:02:19.000 | Crowds aren't as big. It's messy in the kitchen. It's less finished, less refined.
00:02:25.000 | You spill things. You have to start over.
00:02:28.000 | So the kitchen is not as, you know, it's not as public and there are not as many kudos that come with the small group that meets in the kitchen.
00:02:38.000 | And I want to go there. I want to go deep and I want to go wide.
00:02:43.000 | So this is Bethlehem College and Seminary. I get to go deep because we're in Greek.
00:02:47.000 | And I'm going to take, you know, 16 guys and go to the kitchen with them for a year.
00:02:53.000 | But I want to go wide. I want to help lay people who don't have any Greek get as much as they can out of their English Bibles.
00:02:59.000 | And they can get infinitely more than they think they can get out of their reliable English translations.
00:03:04.000 | And there are reliable translations that they can work with with confidence.
00:03:08.000 | So look at the book is part of the deep and it's part of the wide.
00:03:16.000 | And I was inspired to what we're going to do by Khan Academy online by Manuel Khan when he's teaching algebra, for example.
00:03:25.000 | What you see on online is a black screen and then numbers appear as he writes them.
00:03:30.000 | And he teaches math that way. And I looked at that and I said, oh, I would love to do that with the Bible.
00:03:37.000 | So that's what we're going to do. People aren't going to see me on these little videos.
00:03:41.000 | They're going to see five to eight minute videos online. And when they click the app, we'll have an app for this.
00:03:48.000 | The little six second introduction with a logo and then they'll see a screen black with white print.
00:03:55.000 | And it'll be a text of the Bible, two, three, four verses, maybe five.
00:04:00.000 | Then they'll hear me talking and they'll see me circle and draw arrows and underline and make connections and write notes all to show them.
00:04:12.000 | What do you do with this text? And that's my goal.
00:04:15.000 | My goal is to to lead people through text after text, after text, hundreds of them to form habits of mind,
00:04:23.000 | habits of reading, habits of analysis that will give people the confidence I can do this.
00:04:31.000 | John Piper, he can die now because I have seen him do a couple hundred of these.
00:04:36.000 | I can do this now. I can find meaning so that my obedience will be stronger and purer and my worship will be more authentic.
00:04:47.000 | And my courage as I share the gospel and I try to teach my Sunday school class will be higher.
00:04:54.000 | So that those are the goals, Tony, and that's the gist of what people are going to see when we roll it out.
00:05:01.000 | This is a really outstanding new product.
00:05:03.000 | I've seen a few of the videos that will be released this fall, and it's absolutely wonderful to see how you, Pastor John, do exegesis with the Bible.
00:05:10.000 | I think it's going to bless those who use it in the future as well.
00:05:13.000 | And for more details, see Pastor John's blog post, The Legacy I Want to Leave, which was published on April 29th at DesiringGod.org/blog.
00:05:22.000 | This forthcoming Look at the Book product is tied to this year's national conference to Look at the Book, Reading the Bible for Yourself is the conference title,
00:05:31.000 | and it will be hosted here in Minneapolis on September 26th, 27th and 28th.
00:05:36.000 | Unlike previous national conferences, John Piper will be delivering five sessions himself.
00:05:41.000 | In two sessions, he will unfold the biblical foundations for reading your Bible.
00:05:45.000 | And in the other three, he will model his method of inductive Bible study, focusing on Romans 8, the greatest chapter in the Bible.
00:05:53.000 | Well, here at DG, we're really looking forward to the Look at the Book product and conference this fall.
00:05:57.000 | I hope you can join us in Minneapolis.
00:05:59.000 | And speaking of working through biblical texts, tomorrow we'll be looking at Colossians 1, 24 to 25 and try to understand how our suffering fills up what is lacking in Christ's suffering.
00:06:10.000 | What can that possibly mean?
00:06:12.000 | I'm your host Tony Reinke. We'll see you tomorrow.
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