The Emotional Complexity of the Christian Life
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:06.000 | This world is full of pain and heartache that reaches into every one of our lives
00:00:10.080 | in some way, not to mention the endless suffering we see on the news. Given all
00:00:15.440 | the struggles and the pains of this world, Pastor John recently explained the
00:00:18.960 | emotional complexity of being a follower of Christ in this broken world. In a
00:00:24.840 | recent sermon, here's what he said. 7.2 million people die of cancer in the
00:00:31.000 | world every year, and in America it's been steady for years. About 600,000
00:00:39.040 | people die of cancer every year just behind heart disease and sometimes vying
00:00:45.360 | for first place. A disease that is unique in its adaptability to evade, evade our
00:00:53.560 | efforts to kill it. Another current reality is that I was preparing for
00:00:58.720 | 1st Peter for the last two days, that I taught for the last two days, and 1st
00:01:03.640 | Peter is permeated with suffering more than any other New Testament book. And so
00:01:08.600 | I had that on my mind, the suffering of 1st Peter. And then, as you can imagine, I
00:01:13.800 | had on my mind the ISIS killing last Monday of the couple dozen Ethiopian
00:01:24.240 | believers, and before that the Egyptian believers, and after that the 12
00:01:29.880 | Christians that were thrown overboard in the Mediterranean Sea, not to mention the
00:01:36.080 | 900 people from North Africa who were trying to get to Europe who drowned in the
00:01:41.720 | last several weeks from the capsizing of their boats. And then I didn't anticipate
00:01:48.080 | that there would be an earthquake that would kill at least 2,400 people, and that
00:01:52.880 | will probably double over the next several days. And as we speak, people
00:01:56.360 | perhaps are lying alive under rubble wondering, "Will anybody reach me?" And so
00:02:04.760 | that cluster of contemporary realities drew me to speak on this, the world of
00:02:14.000 | pain and the purposes of God. In 1995, we entered...I was 15 years into my 33-year
00:02:25.280 | pastorate and entered the biggest crisis that we'd ever faced as a church. 230
00:02:31.480 | people had walked away. They were angry at me. We had disciplined a staff member.
00:02:37.120 | They didn't like the way it went down. I had opposed a $450,000 pipe organ that I
00:02:49.080 | didn't think was God's will for us, and hundreds of people did, and it was
00:02:54.280 | the worst time in my ministry and the worst time in the church. And I didn't
00:02:59.800 | know...I was 49 years old, and I thought, "I don't know whether there's a future
00:03:05.920 | here for me or what will become of this church." One of the things we did was we
00:03:12.960 | formed a group of 23 people, about three or four staff members and then
00:03:18.720 | laypeople, and we met for a year and a half, and we simply prayed and studied,
00:03:24.280 | "Who are we? What's happened? Is there a future? What will it be? What will it
00:03:28.680 | look like?" During that time, they sent me away to a little monastery over in St.
00:03:35.160 | Paul, 10 miles away, and said, "Go away, pray, listen to God, and bring us a vision
00:03:42.960 | for the church, and we'll interact with it. We know you're not God, and you're not
00:03:48.840 | infallible, but you're our leader. Go hear from God as best you can, and
00:03:53.480 | then we will refine what he gives you." And one of the things I believe God gave
00:04:01.680 | me was a vision for my life. And when I brought it back, it was a one-sentence
00:04:07.080 | vision, still is the vision. I asked, "Could this be the vision statement of the
00:04:13.400 | church as well?" And it became the vision statement of the church. If you walked
00:04:16.400 | into Bethlehem today, downtown, it would be on the wall. If you walked into the
00:04:20.080 | North Campus, it would be on the wall. We don't have a South Campus building. We
00:04:23.300 | rent that, so they won't let us put things on the wall there. And that
00:04:29.240 | sentence goes like this. "I," and now I would say "we," and so does Desiring God, so
00:04:34.880 | does Bethlehem College and Seminary, "we exist to spread," very operative word, "to
00:04:42.040 | spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things, for the joy of all
00:04:53.160 | peoples," with an "s," "through Jesus Christ." We exist to spread a passion for the
00:05:02.320 | supremacy of God in all things, for the joy of all peoples, through Jesus Christ.
00:05:09.000 | And when we embraced that, we did not mean we exist to spread a passion for
00:05:18.400 | the supremacy of God in all things except earthquakes, supremacy of God in
00:05:24.080 | all things except cancer, supremacy of God in all things except babies born with
00:05:29.640 | profound disabilities. We didn't mean that. We meant all things, no exceptions.
00:05:36.520 | We Christians are very complex emotional people if we have our eyes open and our
00:05:45.080 | hearts are in tune with the Word of God, because the world is a complex place. The
00:05:49.920 | world is a beautiful place and a horrible place. So you walk outside right
00:05:57.480 | now, it's beautiful, isn't it? It's beautiful. And in Nepal, somebody's groaning under
00:06:05.280 | rubble, just about to die of thirst. This is a horrible place and a beautiful
00:06:11.880 | place. And inside us, we who love people and are instructed by Jesus Christ how to
00:06:19.520 | be, we hear the words, "Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep."
00:06:25.720 | And there is a wedding and a funeral every day at the same time all over the
00:06:30.520 | world. And if you're in a church this size, you always know somebody
00:06:35.840 | weeping and you always know somebody on tiptoe happiness, which means that 2
00:06:42.480 | Corinthians chapter 10 verse 6 is true, sorrowful yet always rejoicing. And you
00:06:51.520 | don't have to be very old in the Lord to know that's true and possible. When I'm
00:07:01.000 | when I got that phone call that every 28 year old dreads, or 15 year old, or 40
00:07:07.600 | year old, that mom was killed in a car accident, my mother, and I hung up and
00:07:14.040 | said to my wife and my two-year-old who looked up at me and said, "Daddy's sad." And
00:07:21.680 | I went back to the room and knelt down, cried for two hours. In that moment,
00:07:27.560 | longest crying I've ever done in my life, in that hours, those hours, I
00:07:35.320 | was saying, "Thank you that I had her for 28 years. Thank you that she was a
00:07:40.680 | Christian. Thank you that she didn't suffer long. Thank you that my dad is
00:07:45.080 | alive. I don't know if he'll be alive when I get there, but thank you for what
00:07:48.600 | a great mom she was. You have been so good to me." I know this is possible. You
00:07:55.440 | may not have lived long enough to taste it, but it is possible to be simultaneously
00:08:02.440 | profoundly sad and profoundly happy. Simultaneously. Not sequentially.
00:08:09.920 | Simultaneously. This is possible.
00:08:13.160 | Incredible. That was from John Piper's recent sermon, "The Pain of the World and
00:08:17.680 | the Purposes of God," a sermon he preached in Vancouver on April 26th. You can find
00:08:24.640 | the full sermon at desiringgod.org right now, and you can listen to it in its
00:08:28.960 | entirety. I'm your host Tony Reinke. We'll see you tomorrow.
00:08:33.720 | [BLANK_AUDIO]