Spend Your Life to Build a Risk-Taking Church
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:05.000 | "Spend your life to build a church that does not live like the world."
00:00:09.800 | This was the invitation of John Piper to Christian leaders at the Together for the Gospel conference
00:00:14.600 | back in 2008.
00:00:17.160 | This is what he said.
00:00:18.160 | "I want to put it in a wider context for what my heart is for this moment and this conference.
00:00:24.560 | I don't come here for nothing.
00:00:27.360 | I want something, I want you to do something.
00:00:31.240 | I want this world to be rocked by your lives.
00:00:35.560 | So I'll tell you what I'm praying, what I want to happen, and I think the brothers with
00:00:41.200 | me would agree who lead this conference.
00:00:44.680 | My desire and prayer to God is that your life and your ministry would have a radical flavor,
00:00:52.040 | a risk-taking flavor, a gutsy, counter-cultural, wartime flavor that makes average American
00:01:02.400 | people in your church uncomfortable.
00:01:07.200 | A strange mixture of tenderness and toughness that keeps people a little bit off balance.
00:01:15.480 | A pervasive summons to something more, something hazardous, something wonderful, a saltiness
00:01:23.440 | and a brightness about your life and about your church.
00:01:28.640 | Something like Jesus.
00:01:30.320 | When Jesus said, "You're the salt of the earth and you're the light of the world," I think
00:01:35.160 | He had in mind the verse just before.
00:01:40.800 | They will persecute you and revile you and say all kinds of evil against you falsely
00:01:47.720 | on my account.
00:01:49.320 | Rejoice, for great is your reward in heaven.
00:01:53.560 | I think that's what makes salt.
00:01:58.320 | Salt and light are joyful embrace of suffering.
00:02:04.120 | That's what the world is waiting for.
00:02:09.760 | Jesus said, "Do this.
00:02:13.960 | Be light, be salt."
00:02:16.440 | My desire for you, my prayer, and I've been praying this over and over again for you,
00:02:21.400 | I hope you already are ready, I hope you feel God doing this already in your life, my desire
00:02:27.320 | is that your life and ministry would have a radical flavor.
00:02:32.200 | Reviling comes, persecution comes, slander comes, and you rejoice.
00:02:38.560 | You don't murmur, you don't complain, you don't quit.
00:02:43.680 | You rejoice.
00:02:46.680 | You preach and you live in such a way that over a decade or two or three, the church
00:02:54.240 | you're leading becomes bright and salty like this, counting it all joy when they are walking
00:03:01.560 | through various trials.
00:03:04.000 | That's your goal in this church.
00:03:06.320 | Many people who meet cancer and meet death and meet suffering with unflinching confidence
00:03:16.160 | in Christ and joy in being known by Him and loved by Him.
00:03:22.240 | There is a great reward coming, an all-satisfying, everlasting experience of the supremacy of
00:03:29.560 | Christ.
00:03:31.480 | You will have lived it, right?
00:03:33.240 | You're living this.
00:03:34.240 | This is what you want for your life and I want for you.
00:03:38.160 | You will have treasured Christ above all, above all the accumulation of stuff.
00:03:46.680 | You will have laid up treasures in heaven and not on earth.
00:03:50.480 | Right?
00:03:51.480 | That's what you're doing now.
00:03:53.520 | You're not laying up treasures on earth.
00:03:56.280 | You are laying up treasures in heaven, you are maximizing your enjoyment of the reward.
00:04:02.920 | You have not only fled fornication and adultery, you have fled opulence, you have fled ostentation,
00:04:17.520 | you have fled riches.
00:04:21.640 | You have remembered the story of the rich young man.
00:04:24.600 | I have it on a plaque over the door in my study.
00:04:28.440 | Remember the rich young man, Piper.
00:04:32.520 | Whatever else you forget, don't forget him.
00:04:37.480 | You remembered that as you served in these decades and will serve.
00:04:44.520 | You've heard the Apostle Paul and you've taken it into your heart and you've blazed it on
00:04:50.200 | the brain in your head.
00:04:53.240 | Those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and hurtful
00:05:03.520 | desires that plunge them into destruction and ruin just to want to be rich does that
00:05:10.800 | to you.
00:05:11.800 | And you've heard that and you've put it on the inside of your brain and you've led a
00:05:14.920 | church another way.
00:05:17.600 | That's what will make you salty and bright.
00:05:22.040 | You have eaten the words of Isaiah.
00:05:27.000 | All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass.
00:05:37.520 | The flower falls and the grass withers, but the word of the Lord abides forever.
00:05:44.400 | You've put it inside your heart and that's where you live.
00:05:48.520 | That's what you are thinking.
00:05:52.080 | My desire and my prayer for you is that your life and your ministry will have a radical
00:05:56.440 | flavor and I say this for the glory of Christ.
00:06:02.000 | The world is not going to glorify Christ because they see that Christians are wealthy and healthy
00:06:19.920 | and prosperous.
00:06:20.920 | A very simple reason why.
00:06:23.560 | That's what they live for.
00:06:27.440 | So you use Jesus to get it?
00:06:31.840 | They use other means to get it?
00:06:36.560 | You're not impressed.
00:06:40.040 | Jesus is the ticket.
00:06:43.360 | When the show starts, you throw the ticket away.
00:06:49.600 | They don't need your ticket.
00:06:52.840 | They're not impressed.
00:06:54.920 | I'm saying what I'm saying because I want them to be impressed.
00:07:01.040 | They're not impressed with us.
00:07:03.920 | Prosperous, wealthy, safe, middle class, do what everybody else does, people.
00:07:12.720 | Don't build a church like that.
00:07:16.040 | Don't go there.
00:07:17.040 | Don't spend your life like that.
00:07:19.080 | It will be wasted.
00:07:23.960 | You will have lived it.
00:07:25.560 | My desire and prayer for you is that your life have a radical flavor.
00:07:32.720 | Some extraordinary love, something risky, some crazy sacrifice that nobody can understand,
00:07:41.920 | including mom.
00:07:44.540 | Something salty and bright.
00:07:48.220 | The world may not like it.
00:07:50.380 | They may crucify it.
00:07:53.640 | Satan's face shone like an angel.
00:07:56.000 | His face shone like an angel.
00:08:01.040 | They could not resist his wisdom and they killed him.
00:08:08.680 | They weren't bored.
00:08:12.080 | They weren't sleeping.
00:08:15.200 | And chapter 8 of Acts says he didn't die in vain.
00:08:23.200 | He did his greatest work in spreading the gospel at that moment because God cleaned
00:08:29.080 | house in Jerusalem and saw to it that a persecution caused them to obey Acts 1.
00:08:35.560 | That's what it cost Stephen his life to get them off their butt into Samaria and into
00:08:42.400 | Judea and to the ends of the earth.
00:08:45.000 | And it will cost you your life to build a church that doesn't live like the rest of
00:08:51.120 | the world.
00:08:52.280 | You got to live like that.
00:08:53.560 | You got to have a flavor about your life that is risky and radical, different.
00:09:03.640 | That clip was from John Piper's conference message titled "How the Supremacy of Christ
00:09:08.120 | Creates Radical Christian Sacrifice" at the Together for the Gospel conference in Louisville,
00:09:13.920 | Kentucky.
00:09:14.920 | He preached it on April 17, 2008.
00:09:18.040 | Special thanks to Jeff Connor of Neno, Wisconsin for suggesting this clip.
00:09:22.200 | The full message audio can be found online at DesiringGod.org.
00:09:26.800 | And if you have a favorite clip from a John Piper sermon to suggest, please email us the
00:09:30.320 | title of the message and if possible, the timestamp of when and where the clip occurs
00:09:34.480 | in the audio.
00:09:35.480 | Put the word clip in the subject line of an email and send it to us at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org.
00:09:43.320 | I know a few of our regular listeners are in fact wealthy by God's grace.
00:09:48.360 | And if you want more on the missional value of affluence, see episode number 420 in this
00:09:53.160 | podcast series titled "Wartime Wisdom for the Wealthy."
00:09:57.240 | That's episode number 420 in this series.
00:10:00.680 | What Jesus tells us to pray lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
00:10:06.200 | What exactly does that mean?
00:10:07.480 | How does he deliver us from evil?
00:10:10.160 | Pastor John will offer his thoughts for us tomorrow.
00:10:13.000 | I'm your host Tony Reinke.
00:10:14.000 | Thank you for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast.
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