How Christ Sensitizes Us to Reality
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:05.000 | Becoming a Christian is an awakening.
00:00:07.500 | It's an awakening to the pervasiveness of sin.
00:00:10.500 | It's an awakening to the subtleties of the evil.
00:00:13.000 | It's an awakening to our need of Christ.
00:00:15.500 | And it is also, in a strong sense, an awakening to the meaning behind all of the realities of life.
00:00:23.000 | Without grace, the world desensitizes us.
00:00:26.500 | And it dulls our spiritual vision, and it numbs our spiritual needs,
00:00:31.000 | and it breeds a spiritual ignorance within us.
00:00:36.000 | So in Christ, we are brought to life, given a tender heart,
00:00:39.000 | and given new levels of sensitivity when it comes, even to the pains of life.
00:00:45.000 | In a recent sermon in Milwaukee, at the Campus Outreach 2015 New Year's Conference,
00:00:50.000 | John Piper addressed Paul's testimony in 2 Corinthians 6, verses 8-10,
00:00:56.000 | where Paul writes about his suffering in these pairs when he writes,
00:00:59.000 | "Through honor and dishonor, through slander and praise,
00:01:03.500 | we are treated as impostors and yet are true, as unknown and yet well-known,
00:01:09.500 | as dying and behold we live, as punished and yet not killed,
00:01:15.000 | as sorrowful yet always rejoicing, as poor yet making many rich,
00:01:21.000 | as having nothing yet possessing everything."
00:01:25.500 | Building off of Paul's descriptions, here's what John Piper said.
00:01:29.500 | People see us as impostors, but in spite of that, we are real.
00:01:35.000 | We are virtually unknown in the Roman Empire.
00:01:38.000 | Nobody's. But in spite of that, we are well-known by the one person in the universe who matters.
00:01:45.000 | Third, we're dying, our bodies are wasting away, but in spite of that,
00:01:49.500 | our eternal life in Christ is untouchable.
00:01:53.000 | Fourth, we are punished, but in spite of that, God hasn't seen fit yet to take us home.
00:02:00.000 | Fifth, we're sorrowful. We're sorrowful about sin and misery and pain in this world and in ourselves,
00:02:08.000 | but in spite of that, our joy is unshaken and constant.
00:02:14.500 | Sixth, we are poor. We have little wealth in this world, but in spite of that,
00:02:19.500 | we make many rich with the one treasure in the universe that counts more than anything.
00:02:25.000 | And lastly, we're nothing compared to the lovers of this world. We have nothing.
00:02:30.500 | In spite of that, we are heirs with Christ of the Father's estate, which means we own everything.
00:02:39.000 | That's the way it works, right? Are we together?
00:02:41.500 | In spite of these things, these things stand,
00:02:46.500 | which shows that the emphasis is on the second half of all these pairs here,
00:02:52.000 | including sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.
00:02:58.500 | The joy in the Christian's life is the rugged thing, the durable thing, the lasting thing,
00:03:05.000 | and the sorrow is not the main thing. It's just the real thing.
00:03:10.500 | One of the most amazing things about becoming a Christian is that awakens you to more sorrow.
00:03:18.500 | You come to Christ and you're not naive. You suddenly wake up to pain.
00:03:26.500 | Of course, there's pain for unbelievers, but they don't have any sense of how big it is,
00:03:33.500 | how horrible it is, how long it can be.
00:03:38.000 | To be a Christian is to be awake to cancer and birth defects and profound mental disabilities
00:03:47.000 | and divorce and child abuse, including abortion and terrorism and earthquakes and tsunamis
00:03:54.500 | and racial hostilities and prejudices and white-collar crime and sex trafficking
00:04:02.500 | and poverty and hunger and a thousand daily frustrations that make life very hard.
00:04:09.500 | Every Christian is increasingly sensitized to these things.
00:04:18.500 | The gospel brings life, right? And living things are awake and alert and touchable by other things,
00:04:30.500 | which means welcome to Christ and greater sorrow.
00:04:37.500 | I don't have a lot of patience with Christian ministries that sell Jesus
00:04:44.500 | with the promise that he'll make life easier. He doesn't. I promise you.
00:04:52.500 | He makes it real. He makes it eternal. And he makes the joy in it indomitable and invincible.
00:05:02.500 | But so do your sorrows rise. Come to Jesus and learn how to weep.
00:05:09.500 | The world doesn't know how to weep for lost people. They are one.
00:05:14.500 | They don't even believe in it. They don't believe in hell.
00:05:20.500 | They don't see to the bottom of anyone's pain. They see pain. They feel pain.
00:05:26.500 | But they don't see to the bottom of it. Christians are the saddest people in the world and the happiest.
00:05:36.500 | Do you feel that? I'm getting this from 2 Corinthians 6, verse 10,
00:05:43.500 | "Sorrowful yet always rejoicing." Not sequential. Simultaneous. Do you hear it?
00:05:52.500 | Sorrowful yet always in, in, under, around, sorrow, joy.
00:06:01.500 | There isn't any other kind in a not yet saved world. Right?
00:06:07.500 | If you think, "I've got to have all the sadness out of my life.
00:06:10.500 | I've got to get all the sorrow and brokenness out of my life. Then I might be happy."
00:06:15.500 | You won't have any. You will never get all the sorrow and all the brokenness out of your life.
00:06:22.500 | The more you love, the more you hurt. So I love this phrase. I love it.
00:06:30.500 | I don't want to be sad. Frankly, I hate sorrow. I hate it.
00:06:35.500 | I don't want to cry. I don't want to cry. I don't like crying.
00:06:41.500 | And I can't control the phone calls that come. The doctor's report.
00:06:47.500 | The 9-year-old missionary kid who fell on Christmas Day, bumped her head and died.
00:06:52.500 | We know those people. So the gospel brings life.
00:06:58.500 | And with life comes sensitivity to reality. And reality is really sad in a not yet saved world.
00:07:10.500 | Amen. That was from John Piper's sermon on December 29, 2015, titled "One Passion,"
00:07:17.500 | delivered at the Campus Outreach 2015 New Year's Conference in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
00:07:22.500 | You can find the full message on our site right now.
00:07:25.500 | For more information about the podcast or to send us your favorite John Piper sermon clip,
00:07:30.500 | please send us an email with the details of where we can find it.
00:07:33.500 | Connect through our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:07:39.500 | Well, tomorrow we hear from a podcast listener who wants to know,
00:07:44.500 | "What assurance do we have that the human fall into sin will not repeat in heaven?"
00:07:50.500 | I'm your host Tony Ranke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast with John Piper.
00:07:55.500 | We'll see you tomorrow.
00:07:57.500 | [Pastor John's Office]
00:08:00.500 | [Pastor John's Office]
00:08:03.500 | [BLANK_AUDIO]