What Does It Feel Like to See the Beauty of Christ?
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00:00:04.000 | Well, John Piper is a big advocate for seeing glimpses of the peculiar glory of Christ in Scripture.
00:00:09.000 | And those moments of discovery in his Bible are far more than mere intellectual discoveries.
00:00:14.000 | They are affectional. They feed within him his delight in God.
00:00:18.000 | So the question then becomes, well, John Piper, what does it feel like to see the beauty of Christ?
00:00:24.000 | And this bold question comes from a listener named Josephine.
00:00:28.000 | Hello, Pastor John. I love to read my Bible every day and get to know God better.
00:00:31.000 | And I have heard you talk about the importance of not just reading the Bible,
00:00:34.000 | but reading in such a way as to see the peculiar glory of Christ shining from the pages into our eyes to stir our hearts.
00:00:42.000 | It's a very unique type of reading, requiring genuine faith, regeneration, and of course the power of the Spirit.
00:00:49.000 | But I don't really know if or how or when this happens in my life.
00:00:52.000 | Sometimes I make discoveries in the text that really stir my heart. Sometimes I don't.
00:00:57.000 | Can you bring us into your own Bible reading and articulate for me the difference between simply reading the Bible
00:01:04.000 | and those precious times in which you are met with the glory of Christ shining in the pages of Scripture?
00:01:10.000 | I presume this does not always happen, but what's it like for you when it does?
00:01:15.000 | Okay, as risky as it is, I'll try to give you a glimpse into this morning's meeting with God in Scripture.
00:01:27.000 | And I say it's risky because our fallen heart, our sinful heart, John Piper's sinful heart,
00:01:36.000 | is so primed for pride that to speak of our own experiences almost inevitably passes over into boasting.
00:01:50.000 | As contradictory and insane as that is, such is the nature of our remaining corruption.
00:01:59.000 | But perhaps, since you asked, the good may outweigh the risk in this case.
00:02:08.000 | One of the reasons we don't meet God profoundly in his Word as often as we would like
00:02:16.000 | is because our hearts are so unprepared and out of sync with spiritual reality when we come.
00:02:26.000 | Wesley Duell, in his book Let God Guide You Daily, page 77, said,
00:02:33.000 | "I have at times read as many as 50 chapters from God's Word before I was completely alone with God."
00:02:45.000 | Now, don't hear me saying when I quote that.
00:02:48.000 | Here we have a nice, neat daily prescription for how to get alone with God, namely,
00:02:56.000 | read 50 chapters of the Bible, then you'll be in tune.
00:03:00.000 | We all know that's unrealistic, but I mention it for two reasons.
00:03:06.000 | One is to point out the fact that we may be that out of sync spiritually and emotionally and psychologically
00:03:16.000 | with the Bible, so that when we read, our frame of mind and the disposition of our heart
00:03:23.000 | and the spiritual receptivity of our heart are so out of step with the spirit of the passage
00:03:33.000 | that we're reading that nothing happens. It can't happen.
00:03:37.000 | And the other reason is to say that even though reading 50 chapters of the Bible every day is unrealistic,
00:03:45.000 | reading 50 chapters on a two-day retreat in solitude in a motel that your spouse gave you as a gift
00:03:53.000 | is not unrealistic. Have you ever pursued it? Have you ever asked for it?
00:03:58.000 | Have you ever gone that hard after God?
00:04:01.000 | So many people complain about God not meeting them.
00:04:05.000 | They've never even conceived of what Wesley Duell regularly does to find God in his Word.
00:04:13.000 | One of the ways that I seek to have my heart prepared for Scripture is to sometimes spend 15 or 20 minutes
00:04:23.000 | reading a book by someone who I have learned over the years has seen more glory in the Scriptures than I have,
00:04:35.000 | and they're very good at showing it to me.
00:04:39.000 | Their sight and their experience prepares me for my sight and my experience.
00:04:47.000 | Their taste prepares me for my taste.
00:04:51.000 | So this morning I read this on page 159 of Volume 1 of the works of John Owen, these words.
00:05:03.000 | "I'm sitting in my chair in complete solitude and quietness," and here's what Owen wrote.
00:05:11.000 | "There is more glory under the eye of God," and I think what he means by that is there's more glory in the sight of God
00:05:20.000 | that God sees and recognizes.
00:05:22.000 | "There's more glory under the eye of God in the sighs, groans, and mournings of poor souls
00:05:30.000 | filled with the love of Christ, pursuing after the enjoyment of him according to his promises.
00:05:36.000 | He sees more glory in their fervent prayers for his manifestation of himself unto them,
00:05:44.000 | in the refreshments and unspeakable joys which they have in his gracious visits and embraces of his love,
00:05:52.000 | than in the thrones and diadems of all the monarchs on the earth.
00:05:59.000 | Nor will the poor, sighing, groaning, seeking souls part with the ineffable satisfactions
00:06:08.000 | which they have in these things for all that is in the world or that the world can do for them or unto them."
00:06:18.000 | When I read that this morning, there rose up in my heart a strong yes.
00:06:25.000 | Yes, Lord. Yes. I am sighing. I am groaning. I am mourning.
00:06:34.000 | I am longing for these enjoyments, for these refreshments, for these unspeakable pleasures,
00:06:42.000 | for these visits and embraces of the love of Christ. I want them more than I want all the world or what it can do for me.
00:06:53.000 | And in the very longing and crying out, I tasted the love of Christ for me, the visit of Christ.
00:07:06.000 | Don't you think that C.S. Lewis is absolutely right in what he says over and over again,
00:07:16.000 | namely, that the perfect fullness of the enjoyment of Christ reserved for the future,
00:07:23.000 | when we meet him face to face and all our sin and all the hindrances to joy are removed,
00:07:30.000 | as it says in 1 John 3, that perfect fullness of the enjoyment of Christ's presence is experienced really,
00:07:40.000 | substantively, authentically, spiritually in the very longings for it.
00:07:48.000 | It's an artificial thing to separate our deepest yearnings and achings and longings and cryings for Christ
00:07:57.000 | from his presence and his sweetness and the tastes of his visits and his love.
00:08:05.000 | That's an artificial distinction. The longings are themselves a sweet taste of the bread of heaven.
00:08:14.000 | The yearnings are themselves a sweet detection of the aroma of paradise.
00:08:22.000 | The inconsolable desires of your soul for Christ are themselves a divine work of the Holy Spirit
00:08:32.000 | communicating to you in advance some measure of the sweetness of Christ himself in heaven.
00:08:40.000 | Then, having spent about 20 minutes reading John Owen, I turned to the next reading appointed in my pilgrimage through the Bible.
00:08:51.000 | So I'm using the Discipleship Journal reading plan that gets me through the Bible in a year.
00:08:57.000 | And the next text appointed for me was Romans chapter 9.
00:09:04.000 | And I will tell you straight up that there are three other places appointed for me to read today—Deuteronomy, Psalms, Matthew—
00:09:11.000 | and I did not read them this morning. I will do that this evening.
00:09:16.000 | God met me in Romans 9 in such a way that I felt that to walk away from Romans 9 to Deuteronomy or Matthew or Psalms
00:09:27.000 | would be to walk away from God's work in my life.
00:09:32.000 | Now, this is a very familiar chapter to me. I have read Romans 9 a hundred times,
00:09:39.000 | and I wrote a big book on the first 23 verses of this chapter.
00:09:46.000 | And it is the curse of fallen man that familiarity breeds contempt, or at least indifference.
00:09:54.000 | And I am not immune to being callous to Scripture because I know it so well.
00:10:00.000 | But God had prepared me through his servant, John Owen.
00:10:05.000 | And there it was in a frame, a disposition, a tenderness, a susceptibility, a readiness.
00:10:12.000 | And for some reason, and I do not know why, when I got to verse 14, 15, and 16, God showed up in an unusual way.
00:10:24.000 | And you're right. This does not happen every time I read my Bible.
00:10:30.000 | But now this next sentence I'm going to say really matters because so many people say,
00:10:35.000 | "Well, what's the use? Blah, blah, blah."
00:10:38.000 | No! When he does, it's worth a year's reading for.
00:10:45.000 | I mean, if he showed up once a year, it would be worth reading every day, wouldn't it?
00:10:53.000 | I mean, come on. Are we real or are we fake?
00:10:58.000 | So I read this. "What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God's part?
00:11:05.000 | By no means. For he says to Moses, 'I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.'
00:11:14.000 | So then it depends not on the one who wills or runs, but on God who has mercy."
00:11:23.000 | Now Paul is raising the issue of God's justice here because of his choosing Isaac over Ishmael, Jacob over Esau,
00:11:31.000 | because—or before—they were born or had done anything good or evil.
00:11:37.000 | And Paul's answer is no, no. God is not unjust in his choice of one over the other.
00:11:43.000 | Why? Because "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy."
00:11:52.000 | "I will have compassion on whom I have compassion."
00:11:59.000 | This is God talking. In other words, because I do what I do in freedom,
00:12:07.000 | my doings, my choosings are not governed by forces outside of me, John Piper.
00:12:15.000 | I am God. This is part of my glory as God. And it is always just to uphold God and to act as God in his glory.
00:12:29.000 | And then he interprets what he means when he says that in Exodus and says,
00:12:34.000 | "My doings, my choices are not owing to man's willing or running."
00:12:41.000 | Not man's choices, not man's deeds, but are owing to God who has mercy.
00:12:48.000 | And all I know to say is, for the next half hour or so, my mind moved back and forth,
00:12:59.000 | back and forth through Romans chapter 9 as the absolute freedom and righteousness of God washed over me,
00:13:13.000 | subdued me, broke my presumptions, shut my mouth, filled me with thankfulness,
00:13:26.000 | caused me to weep for lost people very, very close to me, gave me sweet assurance
00:13:35.000 | that God can do anything he please in this world in absolute freedom and sovereignty,
00:13:43.000 | and therefore, there is hope. So much more happened, but time is up,
00:13:50.000 | and I hope that gives you a little glimpse into what you were asking about.
00:13:56.000 | Insightful. Thank you for taking us into your experience this morning, Pastor John. Appreciate that.
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00:14:27.000 | Well, speaking of great questions, none other than C.S. Lewis himself seemed to see that God's glory and our joy were interlinked.
00:14:36.000 | But he also seemed to say that the penny will drop on this connection for most Christians on the other side of eternity, not in this life.
00:14:45.000 | In other words, most Christians will not grasp Christian hedonism in this life.
00:14:50.000 | So would C.S. Lewis say that our labors at DG is aiming at goals that are premature?
00:14:57.000 | Wow. I am so glad I get to ask the questions. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. We'll see you back here on Friday.
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