Who Is John Piper?

00:00:00.000 | Hey podcast listeners, this is Tony. Today I had hoped to get you audio from our

00:00:05.360 | first ever APJ live recording recently in Nashville with Pastor John and I on

00:00:09.840 | stage together. That audio is being delayed, so here's a different episode to

00:00:14.160 | stand in while we wait. Thanks for your patience.

00:00:18.240 | Well sometimes the best questions are the simplest ones like, "Who is John

00:00:24.000 | Piper? Where did he come from? How was he saved? And how did he become a preacher?"

00:00:28.640 | The very types of questions asked of him during a recent ministry trip to

00:00:32.760 | Belfast. Keith Getty, the Northern Irish Christian singer and songwriter, asked

00:00:38.160 | the questions. Here today is the interchange that they had in Belfast.

00:00:41.840 | Have a listen. I suspect most people in this place have been influenced over the

00:00:47.000 | years either directly by your preaching, your books, podcasts, whatever, or

00:00:52.720 | indirectly through those who have. And so we want you to know that we are, we

00:00:58.360 | owe you a debt of gratitude for your faithful service and we are so

00:01:02.000 | grateful to you for that. Yes indeed.

00:01:05.720 | By way of broad introduction, tell us about yourself, your journey to faith, a

00:01:15.200 | short biography, and actually what you're doing now. I don't remember being

00:01:24.240 | converted, which I am happy with because I think we learn the wonder of

00:01:33.960 | conversion not primarily through remembered experiences but through the

00:01:39.800 | Word of God. I think if you think you have a handle on the majesty and

00:01:48.560 | magnificence and wonder of your conversion because you remember it and

00:01:53.920 | how glorious the transition was, you don't know a fraction of it because you

00:02:01.720 | can't know the miracle without being told by God what happened there. So my

00:02:09.480 | mother told me that when I was six in a motel in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, I

00:02:18.120 | became convicted of my sin and asked her what I could do and she knelt with me by

00:02:26.920 | the bed in the motel room and led me in a prayer of confession of my sin and

00:02:33.280 | faith in Jesus. And I don't remember any of that. And so it doesn't matter to me

00:02:41.440 | whether that's a true story or not. What matters to me is that today I see. When I

00:02:50.000 | began to see is not of the essence. Once upon a time the devil was blinding the

00:02:56.920 | minds of an unbeliever and God said, "Let there be light." 2nd Corinthians 4 verse 6.

00:03:03.960 | He said, "Let there be light." And whether a six-year-old or a 14-year-old or a

00:03:08.680 | 23-year-old discovering God-centeredness was the first seeing doesn't matter much

00:03:14.960 | to me. What matters to me is that I see by grace. So I'm not sure what the

00:03:23.240 | pilgrimage was. I never remember being an unbeliever and I'm thankful for that. I

00:03:28.920 | never remember rebelling against my parents. I think one of the most

00:03:33.480 | helpful things for me to say here in this context would be that my father

00:03:38.160 | would have self-identified as a fundamentalist of the good old Southern

00:03:43.200 | American variety. And you would think that a fellow like me would grow up and

00:03:50.640 | kick against the standards that were used. And I never did. And I've tried to

00:03:57.040 | figure out why that is because I know a lot of people who grew up in homes sort

00:04:02.000 | of like mine who did kick, rebel, leave, and never come back. But I think one of

00:04:11.520 | the means God used to keep that from happening was that my father was the

00:04:17.880 | happiest man I've ever known. He and my mother would sing in the front seat of

00:04:25.920 | our old Buick driving from Greenville, South Carolina to Daytona Beach for our

00:04:32.400 | annual 10-day beach vacation. And my sister and I in the back seat listening

00:04:39.640 | to my mother and father sing gospel choruses. I mean that's extraordinary.

00:04:47.520 | That's extraordinary. And not only did he sing but when he came back from

00:04:52.520 | evangelistic crusades, he was an evangelist, he would come back with

00:04:56.480 | stories of triumph about the gospel and a new joke. And he laughed harder at his

00:05:04.800 | own jokes than anybody. And my mother laughed next hardest until the

00:05:11.200 | tears would roll down her cheek. And my sister and I would sit there looking at

00:05:15.240 | each end of the table saying, "I think they're having a good time enjoying Jesus."

00:05:21.240 | Why would anybody want to go to a movie or dance or smoke? I mean I just never

00:05:29.200 | kicked because I lived in a glorious family. So that brings me to... where do I

00:05:39.160 | go from there? You went to college then? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:05:43.320 | Okay, off to Wheaton College, literature major, met Noel Henry on an auspicious

00:05:51.440 | date 6-6-66. We just celebrated our 53rd 6-6-66.

00:06:09.480 | Straightway got mono and was in the hospital for three weeks and decided not

00:06:16.120 | to be a medical doctor but to go to seminary because I was listening to John

00:06:20.560 | Harold Ockengay preach 200 yards away in the Wheaton Chapel. And as I lay there

00:06:29.080 | with my big yellow tonsils and my palpitating spleen said to myself, "I can't

00:06:36.320 | do anything to do what he's doing right now, opening the Word of God." I said, "That's

00:06:42.120 | glorious." And so my girlfriend had fallen into love with a pre-med student

00:06:51.040 | and so I did a bait-and-switch on her and said, "I think I'm gonna go to seminary

00:06:59.280 | not medical school." And she was okay with that. So we went to Fuller Seminary

00:07:05.520 | and had the most influential teacher of my life there, Daniel Fuller, who

00:07:10.720 | did two things. He showed me a magnificent view of a sovereign God,

00:07:14.520 | especially through the lens of Jonathan Edwards. And then he gave me an

00:07:18.600 | exegetical method called arching, which takes every word, every phrase, every

00:07:23.360 | sentence of the Bible with blood, earnest seriousness, and rings it until every

00:07:28.440 | drop of life-giving blood falls out of it on the page. And I've never been the

00:07:33.180 | same since. That's why I talked last night about being 23 years old, because I was

00:07:36.600 | 22 when I went there and by the time I was 23 I was a different

00:07:40.480 | human being. And Noel was walking on that pilgrimage with me. Then I went to

00:07:45.640 | Germany for three years and got a degree in New Testament. Then I taught for six

00:07:50.360 | years at Bethel College in St. Paul, Minnesota. Taught Bible and Greek. And

00:07:54.640 | then God stepped into my life in a most remarkable way on October 14, 1979.

00:08:02.080 | I mean, Pascal, I don't know if you've ever read Pascal's conversion story, but he

00:08:06.360 | carried all of his life long until his grave, he carried inside his coat, sewn

00:08:10.800 | into his coat, a piece of paper where he had written down, and I don't remember

00:08:14.640 | the date, but he put down, "The date, midnight, fire." And met God. And I didn't

00:08:23.040 | meet God, but I met a call to preaching that was, at that point, irresistible.

00:08:31.680 | Waited for Noel to wake up the next morning thinking, "Okay, this is another

00:08:36.200 | bait-and-switch here." Because being a teacher is cool, you know, Mr. Academics,

00:08:41.400 | and no big pressure on the wife if you're a professor, but if you become a

00:08:45.480 | pastor, whoa, this is big for both of you. And so I'm lying there at 6:30 in the

00:08:51.600 | morning having been up half the night wrestling with God and thinking,

00:08:55.720 | "She's got to say yes, because if she doesn't say yes, we're in big trouble.

00:08:59.760 | God just spoke." But you don't go off without your wife, right? You two have

00:09:06.240 | become one flesh. And I leaned over when she got up and said, "What would you think

00:09:11.880 | if I resigned at Bethel and looked for a church?" And she said, "I could see that

00:09:20.040 | coming." And what she meant was a couple of years of watching me in church, and if

00:09:29.440 | it was a mediocre sermon, I'd say, "We've got to do better than that." And if it was a great sermon, I

00:09:36.720 | would say, "I would love to do that." So I went to my denomination and said, "I'm

00:09:45.240 | available. Find me a church. Help me. Help me." And they sent me to Bethlehem, and I

00:09:49.760 | was there for 33 years until 2013. So 2013, I stepped away, not because I was

00:09:58.240 | tired of preaching, but because the church was big and complex and prosperous,

00:10:02.760 | and I think I had Peter-principled myself out of a job. I mean, it's a big

00:10:09.280 | church. It's complicated. It had three campuses, 125 employees, and 20 pastors,

00:10:16.680 | and 40 elders, and I thought, "Oh my goodness. This is just over my managerial head."

00:10:23.960 | And so while I still had energy and life, God did a miracle. There's a lot of

00:10:29.920 | people here in this room right now who go to Bethlehem, and they will remember

00:10:33.480 | what a miracle He did of bringing in a man named Jason Meyer, and the church

00:10:39.640 | voted in a closed ballot. These are Baptists now. Remember, these are Baptists.

00:10:44.440 | They don't agree on anything. I think these guys, we've heard of Baptists.

00:10:49.240 | Yeah, and I think out of 890 votes or something like that, there were

00:10:55.800 | seven no votes on a closed ballot. So he was in tears, and we were all

00:11:02.440 | thrilled that God had found a person, and so I stepped away. I still go to the

00:11:06.800 | church, love it every minute of it, love corporate worship like crazy. We'll go

00:11:10.120 | there. So I was there for 33 years, and now I attend there, enjoy it. That's a nice

00:11:14.480 | little introduction to John Piper, and Pastor John, no longer in pastoral

00:11:18.240 | ministry, is now full-time at Desiring God, writing, preaching, traveling around

00:11:23.080 | the globe to minister in places like Belfast, and of course recording episodes

00:11:27.800 | for this podcast, too. We keep him pretty busy, and I recently asked Pastor John to

00:11:32.600 | explain that long night where he wrestled with God's calling to preach,

00:11:35.800 | and what he has to say to those of us who are wrestling with two good options.

00:11:40.240 | Which one does God call us to when we have two good options that are both God

00:11:45.280 | honoring? Kind of maps on to that night that he experienced, and we'll look at

00:11:49.560 | that huge date for him on the 40th anniversary of it, which is coming up on

00:11:53.720 | October 14th. Be watching for that episode. That one is recorded, done, and

00:11:57.880 | ready to go, and we continue to eagerly wait for audio to come in from our first

00:12:02.560 | ever APJ Live Sing session, Pastor John and I on stage in Nashville. It's been

00:12:07.160 | delayed, but I'll get you those episodes as soon as possible. We recorded those

00:12:10.160 | five episodes live on stage at the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention

00:12:14.800 | Center in Nashville. This was the very same site, ten years ago, to the month, to

00:12:20.800 | what I think is the weirdest John Piper preaching video you will ever see. So why

00:12:26.520 | did 8,000 Christian counselors laugh at John Piper? I have so many questions

00:12:32.400 | about this event. I know you have so many questions about watching the video.

00:12:35.760 | Together we will find out when I ask Pastor John about it next time on

00:12:39.760 | Friday. I'm your host Tony Reike. We'll see you then.

00:12:44.440 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Who Is John Piper?

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