The God Who Brings Us into Everlasting Pleasure
Chapters
0:00:14 The Path to Full and Lasting Pleasure
0:47 Pastor John Reciting Psalm 16
2:13 Psalm 16
00:00:00.000 | (music)
00:00:04.000 | Well, it's never a bad time to soak in the glorious truths of
00:00:08.000 | Psalm 16, and that's what we're going to do today in a clip from
00:00:12.000 | 2015. This clip comes from a memorable sermon titled
00:00:16.000 | "The Path to Full and Lasting Pleasure." The clip begins
00:00:20.000 | where the sermon begins, with John Piper walking out on stage
00:00:24.000 | at a Shane and Shane conference. There, Pastor John recited
00:00:28.000 | Psalm 16 from heart. This text and this
00:00:32.000 | sermon was fresh on his heart, coming in light of pretty deep
00:00:36.000 | sorrow for the Bethlehem community, as you will hear in a moment, making
00:00:40.000 | for a clip and for a sermon, and for an event that has
00:00:44.000 | impacted many of you, I know. Without any further introduction,
00:00:48.000 | here's Pastor John reciting Psalm 16.
00:00:52.000 | Preserve me, O God, for in you
00:00:56.000 | I take refuge. I say to the Lord, "You are my Lord. I have no good
00:01:00.000 | apart from you." As for the saints in the land,
00:01:04.000 | they are the noble in whom is all my delight.
00:01:08.000 | Those who choose another god multiply their sorrows.
00:01:12.000 | Their libations of blood I will not pour out
00:01:16.000 | or take their names upon my lips. The Lord is
00:01:20.000 | my chosen portion and my cup. You hold
00:01:24.000 | my lot. The lines have fallen for me in
00:01:28.000 | pleasant places. Indeed, I have a beautiful
00:01:32.000 | inheritance. I bless the Lord who gives me
00:01:36.000 | counsel. In the night also my heart instructs me.
00:01:40.000 | Because you are right at my right hand, I shall not
00:01:44.000 | be moved. Therefore, my heart is
00:01:48.000 | glad and my soul rejoices, and my whole body dwells
00:01:52.000 | secure. For you do not give me up to shield or let your
00:01:56.000 | godly ones see the pit. You show me the path of life.
00:02:00.000 | In your presence is fullness of joy.
00:02:04.000 | At your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
00:02:08.000 | So if you have a Bible,
00:02:12.000 | I want you to open it to Psalm 16,
00:02:16.000 | which I just recited. Let me set the table for you
00:02:20.000 | before I pray and ask God to come and do mighty things among us.
00:02:24.000 | And the reason I feel an anticipation that he's going to do remarkable
00:02:28.000 | things is because the way he has set up this evening.
00:02:32.000 | So two weeks ago, I was in the Boundary Waters in northern
00:02:36.000 | Minnesota fishing with my son and
00:02:40.000 | six others. And one of those others was
00:02:44.000 | a 20-year colleague whom I love, who has
00:02:48.000 | been the worship leader at our church for 20 years.
00:02:52.000 | When we got back to the Outfitters, he was to call home and the
00:02:56.000 | phone call was that his son had died
00:03:00.000 | at 22 without the slightest
00:03:04.000 | history of trouble. He was in northern Ireland
00:03:08.000 | doing a mission trip and simply
00:03:12.000 | fell over. And with his sister at his side
00:03:16.000 | met Jesus. The funeral
00:03:20.000 | was last Friday, four days ago. And
00:03:24.000 | little did we know that Alex, before
00:03:28.000 | he had left for northern Ireland, had told his small group
00:03:32.000 | what he wanted in his funeral. He didn't think
00:03:36.000 | he was going to die, but he said
00:03:40.000 | here are the songs. We sang all the songs that he chose and here's the
00:03:44.000 | text that I want. Psalm 16.
00:03:48.000 | That's the psalm that I was asked to speak on months ago at this
00:03:52.000 | event. And so last Friday, in front of about a thousand
00:03:56.000 | young people mainly, I was
00:04:00.000 | doing what I just did, praying over these
00:04:04.000 | people's Psalm 16. And now I'm here speaking to
00:04:08.000 | several thousand people, not too much older probably than
00:04:12.000 | Alex. Psalm 16.
00:04:16.000 | And in my judgment, God is
00:04:20.000 | setting that up to burden me for you
00:04:24.000 | in a way that he wouldn't
00:04:28.000 | or couldn't any other way.
00:04:32.000 | You have no idea whether you will live out this week.
00:04:36.000 | None. He had no history
00:04:40.000 | whatsoever. And to this moment, we do not know why he died.
00:04:44.000 | So Lord, I believe this is a divine appointment
00:04:48.000 | for many. Whether it be the case that some here
00:04:52.000 | will not live out the week or whether they will live 60 more years.
00:04:56.000 | It's a divine appointment and the weight I feel
00:05:00.000 | for this psalm to come to reality in their lives is very great.
00:05:04.000 | And so I invite you, Holy Spirit, to come. In the name
00:05:08.000 | of Jesus, I plead with you to come. Don't leave me to my
00:05:12.000 | resources. I look away from myself and
00:05:16.000 | I ask that these friends would do the same. May they look away from themselves
00:05:20.000 | and all their performances
00:05:24.000 | and look wholly to you
00:05:28.000 | to speak to them now. So that
00:05:32.000 | what David is and sees
00:05:36.000 | in this psalm, they would be and see and feel.
00:05:40.000 | I ask this in Jesus'
00:05:44.000 | powerful name. Amen. Let me give you the
00:05:48.000 | main point as I understand it in one sentence.
00:05:52.000 | I'm going to try to sum up the main point of all 11 verses
00:05:56.000 | in one sentence. It goes like this.
00:06:00.000 | God will bring you
00:06:04.000 | body and soul
00:06:08.000 | through life and death into
00:06:12.000 | full and everlasting pleasure
00:06:16.000 | if God is your
00:06:20.000 | safest refuge and your sovereign Lord
00:06:24.000 | and your supreme treasure
00:06:28.000 | and your trusted counselor.
00:06:32.000 | I know it's a long sentence.
00:06:36.000 | So I'm going to say it again and then we're going to move through the entire psalm
00:06:40.000 | verse by verse and you will watch for whether I'm
00:06:44.000 | right to sum it up this
00:06:48.000 | way. It goes like this. God
00:06:52.000 | will bring you body and
00:06:56.000 | soul through life
00:07:00.000 | and death into full
00:07:04.000 | and everlasting pleasure
00:07:08.000 | if God is
00:07:12.000 | for you your safest refuge,
00:07:16.000 | your supreme treasure,
00:07:20.000 | your sovereign Lord
00:07:24.000 | and your trusted counselor.
00:07:28.000 | And so if he's not, my prayer is that
00:07:32.000 | as God speaks through this psalm he would become
00:07:36.000 | that for you. A few of you who really
00:07:40.000 | know your Bible well might hear that summary
00:07:44.000 | in one sentence and say to me, "Are you going to
00:07:48.000 | take into account what
00:07:52.000 | the apostle Peter over in Acts
00:07:56.000 | chapter 2 in the New Testament makes of this psalm?"
00:08:00.000 | Because Peter says
00:08:04.000 | that verses 9 to 11 are a
00:08:08.000 | prophecy of the resurrection of Jesus.
00:08:12.000 | And you didn't mention that
00:08:16.000 | in your main point. Why not?
00:08:20.000 | Because that's the one thing he picked out of the psalm
00:08:24.000 | to mention. And my answer is
00:08:28.000 | number one, yes I am going to deal with what
00:08:32.000 | Peter makes of this psalm in Acts 2.
00:08:36.000 | And number two, the reason I don't
00:08:40.000 | say that the resurrection of Jesus is part of the main
00:08:44.000 | point of this psalm is because I don't think it is.
00:08:48.000 | But rather is a massive
00:08:52.000 | and unshakable argument for the main
00:08:56.000 | point of the psalm. And if that sounds strange
00:09:00.000 | to you, that something is massive and unshakable
00:09:04.000 | and great and glorious as the resurrection
00:09:08.000 | of the Son of God from the dead should be an argument
00:09:12.000 | under a main point supporting it,
00:09:16.000 | just know this, that one of the great and amazing
00:09:20.000 | and wonderful things about the Bible is that
00:09:24.000 | again and again and again, glorious
00:09:28.000 | things, massive, unshakable,
00:09:32.000 | beautiful, awesome realities are made
00:09:36.000 | to serve practical, personal
00:09:40.000 | main points in texts. That's amazing
00:09:44.000 | and that's true all over the Bible. So yes,
00:09:48.000 | we will get to Peter's application
00:09:52.000 | of verses 9 to 11 in the resurrection and we will discover
00:09:56.000 | it is not the main point of this text. The main point
00:10:00.000 | of this text is that God will bring you
00:10:04.000 | body and soul through death into full
00:10:08.000 | and everlasting pleasure if he is your
00:10:12.000 | treasure and refuge and sovereign
00:10:16.000 | and counselor. That's the main point.
00:10:20.000 | Powerful. And that's just the start of the sermon. The whole sermon is great.
00:10:24.000 | It's available online. As always, it's titled "The Path to Full and
00:10:28.000 | Lasting Pleasure," preached on August 14, 2015
00:10:32.000 | at a Shane and Shane conference. The sermon has been suggested
00:10:36.000 | several times to us for a clip on APJ. This particular clip comes from Alan
00:10:40.000 | in Little Rock, Arkansas. Alan writes, "Thank you so much for this podcast and
00:10:44.000 | answering your questions and giving us sermon clips. I first listened to this
00:10:48.000 | sermon in 2015 and it was one of the first John Piper sermons I had checked
00:10:52.000 | out. I'd recently moved to a new state to help plant a church in Wisconsin
00:10:56.000 | and I started a new job that allowed me to listen to music and sermons while I worked.
00:11:00.000 | I hit play on this one and heard John Piper recite Psalm 16 from memory.
00:11:04.000 | I was amazed that someone would do that. So I did it.
00:11:08.000 | All of Psalm 16 and have continued to recite it into my life
00:11:12.000 | for the past six years. God has done amazing things for me and my family
00:11:16.000 | through that one Psalm. Thank you, Pastor John, for this model."
00:11:20.000 | Thank you, Alan. That's a great story. Many of our clips are now crowdsourced.
00:11:24.000 | You tell us what bits of Piper's sermon has changed your life or impacted you and we share that clip
00:11:28.000 | with the APJ audience. If you've got one, email me. Give me your name, hometown,
00:11:32.000 | the sermon title, and the timestamp of where the clip happens in the audio file
00:11:36.000 | and tell me how it impacted you. Put the word "clip" in the subject line of an email and send it to me
00:11:40.000 | at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org. That's our email address.
00:11:44.000 | askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org
00:11:48.000 | Well, the divided heart is a natural
00:11:52.000 | experience in the Christian life. The heart, even the heart of the believer,
00:11:56.000 | puts up resistance against God.
00:12:00.000 | How to overcome this divided heart is worth some reflection
00:12:04.000 | and that's what we're going to do next time. I'm your host, Tony Rehnke. I'll be rejoined
00:12:08.000 | in the studio with Pastor John on Friday for that, talking about the
00:12:12.000 | divided heart. We'll see you then.
00:12:16.000 | [Silence]
00:12:20.000 | [BLANK_AUDIO]