Jesus Didn’t Die for Our Present Prosperity
00:00:00.000 | [Intro]
00:00:04.880 | The prosperity gospel is alive and well. It seeps into American churches, it's been called
00:00:10.600 | America's theological export to Africa, and it has seeped into the American prison system
00:00:17.100 | of all places, even in Angola. Angola is the largest maximum security prison in the US.
00:00:23.680 | An 18,000 acre complex comprised of five former plantations now home to 6,300 prisoners, limited
00:00:31.460 | to only murderers, rapists, armed robbers, and habitual felons. The average sentence
00:00:37.280 | here is 88 years, with 3,200 people in one place serving life sentences. 90% of the inmates
00:00:44.760 | will die here.
00:00:46.400 | Yes, the prosperity gospel even reaches into a place like that. John Piper traveled to
00:00:52.360 | Louisiana and preached in Angola's chapel on November 20th, 2009. About 800 prisoners
00:00:58.080 | packed in to hear a message on John 6, on Jesus' feeding of the 5,000, and his walk
00:01:02.800 | on water. "I preached with all my heart to those who could fit in the chapel," Piper
00:01:07.360 | recounted later. "I pulled no punches."
00:01:10.400 | Hundreds of other prisoners heard the sermon through closed circuit television, including
00:01:13.880 | those on death row, like Gerald Bordelon, a convicted rapist and child murderer we met
00:01:18.760 | in episode 1445. Piper pulled no punches, and the result is one of my favorite all-time
00:01:25.280 | sermons. Pastor John, it is most urgent. Here's a clip from that Angola sermon.
00:01:30.760 | I want very much to say the best news in all the world for Christians is on the other side
00:01:38.280 | there's life. So there's another young lady in our church, young, late 40s, four kids,
00:01:43.960 | two in college, two smaller, and the doctors have told her maybe two weeks before her leukemia
00:01:52.960 | takes her out. We're still praying, "Oh God, make this last ditch, unusual, creative, never
00:01:59.080 | tried before kind of chemo. Do the thing that might do it," but they are preparing themselves.
00:02:06.440 | And oh, I am willing big time to do that funeral if it comes, because I've got such good news
00:02:15.920 | for that elder in my church and that family and those kids. God cares about the body.
00:02:23.480 | He'll never, ever throw it away. He will make it new, but he didn't come mainly to do that
00:02:33.400 | here. He didn't come mainly to cause all of our physical desires to be satisfied, but
00:02:41.680 | to change those desires at their core so that he becomes our treasure over everything. And
00:02:48.160 | that can happen in this prison way better sometimes than it can in the free, prosperous,
00:02:56.480 | hell-bent world. So I hope you men get this, that Jesus Christ came into the world to do
00:03:06.480 | mainly what can be done here, mainly to do what can be done here in human beings, treasuring
00:03:15.400 | him, loving him, following him, living for him, rejoicing in him, being satisfied in
00:03:21.920 | him, making much of him in everything you do morning to night can be done anywhere on
00:03:28.080 | the planet, and that's the main reason we exist. That's the main point of the message.
00:03:34.080 | Now let's go to the text. So if you have your Bible, you can read with me. If you don't,
00:03:38.560 | well just listen. Verses 1 to 15 is the story of the feeding of the 5,000. It goes like
00:03:48.120 | this. After this, Jesus went away to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea
00:03:53.160 | of Tiberias. And a large crowd was following him because they saw signs that he was doing
00:04:00.480 | on the sick. Verse 3, "Jesus went up on the mountain, and there he sat down with his disciples.
00:04:06.440 | Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand. Lifting up his eyes then and seeing
00:04:13.840 | that a large crowd was coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, 'Where are we to buy
00:04:19.440 | bread so that these people may eat?' And he said this to test him, to test him, for he
00:04:27.740 | himself knew what he would do. Philip answered him, 'Two hundred denarii, that's 200 days'
00:04:35.240 | wages, would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.' One of his disciples,
00:04:42.320 | Andrew Simon Peter's brother, said, 'There's a boy here who has five barley loaves and
00:04:46.840 | two fish, but what are they for so many?' Jesus said, 'Have the people sit down.' Now
00:04:54.480 | there was much grass in that place, so the men sat down about 5,000 in number. Jesus
00:05:00.160 | then took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were
00:05:06.840 | seated. So also the fish, as much as they wanted. And when they had eaten their fill,
00:05:15.240 | of what he distributed, when they had eaten their fill, he said, 'Gather up the leftover
00:05:23.920 | fragments, that nothing may be lost.' So they gathered up the leftover fragments, 12
00:05:29.960 | baskets, with fragments from the barley loaves, left by those who had eaten the barley loaves.
00:05:37.680 | They had all eaten from the five barley loaves. They had all eaten as much as they wanted,
00:05:43.400 | 5,000 people, and there's 12 baskets left over. When the people saw the sign that he
00:05:49.880 | had done, they said, 'This indeed is the prophet who has come into the world.' Perceiving
00:05:55.680 | then that they were about to come and take him by force, and to make him king, Jesus
00:06:00.760 | withdrew again to the mountain by himself." Now, the rest of this chapter is a total of
00:06:08.560 | 71 verses, and it's all about bread. It's all about Jesus as the bread. So Jesus has
00:06:19.800 | come to give a sign in the multiplying of these loaves, that he himself is the bread
00:06:28.200 | of heaven. Not mainly that he can make enough bread to feed everybody. He calls this a sign.
00:06:39.720 | What is a sign? Let me tell you what I think a sign is. A sign is glory comes into the
00:06:47.320 | world. John 1, 14, "We beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of
00:06:54.480 | grace and truth." And shining down from that glory is like a beam, a beam of glory shining
00:07:01.600 | from Christ, the glorious, eternal, divine Son of God. A beam is shining down and it
00:07:08.160 | lands, and when it lands, it produces out of five loaves and a few fish, enough food
00:07:14.140 | to feed 5,000. It creates out of nothing food to feed 5,000 people, and the sign is meant
00:07:22.800 | to do this. Your eyes behold the landing of the beam, and your eyes should run up the
00:07:29.120 | beam to the glory. Instead, what did they do? They saw this miracle and they fixated
00:07:37.960 | on the product of the miracle, not the person of the miracle. Drop your eyes down, if you
00:07:45.200 | got a Bible, to verse 26. They found him the next day, so this is what he says to the crowd.
00:07:51.280 | "Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me not because you saw signs, but because
00:07:58.800 | you ate your fill of loaves." He's angry. Can you imagine Jesus being angry that somebody
00:08:06.880 | is seeking him? Why would he get upset if you sought him? It's because they were seeking
00:08:16.360 | him as useful, useful for the bread, the money, the health, the prosperity. He's useful to
00:08:25.740 | my stuff. And they didn't let their eyes run up the beam and say, "There he is. That's
00:08:35.120 | my treasure." Or picture it as the sun. Ninety-three million miles away, the sun sends out rays,
00:08:43.800 | lands on the earth, ninety-three million miles away, and it does amazing things. It causes
00:08:48.560 | plants to grow, and it makes us warm, and it produces vitamin D in our skin, and it
00:08:53.960 | enables us to see beautiful things. And most people simply get the analogy, sun, Christ,
00:09:01.960 | beam, glory, landing, miracle. Most people just say, "Whoa, I love what I see. I love
00:09:08.720 | my skin. I love my plants that grow." They don't let their eyes run up the beam to the
00:09:15.360 | son of glory, Jesus Christ. So when I said at the beginning, "Jesus Christ came into
00:09:21.360 | the world not to be useful mainly, but to be precious mainly," that's what I mean.
00:09:29.320 | They didn't do it. What does verse 15 say? "Perceiving that they were about to come and
00:09:37.360 | take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself."
00:09:46.960 | They didn't see him as precious. They saw his gifts as precious. Oh, what a useful king
00:09:56.920 | he will be, right? Yes. Let's have Jesus be our king. He will keep our bellies full. Jesus
00:10:06.760 | doesn't want that kind of a disciple. Now, I don't know how many times you get that kind
00:10:12.040 | of a preacher in this place, but they're all over the world. The main export from America
00:10:17.360 | to Africa is this kind of theology that says, "He wants your stuff to multiply mainly. Get
00:10:25.240 | the car. Get the gold watch. Wear the suit, the shoes. Get all that." That's what Jesus
00:10:33.200 | is for. I think that's demonic theology. Jesus came into the world to bless us in some measure
00:10:50.400 | now, and I'll get to that in a minute from this very parable, but mainly he's trying
00:10:56.280 | to forgive our sins, clothe us with righteousness, make himself our treasure, seal our eternity
00:11:03.120 | forever, and then put us to work in the world, whether we're in prison or on the outside.
00:11:09.000 | The same reality is here as out there. The main thing is here. The other stuff feels
00:11:18.360 | real important. That's why I said it may be that your very presence here will enable you
00:11:26.480 | to see better than the people in my church can see. They got the stuff. Just take it
00:11:34.000 | for granted. That's what it's about. It's not what it's about. It's about him.
00:11:40.320 | Yes. Amen. Amen. It is all about him. It is all about him. You can listen to or watch
00:11:45.700 | the full sermon at Angola at DesiringGod.org. Search for its title, "Jesus Came Not to
00:11:51.280 | Give Bread, But to Be Bread." And if you don't believe the prosperity gospel can seep into
00:11:56.140 | a maximum security prison, later after the sermon, Pastor John was asked by an inmate
00:12:01.000 | this, "Considering your message from John 6, what would you say to someone who considers
00:12:05.040 | Jesus to be precious only if he can give the hope of physical deliverance from prison?"
00:12:11.080 | Wow. To find that video, you can Google it, "John Piper, Questions and Answers, Angola
00:12:17.800 | Prison." Just Google that. John Piper, Questions and Answers, Angola Prison. And scrub forward
00:12:22.760 | to the 10-minute, 13-second mark and you'll hear that question.
00:12:26.400 | Well, there's an important and too common theme in our inbox of men belittling women
00:12:31.900 | as inferior, perhaps in the name of complementarity. It's a hard topic, but we must address it
00:12:37.280 | head on. We will next time on Friday. I'm your host Tony Reinhart. We'll see you then.
00:12:41.280 | [END]
00:12:42.280 | 1
00:12:42.280 | John Piper, Questions and Answers, Angola Prison
00:12:43.280 | Page 1 of 9
00:12:43.280 | Page 2 of 9
00:12:44.280 | Page 3 of 9
00:12:44.280 | Page 4 of 9
00:12:45.280 | Page 5 of 9
00:12:45.280 | Page 6 of 9
00:12:50.280 | you