The Single Key to Personal Change
00:00:00.000 | Well, each of us needs to change something about ourselves and many of us want to change
00:00:10.280 | something about ourselves.
00:00:11.520 | So how do we break free from the patterns and ruts of life?
00:00:15.180 | What hope is there for personal change in our lives when we seem to be stuck?
00:00:20.000 | The answer comes in a marriage sermon on a glorious text in Ephesians 5 verses 22 to
00:00:25.120 | 33.
00:00:26.120 | In a 2007 sermon, here's what John Piper said.
00:00:30.520 | Marriage in its deepest meaning is a copy of Christ and His church.
00:00:35.500 | If you want to understand God's meaning for marriage, you have to grasp that we're dealing
00:00:42.600 | with a copy.
00:00:44.640 | Marriage isn't an end in itself.
00:00:46.440 | This is why marriage doesn't exist in the resurrection.
00:00:50.380 | It's a copy.
00:00:52.320 | Copies aren't needed anymore.
00:00:54.860 | And the reality is fullest on its display.
00:00:58.840 | Here they're needed.
00:00:59.840 | The world is filled with a need for this very kind of marriage.
00:01:04.400 | It won't be needed in the end.
00:01:05.800 | It's a copy.
00:01:07.120 | And what it's copying is an original, a reality, a truth.
00:01:11.380 | So it's a copy of a greater original.
00:01:13.900 | It's a metaphor of a greater reality.
00:01:16.280 | It's a parable of a greater truth.
00:01:18.800 | And the original, the reality, and the truth is God's marriage to His people or Christ's
00:01:24.740 | marriage to His church.
00:01:27.580 | And the copy, the metaphor, and the parable is human marriage.
00:01:33.780 | Jeffrey Bromley, one of my teachers in church history of all things, wrote a book called
00:01:38.600 | God and Marriage.
00:01:40.740 | And he said this, "As God made man in His own image, so He made earthly marriage in
00:01:50.880 | the image of His own eternal marriage with His people."
00:01:55.840 | That's exactly right.
00:02:00.680 | Pause here.
00:02:01.680 | Men, I said a minute ago, if you really got this text, if it landed on you, you wouldn't
00:02:08.560 | need next Sunday's message, the application one, because I really believe that even though
00:02:14.320 | application is appropriate and nitty-gritty examples are helpful and good and right for
00:02:21.520 | preachers to give, I don't think that's the main way preaching works.
00:02:25.720 | I don't think that's the main way the Bible works.
00:02:28.200 | I think the main way the Bible works and preaching that is faithful to the Bible works is that
00:02:34.920 | the Bible displays glories that we are designed and made to know and which we don't know because
00:02:43.320 | we're in the cesspool of soap operas.
00:02:48.160 | And by the Holy Spirit, in a moment of illumination, all of that can be just driven out and something
00:02:54.340 | absolutely glorious enter into a human heart and change everything by virtue of its magnitude
00:03:07.460 | before any application ever arrives.
00:03:11.580 | You're just changed.
00:03:13.740 | Your heart soars with a new sense of what you're on the planet for and what this woman
00:03:19.220 | in her magisterial dignity as your bride is about and what you're living for here and
00:03:27.940 | everything changes when something lands on you with a biblical force.
00:03:36.260 | That's what I would like to happen.
00:03:38.060 | I can't make that happen.
00:03:40.100 | Lift my voice, I'd like to lift my voice, but I can't make that happen.
00:03:45.820 | God can.
00:03:47.580 | So that's a little parenthesis to tell you how I think about preaching.
00:03:50.900 | I will give you application.
00:03:53.180 | But I have a little misgiving when somebody hears a sermon like this and their first response
00:03:57.780 | is "You ever give me an example?"
00:04:02.540 | All right, I'll give you an example, but is your heart exploding with the glory of marriage?
00:04:09.340 | Are you soaring?
00:04:11.260 | Will you by the end of this service just begin to take off like a little roadrunner?
00:04:17.460 | So that from those new heights, she looks different, the kids look different, the job
00:04:23.340 | looks different, the planet looks different, life looks different, death looks different,
00:04:28.620 | the devil looks different.
00:04:30.020 | Let me out of here, I want to live.
00:04:36.140 | Wonder changes people, not examples.
00:04:40.460 | Lists and examples, a little bit helpful.
00:04:48.100 | But seeing glory changes everything.
00:04:52.420 | Glorious, I love that.
00:04:54.780 | This sermon clip was from John Piper's sermon on marriage titled Lionhearted and Lamblike,
00:05:00.380 | the Christian Husband as Head, part one from back in 2007.
00:05:04.540 | You can find the full message on our site, DesiringGod.org.
00:05:07.940 | And this clip was suggested by podcast listener Doug Moore from Goshen, Indiana.
00:05:12.460 | Thank you, Doug, for this gem.
00:05:13.460 | If you have a favorite selection from a John Piper sermon, send us the name of the sermon
00:05:17.300 | and the timestamps of when and where the clip appears in the audio, and we will share it
00:05:21.880 | online here in the podcast.
00:05:23.580 | Email me at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org and put the word clip in the subject line.
00:05:30.020 | Well change is part of our lives and breakups too are part of our lives, a particularly
00:05:34.620 | painful part of life.
00:05:36.520 | But there is biblical hope for the breakups we experience as John Piper will explain to
00:05:40.800 | us tomorrow as he returns to answer the question from a podcast listener.
00:05:44.820 | I'm your host Tony Reinke.
00:05:46.500 | I'll see you tomorrow.
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