Hope in Eternal Purity, Aim at Daily Purity
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:04.880 | How do we know if we have truly experienced the spiritual reality of new birth?
00:00:10.380 | How do I know if God has acted on my life?
00:00:13.920 | This is such a critical question in our lives and John Piper addressed it in a 2007 Christmas
00:00:19.660 | sermon of all places.
00:00:21.600 | We pick up with John Piper citing 1 John 5 verse 12.
00:00:26.240 | Verse 12, "Whoever has the Son has life.
00:00:33.100 | Whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.
00:00:38.840 | The Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld His glory.
00:00:43.080 | Glory is of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth, and from His fullness
00:00:49.240 | we have all received grace upon grace."
00:00:53.120 | That's where our life comes from.
00:00:55.060 | The Son, the Word made flesh is our life.
00:01:01.280 | This is the testimony.
00:01:03.440 | How do you know that you're a child of God?
00:01:05.640 | How do I know that John Piper is alive?
00:01:08.040 | It's my birth certificate.
00:01:11.080 | Does anybody believe you're alive because you have on file a birth certificate?
00:01:16.600 | You don't because you breathe.
00:01:18.600 | It's exactly the same with Jesus Christ.
00:01:21.340 | You know that you're a child of God because you breathe.
00:01:26.160 | You're alive.
00:01:27.560 | You see Him for who He is.
00:01:29.880 | You love Him for who He is.
00:01:32.040 | You trust Him for who He is.
00:01:34.000 | You embrace Him for who He is.
00:01:36.080 | That's how you know you're alive.
00:01:37.360 | The testimony is within you.
00:01:39.000 | And what is it again?
00:01:40.400 | The testimony?
00:01:41.640 | Verse 11, "This is the testimony.
00:01:46.520 | God gave us life."
00:01:50.760 | That's how you know you're alive, to Him, alive to God, and dying to sin.
00:01:59.880 | The aim of the new birth is to awaken faith in the crucified, incarnate Son of God.
00:02:07.840 | And if there were no incarnate, crucified Son of God, then the new birth would not be
00:02:12.680 | performed because the point of it would not be possible.
00:02:16.340 | The incarnation of the Son of God is necessary because the life that we have in the new birth,
00:02:26.000 | in union with Him, is the life of the Son of the incarnate Christ.
00:02:33.340 | I am the way, the truth, and the life, and I became the way by being man.
00:02:41.320 | I come now to close with justification and purification, or if you want to use the old
00:02:47.860 | sanctification, you can, but purity is what's used in this text.
00:02:50.460 | I'm going to use it.
00:02:53.800 | Look at 1 John 3, 3 through 5, "And everyone who thus hopes in Him," in other words,
00:03:02.740 | if you're deeply confident that you're going to see Him someday and become like Him,
00:03:07.340 | that's what that's referring to.
00:03:08.860 | Verse 3, "Everyone who thus hopes in Him purifies himself as he is pure.
00:03:17.420 | Everyone who makes a practice of sinning practices lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness.
00:03:23.500 | You know that He appeared to take away sins, and in Him there is no sin."
00:03:28.540 | John says, "If you've experienced the new birth, and thus your heart has been awakened
00:03:34.740 | to hope in Jesus Christ, and you cannot wait until He appears because all your sin will
00:03:39.860 | be done away with, and you won't be battling with the internet anymore, and you won't be
00:03:42.700 | battling with pride anymore, and you won't be battling with selfishness anymore, and
00:03:46.420 | you won't be battling with all the bitterness and anger in your life, you'll be free and
00:03:51.420 | like Him if that's the passion of your life."
00:03:54.740 | This text says, "You will purify yourself now."
00:03:59.700 | If you want it to happen in the future, you're just kidding yourself if you don't want it
00:04:03.300 | to happen now.
00:04:04.660 | "Oh, He's going to show up someday, and then I'll really want to be pure."
00:04:09.780 | You won't.
00:04:11.620 | I used to play those games when I was a kid.
00:04:14.340 | Get saved when I'm old, because it's boring to be saved.
00:04:18.800 | So get saved when you're old.
00:04:20.820 | It won't happen.
00:04:23.260 | The hardness will creep over you, and you will lose all your capacity to know Him, see
00:04:28.900 | Him, love Him, and God will withdraw from you, and you will perish, thinking that on
00:04:34.460 | your deathbed you could repent, and you'll be an Esau pleading for repentance, and it
00:04:38.700 | will not be given.
00:04:40.100 | Don't play that game.
00:04:42.060 | If you're 30 years old, don't play it.
00:04:43.820 | If you're 40, don't play it.
00:04:45.140 | 50, don't play it.
00:04:46.140 | And sure, don't play it.
00:04:47.140 | If you're six, don't play that game.
00:04:52.560 | We will purify ourselves, meaning we're going to fight, right?
00:04:58.540 | We're going to fight.
00:05:00.740 | Nobody in this room is perfect.
00:05:02.820 | Nobody will be pure perfectly before you die.
00:05:06.420 | The question is, who's fighting?
00:05:10.660 | Who's fighting?
00:05:14.060 | Who says, "Yes, I want Him to come.
00:05:16.300 | Yes, I'd like to be like Him perfectly.
00:05:18.620 | It grieves me not to be more like Him than I am.
00:05:22.700 | Now I'm going to fight this thing."
00:05:25.460 | Who's that?
00:05:26.460 | It's the children of God talking.
00:05:27.900 | I don't care how many times you fall down, if you get up talking like that, you're a
00:05:33.220 | child of God.
00:05:34.780 | Amen.
00:05:35.780 | That is such a powerful little clip, and it was taken from a sermon titled "The Reason
00:05:40.140 | the Son of God Appeared Was to Destroy the Works of the Devil," a Christmas sermon from
00:05:45.700 | John Piper preached back on December 23, 2007, and the clip was emailed in to us by Christopher
00:05:51.020 | Burdeen from Oklahoma City.
00:05:53.020 | Thank you, Christopher, for the clip, and John Piper is going to return with us tomorrow,
00:05:57.300 | and a listener wants to ask whether tardiness and chronic lateness is a sin issue.
00:06:02.500 | I'm your host, Tony Ranke.
00:06:03.980 | Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John Podcast.
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