How Do I Grow in Wisdom?
00:00:00.000 | On April 26th, 1998, John Piper preached a sermon on Romans 1 verse 1. It was sermon
00:00:12.480 | number one in a new series he called Romans, the greatest letter ever written. He announced
00:00:18.880 | to his church it would be "a great ten years in Romans." He would go on to complete the
00:00:26.640 | book in 225 sermons in just 8 years and 8 months, finishing up on Christmas Eve 2006.
00:00:35.360 | This Roman series is now legend, but back in the early months of the series, the church
00:00:40.160 | had to be prepared to plunge into Romans 118-320, a prolonged argument from Paul that diagnoses
00:00:47.960 | the world's sin problems and God's righteous, wrathful response to it. This section alone
00:00:55.240 | would require 22 of those sermons, and to prepare his congregation for such a heavy
00:01:00.360 | season ahead, Pastor John explained how hard texts about sin and wrath are vital for creating
00:01:07.480 | sages in a local church. Here's a clip of him explaining this from his August 30th,
00:01:13.480 | 1998 sermon titled "The Wrath of God Against Ungodliness and Unrighteousness." Here he
00:01:20.080 | is. For a couple of years, I've been throwing out from time to time a goal that I have for
00:01:27.760 | the church in the word "sage." I want us to be, through Sunday school, Wednesday night
00:01:35.760 | efforts, track one TBI, small groups, preaching, worship, I want us to become a church in which
00:01:44.520 | we nurture and cultivate sages, sagacious people, that is, people who are wise, discerning,
00:01:58.840 | penetrating, people-loving, heart-knowing, God-exalting sages. I've put it like this,
00:02:10.360 | all of you 20, 30, 40-year-old people should think, and I'm thinking of women and men,
00:02:18.800 | I've said it especially to some of you women, some women wonder, "What's my vision for
00:02:25.000 | my life spiritually as I grow older?" Single, say, or married. And here's one vision,
00:02:32.200 | here's one way to articulate to yourself why you're on planet earth. Think of becoming
00:02:39.320 | a sixty-year-old sage
00:02:43.760 | to which hundreds of young women in their twenties
00:02:48.820 | and thirties and forties will come streaming
00:02:53.120 | because you penetrate. You see things.
00:02:57.520 | You understand things. You grasp things. You know nature.
00:03:02.180 | You know God. You know the heart. You know sin.
00:03:05.520 | You know ugliness. You know beauty. You know wrath. You know holiness.
00:03:10.020 | You know mercy. You know things. You've
00:03:13.320 | been into the human heart and worked around there
00:03:16.820 | and understood it and untangled the sanctity and the sin
00:03:21.620 | of the human nature and people read all over you the aroma of wisdom.
00:03:27.920 | And I just think the only reason that doesn't happen more often than it does
00:03:31.320 | is that we don't pray toward it, think toward it, work toward it,
00:03:35.020 | read toward it, listen toward it, act toward it, relate toward it.
00:03:39.120 | We just coast. So,
00:03:43.120 | long after I'm off the scene, may some people
00:03:47.220 | in this room right now be remembering. Remember twenty,
00:03:50.420 | thirty years ago when Pastor John
00:03:53.720 | Piper was here and he called us to be sages?
00:03:57.820 | There's one. There's one. There's one. There's one.
00:04:01.520 | The men and women in their sixties and seventies and eighties
00:04:04.620 | to whom people go because every time they go
00:04:09.320 | there's a fountain of life. The lips of wisdom
00:04:13.520 | are a fountain of life. Who drinks at your life?
00:04:18.020 | You are meant to be that. You are on the
00:04:21.520 | earth to become that way.
00:04:25.320 | And so many of you have low views of what you're going to be
00:04:29.220 | when you're older. Stop having low views.
00:04:34.420 | The Bible is written to make you wise
00:04:38.220 | unto salvation and not just your own.
00:04:42.220 | All of which is simply to tell you
00:04:45.620 | that to linger in the presence of an authoritative
00:04:50.020 | analysis of the human condition for some months
00:04:54.720 | is not an unhelpful thing to do
00:04:58.320 | if you want to produce sagacious,
00:05:02.820 | wise, penetrating, loving
00:05:06.820 | counselors to whom people go
00:05:10.920 | and get great help.
00:05:14.720 | Verse 18 of chapter 1, which begins this whole section on sin,
00:05:21.320 | is given as a support for
00:05:25.220 | the gospel. You see the word "for"
00:05:28.820 | or "because" at the beginning of verse 18? If you have an NIV,
00:05:32.220 | you don't see it because they dropped it. Shame on them.
00:05:35.820 | Don't know why they do that sort of thing, but if you have an NASV or
00:05:38.920 | RSV or King James or one of the more
00:05:42.420 | literal renderings, you will see the word "for"
00:05:46.120 | or "because" at the beginning of verse 18, and it is
00:05:49.320 | absolutely essential
00:05:52.720 | for understanding the flow of the apostolic argument.
00:05:57.820 | The gospel is power because
00:06:00.820 | in it righteousness is revealed
00:06:04.420 | for you to have by faith. God's not yours.
00:06:08.020 | So that you can have peace in your conscience, acceptance with God, hope for
00:06:12.220 | everlasting life.
00:06:14.620 | And you need that because
00:06:17.620 | the wrath of God is against your sin
00:06:20.620 | mightily. Get the connection?
00:06:24.220 | Which means that if you understand wrath and you understand
00:06:29.420 | sin and ungodliness and unrighteousness,
00:06:32.520 | you will desperately look for the gospel.
00:06:36.220 | You will want a shield
00:06:39.420 | from that wrath more than you want anything in the world.
00:06:42.920 | And it's there in verse 17. We're coming back to it
00:06:46.620 | every Sunday. So if you wonder, "Are we going to leave the gospel behind
00:06:50.120 | and only talk about the problem for several months?" The answer is
00:06:53.520 | no. Because the only reason Paul talks about the problem
00:06:58.320 | is to make you love the gospel. And if you try
00:07:02.620 | to do an end run around this section and jump
00:07:06.120 | from 17 to 321,
00:07:09.620 | you won't love the gospel. That's being taught all over the world today
00:07:15.020 | in the name of Christianity. Let's just jump over this sin stuff.
00:07:19.020 | Let's just jump over this wrath stuff.
00:07:22.020 | This is not encouraging. It is not going to make people want to come back to my
00:07:27.120 | church on Sunday morning.
00:07:30.120 | I don't believe that, by the way. Visitors, whoever you are,
00:07:34.320 | frankly, I think you'd like an interpretation of
00:07:38.120 | death and suffering
00:07:41.520 | and moral degeneracy in our society. I think
00:07:45.020 | the world is kind of interested in where did that come from?
00:07:49.420 | And is there any hope to overcome it?
00:07:52.720 | I'm not worried about talking about sin and chasing anybody away.
00:07:57.320 | People leave for all kinds of reasons. And people come for the most strange
00:08:01.520 | reasons you can ever imagine.
00:08:03.720 | God brings you here this morning for this message.
00:08:07.120 | You're here for this message. And I pray that you'll be
00:08:11.320 | listening. Because or for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all
00:08:17.620 | ungodliness
00:08:19.220 | and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. The first thing I
00:08:23.220 | want you to see in that verse
00:08:24.720 | is the two uses of the word unrighteousness.
00:08:28.420 | Twice, twice, wrath is coming against
00:08:32.720 | our unrighteousness. And we are holding down or suppressing or hindering the
00:08:37.020 | truth
00:08:37.820 | in unrighteousness. Surely, Paul,
00:08:40.920 | in writing those two words, unrighteousness,
00:08:44.320 | means for us to connect them with the word righteousness in verse 17.
00:08:49.720 | And here that the reason we need
00:08:53.720 | a righteousness from God is because we
00:08:57.120 | are unrighteous. That's what he wants us to hear
00:09:00.520 | in these words. So don't miss that connection.
00:09:03.720 | In other words, you can see right off the bat that the bad news of verse 18
00:09:08.520 | is meant to highlight the good news of verse 17.
00:09:11.620 | And if you don't get your condition as unrighteous, you won't love
00:09:15.720 | the awesome reckoning
00:09:19.120 | of verse 17. So don't run from these things.
00:09:22.720 | Don't run from the diagnosis. Amen.
00:09:25.920 | Do not run away from texts like Romans 118 to 320.
00:09:29.320 | Slow down. Go through them deliberately. That clip was taken from John Piper's
00:09:33.520 | sermon on Romans 118, preached on
00:09:35.520 | August 30th, 1998. To find this sermon or the entire
00:09:39.520 | epic 225-part sermon series, you can Google it.
00:09:43.620 | Just type in Romans, the greatest letter ever written.
00:09:46.820 | Over the years, we've heard from many APJ listeners who have plowed through this
00:09:50.020 | entire series. Jonathan Stith wrote in to say this,
00:09:54.120 | "Pastor John, your series in Romans was used supernaturally by the Holy Spirit
00:09:58.320 | and is the reason I am walking with the Lord today."
00:10:01.820 | Incredible. David Artrip wrote in, "Pastor John, your sermon series through
00:10:06.420 | Romans changed my life by opening my eyes to the deep truths of the gospel
00:10:11.120 | and God's sovereignty and goodness." Wow. The entire Romans series has been
00:10:15.420 | listened to by Jason Fest, Karen Featherston, Leonardo Diaz,
00:10:20.320 | Stephan Tate, Jesse Pauland, Michael Fergus, Tony Gidwillow,
00:10:25.020 | Brent Stong, Annie Johnson, Scott Hewson, Dylan Rumbaugh,
00:10:29.620 | Hunter Manning, Mark Mabelline, and David Johnson.
00:10:33.220 | And those are just a few of the APJ listeners who have emailed us to tell us
00:10:36.520 | about the experience. That's amazing. Thank you for sending your stories to us.
00:10:41.720 | Well, it seems like every week we get emailed this question,
00:10:45.920 | "How do I find a good local church?" Well, next time we're going to finally
00:10:50.620 | address the question. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. We'll see you back here on Friday.
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