The Key to Killing Lust
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:04.000 | I have a few favorite sermon clips from the sermons of John Piper, and today's clip is one of the very best.
00:00:10.000 | I've listened to it dozens of times at least.
00:00:12.000 | It happens to also be the favorite sermon clip of a long-time podcast listener named Greg Briggs, who lives in Louisville, Kentucky.
00:00:19.000 | It's from a 2004 conference message in which Pastor John is explaining how we order our sexual lives.
00:00:26.000 | Now, you don't have to be a Christian to see the destructive power of pornography on the human brain.
00:00:31.000 | You don't have to be a Christian to discern the difference between love and lust.
00:00:35.000 | And you certainly don't have to be a Christian to know that adultery destroys marriages.
00:00:40.000 | But you must be a Christian to see the battle for sexual purity within its fullest reality.
00:00:45.000 | So how do we battle lust like Christians? And how does sexuality find its ultimate purpose and right place in our lives?
00:00:52.000 | It is no overstatement that the following clip explains the key to it all, the key to the entire struggle.
00:01:00.000 | Here's Pastor John.
00:01:02.000 | We were made to see and savor with everlasting satisfaction the supremacy of Christ.
00:01:11.000 | Our sexuality points to this, and we are sexual beings that we may know something of this.
00:01:23.000 | And we must know this in order to be pure and have our sexuality be sacred and sweet and Christ-exalting and secondary,
00:01:35.000 | quietly, powerfully secondary.
00:01:38.000 | So my prayer for this conference has been and is that you will all, one by one, see and savor the supremacy of Christ.
00:01:50.000 | Married or single, male or female, old or young, disordered in your desires, or walking in a measure of holiness,
00:02:00.000 | that you will behold and embrace the supremacy of Christ in all things.
00:02:09.000 | Because I know, I know without the shadow of a doubt on biblical authority that the little spaceships of our moral regimes,
00:02:23.000 | our little tactics to fight lust, our little spaceships to nudge the planet of our sexuality back into orbit,
00:02:35.000 | are absolutely futile if the supremacy of Christ is not the sun at the center of the solar system of your life.
00:02:46.000 | I know that. I don't know many things.
00:02:49.000 | I know that beyond the shadow of a doubt, and therefore this is an easy conference to do because the solution is clear.
00:02:59.000 | Not easy to appropriate because of our sin, but the answer to the problem is clear.
00:03:10.000 | There's a massive sun that belongs at the center of the solar system of our lives,
00:03:18.000 | and by its weight and glory and mass and beauty and power holds the orbits in place.
00:03:31.000 | And therefore, my prayer, as much as I believe in my practical strategies, and oh, I believe in them,
00:03:41.000 | my prayer is that you will know, that you will press on to know the supremacy of Christ,
00:03:53.000 | the supremacy of his deity, equal with God the Father in all of his attributes,
00:04:00.000 | the radiance of his glory and the exact image of his nature,
00:04:06.000 | the supremacy of his eternality that makes the mind want to explode with the imponderable thought
00:04:16.000 | that Jesus Christ never had a beginning. He is simply there.
00:04:25.000 | The absolute reality with which we reckon we must rise to the supremacy of his eternality
00:04:35.000 | while all the universe, including this building in your body and this earth and all the galaxies,
00:04:42.000 | are fragile, contingent, like a shadow in comparison to the substance of Jesus Christ.
00:04:51.000 | We must know the supremacy of his never-changing constancy.
00:04:57.000 | Oh, to have virtues that never change, a character whose commitment is constant,
00:05:04.000 | yesterday, today, and forever, let us know the supremacy of his constancy,
00:05:09.000 | and let us know the supremacy of his knowledge that makes the Library of Congress look like a matchbox
00:05:17.000 | and makes all the information on the internet look like a 1940's farmer's almanac
00:05:25.000 | and makes all of quantum physics and everything that Stephen Hawking has ever dreamed
00:05:32.000 | look like a first-grade reader. We must know the supremacy of the knowledge of our Lord.
00:05:40.000 | We must know the supremacy of his wisdom that has never been perplexed by any problem whatsoever,
00:05:48.000 | nor can he be counseled by any person or any being in the universe.
00:05:54.000 | We must know the supremacy of his authority. All authority is mine in heaven and on earth and under the earth.
00:06:04.000 | No change. All authority. Changing times and seasons, removing kings, setting up kings,
00:06:12.000 | doing according to his will in the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth.
00:06:17.000 | No one can stay his hand or say to him, "What have you done?"
00:06:21.000 | We must know the supremacy of his providence, without which not a single bird in the extended reaches
00:06:30.000 | of the Amazon forest has ever fallen off of any limb, and without which not one hair turns white or black.
00:06:39.000 | We must know the providence of Jesus. We must know the supremacy of his word,
00:06:46.000 | which upholds the universe by the word of his power. All the galaxies, molecules, atoms, and subatomic reality
00:06:53.000 | nobody has yet dreamed of down there where no one has yet looked.
00:07:00.000 | We must know the supremacy of his power to walk on water and cleanse lepers and heal the lame
00:07:07.000 | and open the eyes of the blind and open the ears of the deaf and cause storms to cease
00:07:13.000 | and with two words to raise the dead, "Lazarus, come forth!" or one word to raise the dead.
00:07:19.000 | In your blood, I said to you, "Live!" We must know the supremacy of his power.
00:07:25.000 | We must know the supremacy of his purity. He never sinned. He never sinned.
00:07:31.000 | He never had one millisecond of a bad attitude or a sinful lust.
00:07:38.000 | We must know the supremacy of his trustworthiness. He never breaks a promise.
00:07:44.000 | He always keeps his word absolutely without fail. We must know the supremacy of his justice.
00:07:51.000 | He will render all accounts settled in the end in the universe, either on the cross or in hell.
00:08:00.000 | No injustice will remain when Christ is finished with his supreme justice.
00:08:06.000 | We must know the supremacy of his patience. He has endured you and me for decades.
00:08:13.000 | He has endured this city and brings the sun. Can you imagine why the sun rose on this city this morning?
00:08:20.000 | This wicked city, this world so full of us-type sinners, and he makes paradise rise in the sky in Minneapolis.
00:08:29.000 | What kind of patience are we dealing with here? We must know the supremacy of his servant-like sovereign obedience.
00:08:38.000 | Kept every one of his father's commands absolutely, and in the end, embraced the cross with total willingness.
00:08:47.000 | We must know the supremacy of his meekness and lowliness and tenderness.
00:08:52.000 | He will not break a bruised reed or quench a smoldering flax.
00:09:00.000 | We must know the supremacy of his wrath. One day it will explode on this world from heaven
00:09:07.000 | such that all who have rejected him will call for rocks to crush their brain,
00:09:14.000 | lest they have to face the wrath of the Lamb.
00:09:18.000 | We must know this when I look at the beheadings, and I hear someone ask, "Where is your supreme Christ?"
00:09:27.000 | My answer is really easy. He is in heaven storing up almighty wrath in fury to pour out on all those who commit such sins.
00:09:38.000 | That's where he is, and you better get right with him and repent or you will all likewise perish.
00:09:46.000 | It's not a hard question to answer biblically.
00:09:49.000 | We must know the supremacy of his grace, which gives to the spiritually dead rebels like us life,
00:09:58.000 | wakens faith in hell-bound haters of God, justifies the ungodly with his own righteousness.
00:10:08.000 | We must know the supremacy of his love, which dies for us while we are yet sinners
00:10:14.000 | and gives to the absolutely undeserving the ability for ever increasing joy in making much of him.
00:10:23.000 | And we must know the supremacy of his gladness.
00:10:28.000 | In the fellowship of the Trinity, infinite power, infinite energy, infinite joy rising,
00:10:34.000 | spilling over in the creation of a universe and becoming for you one day an inheritance for every struggling saint.
00:10:44.000 | We must know. This is what we were made for.
00:10:49.000 | Press on to know the Lord.
00:10:52.000 | When you said last night, "Al, if you're not reading substantial theology, how do you think you're fighting lust?"
00:10:59.000 | Get the connection. We are made to know Christ.
00:11:04.000 | We're not made to do little diddly things.
00:11:07.000 | We're made to know this massive Christ, this world, this little two-second slice, and then with him or not forever.
00:11:15.000 | It's what we are created to know and do and be about.
00:11:21.000 | And when we know him in those ways, we have begun to know the outskirts of his supremacy.
00:11:31.000 | For time would fail to speak of his supreme severity and invincibility and dignity and simplicity and complexity
00:11:42.000 | and resoluteness and calmness and depth and courage.
00:11:46.000 | If there's anything admirable, if there's anything worthy of praise in all the universe, it is summed up in Jesus Christ.
00:11:56.000 | He is always infinitely admirable in everything and over everything supreme.
00:12:04.000 | Over all galaxies and endless reaches of space, over the earth, from the top of Mount Everest,
00:12:12.000 | 29,000 feet up to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, 36,000 feet down in the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Rim.
00:12:21.000 | He is sovereign and supreme over all plants and animals, from the peaceful blue whale to the microscopic killer viruses.
00:12:31.000 | He is supreme over all weather and all movements of the earth, hurricanes, tornadoes, monsoons, earthquakes, avalanches,
00:12:40.000 | floods, snow, rain, sleet. He is supreme over all chemical processes that heal or destroy cancer, AIDS, malaria, flu,
00:12:52.000 | and all the amazing grace of antibiotics and a thousand healing drugs that we do not deserve.
00:13:00.000 | He is supreme over all countries and governments and armies.
00:13:04.000 | He is supreme over al-Qaeda and the terrorists and the kidnappings and the suicide bombings and the beheadings.
00:13:11.000 | He is supreme over bin Laden and al-Zarqawi. He is supreme over all nuclear threats from Iran and Russia and North Korea.
00:13:20.000 | He is supreme over politics and elections and debates on Thursday.
00:13:26.000 | He is supreme over media and news and entertainment and sports and leisure.
00:13:31.000 | He is supreme over all education in universities, no matter what they teach.
00:13:36.000 | And he is supreme over all scholarship and science and research.
00:13:40.000 | He is supreme over all business and finance and industry and manufacturing and transportation.
00:13:46.000 | And he is supreme over the internet and all informational systems.
00:13:50.000 | As Abraham Kuyper famously said, and many of you know,
00:13:54.000 | "There is not one square inch on planet Earth over which the risen Christ does not say, 'Mine!'
00:14:03.000 | And I rule it. I am supreme over it."
00:14:07.000 | That is absolutely amazing. One of the great John Piper sermon clips.
00:14:13.000 | The whole message is incredible. "Sex and the Supremacy of Christ, Part 2" from Desiring God's 2004 National Conference.
00:14:20.000 | It was preached on September 26, 2004.
00:14:23.000 | There are a few must-listen messages in Piper's legacy. This is one of them, along with Part 1.
00:14:29.000 | Both are available right now at DesiringGod.org.
00:14:32.000 | "Thank you, Greg in Louisville, Kentucky. I'm a longtime listener to the podcast," he writes.
00:14:37.000 | "I actually started listening to APJ during my one-hour subway commutes in Beijing in 2016.
00:14:42.000 | The Lord has since brought me and my family back to the USA, but I still listen to APJ regularly on my commutes.
00:14:48.000 | This conference message was the first John Piper sermon I ever remember listening to.
00:14:53.000 | I was at home for the summer between college semesters in 2006.
00:14:57.000 | I was out mowing seven acres of grass on a large diesel tractor among the cornfields of Ohio.
00:15:02.000 | Part 1 of this message was so profound to me.
00:15:05.000 | I had never heard anyone teach about why we are made sexual beings.
00:15:09.000 | However, Part 2 has always stuck out to me as a quintessential Piper sermon.
00:15:13.000 | The way he adds attribute after attribute and facet upon facet of Christ's greatness and supremacy builds into such a fantastic crescendo.
00:15:21.000 | I love it. It is expanding to the soul.
00:15:24.000 | I have listened to it many times and never get tired of it. Amen."
00:15:29.000 | Thank you, Greg. I appreciate you sending in this clip.
00:15:32.000 | Thanks for listening to today's sermon clip. All our clips are now crowdsourced.
00:15:35.000 | You tell us what bits of Piper's sermons changed your life, and we share that clip with the APJ audience.
00:15:39.000 | They don't have to be as epic as the clip today, but if you have one, email me.
00:15:43.000 | Give me your name, hometown, the sermon title, the timestamp of when the clip happens in the audio, and tell me how it impacted you.
00:15:50.000 | Put the word "clip" in the subject line of an email if you would, and send it to me at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.
00:15:56.000 | That's an email address, askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.
00:16:00.000 | I am your host Tony Reinke. We are rejoined in studio with Pastor John next time when we return on Friday.
00:16:07.000 | We'll see you then.
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