John Piper’s Death-Row Plea

00:00:00.000 | Hello everyone, just a little note before we start to let you know that the following

00:00:04.120 | episode is not for sensitive ears.

00:00:06.280 | We are going to talk about a crime against a child in a moment and I'll use as few

00:00:10.560 | details as possible, but thanks for understanding.

00:00:18.920 | Today's episode needs a backstory and it's a chilling backstory set in Denham Springs,

00:00:23.960 | a rough town east of Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

00:00:27.840 | There a 40 year old man, Gerald Borderlin, already a convicted rapist on the morning

00:00:33.060 | of November 15th, 2002, abducted his stepdaughter, Courtney, a 12 year old, took her by knife

00:00:40.480 | point to his car, drove her across state lines to Mississippi, forced her to undress, and

00:00:46.080 | assaulted her in an unspeakable way.

00:00:49.120 | He then led her to a riverbank, pushed her to the ground, strangled her to death, hid

00:00:54.600 | her body under a brush pile, and drove away.

00:01:00.200 | Borderlin was caught a few days later and confessed.

00:01:02.320 | It took less than an hour of deliberation for a jury to convict him of first degree

00:01:06.320 | murder and it took less than an hour of deliberation for a jury to give him the death penalty.

00:01:12.240 | Borderlin waived his right to appeal, saying in court, "I would commit the same crime

00:01:17.040 | again if ever given the chance."

00:01:20.600 | A state supreme court opinion found his decision made with a clear mind and upheld Borderlin's

00:01:24.580 | right to waive all appeals, arriving at the conclusion that he was a "sexual sadist"

00:01:31.800 | and that his criminal history showed escalating patterns of violence.

00:01:36.100 | For his final days on earth, he was sent to death row at a maximum security prison in

00:01:40.080 | Louisiana called the Alcatraz of the South, or simply Angola.

00:01:45.960 | Angola is the largest maximum security prison in the US.

00:01:49.800 | An 18,000 acre complex comprised of five former plantations now home to 6,300 prisoners, limited

00:01:57.600 | to only murderers, rapists, armed robbers, and habitual felons.

00:02:02.920 | The average sentence here is 88 years, with 3,200 people in one place serving life sentences.

00:02:09.120 | Ninety percent of the inmates will die here, but only a couple by execution.

00:02:15.760 | But as Borderlin's execution date drew close, the Lord providentially landed John Piper

00:02:21.180 | in Angola.

00:02:23.460 | On November 20, 2009, Piper toured the prison with the notorious warden, Burl Kane, a forthright

00:02:29.320 | Christian and a man with a near-mythical reputation for turning Angola, once known as the bloodiest

00:02:35.220 | prison in the South, into a model facility.

00:02:39.040 | As he drove Piper around the enormous campus, Kane, always eager for death row inmates to

00:02:43.740 | hear the gospel, turned to Piper and asked if he'd be willing to meet with a condemned

00:02:47.480 | prisoner.

00:02:48.940 | Piper agreed, and Kane drove to the solitary confinement cells.

00:02:53.460 | A few moments later, Piper was face to face with Gerald Borderlin and given 30 minutes.

00:02:59.480 | "Never have I felt a greater urgency to say the good news plainly and plead from my

00:03:04.280 | heart," Piper recounted.

00:03:06.540 | He shared the gospel, pled with Borderlin to treasure Christ, and asked him to read

00:03:11.300 | the gospels until the beauty of Christ gripped his heart.

00:03:15.300 | That was of utmost urgency.

00:03:18.320 | They prayed together twice.

00:03:19.920 | Piper took a picture of Gerald on his iPhone and promised to pray for him and to write

00:03:23.380 | him letters later.

00:03:25.820 | Moments later, in Angola's chapel before 800 prisoners, Piper preached from John 6

00:03:30.460 | on Jesus' feeding of the 5,000 and his walk on water.

00:03:33.460 | "I preached with all my heart to those who could fit in the chapel," Piper recounted

00:03:37.380 | later.

00:03:38.380 | "I pulled no punches."

00:03:41.140 | Many other prisoners watched on closed circuit television, including Borderlin and his fellow

00:03:44.920 | death row inmates.

00:03:46.740 | The result from this afternoon remains one of my all-time favorite sermons, "Piper

00:03:50.980 | at His Most Urgent."

00:03:52.820 | And today I want to feature this clip from the beginning of that sermon, and when you

00:03:56.260 | hear Gerald's name, you'll know a bit of the backstory.

00:03:59.220 | Here's Pastor John.

00:04:01.660 | This has been a really remarkable afternoon, as you can imagine.

00:04:04.940 | My first time here, and hope not my last.

00:04:10.700 | But I have been moved.

00:04:12.300 | I just want to greet the several brothers whose hands I shook over on death row.

00:04:17.700 | I told them to be watching on Channel 21, and they said they would be, so I said I would

00:04:22.660 | remember you.

00:04:24.500 | And Gerald, you said you'd be watching.

00:04:26.140 | I want you to listen real carefully.

00:04:28.340 | I hope you are.

00:04:30.260 | I've seen the lay of the land, and I've heard remarkable stories.

00:04:36.420 | The work of God here is unprecedented, as you know, in prisons.

00:04:42.460 | I feel a weight on me that I hope the Lord processes in terms of power and not oppression.

00:04:52.540 | And the reason I feel such a weight is because I know most of you aren't leaving this place

00:04:57.700 | except to go to heaven.

00:05:01.140 | And that's heavy.

00:05:03.060 | It's got to be a battle lots of times.

00:05:07.460 | The message that I have is a combination of the last three Sundays at my church.

00:05:16.020 | So I didn't prepare the substance of this just for you.

00:05:21.340 | But as I was praying three or four days ago, "Lord, what am I supposed to say in this situation?"

00:05:28.620 | And I went over in my mind what I had been trying to drive home to my people from the

00:05:33.540 | sixth chapter of John.

00:05:36.420 | I think the Lord said, "Just go there and apply it to their situation."

00:05:42.940 | And here's the remarkable thing.

00:05:45.860 | I hope you see this.

00:05:48.140 | There is a sense in which your position here in prison, next stop heaven, makes it easier

00:06:00.580 | for you to get this message than for my people who are tempted every day to be idolaters

00:06:09.700 | with their freedom and their prosperity.

00:06:12.980 | Let me sum it up.

00:06:14.220 | Let's do the big summary of where I'm going, and then we're going to go in.

00:06:17.580 | And if you have a Bible and you want to go with me, you can go to John, the gospel of

00:06:21.940 | John chapter 6.

00:06:23.180 | If you don't have a Bible, just listen.

00:06:25.740 | That's fine.

00:06:26.740 | And here's the summary of where we're going to go.

00:06:30.340 | We're going to work on verses 1 through 29 in three sections because there were originally

00:06:35.500 | three sermons.

00:06:36.500 | We're packing it in to one, and I'll just get right to the heart of each one.

00:06:41.060 | And there's a common denominator.

00:06:44.020 | Here's the main point.

00:06:45.660 | Jesus did not come into the world mainly to give bread, but to be bread.

00:06:52.860 | I am the bread of life.

00:06:56.860 | He who comes to me will not hunger.

00:06:59.140 | He who believes in me will never thirst.

00:07:01.300 | John 6, 35.

00:07:03.460 | That's verse 35.

00:07:04.460 | It says the same thing again in verse 48.

00:07:07.940 | Same thing again in verse 51.

00:07:10.700 | He came into the world not to give bread, but to be bread.

00:07:16.620 | Now, he is going to give bread, and you can miss it.

00:07:21.100 | You can miss it by thinking that's the main thing he came to do.

00:07:25.220 | Give me the bread.

00:07:27.260 | But that's not the main reason he came.

00:07:29.940 | You've already had a lot of bread taken out of your hands, and I hope it lands on you

00:07:34.180 | with massive good news that he came to be bread, not mainly give bread.

00:07:42.460 | He's got to take bread out of a lot of people's hands so that they will trust him as the bread.

00:07:49.180 | Secondly, he did not come to be useful, but to be precious.

00:07:56.660 | Oh, how many Christians receive him as useful.

00:08:04.140 | Or another way to put it is Jesus Christ did not come into the world to assist you in meeting

00:08:13.380 | desires you already had before you were born again.

00:08:18.620 | He came into the world to change your desires so that he's the main one.

00:08:26.820 | That's the reason he came.

00:08:28.420 | And so many preachers, maybe some have stood in this pulpit, and they have taken you right

00:08:34.700 | where you are with your desires, natural desires that you share with every fallen human being

00:08:41.720 | in the world and just say, "Jesus came to meet that."

00:08:45.940 | Well, he didn't.

00:08:48.420 | He came to change those desires profoundly deep.

00:08:53.220 | It's called the new birth so that he's the central desire.

00:08:58.620 | He's the bread.

00:09:00.140 | He's the precious one.

00:09:02.780 | That's the point of this sermon.

00:09:05.020 | Now, he does care about bread.

00:09:08.420 | I mean natural bread.

00:09:09.580 | He cares about your body.

00:09:11.580 | He just doesn't care about your body and your natural bread mainly.

00:09:16.980 | That's coming.

00:09:18.740 | That's coming just on the other side of the grave.

00:09:22.860 | There's going to be a resurrection someday.

00:09:25.380 | No more mourning, no more crying, no more tears, no more depression, no more sin, only

00:09:33.020 | joy on the new earth, under the new heavens forever.

00:09:37.260 | That's coming.

00:09:38.260 | He cares about the body.

00:09:39.940 | He's going to raise the body from the dead, make you young forever, handsome forever,

00:09:45.380 | healthy forever so that you can enjoy him in the fullness of your humanity.

00:09:51.780 | That's coming.

00:09:52.780 | But that's not the main point of this world.

00:09:55.060 | Amen.

00:09:56.060 | It's unclear what resulted from Piper's meeting with Gerald Borderland and this sermon,

00:10:00.220 | One Day We Will Know.

00:10:02.060 | Piper promised to write and he did, sending off two letters in December of 2009.

00:10:06.220 | "I know that you have decided not to appeal your death sentence.

00:10:11.580 | You have decided to lay down your life to spare your family and others any more heartache,"

00:10:16.140 | Piper wrote him.

00:10:17.140 | "I see a glimmer of goodness in that.

00:10:19.660 | Maybe you can taste, then, what it was like for Jesus.

00:10:22.260 | He never committed any sin, none, not even a bad thought or a bad attitude.

00:10:28.060 | If anybody ever deserved to live a long life, it was Jesus, and it ended at age 33.

00:10:34.320 | It ended because he chose to die in our place so that the curse of our sin could fall on

00:10:39.420 | him.

00:10:40.420 | As I said, no one takes my life from me.

00:10:42.580 | I lay it down of my own accord.

00:10:45.300 | So he chose to die for us.

00:10:47.700 | Gerald, you know that you have committed many sins, including the one that will send you

00:10:51.940 | to your death in this world.

00:10:53.840 | But there is no sin so great that the terrible death of Jesus cannot cover it.

00:10:58.260 | I hope you believe this."

00:11:02.340 | Seven weeks after this sermon, Borderland was executed.

00:11:06.140 | On January 7, 2010, he was led into Angola's lethal injection chamber, wearing a white

00:11:12.020 | t-shirt and a gold-crossed necklace from his daughter.

00:11:15.220 | Witnesses say Borderland's eyes were red-rimmed from crying as he haltingly said his final

00:11:19.860 | words, "I'd like to apologize to my family and tell them that I love them."

00:11:25.460 | He was strapped down, IVs inserted in his arms.

00:11:28.700 | Three drugs put him to sleep, stopped his breathing, and stopped his heart, all very

00:11:33.380 | quickly.

00:11:34.380 | A moment later, Warden Kane said, "We now pronounce Gerald Borderland dead.

00:11:39.500 | We've sent his soul for final judgment."

00:11:43.300 | To this day, Borderland remains the last prisoner to be executed in Louisiana.

00:11:48.720 | You can listen to or watch the full sermon at DesireWinGod.org titled, "Jesus Came

00:11:53.340 | Not to Give Bread, But to Be Bread."

00:11:56.300 | You'll find it on the site.

00:11:59.180 | I'm your host Tony Ranke, and we'll see you on Friday with Pastor John, back in the

00:12:02.780 | studio.

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John Piper’s Death-Row Plea

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