Stop Living a Half-Life with God
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | Melanie Carelli is a faithful podcast listener
00:00:08.080 | and she recently wrote us an amazing testimony
00:00:10.000 | of how John Piper's 1985 sermon
00:00:12.560 | on Romans chapter eight, verses 28 to 30,
00:00:16.440 | changed her life as she came to understand
00:00:18.560 | how she was saved.
00:00:20.920 | It was an incredibly encouraging email to receive
00:00:23.500 | and it's great to be reminded of the real life
00:00:26.080 | implications of our theology
00:00:28.680 | and hoping the sermon would help others,
00:00:30.480 | Melanie sent us a clip for the podcast
00:00:33.680 | where John Piper explains why God's sovereignty
00:00:36.600 | in our salvation matters for life.
00:00:39.720 | Here's what he said.
00:00:41.520 | The doctrines of unconditional election
00:00:43.880 | and predestination and effectual calling
00:00:46.680 | tend to root out all boasting and pride and self-reliance.
00:00:51.000 | You ever get gripped by these things,
00:00:52.920 | you will be a broken person.
00:00:55.080 | You will not take one ounce of credit
00:00:58.560 | for your salvation,
00:01:00.000 | neither the provision of it in the cross
00:01:02.520 | nor the application of it in faith.
00:01:05.760 | You will give it all to God
00:01:07.680 | and you will humble yourself before him.
00:01:10.760 | Now here again, in talking with my friends
00:01:13.920 | who don't agree with me,
00:01:15.360 | this is one of the things they say.
00:01:17.080 | They say, "Piper, you don't need to say
00:01:20.560 | "that faith is a gift in order to eliminate boasting.
00:01:23.980 | "You don't need to say that God gives faith.
00:01:26.520 | "All you need to do is say that salvation is by faith,
00:01:29.800 | "not by works because faith itself rules out boasting."
00:01:32.680 | And then they quote Romans 3:27, which says,
00:01:35.280 | "Boasting is excluded on what principle?
00:01:37.500 | "On the principle of works?
00:01:38.440 | "No, on the principle of faith."
00:01:40.400 | And they say, "See, faith all by itself excludes boasting.
00:01:43.740 | "You don't need to be driven by logic
00:01:46.920 | "to say that faith is a gift in order to rule out boasting."
00:01:50.280 | To which I respond twofold.
00:01:52.080 | One, I'm not driven by logic to say faith is a gift,
00:01:55.160 | I'm driven by exegesis.
00:01:57.280 | It's taught in the Bible.
00:01:59.440 | It's icing on the cake that it happens to smash pride,
00:02:04.180 | but that's not the reason I invent it.
00:02:06.800 | It's taught in the Bible that faith is a gift.
00:02:09.600 | We're dead in our trespasses and sins.
00:02:11.480 | Nobody would ever believe and perform
00:02:13.200 | the most beautiful act of morality that can be performed,
00:02:15.640 | namely faith, if God didn't enable us
00:02:17.840 | to get rid of our hard hearts and have a heart of flesh.
00:02:20.960 | But that's not the main response.
00:02:22.480 | My main response to this criticism is,
00:02:26.160 | "Yes, yes, faith eliminates boasting by itself."
00:02:31.960 | Why?
00:02:33.560 | Because faith in the New Testament
00:02:36.160 | is faith in all of salvation, not only a piece of salvation.
00:02:40.120 | New Testament faith is not just faith in God
00:02:44.240 | to provide us with the cross,
00:02:47.360 | it's faith in God to work in us
00:02:50.520 | that which is pleasing in His sight.
00:02:52.920 | Faith in the New Testament doesn't just say,
00:02:55.240 | "I choose you, Christ."
00:02:57.040 | Faith in the New Testament says,
00:02:58.480 | "I rest in you, Father, to draw me to Christ."
00:03:01.760 | Of course faith rules out all boasting.
00:03:04.680 | It's faith in everything the Bible says,
00:03:07.520 | not just a little piece of what the Bible says.
00:03:11.080 | Suppose that you were drowning in a lake
00:03:16.000 | and the Son of God were standing on the beach
00:03:19.320 | and He saw you drowning and He tossed you an inner tube
00:03:23.280 | and it landed in your vicinity
00:03:25.280 | and you flailed your way over to it and got a hold of it,
00:03:29.240 | paddled your way to shore gasping.
00:03:32.440 | You'd thank Him for the inner tube at least.
00:03:37.120 | But suppose that you were dead at the bottom of a lake
00:03:40.880 | and your family was dragging the lake for you,
00:03:43.800 | missing you since the morning,
00:03:45.520 | and you had been an enemy of the Son of God all your life,
00:03:48.920 | rejecting Him and spurning Him.
00:03:51.840 | And He walks up and says,
00:03:53.520 | "You can put that stuff away, I'll find it."
00:03:55.600 | And He swims out and dives down and pulls you up
00:04:00.440 | and pulls you to shore, lays you down,
00:04:03.040 | kneels down and works on you all day,
00:04:05.840 | all afternoon, works, works.
00:04:09.040 | And all of a sudden there's a twitch of life
00:04:12.480 | and you breathe and you're alive again
00:04:16.040 | and He falls at your side, dead, exhausted.
00:04:22.600 | And you get up on your knees and you look down at His face
00:04:26.240 | with tears of love streaming down your face
00:04:29.360 | and you hear a voice from heaven saying,
00:04:33.360 | "This is my beloved Son.
00:04:35.360 | With Him I am well pleased.
00:04:38.280 | Rise, my son."
00:04:40.480 | He comes alive and He stands up and He looks down at you
00:04:44.280 | and you see in His face more personal affection for you
00:04:48.600 | than you have ever seen in any face in all the world.
00:04:51.840 | He puts His hand down,
00:04:53.480 | very gently and yet very firmly takes your hand
00:04:55.960 | and pulls you up and looks you in the face and says,
00:04:58.960 | "Follow me and I will work everything together
00:05:02.840 | for your good all the days of your life."
00:05:07.000 | Which way did you get saved?
00:05:09.320 | You flail your way over to the inner tube
00:05:11.400 | and kick your way to heaven?
00:05:13.280 | Or did you get raised from the dead?
00:05:15.560 | How are you going to give God glory today?
00:05:19.560 | How are you going to sing amazing grace?
00:05:23.680 | "He threw the tomb and I swam to it."
00:05:27.280 | 50% to God and 50% to me.
00:05:29.360 | 90% to God and 10% to me.
00:05:30.800 | You name it.
00:05:32.640 | Brothers and sisters, could it be
00:05:35.400 | that many of the problems and struggles in your life today
00:05:39.480 | are owing to the fact that you never knew how you got saved
00:05:45.240 | and therefore you've never known Christ?
00:05:49.200 | You've lived a half-life with God.
00:05:51.760 | You thought it was half yours and half His.
00:05:54.960 | And this morning, maybe all of a sudden,
00:05:57.560 | you could wake up to what He did for you
00:06:01.440 | so that you could start loving Him
00:06:03.080 | with an appropriate affection,
00:06:05.160 | so that you could be humble to the dust.
00:06:07.760 | Could it be that this would be the day
00:06:10.000 | you would be awakened to life
00:06:12.040 | because you heard the gospel for the first time in its power,
00:06:16.560 | that it was God who swam to the bottom
00:06:19.200 | at the cost of His Son's life and pulled you up
00:06:22.600 | and not just heaved you an inner tube
00:06:25.760 | and waited for your self-determined flailings
00:06:28.800 | to get you onto the boat?
00:06:31.280 | -Powerful image.
00:06:32.440 | That was taken from John Piper's 1985 sermon,
00:06:34.800 | "Those Whom He Predestined He Also Called,"
00:06:38.320 | Part 1, a sermon on Romans 8, 28-30,
00:06:42.720 | with some Ephesians 2 mixed in there as well.
00:06:45.680 | The entire sermon can be found at desiringgod.org, of course.
00:06:50.440 | Well, as we draw closer and closer to Easter 2016,
00:06:55.160 | I'm going to call on two friends
00:06:56.560 | to help us appreciate the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
00:07:00.160 | And tomorrow, we will look at 10 ways
00:07:02.480 | that Easter changes everything.
00:07:05.440 | Yes, literally everything is changed by Easter.
00:07:09.040 | We'll talk with one scholar who has a lot to say on that.
00:07:11.240 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:07:12.320 | Thanks for listening to the "Ask Pastor John" podcast.
00:07:14.840 | I'll see you tomorrow.
00:07:16.440 | ♪♪