The New Book John Piper Wrote

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00:00:02.580 | - Welcome back to a new week on the Ask Pastor John podcast.

00:00:07.680 | And last week, Pastor John,

00:00:09.180 | you shared with us 15 lessons on writing

00:00:12.320 | from your recent six week writing leave.

00:00:15.200 | And now it's finally time to talk about what you wrote.

00:00:19.200 | So give us a little preview of your new book.

00:00:22.040 | - So I started the six week writing leave

00:00:25.400 | with the expectation that I would write a book

00:00:28.900 | on how to use the Bible to the greatest,

00:00:32.080 | to get the greatest treasures out of it.

00:00:34.960 | How do you look at the book and benefit from the book?

00:00:37.940 | I was a good five weeks into this project

00:00:42.040 | before I gave that up.

00:00:43.180 | I thought that's where I was going.

00:00:48.080 | And 90,000 words later, that's not where I went.

00:00:53.080 | Here's how it happened.

00:00:55.180 | I was writing and I thought,

00:00:58.140 | well, I've got to at least say something

00:01:00.560 | at the beginning of the book

00:01:01.920 | on how we know the Bible is true,

00:01:04.240 | how we know it's the word of God,

00:01:05.920 | how we can put any confidence in it

00:01:08.340 | so that we're warranted in spending so much time

00:01:12.060 | trying to look at the book.

00:01:14.360 | Well, that initial question took over.

00:01:18.000 | It just took over.

00:01:19.120 | And that's what the book is about.

00:01:20.440 | Now, if I were to title the book now,

00:01:23.700 | it would be "A Peculiar Glory," colon, subtitle,

00:01:28.700 | "How the Christian Scriptures Reveal That They Are True,"

00:01:33.760 | or something like that.

00:01:35.000 | So, and this idea of a peculiar glory

00:01:37.960 | is the new and fresh thing.

00:01:41.120 | So I tell my story in the book,

00:01:44.680 | my story with the Bible,

00:01:46.600 | my whole life from six years old until today

00:01:50.680 | on my life with the Bible.

00:01:52.480 | That's a chapter in the book.

00:01:55.580 | And the fresh thing about that chapter is

00:01:58.520 | I don't talk about how did I manage to hold on

00:02:01.540 | to a view of the Bible through college and seminary

00:02:04.480 | and German liberal graduate school.

00:02:07.000 | And my answer is I didn't hold on to a view of the Bible.

00:02:10.120 | A view through the Bible held on to me.

00:02:13.420 | - Oh, that's good.

00:02:14.320 | - I had this picture of, I'm inside an Alpine chalet

00:02:18.520 | and there's a masterpiece on the wall,

00:02:21.120 | a Rembrandt masterpiece on the wall.

00:02:23.880 | And that could be my view of the Bible.

00:02:25.760 | And can I hold on to my view that that's a masterpiece?

00:02:29.480 | As everybody tells me, it's not, it's an ugly painting.

00:02:32.040 | And I can hold on, it's a masterpiece, a masterpiece.

00:02:34.720 | Is that what happened through all those years?

00:02:36.840 | Or did I walk over to the window in the chalet

00:02:41.760 | and saw the Alps outside,

00:02:44.720 | so that the Bible became the window

00:02:47.080 | and held me not by some view that I was clutching,

00:02:51.360 | but rather it just continually revealed to me

00:02:54.800 | more of God so that I couldn't be let go.

00:02:58.200 | So that's what is going on in that chapter.

00:03:02.080 | And then I tackle which books are in the Bible,

00:03:05.240 | the canon issue, the issue of do we have the actual words?

00:03:09.880 | And I love some insights that I got there about,

00:03:12.880 | I've heard people be so skeptical about,

00:03:14.840 | ah, what difference does it make if you confess

00:03:17.080 | in your doctrinal statement that you have an inerrant Bible

00:03:20.800 | in the original manuscripts?

00:03:22.280 | You don't have the original manuscripts anyway,

00:03:24.040 | so what difference does that make?

00:03:25.360 | So why do you have that in your confession?

00:03:26.960 | Well, it is massively important

00:03:29.640 | that that statement be in the confession.

00:03:31.480 | And I've got an analogy in there about email,

00:03:35.240 | original email that gets Xerox, that's not the right word.

00:03:40.240 | - Scanned.

00:03:41.720 | - Scanned, thank you very much.

00:03:43.540 | Well, scanners typically make mistakes.

00:03:46.400 | They put two R's back to back,

00:03:48.680 | look like an M or two T's make an H or weak scanners.

00:03:53.680 | And so you send out this email to people

00:03:55.920 | and they get all these different versions

00:03:57.960 | because you scanned it on different days.

00:03:59.600 | And does it matter that there's an original email back there

00:04:04.260 | with the instructions of how to get to the meeting place?

00:04:06.400 | And of course, somebody who's got real savvy

00:04:08.680 | about how scanners work, they put them all together

00:04:10.520 | and he figures out which mistakes they made

00:04:12.120 | and you finally can get back to the original.

00:04:14.100 | It really does matter

00:04:16.040 | whether we have original manuscripts or not.

00:04:19.640 | And then I write about another section

00:04:21.260 | on the claims of scripture,

00:04:23.020 | even though my approach apologetically is not to say

00:04:26.580 | because the Bible says it's true, it's true.

00:04:28.540 | You have to believe the Bible, it's God's word.

00:04:30.080 | God's word said it is God's word

00:04:32.020 | and therefore you believe that.

00:04:33.660 | That's probably true, it's just ambiguous

00:04:36.940 | because the question is how you know God's talking here.

00:04:41.320 | That's the big question.

00:04:43.060 | And that's what I turn to next.

00:04:44.740 | And that's half the book,

00:04:46.620 | the 150 pages on Edwards guiding me in two key ways.

00:04:51.620 | Edwards was so burdened by how the Indians,

00:04:57.800 | the Housatonic Indians could know the Bible is true.

00:05:02.140 | When they're preliterate,

00:05:05.180 | they don't have any historiographical skills,

00:05:08.220 | how could they know?

00:05:09.220 | And that drives me too.

00:05:10.980 | I want to know what I can say to the missionary

00:05:13.780 | going to Papua New Guinea to speak to a tribe

00:05:18.320 | and speak to them from the Bible,

00:05:20.960 | hold a big black book in front of them,

00:05:23.120 | read from God's paper, God's book,

00:05:27.220 | and have them be able to know that's true.

00:05:29.780 | I'll stake my life on that.

00:05:31.480 | How can that be?

00:05:32.960 | That's what drove Edwards.

00:05:35.340 | And the second way he influenced me was

00:05:37.460 | he took his starting point from 2 Corinthians 4,

00:05:40.480 | 4 to 6, where the God of this world

00:05:42.500 | has blinded the minds of unbelievers

00:05:44.100 | to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel

00:05:47.220 | of the glory of Christ.

00:05:48.860 | And that proved to be enormously influential

00:05:53.860 | in how I approached this.

00:05:56.020 | And so maybe the last thing I should say

00:05:58.140 | just to give people a flavor is,

00:06:00.020 | I asked this question,

00:06:01.140 | how do we know there is a divine revelation in nature?

00:06:06.140 | Which Romans 1 says there is.

00:06:09.740 | And the answer is glory.

00:06:12.280 | You exchanged the glory of God.

00:06:13.900 | You didn't glorify me as God.

00:06:16.000 | You should have seen the glory.

00:06:17.900 | Second question, how do you know there's a divine person

00:06:21.520 | in Jesus, the Jesus of history?

00:06:24.960 | How do you know that?

00:06:25.880 | How did John and James and Peter know this is God?

00:06:30.880 | Answer, we beheld his glory.

00:06:33.720 | Glory as of the only son from the father.

00:06:36.160 | Third question, how do you know the gospel

00:06:40.120 | is a divine reality from God?

00:06:42.960 | Answer, 2 Corinthians 4, there is a light of the gospel

00:06:47.960 | of the glory of Christ,

00:06:49.900 | that when God overcomes Satan's blinding,

00:06:51.980 | you see the glory and you know.

00:06:53.820 | And all I did was, in this book,

00:06:56.120 | was ask the fourth question,

00:06:58.160 | is that way of answering the question of nature,

00:07:02.200 | Jesus, gospel, also apply to scripture?

00:07:05.380 | And of course, I'm not new in this

00:07:06.880 | because the Westminster Larger Catechism says,

00:07:11.120 | how doth it appear that the scriptures are the word of God?

00:07:16.080 | Answer, I'm gonna pick out one phrase, answer.

00:07:19.380 | The scriptures manifest themselves to be the word of God

00:07:23.900 | by the scope of the whole,

00:07:27.140 | which is to give all glory to God.

00:07:31.980 | And in one way to see my book is,

00:07:34.280 | I just tried to write 300 pages about that sentence.

00:07:37.380 | - Wonderful, thank you, Pastor John.

00:07:38.760 | I'm looking forward to reading the draft very soon.

00:07:41.840 | And of course, it's early in the process.

00:07:43.860 | And if we move forward and finalize the title

00:07:46.300 | and the release date and a publisher,

00:07:48.660 | I'm sure we will have more details to come

00:07:50.900 | on the website, DesiringGod.org,

00:07:53.500 | and through our social media channels as well.

00:07:55.840 | So you can stay tuned to future details on the book project

00:07:58.540 | through those mediums.

00:08:00.060 | Tomorrow, we have a question

00:08:01.100 | from a newly married listener named Sarah,

00:08:03.620 | who is wrestling with 1 Corinthians 7

00:08:06.300 | and asking whether or not the apostle Paul

00:08:08.580 | has a low view of marriage.

00:08:10.860 | Pastor John will tackle a very hard text tomorrow

00:08:13.520 | on the Ask Pastor John podcast.

00:08:15.500 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.

00:08:16.380 | Thanks for listening.

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The New Book John Piper Wrote

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