Consistent Spiritual Discipline Is Not Legalism
00:00:00.000 | Old Testament Saint Daniel prayed three times a day. It was his daily spiritual pattern.
00:00:11.600 | We see this in Daniel 6.10. And apparently everyone knew it was his daily pattern according
00:00:17.200 | to Daniel 6.13. John Piper picks up this point in the 1991 sermon and addresses whether consistent
00:00:23.960 | spiritual discipline is legalism. Here's a listen to what he said.
00:00:29.600 | Daniel's prayer was a testimony not just to the glory of the Lord, but to the fact that
00:00:33.600 | his life was built on prayer. He was making a statement, not just about God, but about
00:00:39.280 | his relationship to God. Had he not prayed, God would be the same, probably his relationship
00:00:44.880 | would have been the same, but one thing would have been different. What the satraps thought
00:00:50.200 | about Daniel's relationship to God. Oh, I see, when it's dangerous, he doesn't do it
00:00:56.240 | anymore. Daniel knew that his testimony was at stake and therefore he got down on his
00:01:05.360 | knees on the second floor before the open window three times a day and he prayed. He
00:01:11.600 | lived by prayer. He consulted what God thought and he asked God to act.
00:01:18.320 | Daniel's prayer was disciplined and regular. When the time for a demonstration came, he
00:01:23.920 | didn't have to do anything different than he was already doing. He had disciplined himself
00:01:28.480 | for years probably at that window three times a day and he simply said, "Will I maintain
00:01:34.080 | my discipline or will I forsake my God-given discipline?" And he said, "I will not forsake
00:01:40.960 | it at the cost of my life. I will not forsake it."
00:01:44.800 | I wonder if it strikes you as strange, like it does me, that very few Christians in the
00:01:48.800 | American Evangelical Church pray like this, statedly disciplined three times a day. Does
00:01:55.800 | it strike you as strange that nobody prays that way these days? And I think there are
00:01:59.920 | a lot of people who would say, "That's real good because it shows that we have discovered
00:02:05.960 | freedom from legalism." Now, I might believe that. I might believe that if I saw people
00:02:15.880 | who did not have Daniel's discipline as powerful in prayer as Daniel was. But I don't believe
00:02:24.320 | it. In fact, as I analyze the American Evangelical Church today, the creeping legalism that I
00:02:32.120 | see is not Daniel's disciplined prayer three times a day. I do not think spiritual discipline
00:02:40.600 | is the Trojan horse in which legalism is making its way into Troy the church. No way, Jose.
00:02:49.320 | We are not in a thousand years in danger of becoming legalists through spiritual discipline
00:02:56.800 | in the American Evangelical meet-my-need, cushy Christianity. In fact, I think that
00:03:05.240 | the kind of legalism that is creeping in today is virtually the opposite of spiritual discipline.
00:03:13.000 | It has two sides to its coin. On one side is fear. The fear of anything that comes close
00:03:23.240 | to sounding or looking like biblical discipline, expressed in sentences like, "Train yourself
00:03:32.640 | in godliness. Strive to enter by the narrow gate. Take up your cross daily. Work out your
00:03:40.840 | salvation with fear and trembling. I pommel my body and subdue it. If you're right, I
00:03:48.200 | offend you. Gouge it out. Strive together with me in prayer." Anything that comes remotely
00:03:55.520 | close to sounding like such discipline is feared in the new legalism. For centuries,
00:04:03.520 | the disciplines of the Spirit have marked the great saints, and today they are feared.
00:04:10.880 | The other side of the coin of the new legalism is a demand for psychologically correct speech.
00:04:20.040 | Not politically correct speech. We all know what that is. Psychologically correct speech.
00:04:25.960 | If you don't use certain language to describe morality, ethics, duty, and the commandments
00:04:32.520 | of God that are psychologically correct, you are a defective people helper and do more
00:04:38.520 | harm than good. Taboo. A new list of taboos in the legalism that I'm talking about. And
00:04:45.160 | the new list of taboos is "Thou shalt not use must. Thou shalt not use should. Thou
00:04:50.280 | shalt not use ought. Thou shalt not use warnings like 'Those who do such things shall not
00:04:56.560 | enter the kingdom.'" This is the new legalism and the new list of taboos. You must not say
00:05:03.480 | must. They are simply not psychologically correct ways of talking about reality. The
00:05:12.760 | creeping legalism in the American evangelicalism today, I believe, is not the spiritual discipline
00:05:19.760 | of Daniel, who prayed three times a day. I urge you to consider whether some of our
00:05:27.040 | weakness rather in cushy, self-indulgent, so-called spontaneous "meet my need" American
00:05:35.440 | Christianity is owing not mainly to bondage to legalistic lists of do's and don'ts,
00:05:42.600 | but rather to the fact that we have forsaken biblical discipline.
00:05:49.480 | To write. That's a short point worth thinking about. 24 years after this sermon was delivered,
00:05:55.040 | the audio quality is a little bodgy, but that is a classic clip from John Piper's 1991
00:06:00.400 | sermon, "Daniel's Defiance of Darius in Prayer." And it was sent in to us by Jessica
00:06:05.360 | Cole in Sydney, Australia. Good on ya. Okay, enough of the Australian slang for today.
00:06:12.600 | If God is most glorified in me when I am most satisfied in him, does this mean that God
00:06:17.480 | is never glorified by those who don't love him? John Piper joins us tomorrow to answer
00:06:22.960 | a really important question. I hope you join us. I'm your host Tony Reinke. We'll see you
00:06:26.800 | tomorrow, mates.
00:06:27.480 | [END]
00:06:29.640 | John Piper's "Daniel's Defiance of Darius in Prayer" is available on our website www.johnpiper.org.
00:06:31.640 | www.johnpiper.org/daniel-darius-in-prayer.html
00:06:33.640 | [BLANK_AUDIO]