Why Going to Church Does Not Make You a Christian
00:00:00.000 | I'm not a Christian because I attend church on Sunday, and neither are you, and neither
00:00:10.160 | is John Piper.
00:00:11.560 | This was a discovery Piper made in the opening pages of a book by C.S. Lewis.
00:00:16.560 | In God's Providence, a thin little blue book by the title "The Weight of Glory" found its
00:00:21.760 | way into Piper's life at age 23.
00:00:24.640 | Here's how he recounted the story in a 2015 sermon.
00:00:29.080 | One way that broke over me in my 23rd year was the discovery that my desires were not
00:00:37.280 | too strong but too weak.
00:00:40.620 | And the remedy for my early perplexity did not lie in getting rid of my desires but on
00:00:48.360 | glutting them on God.
00:00:51.960 | That was revolutionary to me.
00:00:55.380 | Your problem longing, aching, yearning, wanting John Piper is that you don't yet want like
00:01:02.120 | you ought to want.
00:01:04.120 | I will come to you and I will put a fire under the fire of want.
00:01:08.440 | You want to know what want is?
00:01:10.680 | I'll show you what want is.
00:01:12.720 | And he puts his glory in front of you and fills you with his Holy Spirit and you discover
00:01:18.980 | what want is.
00:01:22.320 | C.S. Lewis was the one who unlocked the door.
00:01:24.520 | I'm standing in Vroman's bookstore on Colorado Avenue having read I think "Mere Christianity"
00:01:31.580 | and that was all in college.
00:01:33.160 | I look at a table, I think they were on sale or something, while they're out on the table,
00:01:37.280 | a little blue book called "The Weight of Glory" by C.S.
00:01:39.800 | Lewis.
00:01:40.800 | I pick it up and open to the first page and read this.
00:01:43.200 | The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial but not about self-denial as an end in itself.
00:01:50.640 | Boy has it got my attention.
00:01:52.880 | We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow
00:01:58.800 | Christ and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find, if we do, contains
00:02:05.480 | an appeal to desire.
00:02:09.480 | If there lurks in the most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly
00:02:17.320 | to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit this notion crept in from Immanuel
00:02:25.360 | Kant and the Stoics and has no part in the Christian faith.
00:02:29.080 | Are you kidding me?
00:02:30.480 | No part?
00:02:31.480 | I thought it was the part.
00:02:33.920 | Has no part in the Christian faith.
00:02:36.120 | Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the
00:02:43.680 | rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too
00:02:50.840 | strong but too weak.
00:02:53.640 | We are half-hearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite
00:03:01.200 | joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in the
00:03:09.360 | slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by a holiday at the sea.
00:03:16.520 | We are far too easily pleased.
00:03:21.680 | I have written many times, "Books don't change people.
00:03:25.800 | Paragraphs change people."
00:03:29.360 | That's all you remember when you're done with the book.
00:03:33.640 | That.
00:03:34.640 | That's enough.
00:03:35.640 | That's world-shaking.
00:03:38.520 | Whatever else was in the book, that changed the world.
00:03:42.440 | And then I saw it, of course, as you have, all over the Bible.
00:03:46.680 | As a deer pants for the flowing streams, so my pants, so...
00:03:51.800 | Not my pants.
00:03:55.400 | Start over again.
00:03:56.400 | Get that one right.
00:03:57.400 | Edit or leave it.
00:03:58.520 | It's funny.
00:03:59.720 | As a deer pants for the flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God.
00:04:06.400 | My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
00:04:10.520 | When shall I come and behold God?
00:04:12.440 | Psalm 42.
00:04:13.440 | Psalm 43.
00:04:14.440 | Then I will go to the altar of God, to God, my exceeding joy.
00:04:21.880 | Psalm 37.
00:04:23.440 | Delight yourself in the Lord.
00:04:25.600 | Give you the desires of your heart.
00:04:27.400 | Psalm 100, verse 2.
00:04:29.440 | Serve the Lord with gladness.
00:04:32.520 | To sin, to serve the Lord another way.
00:04:37.040 | Rejoice in the Lord, and again I say, rejoice.
00:04:40.720 | Philippians 4.
00:04:43.000 | So the mandate, the mandate from God to enjoy God was not, to my amazement, marginal.
00:04:53.640 | This was central.
00:04:54.640 | This was pervasive.
00:04:56.760 | Being satisfied in God was not icing on the cake of Christianity.
00:05:02.200 | It wasn't to caboose at the end of the train.
00:05:06.160 | Don't mean to be offending anybody, except a little bit.
00:05:08.980 | It was the essence and the heart of Christianity.
00:05:12.920 | Christianity, now get this, Southern Bible Belt people.
00:05:17.200 | Christianity, Presbyterian, Baptist, you name it.
00:05:20.360 | Christianity is not a willpower religion.
00:05:23.520 | It is not a religion of decisions to do what you don't want to do.
00:05:30.320 | It is a supernatural work of God by which you are born again so that you want God more
00:05:35.720 | than you want anything.
00:05:38.080 | And if you don't want God more than you want anything, you're not a Christian.
00:05:44.200 | That's what the new birth is.
00:05:47.120 | It takes hearts that are in love with the world and puts them in love with Christ and
00:05:52.560 | his Father and the Gospel and the glory of being saved and promised to go into everlasting
00:05:59.000 | paradise of joy.
00:06:02.560 | And if it's a ho-hum, boring, insignificant thing to you and everything else in the world
00:06:07.200 | is real to you, you're not a Christian.
00:06:09.560 | I don't care how many decisions you've made, how many aisles you've walked, how many cards
00:06:13.080 | you've signed.
00:06:14.080 | I don't care what you do, what church you go to.
00:06:16.480 | That's not Christianity.
00:06:18.320 | That was the revolution for me.
00:06:20.400 | It is very threatening.
00:06:21.600 | Yes, it is.
00:06:22.720 | It's terrifying to learn that my heart has to be changed in order to be a Christian.
00:06:26.920 | I have to have values that are new, passions that are new, desires that are new, joys that
00:06:31.520 | are new.
00:06:32.520 | New things make me happy.
00:06:34.040 | I don't need to start going to church.
00:06:37.440 | Yuck.
00:06:38.440 | Who wants to call that Christianity?
00:06:41.040 | It's not.
00:06:42.440 | That was a revolution for me.
00:06:44.640 | My desires were not too strong.
00:06:48.040 | They were too weak.
00:06:50.520 | Because to become a Christian is to be given a new heart, which means new passions, new
00:06:58.840 | desires, new longings.
00:07:00.280 | Jesus now is your highest treasure.
00:07:02.760 | I count everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Jesus Christ,
00:07:09.840 | my Lord, is normal Christianity.
00:07:14.520 | Such a valuable clip.
00:07:16.360 | This was sent in to us by a listener with a very French name that I'm sure I would butcher
00:07:20.840 | if I even attempted to pronounce it.
00:07:23.800 | Listener in Quebec, Canada, thank you for this clip.
00:07:25.960 | The Lord knows who you are.
00:07:27.480 | We're grateful for you.
00:07:29.440 | This sermon was preached on October 9th, 2015 in South Carolina.
00:07:32.680 | It's titled, "The Glory of God as the Ground of the Mind's Certainty and the Goal of the
00:07:37.880 | Soul's Satisfaction."
00:07:39.320 | What a title.
00:07:40.320 | Let me say that again.
00:07:41.320 | "The Glory of God as the Ground of the Mind's Certainty and the Goal of the Soul's Satisfaction."
00:07:47.000 | The full message, of course, is on our site at DesiringGod.org.
00:07:49.960 | Well, should we make a decision in life with a coin toss?
00:07:55.080 | Why or why not?
00:07:56.520 | That's the question on the table tomorrow.
00:07:58.560 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke, and I'll see you then.
00:08:00.560 | [BLANK_AUDIO]
00:08:09.260 | [ Silence ]