No pastor lives up to what he preaches. If he does, he's preaching too low. You wrote that on Twitter a few years back, Pastor John. How does a pastor think through this? Talk to the pastor who is preaching high and feels overwhelmed and burdened because of it. Is this a healthy tension for him to feel?

Well I sure don't want to solve the problem of the gap between the heights of our message and the depths of our failure by lowering heights. I'm not going to solve the problem that way. We are called to preach the Word, 2nd Timothy 2.4. Preach the whole counsel of God.

Preach the glory of God as the goal of all things. And so preach a great salvation and the unsearchable riches of Christ and the pathway to pleasures forevermore and rejoicing always. And the aim of our charge is love from a pure heart. And we have peace. And don't be anxious for anything.

And don't grumble. And love your wives like Christ loved the church. And love your enemies. And be perfect for I am perfect. It's overwhelming, right? That's the message. I mean the message is as high as it can possibly be with a focus on God and the gospel and our salvation, our eternal hope and the glories of knowing Jesus and all the radical ethical call that Jesus gives us.

And so the effect that has if we're faithfully lifting this up, we're not going to be like the lawyers in the Gospel of Luke. I think it's chapter 11 where Jesus says, "You load men with burdens hard to bear and you don't lift a finger to help them." So that's not what I'm calling for.

Like dump the burden of "be perfect" on your people then go home and watch basketball games. That's not going to be helpful. We are preaching the gospel. And at this point in this question I think we're modeling the gospel. That is, we are praying like crazy that God would have mercy upon us sinful pastors and work work these things into us.

We are putting them to death by the power of the Spirit. Romans 8 13, we're pummeling our bodies lest we be a castaway and be found unworthy. 1st Corinthians 9, we're striving to enter by the narrow gate and we're doing all that by trusting the gospel. And we are therefore ever repenting.

Now right here may be the key thing to say. I've had, last Sunday, I'm almost done here at Bethlehem as we make this recording as the pastor and a man man come up to me last Sunday and he said, "Pastor, you know what's what's been especially meaningful to me in your ministry is how vulnerable you've been in the pulpit.

How vulnerable you've been with your own sins and your own marriage and your own parenting and your own sense of failure about things." He said, "I just want you to know how encouraging that's been." So I would say to pastors, don't be afraid every time you preach on something to draw attention to the fact that you don't get it right usually.

You don't measure up to it. Model for your people how to constantly confess your sins to the people that you love and aim high, fall short, hold tight to Jesus. Those are my three, that's the way I'd kind of sum it up. Go ahead and aim high in your preachings knowing that in this age while sin indwells you're going to fall short and teach the people what gutsy guilt is.

That is, we go ahead and we assert the truth and we get in the devil's face and we say we're not going to let go of Jesus because he is our vindication, he is our righteousness, not our pastoral accomplishments and not our husbanding and our parenting, but Christ is our all.

And then if you model that for your people, I think it both rescues you from despair as you preach high, but it shows them how to stretch and go for broke without being undone by their failures. Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this podcast. Pastors, email your questions to us at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org.

You can find thousands of other free resources online from John Piper at DesiringGod.org. I'm your host Tony Rehnke, thanks for listening.