(upbeat music) - Welcome back to the Ask Pastor John podcast with author and longtime pastor, John Piper. Pastor John, you've just completed an eight week writing leave. It's been a fruitful one from what you've said. Can you give us a window into how it went and perhaps maybe more importantly, give us a sneak peek as to what you wrote and what you expect to come out of it.

- Tony, I really want to thank any of our listeners who prayed for me during that leave. Here's a little example of the kind of merciful providence that I received and I believe it's 'cause people cared enough to pray. So you start to write at the beginning of an eight week writing leave, you have a general idea of the kind of book you want to write.

I wanted to write a book about how to read the Bible in the most Christ exalting, God-centered, life-changing, mission advancing way possible. I had no idea how long this book would be. I had no idea how many chapters it would have. I only had the vaguest idea of the several focuses I wanted it to have and so I just started gathering material and pondering and thinking about structure and doodling down ideas and finally getting to work on pounding out chapters and lo and behold, on the very last day of the eight week writing leave, 130,000 word book is finished on the very day.

- Nice. - Now to me, that is astonishing. It's just astonishing. I didn't plan that. I had no idea how long the book would be. At any given point, I didn't know whether I was halfway done or three quarters done. I didn't have any idea and so the entire project lands on that last day.

So that, to me personally, that just felt like an evidence of the kindness of God and the power of God to take those eight weeks, take people's prayers, take some ideas and perform what felt to me like a marvel. So as far as going about how you go about it, the answer is sitz fleisch.

The Germans call it, you gotta have sitting flesh. You gotta care about sitting all day long. So I get up at six in the morning, I exercise, I shower, I eat my cereal, I read my Bible, I pray, I sit down and I get up at seven o'clock in the evening and you do that every day for five days and at the end, actually I did it on Saturday as well for a couple of weeks, but I think only two.

And that's the sneak peek. There's nothing magical about it. You chop down a tree with lots of chops and you sit down and you try not to get discouraged that one day wasn't so fruitful and another day was. But what I'm really excited about sharing with the folks is the content.

So let me just quick give a preview into what I hope it's gonna be. I don't know for sure what the title will be, but my suggested title right now is "Reading the Bible Supernaturally," subtitle, "Seeing and Savoring the Glory of God in Scripture." So it's a big book, probably 350 pages.

It's not a technical book. It's not written mainly for scholars. It is a serious book. It's mainly biblical explanations and applications. And my hope is that it will inspire people to love the Bible and to give their most serious mental, spiritual attention to the Bible. I've been more deeply impressed than ever on this writing leave with the wonderful truth that the creator of the universe has communicated so fully to us about himself and his purposes for the world and his great salvation and his future plans for us and the world in a book, a book that we have.

Just think of it, the God who made and rules the world has given us a book about himself and about the way he does things. That's simply staggering to me. And oh, how I want to be faithful to the sacredness of that deposit in our world and in our lives.

So my fallible book about his infallible book has three parts. And the first part is called, "The Ultimate Goal of God in Reading." And there I try to make the case that the ultimate purposes of God in the universe will fall to pieces and abort if Christians don't read their Bible the way God intends.

And that's shocking when you say it like that. But of course, God's purposes will not fall to pieces and abort because Jeremiah says, "He is watching over his word to perform it." God doesn't set out his word in the world and then walk away and watch from a distance to see what's gonna come of his word.

He watches over his word to perform it. He's in his people by his spirit. And those who are truly his people will in fact read their Bibles and will be changed by that reading. And so the ultimate purpose of God in the universe, I argue, is that he be worshiped with white hot affection as the supreme excellence and value of the universe by a people gathered from all the nations and tribes of the world.

So the Bible is the place where people see God clearly enough that the Holy Spirit might be moving them to savor him supremely enough that they'll be changed enough into his likeness so that he will get the white hot worship that he deserves. So Bible reading is a necessary, indispensable instrument in the hand of God to bring about the ultimate purposes of the universe.

That's part one. Part two is called the supernatural act of reading. And the point is that if we have to see the glory of God in scripture, and if we have to savor the glory of God above all things, that's a miracle. Because by nature, John Piper and nobody else reads the Bible and sees the glory of God and savors it above all things.

That's contrary to fallen human nature. So a miracle has to happen. Something super natural has to happen in the reading of the book, or the book is going to abort in its ultimate purposes. For example, one of the chapters that moved me most was the one I did about the Pharisees and the Jewish leaders.

Jesus said six times to them, "Have you never read?" And I thought, what? That's all they do is read. They are professional Bible readers. That's what they do. They knew this book by heart. And Jesus looked at them and said, "You talk like you've never read the Bible." That makes me tremble.

I mean, will he look at me someday? Will he say, "Piper, when you act like that, "when you talk like that, "when you have those kinds of discouragements or feelings, "you act like you've never read the Bible." So I need to know what did those Pharisees miss? Goodnight, how can you spend a lifetime reading the Bible and miss it?

Because Jesus said, "Seeing you do not see." They didn't see. So my aim in this book, for my sake and for others, is to figure out what did they do wrong? I wanna see what they didn't see. And it takes a miracle for that to happen. This is called supernatural reading of the Bible.

And the last part is called the natural act of reading the Bible supernaturally. And it's supposed to sound paradoxical because reading the Bible is both natural and supernatural, just like the Bible itself is divinely inspired and yet in human language. And this is where I try to give my most practical help of what is good reading.

And I try not to get too bogged down in hermeneutical details, but keep it at the level of habits of mind and habits of heart that apply to all the passages of the Bible to make them as transformative in our reading as they can be. And the last thing maybe it would be helpful to say is just to quote a scripture that perhaps, I don't know, I didn't do the count.

I quoted more than any other scripture, namely 2 Corinthians 3, 18. "We all with unveiled face beholding the glory of the Lord are being changed from one degree of glory to another into the same image." So beholding or seeing God, seeing his glory in Christ especially is the key to being changed into the likeness of Christ that moves the church toward the consummation of all things.

So we have to behold the glory of the Lord and that happens decisively in the reading of the Bible or the hearing of the revelation of the glory of God in the face of Christ as it's told in the Bible. And that's what I'm praying God will do with this book.

- That is beautiful. Thank you Pastor John for the update. And so how does John Piper get so much done? That's a question I wanna ask you Pastor John next week, actually on Monday. We'll talk about personal productivity. But first tomorrow I wanna talk about the American cultural phenomenon.

For the first time in America, unmarried women outnumber married women. What does that mean for Christians? What does that mean for the church? We'll talk about that tomorrow. I'm your host Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)