(upbeat music) - Well, pride is a dangerous sin. It's one of the seven deadly sins. So when you're a notable person who gets noticed and approached by strangers in restaurants and in airports, how do you stay humble? This was a question asked of Pastor John at the Desiring God National Conference in October of 2010.

And to raise the stakes a little bit higher, Pastor John had just been presented with a festrift. It was a large book published in his honor as a surprise gift. It's titled "For the Fame of His Name." And in the context of a panel discussion at the conference, here's how Pastor John answered the question of how to stay humble when God is blessing your ministry.

- Oh my. Probably the first thing to say is that God is in charge of keeping his people humble, not us. The Bible does say, "Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, but as in almost all other things, command what you will and give what you command." So you may, I think, expect that God will deal roughly with you if he has to in order to remind you that you're not God and that you are desperately in need of him.

And perhaps it's no accident that I received this book of essays in the middle of a leave of absence, taken because of pain. Got an accident? That it worked out that way? They've been working on it for three years? And that there are issues in my family, in my wider family, in my soul, that are such that I wanted to step back and look at all of them and work on all of them.

That wasn't my idea to do this. It was things that come up. I felt as I sat there, these folks don't know me well enough. (laughs) And they don't. They don't know what goes on in our living room and bedroom and kitchen. And so you know, and your wife knows, and your children know, and you feel a sense of disjunction between public praise and private imperfections.

And that's God's doing, that he performs that. Then there are these natural limitations that the people closest around me know that I have. And I don't know why God has been pleased to release influence through me the way he has when I look at the limitations. I can't read faster than I can talk.

Everybody thinks I'm a scholar. I'm not a scholar. (laughs) I feel like they're gonna wake up and say, "What did we just do?" (audience laughs) I have learned to navigate my limitations and just do the few things I can do as well as I can. And I'm always thinking about what I can't do.

I just wake up in the morning and think what I can't do. So God, I think, fits us with weaknesses. He leads us through the valley of the shadow of death. He leads us in his providence, yes, even in and out of sin, and does what he has to do to break us.

So that's the first principle. God is in charge of keeping us humble, and he loves us so much, Hebrews 12, that if you are a child and you are not yet disciplined, you may be a bastard. Those are strong words. If you haven't been spanked hard enough to come to blood, then maybe you're not even a child.

So that's the way he works. The second thing I would say is that, I'll just leave it at two. Let's say it big, then let's say it focused. We here, we leaders here, believe in a certain vision of God's sovereign grace. There's not a thing in you or me that inclined God to choose you for himself.

Nothing. There's not a thing in you that inclined God to cause you to be born again. Nothing. There's not a thing in you that secures your eternal destiny. Nothing. It is totally free. This is our theology. Unconditional election, unconditional regeneration, unconditional propitiation, conditional justification, faith. And that's a gift.

Our theology is meant to flatten us. 1 Corinthians 1, 29 and 30. All these things, not many of you were wise, not many of you were high born. Why? So that no one would boast in the presence of God. Let him who boasts finish it. That's weak. - Boast of the Lord.

- Because not all of you are there. Let him who boasts boast in the Lord that no flesh might boast in the presence of God. Salvation is designed in a way as to cut the legs out from under all human boasting. It's designed that way. That's what this conference is about.

That's what the New Calvinism is about. It's about smashing human pride and getting glory for God. Now I said, that's the big picture. The narrow picture is Christ crucified. What the most important event in human history is the death of the Son of God. What's the meaning of the death of the Son of God?

It means I am unspeakably lost. It took that much to save me. Anybody that lives near the cross isn't gonna put his thumbs in his armpits and strut. Not gonna brag about his stuff. Not gonna talk a lot about his achievements. He's just looking at that incredible horror and saying, that's how corrupt I am.

And the cross has another message. It's good news. That's how much I'm loved. And it's free. The biggest challenge theologically and experientially for us is to feel loved unworthily. They get up in the morning, be thrilled to be alive and to be thrilled to know God totally undeservingly. That's the challenge.

Because I'm wired to want to feel thrilled because I got a book or had a conference or gave a message. The constant clawing at my ego to find my meaning and my significance in other people's reckoning of what I've done. So these guys have set me up terribly. Right?

But like David said, you deal with it. So you're watching me just process this thing. So those three things, God is gonna do it whether you want him to or not. He's just gonna flatten you. Your marriage may shatter totally or already did, right? Or your kids are gonna just go wacko on you.

Or you're gonna get cancer. Or you're gonna lose your job. He'll do whatever he has to do. Just flatten you so that you are desperate before him. And then secondly, he's gonna work through a conference like this and books here and there and movements to get you a theology.

With him so massively at the center, it never occurred to you to put yourself there. And then he's gonna take you to the cross over and over and over again to remind you how unsavable you are apart from that horrific crucifixion and how much you are amazingly loved. Something like that.

(audience laughing) (audience applauding) - Amen, it all goes back to the cross. This excerpt was taken from the speaker panel at the Desiring God 2010 National Conference. And the book I mentioned earlier that was presented as a surprise gift to Pastor John at the conference is titled For the Fame of God's Name, Essays in Honor of John Piper.

And you can download the book free of charge at our site, desiringgod.org/books. And there you can find it. The title again is For the Fame of God's Name, Essays in Honor of John Piper. This excellent audio clip was sent to us by listener Rebecca Kim. Thank you, Rebecca, for this clip.

And we're gonna be back tomorrow. We're gonna talk about parenting tomorrow. Does Proverbs promise us that if we raise our kids right, they will not fall away from the faith as adults? John Piper will respond tomorrow. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John Podcast.

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