"Spend your life to build a church that does not live like the world." This was the invitation of John Piper to Christian leaders at the Together for the Gospel conference back in 2008. This is what he said. "I want to put it in a wider context for what my heart is for this moment and this conference.

I don't come here for nothing. I want something, I want you to do something. I want this world to be rocked by your lives. So I'll tell you what I'm praying, what I want to happen, and I think the brothers with me would agree who lead this conference. My desire and prayer to God is that your life and your ministry would have a radical flavor, a risk-taking flavor, a gutsy, counter-cultural, wartime flavor that makes average American people in your church uncomfortable.

A strange mixture of tenderness and toughness that keeps people a little bit off balance. A pervasive summons to something more, something hazardous, something wonderful, a saltiness and a brightness about your life and about your church. Something like Jesus. When Jesus said, "You're the salt of the earth and you're the light of the world," I think He had in mind the verse just before.

They will persecute you and revile you and say all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice, for great is your reward in heaven. I think that's what makes salt. Salt and light are joyful embrace of suffering. That's what the world is waiting for. Jesus said, "Do this.

Be light, be salt." My desire for you, my prayer, and I've been praying this over and over again for you, I hope you already are ready, I hope you feel God doing this already in your life, my desire is that your life and ministry would have a radical flavor.

Reviling comes, persecution comes, slander comes, and you rejoice. You don't murmur, you don't complain, you don't quit. You rejoice. You preach and you live in such a way that over a decade or two or three, the church you're leading becomes bright and salty like this, counting it all joy when they are walking through various trials.

That's your goal in this church. Many people who meet cancer and meet death and meet suffering with unflinching confidence in Christ and joy in being known by Him and loved by Him. There is a great reward coming, an all-satisfying, everlasting experience of the supremacy of Christ. You will have lived it, right?

You're living this. This is what you want for your life and I want for you. You will have treasured Christ above all, above all the accumulation of stuff. You will have laid up treasures in heaven and not on earth. Right? That's what you're doing now. You're not laying up treasures on earth.

You are laying up treasures in heaven, you are maximizing your enjoyment of the reward. You have not only fled fornication and adultery, you have fled opulence, you have fled ostentation, you have fled riches. You have remembered the story of the rich young man. I have it on a plaque over the door in my study.

Remember the rich young man, Piper. Whatever else you forget, don't forget him. You remembered that as you served in these decades and will serve. You've heard the Apostle Paul and you've taken it into your heart and you've blazed it on the brain in your head. Those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and hurtful desires that plunge them into destruction and ruin just to want to be rich does that to you.

And you've heard that and you've put it on the inside of your brain and you've led a church another way. That's what will make you salty and bright. You have eaten the words of Isaiah. All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The flower falls and the grass withers, but the word of the Lord abides forever.

You've put it inside your heart and that's where you live. That's what you are thinking. My desire and my prayer for you is that your life and your ministry will have a radical flavor and I say this for the glory of Christ. The world is not going to glorify Christ because they see that Christians are wealthy and healthy and prosperous.

A very simple reason why. That's what they live for. So you use Jesus to get it? They use other means to get it? You're not impressed. Jesus is the ticket. When the show starts, you throw the ticket away. They don't need your ticket. They're not impressed. I'm saying what I'm saying because I want them to be impressed.

They're not impressed with us. Prosperous, wealthy, safe, middle class, do what everybody else does, people. Don't build a church like that. Don't go there. Don't spend your life like that. It will be wasted. You will have lived it. My desire and prayer for you is that your life have a radical flavor.

Some extraordinary love, something risky, some crazy sacrifice that nobody can understand, including mom. Something salty and bright. The world may not like it. They may crucify it. Satan's face shone like an angel. His face shone like an angel. They could not resist his wisdom and they killed him. They weren't bored.

They weren't sleeping. And chapter 8 of Acts says he didn't die in vain. He did his greatest work in spreading the gospel at that moment because God cleaned house in Jerusalem and saw to it that a persecution caused them to obey Acts 1. That's what it cost Stephen his life to get them off their butt into Samaria and into Judea and to the ends of the earth.

And it will cost you your life to build a church that doesn't live like the rest of the world. You got to live like that. You got to have a flavor about your life that is risky and radical, different. That clip was from John Piper's conference message titled "How the Supremacy of Christ Creates Radical Christian Sacrifice" at the Together for the Gospel conference in Louisville, Kentucky.

He preached it on April 17, 2008. Special thanks to Jeff Connor of Neno, Wisconsin for suggesting this clip. The full message audio can be found online at DesiringGod.org. And if you have a favorite clip from a John Piper sermon to suggest, please email us the title of the message and if possible, the timestamp of when and where the clip occurs in the audio.

Put the word clip in the subject line of an email and send it to us at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org. I know a few of our regular listeners are in fact wealthy by God's grace. And if you want more on the missional value of affluence, see episode number 420 in this podcast series titled "Wartime Wisdom for the Wealthy." That's episode number 420 in this series.

What Jesus tells us to pray lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. What exactly does that mean? How does he deliver us from evil? Pastor John will offer his thoughts for us tomorrow. I'm your host Tony Reinke. Thank you for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast.

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