The Only Escape from Our Boasting
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:05.000 | Well, the Lord loves to stop human boasting, as John Piper explained in a sermon on Romans
00:00:11.760 | chapter 11, verses 17 to 22.
00:00:14.300 | The sermon was titled, "Continue in the Kindness of God," and preached in February of 2004.
00:00:21.000 | Here's a short clip of what John Piper said about how we escape the trap of human boasting.
00:00:28.000 | We have to believe that in the kindness of God, and in eternal life, and in justification,
00:00:36.120 | and in his working everything together for good, the ultimate essential good of the gospel
00:00:43.060 | is God himself.
00:00:46.080 | And the ultimate thing for which we believe him is that he will be for us an all-satisfying
00:00:52.800 | treasure.
00:00:54.920 | It amazes me.
00:00:55.920 | It amazes me about my own life, and it amazes me about churches, that we can preach the
00:01:01.160 | gospel and not think about what makes it good news ultimately.
00:01:06.520 | We use words like forgiveness of sins, or justification, or salvation, or reconciliation,
00:01:13.360 | or propitiation, or atonement, or ransom.
00:01:17.960 | None of those is the end point that makes salvation good news.
00:01:23.280 | Why do you want to be forgiven?
00:01:25.520 | Because it feels good not to be guilty or to escape hell?
00:01:29.980 | Those are both true and desirable.
00:01:33.540 | But that's not what makes it good news.
00:01:36.340 | What makes forgiveness good news is that it gets out of the way everything that keeps
00:01:42.360 | you from enjoying God.
00:01:44.880 | Because the only ultimate joy that fully satisfies is God.
00:01:52.240 | Everything Jesus did on the cross, everything he did in rising from the dead, everything
00:01:59.520 | he did by way of illustrating his character in doing miracles, in loving people, in getting
00:02:04.720 | his arms around kids and lepers, was to show us that in the end our satisfaction is going
00:02:11.800 | to come from being near him, knowing him, loving him, delighting in him.
00:02:16.400 | He is the end of the gospel.
00:02:18.760 | If we don't penetrate through eternal life and penetrate through kindness and penetrate
00:02:23.880 | through justification and penetrate through Romans 8.28, to him, how is he honored?
00:02:33.300 | So my fifth point about what we trust Jesus for is we trust him to be a treasure to us
00:02:43.640 | that is infinite and all satisfying.
00:02:48.880 | Father, please, there's only one ultimate escape from boasting, and that is the brokenhearted
00:02:59.960 | enjoyment of the God of grace.
00:03:04.720 | So break our hearts for our sin and grant everyone in this room to taste grace, to taste
00:03:17.520 | Christ, the God of grace.
00:03:23.200 | Amen.
00:03:25.320 | And this short clip was sent to us by Eric Dewar.
00:03:28.360 | Eric said this, "This is one of my favorite answers to the question, 'What makes the gospel
00:03:33.360 | good news ultimately?'"
00:03:34.880 | Amen.
00:03:35.880 | It's a gem, Eric.
00:03:36.880 | Thank you.
00:03:37.880 | You can find the whole sermon at DesiringGod.org.
00:03:40.280 | It's titled, "Continue in the Kindness of God."
00:03:44.040 | Well for everything related to this podcast, including a list of our most popular and most
00:03:47.880 | played episodes of all time, a list that is live and constantly updated in real time,
00:03:53.480 | go to our landing page at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:03:59.040 | And there you can toggle between recent episodes and popular episodes.
00:04:04.440 | Tomorrow we hear from a software developer who wants to know what responsibility he has
00:04:08.500 | if his technology is later used for evil purposes.
00:04:13.280 | It's a doozy of a question for Pastor John.
00:04:15.120 | I'm your host Tony Renke.
00:04:16.120 | We'll see you tomorrow.
00:04:16.840 | [BLANK_AUDIO]