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Thanks Greg for sharing that.

It takes only about 5 or 6 minutes, but, everyone, please take the time to hear this message. Piper is one of the truly bright lights shining today in a dark world. This is a very encouraging message.

Stan

These sentences from Piper bear repeating: “Never think of the gospel as ‘that’s the way you get saved’ and then you ‘get strong’ by leaving it and doing something else.  No.  We are strengthened by God, through the gospel, every day until the day we drop.”

Amen.

Greg

I also really liked Piper’s definition of the gospel: “What’s the gospel?  Put in a sentence: The gospel is the news that Jesus Christ the righteous died for our sins, rose again, eternally triumphant over all his enemies so that there is now no condemnation for those who believe but only everlasting joy.  That’s the gospel.”

Amen to that, too!  There’s just no need to muddle the simple message of the gospel with a bunch of extras and distractions. 

I’ve been greatly blessed by the rich depth of his expository preaching.  I think he’s been working through Romans over the course of something like 8 or 9 years, for goodness sake.  John Piper really is a “bright light shining today in a dark world.”

Thanks for putting this up on the site, Greg.

Wow, John Piper has really got the attention of the blogosphere with this article:

http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/TasteAndSee/ByDate/2007/2021_The_Morning_I_Heard_the_Voice_of_God/

This is really profound. God will speak directly to us through His Word.

Stan

And here is an excerpt from the article above:

Think of it. Marvel at this. Stand in awe of this. The God who keeps watch over the nations, like some people keep watch over cattle or stock markets or construction sites–this God still speaks in the twenty-first century. I heard his very words. He spoke personally to me.

What effect did this have on me? It filled me with a fresh sense of God’s reality. It assured me more deeply that he acts in history and in our time. It strengthened my faith that he is for me and cares about me and will use his global power to watch over me. Why else would he come and tell me these things?

It has increased my love for the Bible as God’s very word, because it was through the Bible that I heard these divine words, and through the Bible I have experiences like this almost every day. The very God of the universe speaks on every page into my mind–and your mind. We hear his very words. God himself has multiplied his wondrous deeds and thoughts toward us; none can compare with him! I will proclaim and tell of them, yet they are more than can be told (Psalm 40:5).

And best of all, they are available to all. If you would like to hear the very same words I heard on the couch in northern Minnesota, read Psalm 66:5-7. That is where I heard them. O how precious is the Bible. It is the very word of God. In it God speaks in the twenty-first century. This is the very voice of God. By this voice, he speaks with absolute truth and personal force. By this voice, he reveals his all-surpassing beauty. By this voice, he reveals the deepest secrets of our hearts. No voice anywhere anytime can reach as deep or lift as high or carry as far as the voice of God that we hear in the Bible.

It is a great wonder that God still speaks today through the Bible with greater force and greater glory and greater assurance and greater sweetness and greater hope and greater guidance and greater transforming power and greater Christ-exalting truth than can be heard through any voice in any human soul on the planet from outside the Bible.”
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Soli Deo Gloria,

Stan

Stan, thanks for posting Piper’s thoughts on God’s Word.  For me, the whole Bible became a new book when I finally accepted that it was all His Word, not merely inspirational writings made by spiritual men.  With this understanding, the promises of Scripture became like living water to me.  I don’t know how many times in my life I had heard John 3:16, but I never actually believed that I could know I had eternal life today!  The whole gospel of John, when read as if the promises contained therein are literally true, is simply priceless.  Just think of it–the God of the universe in the person of Jesus tells you, me and everyone else who has the ears to hear that “whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has (present tense) eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed (past tense) from death to life” (John 5:24).  This promise is simply incredible, and apparently too incredible for some to believe, as they must toil under the burden of another man’s (or woman’s) “present truth”, denying the good news.

Greg