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Resurrection Power for Our Pain · Pastor John Piper's answers

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  Welcome back to the podcast on Monday. Last time, we looked at a
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  duality at work in our Bible reading of how God encourages us and then warns
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  us. He encourages us and then he warns us. There's a healthy balance
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  of encouragement and warning that we need in the Christian life, and we get
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  that balanced diet as we read through the entire Bible as a whole, and
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  that leads us nicely into something else we are going to encounter in the Bible
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  as we read, and we're actually going to encounter this together over the next
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  two days in the Navigator's Bible reading plan. We're going to be reading together
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  Philippins three verses eight to eleven. As we do. It reminds me of
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  a couple mistakes to avoid in the Christian life, specifically about our precious savior,
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  Jesus Christ. One mistake is to simply emphasize him as the victor,
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  as the king who is enthroned in heaven, he resurrected, shining sovereign over
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  the universe, triumphant. On the other hand, we can overemphasize Jesus's victim
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  as the suffering servant, only as the bleeding Lamb who died for us on
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  the cross. In Philippians three, verses eighty two eleven, Paul holds together
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  both of these glorious realities of Christ's weakness and his power, and then he
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  braids them together into our experience of the Christian life. It's a remarkable example
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  of theology in application, as Paul wants us to experience Christ in the power
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  of his resurrection, as we share in his sufferings, becoming like him in
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  his death. In other words, we experience his victorious power not by escaping
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  the suffering of this life, but by enduring the suffering of this life.
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  Paster John, do what you do so well, and just walk us through
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  this text and explain how Paul pulls this off. In nineteen ninety two,
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  I listened to one of j Oswald Sanders's last misag He was eighty nine and
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  a great missionary statesman. He told the story of an indigenous missionary who walked
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  barefoot from village to village preaching the Gospel in India. After many miles,
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  he comes to a certain village. He tries to speak the gospel, but
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  was spurned by the leaders and the people in this village. So discouraged,
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  exhausted, he goes to the edge of the village and lies down under a
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  tree and sleeps. When he wakes up, the whole town was gathered to
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  hear him, and the headman of the village explained that they had come out
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  while he was asleep to look at him, and they saw his blistered feet,
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  and they concluded that he must be a holy man, and that they
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  had been wrong to reject him, and they were sorry, and they wanted
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  to hear the message that he was willing to suffer so much to bring them.
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  Now, that kind of story can be repeated again and again in the
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  history of the Church, as Christians fulfill Colossians one point twenty four that says
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  that we complete in our own sufferings what was lacking in the afflictions of Christ,
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  namely a personal individual flesh and blood presentation in our own bodies, our
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  own suffering of the love of Christ and the power of Christ. So,
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  from the beginning of Christianity in the ministry of Jesus to this very day,
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  people have failed to recognize what I would call, and you've pointed out now
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  in Philippians, what I would call the precious upside down logic of salvation,
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  namely that power comes through weakness. The power of Christ comes through our weakness,
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  and salvation comes through our suffering. So you remember the chief priests as
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  they saw Jesus hanging on the cross, they mocked him and said he saved
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  others, he cannot save himself. What they failed to see, and so
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  many people failed to see it today, is that it was precisely by refusing
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  to save himself that Jesus was able to save others. Or to say it
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  another way, Jesus was able to save others in spite of their sin because
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  he refused to save himself in spite of his righteousness. So, as you
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  said, Tony, this weaving together of weakness and power suffering in salvation is
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  carried right through the Bible. And Christ suffered not to spare us in this
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  life our suffering, but to show us how to suffer, to give us
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  power to suffer, and in our suffering, to experience the triumph of His
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  salvation, both for ourselves and for others through suffering. So let's read it
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  and then make a couple of comments. This is Philippins three to eight following
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  I count everything as lost because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ, Jesus
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  my Lord. For his sake, I have suffered the loss of all things
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  and count them as rubbish, in order that I might gain Christ and be
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  found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from law,
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  but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that
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  depends on faith, that I may know him. Pause. So now that
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  he's clothed with a righteousness from God that is not his own, by being
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  in Christ, having union with Christ, Paul says that with this already salvation
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  that he've tasted is being clothed with the righteousness of God in Christ. He
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  says, his aim is to know God, or to know Christ in two
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  ways, and here they come. First, that I may know the power
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  of his resurrection, and second, that I may share his sufferings, becoming
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  like him in his death. In other words, that I may know a
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  share of his sufferings in my own life, that by any means possible,
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  I might attain the resurrection of the dead. So Paul put together these two
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  great Christian aspirations. I want to know his power, the kind of power
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  that raises the dead. And I want to live and minister in that power,
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  and I want to embrace a life of sacrifice and suffering as God wills
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  in the service of his mission, the salvation of sinners, the building up
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  of the church. And what confuses a lot of people and creates the Prosperity
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  gospel is that the only conception we have, many of us of resurrection power
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  is that, of course, it will keep Paul from suffering. That's what
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  power's for. Right, What else is resurrection power for except to protect us
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  and keep us from suffering? And the answers, no, that's not the
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  way. That's it's upside down. Not in this life. For Christians living
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  for the salvation of others, that's not what resurrection power is mainly for the
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  power of Jesus was not used to escape the cross. And in Paul's life
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  and our lives, the present power of the resurrection gives life to other people
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  through our sacrifices, and then in the end Paul hopes through that to attain
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  the resurrection from the dead. So here's an illustration of how this worked in
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  Paul's life. This is tewod Corinthians fur A. We are afflicted in every
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  way, but not crushed perplexed but not driven to despair, persecuted but not
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  forsaken, struck down but not destroyed, always carrying in the body of the
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  death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our
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  bodies. So death is at work in us, but life in you.
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  In other words, Paul's suffering is carrying the death of Jesus in his scars.
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  Is the way the power of the Resurrection brought life to other people.
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  Death is working in us, life is working in you through our suffering,
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  through our sacrifices. The power of the Resurrection did not keep Paul from sacrifices.
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  It turned his sacrifices into manifestations of life giving power in the salvation of
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  sinners. And as he said in two Corinthians twelve nine, Christ's power is
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  made perfect in my weakness. And we all know this is true when we
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  think about it, just from our own experience. People don't fall in love
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  with the worth and beauty and greatness of Jesus because they look at rich,
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  healthy, comfortable Christians. They don't If that's all they see, why wouldn't
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  they just conclude that we live for the same worldly things They do if that
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  produces conversion, it's not conversion to Jesus but to more money. What wins
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  people to the infinite beauty and worth of Jesus is that they see people for
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  whom Jesus is so precious that they are willing to endure suffering to follow him.
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  So when Philippians three ten says I want to know him in these two
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  ways, his power that gives life and his sufferings that cost life, he
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  wasn't confused. He had been mastered and formed by Jesus, who saved us
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  with his omnipotent power through suffering and death. Yeah, Suffering missionaries are the
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  only kind of missionaries that God uses that power in weakness. Dynamic is so
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  so important and so clear in the Bible. You can see the APG book
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  on pages three seventy one to three seventy two. That's a little section I
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  put together on suffering missionaries. It's one of the most profound points I've learned
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  from you, pastor John, over the years of doing this podcast, just
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  explaining over and over why the Prosperity Gospel ministers are such missional and theological failures.
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  It is stark, and it's because of principles like what we see in
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  Philippians three. Thank you, Master John, and thanks for joining us today.
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  If you have a question to ask Pastor John, email me. Ask
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  Pastor John at Desiring Good at dot org. Speaking of not oversimplifying things,
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  most of the time we talk about getting truth from our minds into our hearts,
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  right, That's typically how we talk about It's not exactly a wrong way
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  to speak of the process. It's just not the whole story. Because also
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  true is that the heart governs what the mind focuses on. How the heart
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  governs the mind. That's up next time. I'm Tony Ranky. We'll see
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  on Monday.