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American Church, Is Your Christ Too Cheap? · Pastor John Piper's answers

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  Speaker 1: Welcome Back Monday. I mentioned that we were going to
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  Speaker 1: look at self denial in this episode. Actually I have
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  Speaker 1: postponed that conversation to October tenth. We'll get to it,
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  Speaker 1: I promise to Christian Heedonis is all about seeking our
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  Speaker 1: own joy? Do we practice self denial? Great question that
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  Speaker 1: needs to be addressed, and it will be. But today
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  Speaker 1: we're looking at the topic of worldliness, a theme addressed
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  Speaker 1: many times here over the years, especially when it comes
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  Speaker 1: to worldly media, and just glanced at the APJ book
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  Speaker 1: here on pages two ninety one to three oh seven
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  Speaker 1: to be reminded of how big of a theme worldliness
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  Speaker 1: has been for us over the years. Pastor John is
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  Speaker 1: a permanent challenge for the church, but not one every
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  Speaker 1: preacher wants to address in the pulpit, it seems, according
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  Speaker 1: to this note of concern from an anonymous young woman
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  Speaker 1: who sees worldliness creeping in around her in the lives
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  Speaker 1: of professing Christians in her life. She wrote us this,
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  Speaker 1: Pastor John, thank you for the innumerable ways in which
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  Speaker 1: this ministry blesses me and other Christians around the world,
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  Speaker 1: as well as four You and Tony's books, which also
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  Speaker 1: contribute to that thank you. I don't want to exclude myself.
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  Speaker 1: I'm sure I have blind spots as well. But when
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  Speaker 1: I see the ways in which Christians today use their
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  Speaker 1: free time and celebrate the events in their lives, my
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  Speaker 1: heart feels heavy and saddened because of what I perceive
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  Speaker 1: to be worldliness. The celebrations are just like those of unbelievers.
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  Speaker 1: They often go to concerts by popular artists, stay out
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  Speaker 1: late on Saturday nights, and then skip church the next
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  Speaker 1: day or arrive one hour late. They're usually absent from
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  Speaker 1: prayer meetings the vocation, without giving Sunday worship so much
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  Speaker 1: as a moment of consideration. Some of these individuals are
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  Speaker 1: locally seen as mature model Christians. My own church has
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  Speaker 1: solid Bible and Christ centered preaching, yet I don't see
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  Speaker 1: the subject of worldliness mentioned often, nor do I see
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  Speaker 1: it even on websites with solid theology. In APGA six
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  Speaker 1: h three titled what qualifies as worldly music, you said,
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  Speaker 1: quote worldly isn't a sound. Worldly is leaving Christ out.
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  Speaker 1: That is why it is called worldly and not Christly,
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  Speaker 1: and it approves of what He disapproves. Is called worldly
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  Speaker 1: because the treasure is the world above, the one who
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  Speaker 1: made the world end uote, Could you expand on that
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  Speaker 1: in relation to my concerns above, what can Christians do
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  Speaker 1: to encourage one another in the faith and treasure in Christ.
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  Speaker 1: I'm saddened and worried about the future of the Church
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  Speaker 1: and Christianity because of what I see being normalized in
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  Speaker 1: the church today.
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  Speaker 2: I share your sadness and your concern for the church.
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  Speaker 2: In fact, I see most of my ministry as a
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  Speaker 2: ministry devoted to weaning the Church off of the world
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  Speaker 2: and its pleasures onto Christ and His pleasures. I try
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  Speaker 2: to speak and write in such a way as to
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  Speaker 2: we ate spiritual taste buds in people's hearts, so that
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  Speaker 2: they find distasteful things that don't honor God and find
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  Speaker 2: desirable things that do. I think what we are longing
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  Speaker 2: for together has historically been called revival, a work of
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  Speaker 2: God in the church first. We call it awakening when
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  Speaker 2: it touches the world, but in the church first, revival
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  Speaker 2: a work of God that causes the hearts of God's
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  Speaker 2: people to burn. Like in Luke twenty four, didn't our
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  Speaker 2: hearts burn within us when we walked with him? Causes
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  Speaker 2: our hearts to burn with love for God's word and
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  Speaker 2: love for God's people, love for God's service, all rooted
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  Speaker 2: in an increasingly intense love for God himself, heal and
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  Speaker 2: for communion with God in prayer and meditation, with a
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  Speaker 2: growing delight in holiness and a growing horror at sin,
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  Speaker 2: especially our own, and a growing concern for lost people.
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  Speaker 2: I think one of the greatest signs of worldliness is
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  Speaker 2: little concern for the reality of hell and people's going
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  Speaker 2: there because they don't believe. And in all of that
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  Speaker 2: a greater intensification of our sense of spiritual truth and
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  Speaker 2: spiritual realities. That's my sense of what revival is in
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  Speaker 2: what the church needs today. This is a sovereign work
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  Speaker 2: of God. We can pray toward it, and we can
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  Speaker 2: preach toward it, teach toward it, write toward it, embody
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  Speaker 2: in our individual lives as much of it as possible.
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  Speaker 2: But in the end, it's a gift God gives to
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  Speaker 2: his church with your resistible, sovereign power, and I agree
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  Speaker 2: that we are certainly in need of it. When I
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  Speaker 2: was in college, a popular little book by JB. Phillips
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  Speaker 2: called Your God Is Too Small was very effective in
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  Speaker 2: many of our experience and lives. It was a provocative
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  Speaker 2: little book that pleaded with the church to stop treating
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  Speaker 2: God as though he were a side issue in life,
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  Speaker 2: and to wake up to his massive centrality, the fact
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  Speaker 2: that all things are from Him, and through Him and
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  Speaker 2: to Him. It had a significant awakening effect upon me.
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  Speaker 2: About forty years ago, David Wells wrote a book called
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  Speaker 2: No Place for Truth, which made the case that the
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  Speaker 2: American Church that in the American Church, God rests far
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  Speaker 2: too lightly on the people of God. He doesn't have weight.
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  Speaker 2: It was the same heart cry from doctor Wells as
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  Speaker 2: from JB. Phillips. God is marginal. God has little weight
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  Speaker 2: in our worship services and little weight in our lives.
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  Speaker 2: He's taken lightly. He's simply one among many factors, rather
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  Speaker 2: than the all consuming factor. And I have thought that
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  Speaker 2: if I were to write a book today with a
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  Speaker 2: similar burden, it might have this title. Your Christ is
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  Speaker 2: too cheap, Your Heaven is too distant, your Earth is
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  Speaker 2: too big. When I say your Christ is too cheap,
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  Speaker 2: I have in mind Philippians three to eight. Do the
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  Speaker 2: people who flirt with the world and seem to be
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  Speaker 2: totally at home in secular entertainments that are void of
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  Speaker 2: God christ Christian morality? Do those people really say with
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  Speaker 2: the Apostle Paul, I count everything as lost because of
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  Speaker 2: the surpassing worth of knowing Christ, Jesus my Lord. For
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  Speaker 2: his sake, I have suffered the loss of all things
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  Speaker 2: and count them as rubbish in order that I might
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  Speaker 2: gain Christ. For Paul, Christ was the supreme and all
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  Speaker 2: pervasive treasure of his life. And I would ask all
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  Speaker 2: of us, how does our treasuring of Christ compare to
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  Speaker 2: our treasuring of entertainments offered us by the world. Where
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  Speaker 2: are our affections? Because that is the key bottom issue
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  Speaker 2: is where are our affections? Not first our behaviors, but
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  Speaker 2: our heart. And when I say your heaven is too distant,
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  Speaker 2: I mean that the reality of the afterlife is simply
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  Speaker 2: not operational in the daily mindset of many believers and
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  Speaker 2: virtually all unbelievers. But as I read the New Testament,
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  Speaker 2: the call to lay up for ourselves treasures in heaven
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  Speaker 2: and not on earth is pervasive. We are called to
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  Speaker 2: set our minds on things that are above. We're called
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  Speaker 2: to look to things that are eternal, not transient. We're
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  Speaker 2: called to bank our hope on the rewards of the resurrection,
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  Speaker 2: not the rewards of this life. Heaven is a dominant
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  Speaker 2: life shaping reality in the New Testament, but a minor
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  Speaker 2: reality in most people's lives today. It is too distant
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  Speaker 2: and therefore ineffective, leaving us sitting ducks for worldliness. And
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  Speaker 2: when I say your Earth is too big, I mean
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  Speaker 2: that people are simply not thinking clearly when it comes
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  Speaker 2: to how tiny this earth is. Not only in the universe,
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  Speaker 2: which is not very significant, but in the scope of eternity,
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  Speaker 2: which is very significant. I wonder if people ever think
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  Speaker 2: this has been touching me recently anyway. I wonder if
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  Speaker 2: people ever think that in one hundred years, virtually every
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  Speaker 2: person alive today will be gone, eight billion people gone.
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  Speaker 2: There is a complete turnover of humanity on the earth
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  Speaker 2: every ten decades, which seems very short to me now
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  Speaker 2: because I'm in my eighth The number of people who
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  Speaker 2: live longer than one hundred is point zero zero zero
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  Speaker 2: two percent of the population. It is statistically insignificant. Every
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  Speaker 2: hundred years there is a complete turnover of humanity. Virtually
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  Speaker 2: everybody who was twenty two years old when I was
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  Speaker 2: born are gone, and in twenty two years everybody born
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  Speaker 2: before me will be gone. That turnover has been happening
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  Speaker 2: for thousands of years. We tend to think of humanity
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  Speaker 2: in terms that don't really fit individual experience. Humanity has
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  Speaker 2: been around for thousands of years on the Earth, but
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  Speaker 2: the Earth has been home to individual humans no more
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  Speaker 2: than one hundred years, and in most cases way shorter
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  Speaker 2: than one hundred years. And after that brief eighty to
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  Speaker 2: one hundred years or less, every single one of those
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  Speaker 2: humans enters eternity, And compared to eternity, those hundred years
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  Speaker 2: on earth were nothing. The Bible calls it a vapor
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  Speaker 2: last two seconds when you breathe it out on a
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  Speaker 2: cold winter morning. If people were rational, they would not
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  Speaker 2: be earthly minded. They would be heavenly minded. And if
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  Speaker 2: they were heavenly minded, they would not find their greatest
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  Speaker 2: pleasures in the entertainments produced by earthly minded people. So
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  Speaker 2: we pray, and we teach, and we live with the
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  Speaker 2: hope that God would break in with sovereign reviving power
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  Speaker 2: and cause his word to be so loved that it
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  Speaker 2: will no longer be, as Jesus says, choked out by
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  Speaker 2: the cares and riches and pleasures of this world.
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  Speaker 1: I see most of my ministry as a ministry devoted
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  Speaker 1: to weaning the church off the world and its pleasures
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  Speaker 1: onto Christ and his pleasures. Quote, it's a much needed calling,
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  Speaker 1: Thank you, Pastor John. And on that statement that in
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  Speaker 1: every century we see a complete turnover of humanity the
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  Speaker 1: vapor metaphor, I'm sure some of you Bible people out there,
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  Speaker 1: I think, yeah, yeah, but wait, what about the long
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  Speaker 1: life spans in early Bible history? Right like Methuselah who
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  Speaker 1: lived to be nine hundred and sixty nine years old.
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  Speaker 1: While Pastor John spoke here of current history, but if
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  Speaker 1: you do want more on the long life spans in
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  Speaker 1: ancient history, see what he said in APGA sixteen twenty
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  Speaker 1: in the archive. It's an episode titled why did the
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  Speaker 1: first humans live for so long? Thanks for joining us today,
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  Speaker 1: have a question to ask Pastor John. Find a link
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  Speaker 1: to email us and you can find APJA sixteen twenty
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  Speaker 1: as well at Askpastor John dot com. The Busy Soul
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  Speaker 1: Learning to Wait on God. That's up next. I'm Tony Granke.
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  Speaker 1: We will see you on Monday.