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How I Decide What to Preach · Pastor John Piper's answers

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  Speaker 2: Well.
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  Speaker 1: Pastor John was recently in prison to preach, and not
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  Speaker 1: for the first time, hopefully not for the last time either.
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  Speaker 1: But you may recall in two thousand and nine, Pastor
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  Speaker 1: John preached inside Angola Prison in Louisiana, a notorious maximum
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  Speaker 1: security facility, a place where most inmates will live out
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  Speaker 1: the rest of their lives. In such a sobering context,
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  Speaker 1: Pastor John, of all these things you could have preached,
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  Speaker 1: you were moved to urge these eight hundred inmates from
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  Speaker 1: John six to convey the point that our Savior, Jesus Christ,
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  Speaker 1: did not come into the world to be useful by
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  Speaker 1: fulfilling the worldly desires that we have inherently, but it
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  Speaker 1: came to be precious, to be our all satisfying bread
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  Speaker 1: of life. You walked us through that decision to urge
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  Speaker 1: these men to treasure Christ above all else, declaring that
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  Speaker 1: Angola was not their final chapter, but eternity was. They
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  Speaker 1: had this eternal hope to look forward to, even if
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  Speaker 1: they were never going to be released from this prison.
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  Speaker 1: It was a powerful message and a powerful trip that
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  Speaker 1: we've talked about on the podcast in the past, but
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  Speaker 1: that trip is on my mind today because of a
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  Speaker 1: question we've gotten the whole lifespan of this podcast. How
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  Speaker 1: do you decide, pastor John, what to preach in a
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  Speaker 1: context like Angola or like this one that you just
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  Speaker 1: did recently to preach one sermon in a prison, no redos,
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  Speaker 1: no do overs. You get one shot. And I asked,
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  Speaker 1: because you just preached recently again in a prison, a
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  Speaker 1: local prison. Now, obviously, expositional preaching through books of the
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  Speaker 1: Bible is your norm, and that norm comes with a script. Literally,
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  Speaker 1: you move passage by passage, sometimes slower, sometimes faster, but
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  Speaker 1: always along a clear path forward through a book of
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  Speaker 1: the Bible. But not all ministry fits this predictable flow.
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  Speaker 1: You got funerals that shift the demands with every situation,
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  Speaker 1: depending on the spiritual condition of the person who died,
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  Speaker 1: the spiritual health of the people who are grieving in
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  Speaker 1: the room, how well you know the family. Those are
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  Speaker 1: factors that will come into play. Or maybe you're to
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  Speaker 1: pray at a sports event or to preach inside of
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  Speaker 1: a prison to a room full of unfamiliar faces in
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  Speaker 1: a one time opportunity. So when these opportunities arise, that
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  Speaker 1: break from the script, when there's no sermon series to follow,
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  Speaker 1: how do you discern God's will and his leading and
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  Speaker 1: deciding in those contexts what to preach.
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  Speaker 2: In order from my response to that question to make sense,
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  Speaker 2: I think our listeners need to know what I mean
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  Speaker 2: by the will of God. So, assuming my goal is
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  Speaker 2: to preach a message that is God's will for these prisoners,
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  Speaker 2: say that I went and preached to a while back,
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  Speaker 2: what do I mean by the will of God? I
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  Speaker 2: want to preach a sermon that accords with his will.
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  Speaker 2: What do I mean by that? Well, the first thing
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  Speaker 2: that I mean by the will of God, that there
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  Speaker 2: are at least three three uses that I have in
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  Speaker 2: mind is the sovereign will of God, which refers to
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  Speaker 2: whatever comes to pass. My counsel shall stand Isaiah forty
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  Speaker 2: six says, and I will accomplish all my purpose. So
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  Speaker 2: God works all things together for the council of his will,
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  Speaker 2: according to the council of his will, if he's in's
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  Speaker 2: one eleven. So that's the first meaning sovereign will. Everything
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  Speaker 2: that comes to pass is ultimately God's sovereign will. Second,
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  Speaker 2: God's moral will, or sometimes called his revealed will. This
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  Speaker 2: refers to the commandments of Scripture, the Ten Commandments, the
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  Speaker 2: places like the Sermon on the Mount or Romans twelve,
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  Speaker 2: where Paul says, let love be genuine, abhor what is evil,
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  Speaker 2: hold fast to what is good, Love one another with
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  Speaker 2: brotherly affection, and on and on the revealed will of
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  Speaker 2: God goes. So that's the second meaning of the will
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  Speaker 2: of God. What is revealed in scripture that we ought
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  Speaker 2: to do is God's will. Now, in a sense, you
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  Speaker 2: could say, and many do, say, that's the totality of
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  Speaker 2: God's will in scripture. There isn't a secret will of God,
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  Speaker 2: like which person to marry, which school to go to,
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  Speaker 2: where to park your bike, what shirt to wear. A
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  Speaker 2: lot of people have been driven crazy by thinking of
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  Speaker 2: the will of God this way, and some people have
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  Speaker 2: tried to rescue people from that craziness by saying, you're
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  Speaker 2: free to wear whatever shirt you want, park your bike
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  Speaker 2: wherever you want. You can't sin against something where there's
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  Speaker 2: no commandment, and God didn't put in his book what
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  Speaker 2: shirt to wear, so relax, don't be crazy. No, personally,
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  Speaker 2: I don't want people to be crazy, but I think
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  Speaker 2: things are that simple. So I tend to think in
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  Speaker 2: terms of a third way to talk about the will
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  Speaker 2: of God, namely a spiritually descerned application of the mind
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  Speaker 2: of Christ to a particular situation. It's not just rational,
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  Speaker 2: it's more than rational. It's not irrational, it's just more
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  Speaker 2: than rational. I'm thinking of text like Romans twelve. Do
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  Speaker 2: not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by
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  Speaker 2: the renewing of your mind. Takes a renewed mind that you,
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  Speaker 2: by testing, you may descern, spiritually descern what is the
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  Speaker 2: will of God? What is good, acceptable, and perfect or
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  Speaker 2: Colossians one nine. We pray for you that you may
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  Speaker 2: be filled with the knowledge of His will in all
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  Speaker 2: spiritual wisdom and understanding. Now, I don't think those texts
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  Speaker 2: mean be sure to find the right commandment in the
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  Speaker 2: Bible and obey it. It may really matter for spiritual
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  Speaker 2: reasons what shirt you wear today. Not usually, but it might,
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  Speaker 2: and it may matter for all things considered. Where you
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  Speaker 2: park your bike today. There's a thousand things that might
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  Speaker 2: go into that decision that would make one decision better
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  Speaker 2: than another. And it mattered to me last spring what
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  Speaker 2: text I chose to preach at the prison in Line
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  Speaker 2: on Lakes and how I went about it, even though
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  Speaker 2: there's no command in the Bible to tell me what
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  Speaker 2: text to choose, or what illustrations to use, or what
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  Speaker 2: to emphasize, or what tone to have. None of that
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  Speaker 2: was in the Bible. I know that one way of
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  Speaker 2: describing what I needed at that moment was wisdom. I
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  Speaker 2: remember Gary Freesan's book on the Will of God, and
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  Speaker 2: his whole emphasis was, we don't need a third way
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  Speaker 2: of talking about the will of God. We just need
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  Speaker 2: wisdom to apply what we have in the Bible. Wisdom
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  Speaker 2: to take the knowledge of God and the knowledge of
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  Speaker 2: his revealed will and wisely apply to a situation and
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  Speaker 2: then come up with wise approaches to a message. But
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  Speaker 2: here's what I have experienced, namely that this wisdom, as
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  Speaker 2: I try to experience it and apply Biblical truth, is
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  Speaker 2: shot through with the subjective influences of my heart, not
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  Speaker 2: just the mind figuring out how to apply a text.
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  Speaker 2: So that it would be presumptuous of me to say
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  Speaker 2: that I make my choices in such situations simply because
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  Speaker 2: I am wise. I'm a Bible applying wise person. Too
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  Speaker 2: much of the process is simply out of my control.
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  Speaker 2: So here's how the decision was made, as best I
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  Speaker 2: can remember it, or even if it happened yesterday as
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  Speaker 2: best I think I know, because I think a lot
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  Speaker 2: of things we don't know about how we make decisions
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  Speaker 2: even while we're making them. This approach to decision making
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  Speaker 2: would not be unusual in occasional preaching events like this,
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  Speaker 2: like speaking in a prison or at some of their
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  Speaker 2: special situation. So I woke up that morning and I
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  Speaker 2: was supposed to preach at three o'clock that afternoon at
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  Speaker 2: Lino Lake's prison fellowship about one hundred and twenty men
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  Speaker 2: in prison, and I had not prepared the message yet.
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  Speaker 2: I had four hours set aside that morning, and present
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  Speaker 2: in my mind before there was any conscious decision on
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  Speaker 2: my part at all, was Romans eight. Now this was
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  Speaker 2: striking partly because I was tentatively planning to do something
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  Speaker 2: from Philippians three forgetting what lazohin and straining forward to Lasahad.
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  Speaker 2: I thought that would be a great text for men
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  Speaker 2: who were in prison and needed to get beyond what
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  Speaker 2: the past had done. My first thought was, this is
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  Speaker 2: the greatest chapter in the Bible, and I really believe
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  Speaker 2: that if I've got one chance to speak, maybe I
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  Speaker 2: should deal with the greatest chapter in the Bible. And
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  Speaker 2: my next thought was or maybe it wasn't a thought
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  Speaker 2: at all, but a feeling. I love this chapter. I
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  Speaker 2: love the reality that God communicated in this chapter. I
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  Speaker 2: love it. Now. That was not a decision, right, That
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  Speaker 2: was not a decision. It wasn't a result of any
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  Speaker 2: kind of extensive content implation at that moment. It was
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  Speaker 2: a strong experience. I didn't choose it. And that strong
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  Speaker 2: affection for Romans eight may have been decisive. I suspect
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  Speaker 2: it was decisive, But I didn't decide to love Romans
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  Speaker 2: eight before I got out of bed. It was just there.
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  Speaker 2: My next thought was, I know this chapter. I've lived
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  Speaker 2: in this chapter all my life. Almost in fact, I
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  Speaker 2: know it by heart. I could recite it to these
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  Speaker 2: men from memory. And so I paused before I got
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  Speaker 2: out of bed. Noel still asleep at my side, and
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  Speaker 2: I whisper the entirety of Romans eight. Yes, I've still
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  Speaker 2: got it. I could do this, And so that might
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  Speaker 2: be I thought that might be impactful. Yeah, if I
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  Speaker 2: just if I look them right in the eye and
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  Speaker 2: take ten minutes and recite from memory without looking down
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  Speaker 2: the entirety of chapter in the Bible. Those guys have
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  Speaker 2: never heard that before. I'll bet What would that do
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  Speaker 2: to them or for them? It seemed to me like
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  Speaker 2: a good idea. The next thought was, I've only got
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  Speaker 2: four hours to get ready for this, and this is
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  Speaker 2: doable for the Beans three might take more time than
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  Speaker 2: I have because I don't know it as well as
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  Speaker 2: Romans eight. So you can see how the sheer. Now
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  Speaker 2: this is crucial, the sheer practicality figured into the spiritual
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  Speaker 2: dynamics of the moment. I would be naive to say
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  Speaker 2: that didn't count. Before I got out of bed, the
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  Speaker 2: decision was made Romans eight. It's going to be Romans eight.
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  Speaker 2: All I had to do was now figure out, okay,
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  Speaker 2: what parts of Romans eight in this mammothly glorious chapter
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  Speaker 2: am I going to emphasize? And it seemed and here
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  Speaker 2: again hugely subjective inclinations mingling with rational thought. I decided
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  Speaker 2: on four focuses. Why four I don't know. I would
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  Speaker 2: recite the chapter. Then I would go to the beginning,
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  Speaker 2: no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. I
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  Speaker 2: would go to the end. Secondly, no separation from God. Ever,
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  Speaker 2: if you are in Christ Jesus and there's no condemnation. Third,
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  Speaker 2: I would connect the beginning and the end with my
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  Speaker 2: favorite verse in all the Bible, Romans eight thirty two,
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  Speaker 2: because of the logic that connects no condemnation by the
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  Speaker 2: blood of Jesus with the glorious everything that we get
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  Speaker 2: in the future. And then it occurred to me, if
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  Speaker 2: I were these men, or if I were just me,
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  Speaker 2: I would be left with the question, Okay, I hear
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  Speaker 2: all that good news about no condemnation. If you're in Christ,
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  Speaker 2: am I how can you know if you're in Christ?
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  Speaker 2: That was and that determined that my last helicopter landing
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  Speaker 2: in that chapter was ROMs eight thirteen to fifteen, how
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  Speaker 2: can you know you're a child of God? So that
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  Speaker 2: was the process except for one thing that I haven't mentioned,
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  Speaker 2: and it might be all important, and I'll bet our
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  Speaker 2: listeners know what I left out. For days, I had
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  Speaker 2: been praying, pleading, pleading with the Lord to guide me,
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  Speaker 2: show me, show me what scripture and what approach would
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  Speaker 2: be most effective for salvation, what would be most effective
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  Speaker 2: for strengthening faith. And I am very, very thankful that
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  Speaker 2: I think he answered that prayer.
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  Speaker 1: Amen. Yeah, reciting the Bible from memory is something I
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  Speaker 1: want to return to you for a moment, because it's
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  Speaker 1: such a powerful act you shared with us over the years,
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  Speaker 1: so many stories from your own ministry of speaking God's
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  Speaker 1: truth directly from the heart and moments of need, those
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  Speaker 1: immeasurable moments You've called them moments when you comforted the
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  Speaker 1: broken or encourage the fearful, a moment that enables spirit filled,
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  Speaker 1: scripture saturated words to flow with personal presence and power
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  Speaker 1: that carry a far greater weight than words that are
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  Speaker 1: read from a page or from a Bible app in
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  Speaker 1: the moment. And you can see the collection of the
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  Speaker 1: stories I put together and they ask Pestor John book
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  Speaker 1: pages forty one to forty three. It's a very moving example.
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  Speaker 1: Thank you, Pastor John for that example and for reciting
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  Speaker 1: Romans eight. I bet that was very powerful in the room.
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  Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us today. If you have a question
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  Speaker 1: to ask Pastor John, find a link to email us
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  Speaker 1: and find our complete episode archive at the same place
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  Speaker 1: at ask Pastor John dot com. Well, how can we
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  Speaker 1: know that we are Christians? Absolutely know for certain? This
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  Speaker 1: is such a huge question. It's a question with an
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  Speaker 1: answer that came up in this most recent prison sermon.
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  Speaker 1: I want to return to the substance of the Romans
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  Speaker 1: eight message later in the week so that we can
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  Speaker 1: together ask Pastor John about it. I'm Tony Rangkie. Let's
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  Speaker 1: see Thursday