Living with Purpose: Embracing a Wartime Mentality

"there's always one question that uh one comment or something that elicits the most amount of questions and John Piper you've done it again this time and uh by far the majority of questions not the majority of questions but the largest amount of questions have to do with your comment last night about the need for us to simplify Our Lives people want to know what you meant by that how do you do it how do you do it how do how do we do it the value of it how it fits into your topic last night can you give us a simple answer on that I don't have any one lifestyle in my mind but I think almost everybody can put Governors on your spending and uh everybody knows the principle that expenses rise to meet the income so that everybody is just getting by if you make 30,000 you're just getting by if you make 50 you're just getting by if you make a 100 you're just getting by cuz you got to put oil in your airplane and rent a hanger and and uh cash flow is difficult so if you're going to uh keep from being one of those just getting by millionaires then you need a cap you need some um Governors so I'm just pleading with people though I don't have any clear simple one size fits-all criteria for what that lifestyle is I want I want everybody to be struggling with it that's what I want I want everybody to be reading the gospels looking at Jesus who had no place to lay his head you follow me birds of the air have nests foxes have holes son of man has no place to lay his head as the father sends me so send I you now I don't overinterpret that I just say there's a there's a pointer there there's some issues here for the evangelical church so figure out a wartime I like that better than simple because Ralph winter taught me in war you might need a B-52 bomber cost you a few million dollars you might need computer and so on simple means go to North Minnesota grow carrots and don't you know don't be useful to anybody for anything that's not the point simplicity does hardly anybody any good but a wartime lifestyle says okay we're in a war and in a war you use metal differently you use rubber differently you use everything differently because you got a cause you're living for most Christians don't have a cause they're living for and then you simplify to give it give everything above that away you got hard decisions to make about retirement kids college and so on and every Pastor should just be getting his people to think and pray and talk about those and read literature that summons towards wartime lifestyle so no no simple answer no uh one siiz fits-all diagram but rather a plea for the people of God to move towards need not Comfort move towards need not comfort and don't think you need a fatter and fatter pth had to live on think rather in terms of of streamlining so that you can give as much away as you possibly can for the cause uh Al RC you are involved with organizations uh Christian Ministries um that have larger and larger challenges and demands uh is there a is there an application to a Christian Ministry how do you how do you grow and reach more people and be more effective and train more staff and and keep your ministry uh reflecting and teaching what John was talking about there just by the modeling in your ministry with great difficulty uh I was sitting here thinking while John was talking and I agree with what he said but to me the greatest scandal in the uh Evangelical world is reflected in a poll the last one I saw said that of those people who identified themselves as evangelicals in America only 4% of them were tithers and we're not talking about you know he was talking about going well beyond the tithe we can't even get people to the tithe level 96% of professing evangelicals are systematically robbing from God and the reality of ministry is Paul that one of the greatest barriers we have to extend the ministry of the kingdom are the financial limits that we have because it costs money to do ministry it costs money to put a seminary together and it costs money for John to have his church and to have his ministry it certainly cost money for Doug to run his schools and all of that and uh uh you know ending Ministry if I have $100 I can do $5 worth of ministry and waste $95 or I can do $50 worth of ministry and blow $50 or I can do $100 worth of ministry if I'm efficient okay what I can't do is $15 worth of ministry so that there is a stewardship issue here but again the second what John was saying to me the way I look at it is investment I'm a conservative economically try to teach my kids and students and we have young people learning the principle of delayed gratification the principle of investing in the future and allowing their Investments to to work for them from an economic perspective and I think that the most fabulous and significant investment any person can ever make is in the kingdom of God I mean that's the one place where we know for sure there's never going to be a big in the woods to destroy that market because it's always a bull market uh when we support our King and I really believe that we need to see our stewardship our tithing and our giving as an investment in the most important Enterprise Under the Sun I want to pick up right where RC left with the issue of investment because I think this is something that perhaps even uh americ American evangelicals May understand better a bit now than even the years past there is a sense in which it is clear by our investment pattern where our treasure lies and what we seek to do is to invite persons to invest in something that really matters for eternity now I really like what John talks about with a wartime ethic or mentality uh John was recently on our campus blessed his tremendously and told us we had far more than a B-52 and there's a sense in which we certainly do we have inherited a massive campus great Beauty and an enormous infrastructure and I want to say that we we want to understand the demands of stewardship in the most biblically faithful manner I agree that we're in a war I think it is a war uh for the long hul so to speak we don't know the Lord's timetable but at this point we are the church militant and I believe there there is the necessity of some institutional uh platform accountable to scripture uh for the church that trains Ministers of the gospel and and can become a think tank repository uh for the equipping of the saints that does take money it should be done well and here the standard of Excellence should be something beyond our apology we shouldn't apologize for seeking Excellence but we should be offended by opulence and sometimes knowing the difference between the two is is is difficult and we need to confess that and that's why we need a good we need trustees and constituents and churches to hold their institutions accountable in this matter not just to make sure the books balance but to make sure the funds are rightly invested thank you Doug you've been sitting there uh rather peacefully let me uh direct a question your way and it's a very direct question I'm sure you're used to getting direct questions because you speak very plainly and directly so let me just uh read it as it has been asked here uh the question says you began your talk by slamming brothers in Christ who design Seeker sensitive Services you ended your talk by encouraging us to love our brothers lest we appear OD to the world should we attend to your words or to your actions or can it be both who is that guy Mrs Sproul it says here I in that case she's quite right one of the things I I thought of mentioning this as an illustration but I wasn't sure how many people here were aware of the magazine that I edit in which some of these same things that I addressed in the talk are treated with imperfect tenderness and the the fundamental question that we're getting at here the thing that I would like to answer as provide as my answer to this is the question what would Jesus do all right now however um sapply that's been marketed and it has I think it's a wonderful question the question the question that confronts us is what does it mean in a disobedient culture to be prophetic what does it mean in a in an in an insolent and arrogant culture to confront that insolence and arrogance well one of the first things it means is that you will be accused of being insolent and arrogant who do you think you are challenging everybody's going this way who does Martin Luther think he is who does what how how dare you now the the thing that we've tried to do is is ask this question how how did Jesus talk how did he address the respected theologians of his day day well he called them basically a bag of snakes right now what we do is we we gloss over you know Jesus is talking so these are all holy words all right so we go into holy word mode I in my neck of the words Woods you can drive up to cordelane which is an hour and a half drive and sometimes I've driven that stretch of road and and I find myself approaching cordelane and I know that I had to have gone through a small town on the way but I don't remember I don't remember it but I've driven that road so it's it's it's frequently traveled it's the same way with the text of scripture we just skate over the surface of many things that Jesus said and did and we don't recognize as chesteron once put it that Jesus threw furniture down the temple steps he he was not he was not a tame lion he was someone who confronted hypocrisy he con he confronted and rebuked in the strongest possible terms uh the arrogance of of man- centeredness and I believe that we are called to imitate Christ in all that he does now this is the this is the lopsidedness of our age everybody when when we ask the question what would Jesus do everybody acknowledges that it's appropriate to imitate Christ in his love or Christ in his gentleness or Christ receiving the children and I believe we ought to imitate him in that and how we receive the children and how we bless and how we speak to people in our family and how we love our children and I I believe that we should imitate Christ and pursue that imitation with a passion but we should also imitate Christ in how he handled theologians that corrupted the word of God we should also imitate Christ in the way that he spoke in church that got the people in his hometown so hopping mad at him that they wanted to throw him off a cliff how did he how did he do that how in in the Gospel of John Jesus begins by talking to a bunch of people it says who believed in him and so Jesus begins discoursing with these people who believed in him and by the end of the discourse they're trying to kill him now what we say is it's safe to imitate Christ in his love and his gentleness but it's not safe to imitate Christ in his sarcasm or Christ in his biting cultural criticism or you can't imitate him over there but you can imitate him over here well I I don't know any biblical grounds for that selectivity if we're going to imitate Christ we should imitate Christ if we want to be like him we should want to be like him and that means the whole thing now I I do believe that there are dangers in in imitating Christ's pmic or John the Baptist's pmic or Paul's pmic or Jeremiah's poic and it's it's very hard to find a Biblical character who doesn't have a pmic to imitate and that pmic and and the other interesting feature is in the modern Evangelical World which has all the doctrinal Reg idity of a bowl of pudding right it is hard to find anybody imitating anybody's poic now I don't think we imitate it perfectly I don't believe that we imitate Christ's love perfectly his gentleness perfectly I don't believe that we imitate anything he did perfectly but I do believe that we are called to imitate him across the board and we can do so confident that God has Justified us and and receives our imperfect attempts at imitating him because of his perfect active obedience and passive obedience in his life and his death on the cross so this is a long way of saying that we we want to be like Jesus Christ we want to be like the Apostle Paul we want to turn the world upside down and you don't turn the world upside down by being nice you turn the world upside down by being biblical that means you love what God loves you hate what God hates you praise what God Praises you condemn what God condemns you make fun of what God makes fun of one of the most glorious sections in the Bible is God God coming in at the end of The Book of Job you know where are you oh man when I created the world tell me since you know so much some of the loftiest sarcasm you'll find anywhere and it's dangerous for a creature to imitate God it's dangerous for a creature to imitate Christ but that's our calling we're Christians we have to imitate him so do IAM secret sensitive worship worship yes I do do I slam things that people consider right and proper and people are well intentioned yes I I I do that do I do it with fear and trembling yes I do do I sometimes get it wrong yes I yes I do but I think it would be a Graver danger to sit back and get it wrong that way anybody want to jump in on that I I wish that people in this room would have an opportunity to spend one week reading my mail and see how they could absorb the nasty grams and the hate letters that come into my office every single day and I only see a small portion of them because my staff uh bends over backwards to Shield me from them because it's the old story that if you get 20 letters and 19 of them are grateful and thanking and complimentary and one of them is nasty the one that you think about all day it's the mean one but I have to understand something that if I write a book if I give a speech if I get on the radio and I put my thoughts and my ideas in the public Arena it goes with the territory that I have to be willing to let people critique me attack me differ from me and debate with me in the public Arena the car most the most serious cardinal sin as an Evangelical you can ever do is to make some statement that's critical of Billy Graham I know because I've done it and he say how dare you criticize Billy Graham I said because I think Billy Graham is wrong on that point and I think he because of his the enormous trustworthiness that he has in the Evangelical world can do a world of damage when he talks like that and he says it in the public domain then we enter into debate in the public domain the movement of what's called shorthand secer sensitive worship has been carefully thought out carefully devised and is being marketed and programmed around this America in the public Arena as the way to go to reach a fallen world and the motives behind it I am convinced are genuinely sincerely concerned for saving lost people I also believe that they're sincerely wrong in terms terms of their emphasis on adjusting the nature of worship for the sake of the unbeliever which I believe I believe that corporate worship is established by God for his people and it is God who has established how he is to be worshiped and I talked to the founder of Seeker sensitivity 20 years years ago and he told me that he had done his research and taken the public polls in Chicago and over 2,000 people and he talked to people who had left the church and the number one reason they gave for leaving the church was the church was boring the number two reason was the church was irrelevant so he had a passion to reach those people and he said what I'm going to do is construct the church that no one will ever think is boring we're not going to have a chancel we're going to have a stage we're not going to have a choir we're going to have vocalists my church is not going to look like a church I'm going to make a building where people are comfortable who are unbelievers and I'm going to get through all of the trappings of religion to reach these people and that was the strategy born of a passion to reach people for Jesus Christ and I said to him 20 years ago I said when I read the Bible and I see the records of all kinds of people who encounter the Living God there is not a monolithic response some people are giddy with joy some people pass out some people weep some people run some people tremble in fact most people tremble but of all of the accounts that we have in the Bible of people meeting God I see not a single reference in scripture of anyone ever meeting the Living God and being bored because the one thing God is Not is boring and if you want to have worship that excites people then you need to focus in that worship on who God is and if God is the center and I don't want to take a strategy to disguise it or to hide it I don't don't want my church ever to be considered a stage because in this culture a stage is a place for entertainment not a place to meet God and so though I appreciate very much the motive behind all of this it terrifies me I also say this 20 years ago I was in the backseat of a taxi cab with Francis Schaefer in St Louis and I said to him I said' whatat is your greatest concern for the church right now and his answer was unhesitatingly he responded statism that was 20 years ago if you would ask me that question today what do I think is the greatest danger to the Church of Jesus Christ right now at the beginning of the 21st century I would say it is this movement of worship in our culture scares me to death I can add something to that very quickly not only we've been dumbed down because of this C entertainment mentality so that we can't process doctrinal distinctives anymore and so now this has been a gigantic cultural bait and switch operation so that we what what has happened is everybody's happy you know happy clappy and we're worshiping Jesus whoever he is and nobody's been told who he is nobody has been taught who he is because that's all irrelevant now and now in the last few years as John Piper can tell us we've got this openness of God theism that's now introduced which Pres presents a radically different Jesus a radically different God it's it's a heresy with a capital H and evangelicals are are struggling wrestling with the issue I I wonder why moderates and liberals and evangelicals always wrestle with these issues instead of beating them up but they but they they wrestle with them which means that they go into the conflict prepared to lose and so they they've gone into this prepared to lose and we are about to lose in North America Within in the Next Generation unless God gives a Reformation we are about to lose our lampstand entirely and it began with a bunch of little uh aiop secondary things why make a big deal out of secret sensitive well there's a strategic move here and and the the doctrinal life and breath of the Evangelical Church in North America is imperiled and that was the first stage in that strategy and we needed people attacking it long before we began attacking it because when you begin attacking it it's controversial that means you're already too late John wanted to jump in here John just before you do let me say I want to throw out one last question of my own here in light of our topic upsetting the world and your comment about biographies I'd like to finish by having each of you maybe suggest an a world upsetter out of church history and maybe a good biography of that person someone you respect and someone that we might follow up on here so be thinking about that while John wads into this current question I want to go back to Doug's uh defense of sarcasm and uh irony and um to balance it um the one of the reasons I have a problem with simply do what Jesus did is there is one huge difference between me and Jesus and that is sin in me um there are others and that one is picked up by the Apostle Paul because when he argues for tenderheartedness and gentleness and forbearance he grounds it in the fact that you were forgiven therefore forgive in other words Paul draws attention to the very thing that distinguishes me from Jesus when he's arguing for my tenderheartedness towards people therefore we must stir into the equation of how I respond to something I regard as reprehensible the fact another place he does it Galatians 6 uh if your brother's taken into fault restore such a one Spirit of meekness and gentleness lest you two be tempted and so on there seems to be added to do what Jesus would do and remember it's not just dangerous it's much more dangerous for you than for him therefore James be slow to anger quick to hear anger is a much more dangerous emotion than gentleness or meekness I think it's much more explosive and and one of the reasons for that is uh not only that I'm so wired to uh exalt myself in being angry towards others or and finding a clever way to put them down but I think I I wish I could remember the pastor who said it he says um you cannot make much of Christ oh the words are so good and they slip my mind where uh people are thinking about the Excellence of your rhetoric that's a lousy paraphrase now Doug Wilson is absolute gen genius at sarcasm and irony and I would just wave a little yellow flag to the effect that you come away from these articles thinking oh this is what this is what the quote said you can't exalt Christ and commend yourself as clever you're very clever really clever and uh I think we need you like crazy crazy I read cenda agenda and I wouldn't waste my time on it if I thought it was only contaminating but I tell you I can OD on it fast because it is so well done from a rhetorical standpoint so just a little warning that um I think there need to be more obvious tears in credenda agenda more obvious tears Gees the one illustration I would give is uh Don't Clap about that you don't need to do that one here's the here's the illustration um Jesus is in the synagogue and here's this man with a withered hand and he wants to heal this man and the religious leaders that he calls the bag of snakes elsewhere they they're upset about this and it says he looked this is I think Mark 3:5 he he looked around on them with anger grieved at their Hardness of Heart and that's what I want to pull together what does that look like in a sinner like me anger for sure when I see what's being done in open theism now how can I be grieved at the damage and have the grief come out it's got to show with some tears as well as the clever so that the people in the world the people see the and they say well that's clever or that sounds mean or that's bright or but if they see the tears as well as that in some way and I don't really know how to do it then they might say wow there might be something really uh personal and caring and eternal and dangerous here not just uh the ability to to turn a good phrase so that's a an exhortation a warning really to everybody who clapped for for Doug when he said what he had to say and for you and for me because frankly I think I need to say that because I am wired to be a person who puts down stupidity and I have to work really hard to to manifest tenderness I appreciate that very much I do want to encourage you maybe it won't encourage you but every time you read something and credenda agenda just tell yourself they're holding back and that worries me that worries me something that uh a little practical thing with your small group or with your church staff or whatever that's really interesting to do and that's to get one of these little uh personality tests temperamental analysis tests Myers Briggs or something like that and have everybody in your group take it as if they were Jesus answer the questions the best way they can has how they think Jesus would answer the questions and you'll be surprised at the the way the scores come out and how we view Jesus and how often he reflects happens to just reflect our temperament and it's an interesting little exercise when we're trying to think through this uh what would Jesus do let's uh let's we we're out of time let's get down to your uh to your suggestions uh who is uh someone that has turned the world upside down that you admire and and can you recommend a good biography about them somebody we don't have much time so jump in Al I just have to say Martin Luther uh I I gain more sustenance humanly speaking from Reading Luther and about Luther than any other Saint uh in the history of the church he comes as close as anyone I know to a man who never had an unarticulated thought and uh you know it was either recorded written down by him or recorded by his students or a part of U of the entire Corpus but there's a man who was a real man uh and who in whom God's glory and it's just recently been discovered he was a southern baptist is that correct I I'm glad you're on to that and uh I read it in credenda agenda what would you recommend a good biography there are so many uh which would you recommend one the oh there are so many as a matter of fact and for for Luther the most accessible and is still Roland Bon's here I stand I mean if you haven't read that you're not serious about understanding church history and uh you're just robbing yourself impoverishing yourself some other interesting was a hio overon uh Luther man between God and the devil and then there's a massive three volume uh biography by bre and others has been translated out of the German available from Fortress press just some fascinating material but the best thing is to read Luther get his material start with the bondage of the will or the lectures on Rens and just have at it great somebody else suggestion Doug I'm currently reading a wonderful biography of William Tindle uh by David Daniel um he is recently he's put out I think through Yale uh tile's New Testament and his um as much of the Old Testament as Tindle translated and he's done this biography of Tindle and Tindle is one of the unsung heroes of the Reformation but certainly of the English uh Reformation 9/10 of the King James version of the New Testament is his originally and and as much of the Old Testament the same proportion that he did uh Tindle was a wonderful man of God a wonderful scholar uh the epitome of what the early Puritans were scholarship on fire um I I would recommend David Daniel's biography of William Tindle great RC uh couple before I do I have to say something still about this what would Jesus do I noticed that Jesus does not treat everybody alike that when he's dealing with the Lambs he's the most tender gentle person you can imagine when he's dealing with the woman caught in adultery with those who are in shame with those who are broken he is so sensitive and tender it's unbelievable when he deals with the leaders who are in positions of power he asks no quarter and gives none in fact he's far more pical than any of us could ever be and so was Luther the great trick I think is to know the difference when to be tender and when to be tough and I sure don't always know it's a whole lot easier to be tough than it is to be tener but back to your question Ian Murray's biography of Edwards Elizabeth dod's biography of Edwards marriage to a difficult man baz's biography of Calvin you know I mean ites don't get any better than that sort of thing but John will'll give you the last word John bunan is the one I would say because his book Pilgrims Progress is the whole of reformed thinking and it's been translated into more languages than any other book and it's been so sold more than any book by the Bible so it's upset the world and just get the three volumes from I think Banner of Truth and read his own stuff" [00:00:11]