Daily Devotional By Desiringgod Ministry – John Piper Ministry 9 OCTOBER 2024 | Topic: The World Needs Happy Pastors
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The World Needs Happy Pastors
An Interview with John Piper
Thank you, Dr. Piper. A lot to think about, a lot to pray about. I feel like I have 35 things to process, but man, the concept of kept — amazing. I think about the early days of Acts 29, when so many of us that are older planted churches, and then in the early 2000s someone gave us the book Desiring God, and we read it. We didn’t really understand it the first time, so we read it again, and then we read it again. Then we listened to the Jonathan Edwards biography, and then we listened to that again. Then we listened to the Adoniram Judson biography and the Lloyd-Jones biography, and we’re shaped so much by the Reformed theology that we learned from guys like R.C. Sproul and John Piper.
Here we are now in 2024, and we asked you to speak on this topic because a lot has changed in our culture and our society since 1999, when Acts 29 started. I’d like to ask you this question: In your decades of ministry, 33 years of pastoral ministry, how have you seen the culture change? You just preached on what is completely unchanging. How have you seen the culture change, and do you sense an increased hostility toward the church in today’s culture from when you began in 1980, or do you feel more like there’s nothing new?
Well, that doesn’t depend on my perception. There are statistics that show clearly that the hostility is greater. I don’t usually read statistics, but you have to do what you’re asked to do. In the last ten years, the question has been, “Is it a good thing that more and more people are nonreligious?” That’s the question. Is it a good thing? The movement has gone from 25 percent of the people saying, “Yes, that’s a good thing” to 47 percent between 2010 and 2020.
Twenty-five percent said, “I wish more people were not religious,” and now 47 percent say, “It’s a really good thing that people are less religious because religion is bad for us. You guys are all bad for us.” Yes, that’s an easy question to answer just statistically.
But as far as other changes go, I’m old. I started pastoring before personal computers, before email, before smartphones, before the Internet, before social media. The world has changed. You all have computers in your pockets, and on those computers is every manner of evil, and Desiring God, and lots of other good things, so that’s huge. You preach to people who are looking at their phones because it just bumped and they’re getting a text message from Africa or a different time zone, and you’re looking at them and saying, “Would you pay attention to me? Would you turn them all off?” That’s a small, little issue.
The bigger issue is what’s happening to people as they soak themselves in an entertainment culture. I’m trying to think, What’s the main issue regarding social media? I don’t know the answer to that. I just say it’s huge that I think most people live from eye candy to eye candy and entertainment to entertainment so that the mind is not as reflective. To walk through the airport forty years ago, nobody was talking into the blue with an earbud in their head, and nobody was reading a phone. They had books in their hands or something else like that. It’s a different world. So, that’s a huge piece that’s changed.
Let me just mention one other thing, because it’s just so prominent: the battle lines of sexuality and the battle lines of abortion. Let me go back one step on why I would go there. When I was in high school, I knew there was such a thing as Democrats and Republicans, and I wasn’t a political animal at all in high school. What high schooler is? I just knew they were out there. Both kinds were in my church, and they basically had some different ideas about economics or whatever.
It didn’t enter my mind that you’re bad if you’re one and you’re good if you’re the other. It didn’t enter my mind. I didn’t think that way. Today, it’s very hard given the love affair with killing children, and the love affair with celebrating two men having sex and calling it marriage, and the love affair with taking eight-year-olds and surgically turning them into the opposite gender. (I hate that word. I try to avoid the word entirely because it’s so politically and culturally twisted. Sex is the right word.) Just take those three things. It’s very hard to meet somebody and find out “I’m totally pro-choice, I’m totally affirming of LGBTQ, I’m totally affirming of transgenderism,” and not feel like that’s wicked.
The word wicked wasn’t in my vocabulary for another human being. Theologically, I suppose you’d say it was. I wasn’t a Calvinist in those days, so maybe it wasn’t, but I just mean that makes relationships really hard. You could put on it names, Republican and Democrat, but that’s not really helpful because both those groups are really sinful, and your job as a pastor is complicated by that dynamic, but it should not be consumed by that dynamic. That’s just a big, big change regarding how one navigates relationships.
Here is maybe one other thing. Carl Trueman has done us a good service with his books — the big one and the little one — and now he has a new one of identifying underneath the modern world a kind of autonomy that decides our own nature, and therefore “I can be a woman if I choose to be a woman.” That deeper autonomy, I think, has never changed.
Pastor John, that leads into a second question. So many of us, when we planted Acts 29 churches, were looking. We valued conservative Reformed theology, but we also valued cultural engagement, and we wanted to reach our cities. We wanted to stick to the truths of Scripture, and we wanted to engage with lost people and reach lost people. How can church planters and pastors culturally engage our cities on this hand while also living as people set apart on this hand?
I do have to admit that I emphasize the second one more than the first one because that’s where I think we’re weak. I think most of our people do not live for the age to come, and they’re out of step with the New Testament in that regard. That’s cheating to just go there.
“Do you know what the answer is to persecution and criticism, which drive men out of the ministry? Joy.”
I was at a lecture on Thursday on “Augustine Against the Neo-Stoics,” and I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but Stoicism is making a comeback. There are half a dozen books that are very popular, and it’s recapturing Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and Seneca. It fascinated me because when he was done, I said, “That’s the answer I’m going to give in Dallas. That’s what I’m going to say. Thank you.” Because what he showed was that Augustine was totally culturally engaged. He wrote City of God. If you read City of God (which is good — nice and thick), it’s just one engagement after the other philosophically with the Roman times.
The Stoics said that happiness is found through virtue, not circumstances. If a bad thing happened to you, you could just say, “I didn’t feel that. I’m a stone. I didn’t feel that.” Virtue is about rising above circumstances and maintaining your equanimity. That was the stance of the Stoics. That’s being offered today in our culture, which is so fragile and so uncertain, and these new Stoics are saying, “You can do that. You can just rise above it all. You don’t feel any of that. You’re just your own person.” And yet, the Stoics argued for suicide, and they described what would bring you to the point where it was noble and virtuous to end it with equilibrium.
Augustine saw right through that contradiction. He said, “You can’t have it both ways. You can’t say that happiness is from rising above circumstances and turn around and say, ‘Circumstances can get so bad that you can end it.’ You can’t.” What he did was to go into the mindset of Stoicism and undermine it by just thinking it through as self-contradictory.
What I said to Zach, who gave this lecture, was “Zach, happiness was the common denominator there, and Augustine just took it for granted. They’re seeking happiness, and he’s saying, ‘You can’t have it your way. It can only be had by hope in an everlasting life.’” It’s about rejoicing in hope (Romans 5:2). And I said, “Do you think that’s the way Augustine tackled all the issues, making happiness and its quest the apologetic means by which he hooked the culture?” And he said, “I think it’s probably not the only way.” I said, “But it’s almost the only way, right?”
I haven’t read a lot of Augustine, but I read enough to know sovereign joy is his thing. Augustine is the greatest philosopher-theologian in the history of the church outside the apostle Paul, lots of people would say. Maybe Jonathan Edwards would come in second. If that’s true, we should not be ashamed, both from the history of theology and the Bible, to say the way to engage with culture is to tap into the universal pursuit of happiness. The message I just gave is my way of showing how deep that is. That’s not superficial. That’s not light. That’s weighty because God is supreme. You’re not.
That sounds to people like, “Oh, you’re going to make the pursuit of happiness the goal of life. That’s just selfish. That’s small. That’s man-centered.” Then you use the Bible, the God-centeredness of God, and Christian Hedonism to say, “No, no, no, no, you’re not getting it.” You take them up. This is just Piper’s bent. You hear Piper’s bent.
If I’m going to talk to any unbeliever in any country in the world through any language, I know one thing about that person: They don’t want to be sad. They don’t want to be discouraged. They don’t want to suffer. They want to be happy. They want to be glad. They want to have soul satisfaction to sleep well at night and feel good about the happiness they enjoy during the day without any guilt feelings at all. And only Christianity has the answer to that. For that to be true, you have to make much of the world to come.
I have one more story. Raise your hand if you’ve ever heard of Joni Eareckson Tada. She’s one of my heroes, and her new book, The Practice of the Presence of Jesus, just came out last fall and has an introduction in it that calls her a five-point Calvinist. It’s all there. I am teaching on that at my church. I read them this introduction, and then I said, “I’m going to write to her and say, ‘Why’d you do that? That really tips your hand. That makes a lot of enemies. We’re trying to just keep that underneath.’”
I wrote to her, and she wrote me back the day before yesterday. We know each other. I knew what she’s going to say. She said, “Why would I want to keep secret what keeps me alive? Why would I want to keep secret what sustains me every day of my life?” So, the sovereignty of God in the life of a sufferer is another thing that makes it universally culturally relevant.
At Desiring God, we have a mission statement, and the mission statement says, “Given the truth that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him, we exist to help people glorify God by helping them be satisfied in God above all things, especially in their suffering.” We didn’t always add that little thing at the end. When I wrote Desiring God, do you know the first criticism I got? People said, “This is just naive, typical American self-help. That’s what this book is. It’s just another book about how to be happy.” And they couldn’t have missed it more. I realized, “Okay, I have to make this clear.” So, the next edition had a chapter on suffering: “Suffering: The Sacrifice of Christian Hedonism.” That’s not in the first edition.
Suffering is universal. Everybody suffers. Even the rich people in the suburbs living in their mansions, having total insurance, are miserable. One hundred thousand of them overdosed with opioids last year. That’s not poor people. That’s middle-class people, desperately needing something more than what this world gives them, and they’re dying in droves. If you tap into suffering, and you have a theology big enough to carry you through suffering, that’s another cultural engagement that really does carry the day, I think.
Thank you. Now, you told us earlier tonight that you’d spoken at twenty Passion conferences. How do you hope your legacy of ministry lives on — or do you?
Yeah, I think about that. Should you live and influence the moment? The Bible says they minister to their generation, and I think that is your primary responsibility. I don’t think you are responsible for influencing people fifty years from now — or let’s just say one hundred years from now because some of you will live fifty years. A lot of you will live fifty years. I won’t.
Number one, don’t worry too much about living to make an impact one hundred years from now. That’s not your responsibility. It isn’t. I don’t see anything about it. You are responsible for those people sitting in front of you on Sunday and loving them well, and if God wants to do something with that after you’re gone, he can. If you think about it, then what would you want it to be? I would want it to be this: “He loved God, and he helped people love God. Through that, he helped people love their neighbor, which is the great commandment.” This is not rocket science. There is one great commandment, and there’s a second one that’s like it. Did he love God? Did he help people love God? Did he love his neighbor? That’s huge for me.
I would like to be known as somebody who was faithful to his wife all the way to the end. I sit beside this woman 55 years now every night, and we just look at each other and say, “So, who’s going to take care of the other one?” In other words, when we take the dining room table out and put a hospice bed in there, which one of us is it going to be? The answer is, “Whoever it is, I’m taking care of you. I’m going to be there. I’m not going to any conferences when you’re there.” I’ve watched men and women do that in our church, and I just stand in awe. I stand in awe of a man or a woman who gives up almost everything to be there for the dying spouse. That’s another big one.
We have a lot of potential church planters in here, and we have church planters that are just starting to plant churches, and we have church planters that are planting churches in countries across the world. We were just in Latin America this week with planters from nine countries. What do you think are some of the challenges you’re seeing church planters face today?
I knew that one was coming too. The more I thought about it, the more they are changeless. They are changeless. I thought of ignorance. I thought of death (that is, the people are dead). They’re ignorant. They’re dead. I thought of opposition or persecution. And I thought of discouragement. Now, let me just say a word about each. How much time do we have?
Plenty of time.
Okay, I won’t take long, but I think those are universal. I think they’re in every generation, and I think they’re the deadliest opponents we have. What was the first one? Tell me my first one.
Ignorance.
Ignorance, thank you very much. (This is called being 78 years old.) In Ephesus, is it not amazing that in Acts 19, when he’s driven out of the synagogue, he rents the hall of Tyrannus, and he teaches every day? Now, several manuscripts say from 11:00 in the morning till 4:00 in the afternoon, or whatever. He teaches every day for two and a half years. All of Asia heard the word of God in one place (Acts 19:10). That’s the antidote to ignorance: teach, teach, teach, teach, teach.
Your people don’t know God. They don’t know God, and those poor Ephesians were saying, “Who is this crazy guy?” They could say, “Well, just go down into the hall of Tyrannus. He teaches every day down there.” Isn’t that amazing? I just think, “God, I want to do that. I want to do that.” That’s my little ignorance piece.
Next, consider opposition. Do you know what the answer is to persecution and criticism, which drive men out of the ministry? Joy.
Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. (Matthew 5:11–12)
That’s a miracle. The best antidote to being criticized and reviled and persecuted is that you have a great reward in heaven, and it is so great and so sure that you can smile and be happy. The world needs happy people in the face of suffering. That’s opposition.
“I stand in awe of a man or a woman who gives up almost everything to be there for the dying spouse.”
Regarding death, in 1 Corinthians 1:23–24, Paul says, “We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” The reason the Jews demand signs and the Gentiles call it foolishness is because they’re dead. They can’t see anything glorious in Christ crucified. They think, “That’s just idiotic, a piece of meat hanging on a stick. You call that God and Savior? That’s foolishness. We need a sign. You come down from the cross, and then we’ll believe” — which was a pure lie.
Paul preaches that crazy gospel. Some people believe, and they believe because of the sovereign call of God, who says, “Lazarus, come forth.” That’s great. That’s the way you preach. So, the antidote to deadness is to preach Christ crucified, call down the power of the Holy Spirit, and watch the dead be raised.
What was the last one? Discouragement. Well, this was a big deal because I preached it a few weeks ago at Kevin DeYoung’s Coram Deo pastors conference, and they wanted me to do an exposition of 2 Corinthians 4. Oh my goodness. Throw me into the briar patch. (That’s an allusion nobody in here understands.) He says twice in that chapter, “We do not lose heart” (2 Corinthians 4:1, 16). Losing heart is a big enemy for church planting or for enduring in ministry. “I just lose heart. It’s just too hard, too discouraging.”
He has several arguments. I gave eight arguments for why they shouldn’t be discouraged, but the one that’s so clear in 2 Corinthians 4:16 is this: “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.” So, this 78-year-old nature is wasting away, but our inner nature is being renewed day by day. Then he says,
We look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:18)
There it is again, the remedy to losing heart and the wasting away. I said to them, and I’ll say to you, “If you say this ministry is killing me,” my response is, “That’s no reason to quit.” It killed Paul. Paul said, “I carry about in my body the death of Jesus” (see 2 Corinthians 4:10). This ministry is killing me. That’s what your people watch. They’re watching how you die. Does this man die with joy? Does he have his eyes set on things that are eternal, or does he want to write more books? Does he want to get his name on more placards? Does he want to get more followers? Is he all about money and about fame, or is dying in the ministry for us?
That’s what the whole of 2 Corinthians is about. That’s all it is. We are being comforted in our sufferings with the comfort with which we want to comfort you. We want to comfort you with the comfort with which we are being comforted by God (2 Corinthians 1:4). Pastor, your suffering, your discouragement, your dying in the ministry, is remedied by “we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen.” They are eternal.
Thank you, Pastor John. You’ve served us for 25 years of our history and some of us for even longer. We’d like to close tonight with praying for Pastor John, so can I ask you to just extend a hand toward him? We’ll thank God for his presence in our lives and pray for him.
Father, we thank you for the celebration of Reformed theology that we’ve heard tonight, the celebration of who you are, the celebration of the fact that we are kept, and nothing can pull us away from you. We thank you for using the gifting that you gave Pastor John to impact so many of us, but our ultimate goal is that we would make much of you. So, I pray tonight that as we’ve heard what we’ve read, as we’ve heard what we’ve preached, as we have heard what we believe, that we would walk away from here and make much of you.
I pray that you would be magnified like we began singing tonight. Christ be magnified. We do pray that you would continue to bless Pastor John and his ministry as, hopefully, he has many years left to serve us, and to minister us, and to teach us how to make much of you. So, we thank you for his ministry, and we pray over him tonight in Jesus’s name. Amen.
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