John Piper: The Gospel Will Triumph

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people and storms in the Philippine water sink ferry boats with 800 people on board, and AIDS and malaria and cancer and heart disease kill millions every year, old and young, indiscriminately and Monster torn. Potatoes level, Midwestern towns and droughts and famines bring millions to the brink and over the brink of starvation, freak accidents happen so that a son of a friend falls into a grain elevator and drowns in the grain and another loses an eye from a lawn mower, and a baby is born with no face, if we could see at any given moment, 110 1,000th of the world suffering happening at that moment, we would not be able to bear it. We would pass out or throw up. Only one person can bear that sight, God Almighty, and bear up and keep going. Why? Why did God do this to the world? Why did he subject creation to such futility and bondage, to corruption and decay, the creation didn’t do anything you

God said, Cursed be the ground because of you. Poor ground. The creation was subjected to futility because of you. God said, why God? You said, on the day that you eat of it, you’ll die. Just do that. Just just death, just a simple death. Wouldn’t that do it just life, then death and no eternity or hell. But what’s this kaleidoscope of agony? What is this? Why so many children with so many heart wrenching disabilities? Sometimes I feel like my church is got something in the water.

My answer is that God put the natural world under a curse, so that the physical horrors we see around us, diseases, calamities, would become a vivid picture of how horrible sin is. In other words, Natural Evil is a signpost to the unspeakable wickedness of moral evil. God disordered the natural world because the disorder of the moral and spiritual world is so great, and we don’t feel it. In our present fallen condition. Our hearts are so dull and so blinded to the exceeding wickedness of sin. We can’t see it. We can’t feel how repugnant sin is. Hardly anyone, do you know anyone? Hardly anyone in the world feels the abhorrent evil that our sin is. Almost no one is incensed or nauseated at how they belittle the glory of God. How many people do you know that at the end of the day, or shaking their fist in their face and wanting to almost throw up at how much they have demeaned God that day? Almost nobody. We don’t see it, we don’t feel it, but let God touch my little finger and he’s in the duck. What are you doing? How is there any justice here? Diseases, deformities are Satan’s pride and in God’s overruling Providence, they are God’s portraits of what sin is like in the spiritual realm. That’s true, even though some of the most godly people bear the most. Horrible deformities. I preached this last three minutes or so on the fourth anniversary of 911 at our church. It was the first time it landed on a Sunday. The anniversary 2005 was it? I person, I said that knowing who’s out there, about three weeks later, in a pre service prayer meeting at the North Campus, a dozen people or so gathered for prayer. One of these moms was there with one of these children flopping and noisy in his

little carriage,

and she prayed this, oh, God,

help me to feel

as intense bad about my sin

as I do about my boy’s disability.

You see why I love being a pastor. This went down into her soul, put a whole new perspective every day she hates this,

every day she feels with everything in her this shouldn’t be this way, and I’ve given her another just one more way to put meaning on that. This is God’s way to help you hate your

sin. You in

that’s a picture of sin. That’s where sin is going, that’s at the physical level, what sin is at the spiritual level. But who feels that?

Almost nobody.

That’s how sick we are, how blind we are, how numb we are to our moral condition, oh, that we could feel how repugnant and how offensive and how abominable it is to prefer anything to our maker, television,

wife, ministry, if we

ignore him, we distrust him, we demean him, we give him less attention than the carpet on Our living room floor when it’s time to change it. We got we got to see this, or we’ll never fly to Christ, and we will not want heaven for any other reason than relief, and those who only want heaven for relief won’t go there. So this is important. God mercifully shouts to us in our sickness and pain and calamities, wake up preferring television to fellowship with me is like this,

like this disability, this faceless baby. That’s what preferring television to me is like.

Or that’s what desiring heaven for relief alone is like in my eyes, the natural world is shot through with horrors that aim to wake us up from the dream world that thinking demeaning God is no big deal.

That’s what it’s for.

Back to the big picture. I’m almost to my text. Back to the big picture. God created the heavens and the earth out of nothing. It was very good.

It was so good.

No pain, no evil, no death, full of everything good. And then this horrific heart choice of anything over God brought the whole creation down. And down, and God subjected it to futility, into the bondage of corruption.

So what? What’s to become of us? What’s to become of. US and what’s to become of creation.

What do you say to the parents whose child will never in this life have a mental power beyond six months old? Here’s what you do, here’s what you say. You open your Bible, and I invite you to right now to Romans eight, because everything else I have to say from here on out is an attempt at an exposition of these verses. It

would be good for you to memorize Romans, eight, a whole chapter. It’s it is the greatest chapter in the Bible, maybe competed for by Romans three, I nine. So let’s read verses 18 to 25 I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing to the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now verse 23 and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit grown inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope, we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope for who hopes what he sees, but if we hope for what we do not see,

we wait for it with patience.

Young pastors, this text is one of the most important texts to get clarity on for your pastoral ministry and for your people from the beginning of your ministry. Here’s what I mean when I came to Bethlehem in 1980 it’ll be 27 years ago in

four weeks,

one of the first sermons, I can’t remember how quick, within a month or so, was called Christ and cancer. From this text, you can read it online. Isn’t that amazing? Everything I’ve ever preached is online, how humiliating you can hear what I sound like 27 years ago, like a hick in a high voice. I mean, maybe I sound that way now, but there it is because of this reason, my church, 27 years ago was 300 gray heads. I did a funeral every three weeks for a year and a half. That’s no exaggeration. So I knew that immediately I’m going to be in the hospital every week, multiple times, and I want them to know what I’m not thinking when I come. Namely, if you had faith, you wouldn’t be here. I wanted to say right off the bat, I don’t believe that. And this verse 23 is the reason I don’t believe it not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit grown inwardly, waiting, waiting, waiting for the adoption of our the redemption of our bodies. That was the universal experience of this church still is only now they’re young, seems like so in your ministry, nail that near the near the front end, your people need to know what you think about them Getting sick. It’s more complicated than this, but that’s important. And they need to know where you stand, so that when you stand by their bed, they have a theological framework for what you mean when you say, what you say. And if you’ve done that well, you don’t have to say anything. You can kiss them. You. Yeah, so the text is important, and I want to put it in four observations, four observations to try to get at the meaning of the new heavens and the new earth and the relationship of the gospel to it. Observation number one, God promises that there will be liberation of the creation from its utility and its bondage to decay. God promises that there will be liberation from for this creation, from its futility and its bondage to corruption. Verse 21 first half of the verse, the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption. The world, the natural world, will be freed from the curse of the subjection to futility and corruption. That’s Paul’s way of saying, the new heavens and the new earth are coming. The Earth, sky that we know will be freed this earth. That’s what he says, this earth will be a new earth. This Earth will be a new earth. Let me just read you the new earth, new Heaven. Passages, just the verse Isaiah, 6517, Behold, I create a new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. Isaiah, 6622 as the new heavens and the new earth that I make shall remain before me, says the Lord, so shall your offspring and your name remain. Second. Peter 313, according to according to his promise, we wait. We are waiting for a new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. Revelation. 21, one, then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. For the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and see was no more. Verse four, He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away, acts 319, Repent therefore and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out. The times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that He may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all things about which God spoke by the mouth of the Holy Prophets long ago. So Paul’s words in verse 21, of Romans eight, the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption. Means this old earth will become a new earth. He understands the word new to mean renewed. Not like I got a new car. It’s not the same car. When you get a new car,

new Kainos can mean renewed new because it’s been fixed. So one of the things you say to this mom with this disabled baby, child, seven year old, whatever you know, the Bible teaches that even though your son has been denied a lifetime of leaping and Running on this earth to the glory of God, there is a new earth coming freed from every disease and every disability, and he will not just have a lifetime, but an eternity to run and leap to the Glory of God. And this world will have seen like a light and momentary affliction in comparison to the eternal weight of glory. That’s observation number one, this creation will be liberated. Number two, this liberation of the natural order, from its bondage to corruption, will be a participation in the freedom of the glory of the children of God. This is mind boggling. Verse 21 the whole verse Now the creation itself will be. Set free from its bondage to corruption and

obtain

the freedom of the glory of the children of God. Now the order here is very important, just as the creation followed fallen man into corruption, the creation follows redeemed man into glory, one might be tempted to say, if one were given to quick logic instead of disciplined exegesis, one might be tempted to say to the parent of a suffering child. You see what the Bible says? It says that the natural order, the creation, is going to be set free from its bondage to corruption. Well, your body and your child’s body are part of that natural order, isn’t it, aren’t they? Yes, well then you too, you too, are included. You will be drawn into that liberation. Isn’t that wonderful? Well, it would be wonderful. It’s just not the way Paul’s thinking at all. It’s emphatically not what he says. What he says is that our bodies will be redeemed in this new order. We wait eagerly for adoption as sons. Verse 23 the redemption of our bodies. And our bodies are not drawn into this newness by being part of creation, which generically gets fixed. It’s the other way around. Amazingly, it’s the other way around. The Creation The universe is drawn up into the freedom of the glory of the children of God in verse 21 the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and the creation. All the galaxies, all the oceans, all the mountains, all the cells and atoms will obtain your freedom. You don’t obtain its freedom. It obtains your freedom of the glory of the children of God. The freedom of the glory of the children of God comes first then having glorified His children with the new and glorious bodies which Jesus said will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father, then the whole creation is fitted as A suitable dwelling for the glorified family. So you say to the parents of the disabled child, your child will not be changed to fit the new glorified universe. The new universe will be changed to fit the glory

of your child. The

point of verse 21 is that God loves his children and provides what’s best for them. You see that phrase, just don’t miss that. We fly over things. You stop and Muse the freedom of the glory, not of the saints, the freedom of the glory, not of the redeemed, the freedom of the glory of the children. He’s thinking five verses earlier, right, Romans 816, and 17, the Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we’re the children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God, and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with Him, in order that we might be glorified with Him. The point of verse 21 is that the new heavens and the new earth are the inheritance of the children the universe isn’t get this. Just keep things straight here in your eschatology and your environmentalism, which you should care about and not belittle like some right wing talk show host, but get it straight, the universe is not important in itself. It’s important as the playground of the children of God in. And The Temple of the children of God and the farm of the children of God and the craft store of the children of God. It gets its importance by God’s fitting his children with the glory of his son, and then looking at this creation and saying, I want you to be this

way for my family. It happens.

The inheritance of the children is what matters here, the designs of the universe, the designs of God are for a universe for his children. Your disabled child won’t have to adapt anymore. His body will be totally redeemed and new, and everything in creation will be adapted to him. Number three, the arrival of the new, liberated creation is compared to a birth. So there’s not only continuity with this world, but discontinuity verse 22 For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth. Soon, no dine.

Until now. When a child is born, the child is human and not a horse. There’s continuity, but he’s not the mother. There’s discontinuity. Now I don’t think it would be exegetically warranted to force this metaphor to mean there is an exact one to one correspondence between this world and the world that’s coming and a mother and her child, but surely, the choice of that verb does signify that we should at least look around The New Testament for evidences of discontinuity, as well as continuity between this earth and the new earth, and they abound. Let me give you a few. For Paul, the most important place is First Corinthians 15. He says in verse 35 someone will ask, how are the dead raised with? What kind of body do they come? In other words, if we’re going to have a new earth with new bodies, what are they like? How do they come? And here’s the answer that he gives verse 37 what you sow is not the body that is to be that’s discontinuity, pretty clear, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. Now that sounds very creator like, not just Redeemer like, and frankly, I am thankful if he said it that way, because you and I both know that almost all of our ancestors atoms are in other people and animals and plants,

if we were shut up to God Finding the bodies that have died of our loved ones and then making them new, we would have a problem. But God is God. And I think Paul is trying to say this in a way, that by the end, you’re going to hear the key word. But it’s very strange. Very strange. Verse 42 what is sown perishable is raised imperishable. It is sown in dishonor. It is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness. It is raised in power. It is sown a natural body. It’s raised a spiritual body.

What in the world is that?

Speaker 1

But notice, it’s it, it it it is sown. It is raised. It is sown. It is raised.

John Piper

This is not the new car. This is you. You if there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body, body continuity, natural spiritual discontinuity. Verse 49 just as we have borne the image of the man of dust Adam, we shall bear the image of the man of heaven, Christ. Those images are not identical, but there’s continuity. We’re in the image of Christ and Adam. Adam was created in the image of God. I tell you this, brothers, flesh and blood, cannot inherit the kingdom of God, something’s got to change so that this is just not what it was anymore. Behold, I tell you, a mystery is that the only place I didn’t do my homework here, I’m just going to guess, is that the only place in the New Testament where musterion does not refer learn mean, as we all learn in seminary, not something you can’t understand, but something that has been long concealed and is now revealed. Is this the only place where it means and is still concealed and will be because John said, chapter three, verse two of the letter, it does not yet appear what We shall we just know when we see him, we’ll be like

him. Second Peter, 37 draws out some more discontinuity by the same word the heavens and earth are that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly. Jesus said, talk about discontinuity in the resurrection. They neither marry, nor are given in marriage. They’re like angels in heaven. I just finished a 10 week series on marriage. Almost finished. I made a big deal out of this, because I don’t want people to idolize marriage. Want to idolize Jesus, and marriage is a picture of him and his church, and when that marriage happens, this was not needed anymore. So don’t make it too big. And then I preached a series on a sermon on singleness, which was very easy to do after that King.

John the Apostle says, I’m still on discontinuity and continuity. The first heaven and the first earth had passed away and the sea

was no more.

I don’t know if I like that,

and so I use a little hermeneutical prestidigitation here. What you could just make it a lake, Pacific Lake, Atlantic lake. And I wonder if he doesn’t mean that. I just know seems like we’re going to miss something if the crashing of the waves in the Psalms don’t shout the glory of God anymore.

So I’m tempted to think that

what was so threatening about this Leviathan laden, deep unknown on the other end is just that, if you get the Leviathan out of there, and you know, there’s a coast on the other side, and nobody’s ever gonna drown cool surf, I just, I don’t know. I’m speculating, somehow or other discontinuity with the present ocean and more, and this hurts more. The city has no need of sun and.

Or moon

to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the lamb and night

will be no more.

That’s different. No sun, no moon, no night, just the father and the son so radiant they produce something like light. And I promise you whatever He replaces the sun with, or whether or not he means changing the sun here, like the ocean in some way,

you won’t regret it.

No night, no sun, no moon, no sea, no marriage, spiritual bodies, world brought through fire. We’re talking discontinuity and massive, glorious continuity, Philippians, 321, he will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body by the power that enables him to subject all things to himself. What sort of body was Jesus, resurrection. Body, one recognizable, two spatially inexplicable, arriving, disappearing in ways you can’t explain. And most refreshing and imagination tickling Luke. 2439 to 43 see my hands and my feet. It is on myself. Touch me and see a spirit doesn’t have flesh and bones, as you see that I have and when he said this, he showed them his hands and his feet, while they still disbelieved for joy and were marveling, he said, Do

you have anything to eat?

And they gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and he ate it before them,

parents of disabled children, straight child has never fed himself. Can hardly keep it in his mouth.

And they ask, Will he ever grow up? When does he grow up? How does grow up? Work? Will he eat on his own? Will he eat? Will Will he be able to make anything? Never made anything like one of those little dandelion things? Will you pop a little hole to the top, stick the next dandelion, chain dandelion. He never done anything like that. Can he do that? And we say to her dad, God will make

this world in a way that nothing is wasted. Doesn’t create material things to waste them. Your son will eat with Jesus fish, if nothing else. I’m sure there will be something else, unless he gives me a new palette.

God will give him full development. What stage will he be? 18, forever or 29 forever or 34 you have any idea what the optimal age is for children in the kingdom?

My answer it will be such a level of development that will be for his maximum joy and God’s maximum glory. So we close by asking one more question and giving one more observation. What’s the deepest assurance we can give to these parents or yourself in your suffering, and what’s the highest hope for their son and for themselves, which brings us now to the fourth observation and to the gospel. Fourth observation, finally, the hope of having redeemed bodies in the new creation is secured by our. Salvation, which we received through faith in the gospel. But this is not our best hope. That is receiving new bodies is not our best hope. I’m directing your attention finally, to verses 23 second half of the verse and 24 we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. Four, ground, ground claws, four. This is their assurance. This is the rock under their feet. For in this hope we were saved, one of the few places where Paul uses saved bluntly, in the airst.

What does that mean?

What does it mean in this hope we were saved? It’s a dative, not in El pity, it’s just k l pity. Perhaps I’m inclined to a dative of reference, with reference to this hope we were saved, meaning, when we were saved, this hope was secured for us. And witnesses were saved by banking on the gospel of Christ, crucified and risen. First, Corinthians, 15, one to three in this you were saved. The Gospel is the foundation that produces the salvation on which this hope is secured, which is, I presume, why I was assigned this topic, the triumph of the gospel in the new heavens and the new earth. If there were no gospel, if Christ had not died and risen for sins, we certainly would not be included in the new heavens. And I think there would be no new heavens and no new earth, but last observations. We can’t leave it there. The gospel is the rock of our solid assurance of the hope of the new heavens and the new earth. We will be raised bodies will be redeemed the gospel of Christ crucified, providing pardon, providing righteousness, vindicating this by resurrection. All of that is true. It’s just not the main thing you

the ultimate gift of the gospel is not the new heavens and the new earth. The ultimate good of the gospel is not the redeemed body. The ultimate good of the gospel is not forgiveness of sins, not redemption, not propitiation, not justification. These are all means the ultimate good of the gospel is God himself be held in the glory of his crucified and risen son, enjoyed because of his infinite beauty, treasured because of his infinite worth, and reflected because we’re being conformed to The image of his Son, Christ, suffered once the righteous for the unrighteous that he might bring us

to God.

There is no end after that. Everything before that is means, and I’m concerned, and I just want to close with this, and one last paragraph, I’m concerned that we reform types. So love the doctrine of justification, so love propitiation, so love penal substitution, as I do and will write with all my might to defend that we stop the message there and leave people with perhaps the sense that what the gospel does for them is. Get them out of hell, relieve them of their guilt, clothe them with a righteousness that lets them have relief in heaven forever, perhaps virgins or perhaps golf or perhaps mom.

But they don’t

crave Christ there. That’s my concern. The Gospel terminates on First Peter 318 that he might bring us to God. I close with this paragraph. The ultimate reason there is a new heavens and a new earth is because the risen Christ will never lay down his human body but keep it as an everlasting emblem of Calvary, where the glory of God’s grace was displayed most

fully.

Don’t let anybody tell you we will not sing of the slaughter of the Sun forever. Swagi, my means slaughter. The Lamb slain before the foundation of the world stands like a lamb, slain Lion of Judah forever, and we will sing of it forever. He will hold out his hands and his feet and eat fish forever. And the cross will never cease to be the center of everything as the revelation, the apex of the revelation of the glory of the grace of God, the whole mirror material universe was created in the first place and then given new form so that the Son of God could be incarnate, could suffer, could be crucified, could rise from the dead, could reign as the God man could be surrounded by a countless host of redeemed People with glorified bodies who will sing with these glorified lips, and who will love each other with glorified hands, and who will play with glorified bodies to the glory of God, because, evidently, In God’s scheme of things, to have created mere spirits would not display all of his manifold kaleidoscopic glory, as well as if there had been a physical universe Where the Son of God could physically be slaughtered let’s pray, Father in heaven. We want to be there. Hasten the day of God. Wrap it up. If there is anything that we can do, if there’s anything that we can do that would complete your purposes and bring down King Jesus and transform all these children. Help us to do it. Don’t let us spend our time entertaining ourselves. Let us spend our time displaying in our bodies. It is my eager expectation and hope that now, as always, Christ might be magnified in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain. You can’t say that. Oh, God, don’t let us try to say it while we are swallowed up in an entertainment culture.

Pray these things in Jesus. Name you.