Beeson Podcast, Episode #122 Name Date >>Announcer: Welcome to the Beeson podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. Now your host, Timothy George. >>Timothy George: Welcome to today’s Beeson Podcast. Dr Robert Smith Jr and I are here in the studio and today we have the privilege of introducing to you a sermon by Dr John Piper. Now, John Piper for many years was the pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church in the Twin Cities in Minnesota. He’s a native of South Carolina. He attended Four Theological Seminary. He is a Doctor of Theology from the University of Munich. He’s a scholar pastor. >>Smith: That’s right. >>Timothy George: A deep student of the word of God and probably one of the best-known voices today in the evangelical church, proclaiming the word of God from a strong reformed perspective that comes through in this sermon, his emphasis on the sovereignty of God, but a sermon also that has great pastoral application. So, tell us what we’re going to hear from Dr John Piper. >>Smith: This is John Piper, I think, in a way that we can see him as being unapologetic, pastoral sensitive, and yet taking a strong stand on the title of his sermon, “The Supernatural and Sustaining Grace of God.” His integrating definition being, George, I think is what carries his sermon. This is the spine. This is the backbone of it. Sovereign, sustaining grace is not free to bar what is not bliss nor flight from distress. But this grace that orders our trouble and pain and then in the darkness is there to sustain. So, he provides from Jeremiah chapter 32, verses 36-41, he provides a way of responding to what he calls the inevitable things that will happen. When the cancer report comes, when the kids don’t come home after two years, when there are marital riffs, he says that sovereign grace will bring you to the bottom of assurance and will enable you to persevere, which of course is very biblical reformed and biblical. And I think that in the times that people live today, the leavers must know that that’s the only thing that will enable us to persevere. >>Timothy George: We’ve been privileged to have Dr John Piper at Beeson Divinity School on several occasions, and this is one of the sermons that he preached in Hodges Chapel. We go there now to listen to Dr John Piper. >>Piper: If you have your Bible, I invite you to turn to the text that was read. Jeremiah, chapter 32. And you need to feel the reformation wonder if you have a Bible in your lap. October 6, 1536, one great saint let goods and kindred go this mortal life, also named William Tindell, and was strangled and then burned for one basic reason. He thought you should have a Bible in your lap and that’s why they killed him. The Catholic church peeled him because he thought the Bible should be in English. The reformation really matters. It really matters. Oh, how precious are our Bibles and those who gave our lives that we might look at Jeremiah 32 in a language we can understand. My theme here is the sustaining grace of God, the sovereign sustaining grace of God. I want to begin with a kind of definition and then a couple of illustrations and stories from my life and then unpack it from this text. The definition flows out of years now of dealing with pain. And it’s intensifying, is it not, in the world it seems. At least it looks that way. I sat with a couple whose daughter, Jenny, was hit by a speeding driver and killed two weeks ago at our church and heard them say it was a sovereign car. Twenty-two years old. I got an email yesterday at the hotel from the parents who lost three daughters in a car accident last January who I heard about and just wrote them a word of encouragement and they wrote me back to say thank you for the word. God is faithful. God is sovereign. God rules. It hurts like you don’t know what, but God reigns. I buried, with Wayne Grudem, his daughter in law, twenty-three years old last April. And the list just goes on and on and on. Don’t go into the ministry if you don’t love helping people trust God in the middle of pain. A sovereign God. So, here’s my definition of the grace that I’m talking about. Not grace to bar what is not bliss nor flight from all distress but this, the grace that orders our trouble and pain and then in the darkness is there to sustain. That’s my definition of sovereign, sustaining grace. I’ll give it to you again. Not grace to bar what is not bliss nor flight from all distress but this, the grace that orders our trouble and pain and then in the darkness is there to sustain. First story, Bob Ricker use to be the President of the Baptist General Conference of which we are a part. And he came and spoke at our church about ten years ago and I remember this story so vividly because of the turn it took. His daughter was driving down the road as a teenager and had a serious accident, was thrown from the car and was not breathing and was turning blue. A car pulled up behind her and it happened to be a doctor. And in his pocket, he happened to have one of those instruments by which you do an emergency tracheotomy. When he put it in her throat, he risked lawsuits to save her life. She did survive. And then Bob did her wedding and at her wedding he looked down at her and pointed to the scar on her throat in her beautiful wedding dress and said to her, those are memorials of sovereign, sustaining grace. Because of the marvel that there would be a car behind, it would have a doctor in it, the doctor would have the right instrument, the doctor would have the courage to use it, and then it would work and that she would live felt like a sovereign, sustaining grace. Now, the catch is a God who can see to it that there’s a doctor in the car behind, see to it that he has the instrument in his pocket, see to it that he has the kind of courage and heart to use it could have prevented the accident very easily. Use that same power to just avert the accident. Make life easy. But sovereign, sustaining grace is not grace to bar what is not bliss nor flight from all distress but this, the grace that orders our trouble and pain and then in the darkness is there to sustain. Here's another little one. This is just little. I could give you big ones, but this is the little one. My wife, when did this happen, 12 years ago, is driving from Minneapolis to Indianapolis. Actually, she’s going to South Carolina, but this happened in Indianapolis. So, in the car was little Tabitha so it can’t be 12 years ago because she’s only 10. Okay. Back that one up. Whatever. Eight years ago. She was little. So, Tabitha is there, Barnabas was there, and Abraham was there, and the car died. It’s Saturday afternoon. There’s no husband in the car to take care of her and she’s thinking, I’ve got three kids, it’s Saturday, no places open, I don’t know what’s wrong with this car, and a man pulls up behind. He’s a farmer in his mid-60’s. He looks at the situation and says, well, you could come stay with us. She said, “I think we need a motel” because you don’t just say to a stranger, well come to our house, right. And then he says, “well you know, the Lord says if you do good things to others, it’s like doing them unto Him”, which kind of gives us a little clue, maybe this is safe. So, she comes back with a little parry and says, “could we go to church with you tomorrow morning?” And he said, “if you could take a Baptist church.” So, now the deal is closed and so they’re off to stay with the farmer and the farmer turns out to be a retired aviation mechanic. He drives early Monday morning to Indianapolis, buys a radiator, puts it in, does not charge for anything, sends her on her way, and in the meantime, Barnabas, the only fisherman in our family who’s 22 years old today so you do the math, he was small, younger and he throws his line into the only pond on this farm he can find and catches a 19 inch catfish. The best day of vacation is the day when the car broke down. So, if God could make sure that a farmer stops behind, and that he’s an aviation mechanic, and that he’s a Christian, and a Baptist to boot, and that he knows where to get a radiator, and that he is willing to put it in, and could arrange for a little, a big catfish to be tooling around in the bottom of the pond and latch on to Barnabas’ hook, and make it the best day, then he could have preserved this radiator all the way to South Carolina and back. But sovereign, sustaining grace is not grace to bar what is not bliss nor flight from all distress but this, the grace that orders our trouble and pain and then in the darkness is there to sustain. “Children of the Heavenly Father”, you know that old Swedish song? It’s an amazing, an amazing song. Actually it’s “Day by Day.” I see now. “Day by Day.” That’s the one I’m thinking about. “And with each passing moment, strength I find to meet my trials here, trusting in my father’s wise bestowment. There’s no cause for worry or for fear. He whose heart is kind beyond all measure gives unto each day what He deems best, lovingly it’s part of pain and pleasure mingling toil with peace and rest.” I wonder if you’d believe that. God gives appropriate measures of pain and pleasure each day. I’ve got lots of other stories that illustrate the point, and so do you but I’m going to skip them and go to the text with you. So, we’re at Jeremiah 32 and we’ll see the Bible foundations for what we’ve been talking about. The situation, as you can see, is that Jerusalem, God’s chosen people, are in darkness and distress in Babylon and God himself has been there, very clearly and very decisively. Let’s read verse 36. “Now therefore thus says the Lord God of Israel concerning this city of which you say,” so they’re going to get the first word here, “of which you say it is given into the hand of the king of Babylon by sword, by famine, and by pestilence.” So, that’s what they say and that’s absolutely true and God’s the one who did it and you can see that in verse 37. “Behold, I will gather them out of all the lands to which I have driven you.” No accident here, that Babylon didn’t get the upper hand without God’s hand. “I have driven you there in my anger and my wrath and in great indignation and I will bring them back to this place and make them dwell in safely.” So, God gets the last word, and the last word is going to be grace, but they were driven there by God. God is ordering their trouble and pain. And then in the darkness, if they will have it, He’s there to sustain and turn it around. Now, let me personalize this and ask you how you are sure that the last word will be grace in your life or that when you’ve been send into exile, God will bring you back. Let me get right to the heart of the matter. If you profess faith in Jesus Christ and count on ever lasting life, how do you know that you will persevere till the end in faith and not make shipwreck of your faith and be lost? How do you know that? People give different answers to that kind of question. Let me ask it this way. How do you know that you will wake up a believer tomorrow morning? What’s your confidence that you will wake up a believer tomorrow morning? A kind of trajectory? Been going well for 30 years, you know. Highly unlikely that I will wake up an unbeliever tomorrow morning. How do you know that? What’s at the bottom of your confidence that you will trust God tomorrow, that you will believe in Jesus Christ tomorrow, that you will not apostatize, throw Him away, think it was all a mistake and abandon Him and go into lechery? It happens to pastors who’ve been in churches for 30 years. So, what’s your confidence that you will wake up wanting to pray tomorrow morning, wanting to believe that Jesus is the son of God, wanting to trust in His cross? What is your confidence? My confidence is sovereign grace, not free will, not my resolves. Left to myself, I will not wake up a believer tomorrow morning. Left to myself, I will go another way than the way of Calvary. “Oh, to grace, how great a debtor, daily I am,” daily, daily “I’m constrained to be.” Let thy goodness like a chain, that word fetter, don’t let it land on us. Chain me! Do you pray that way, I wonder. Chain me. “Let thy goodness like a fetter bind my wandering heart to thee.” I hope you pray like that. “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love. Take my heart oh God and seal it.” Whatever cement, whatever glue, whatever chain, fetter it takes, don’t let me go. Our only hope is that He will answer that prayer. If He doesn’t answer that prayer, we will forsake the Lord and perish. So, I ask you, when it comes to sustaining grace, sovereign, sustaining grace, do you pray keep me, preserve me, defeat every rising rebellion in me, over come every nibbling doubt, deliver me from destructive temptation, nullify every fatal allurement, expose every demonic deception in my soul, tear down every arrogant argument that rises up against you, shape me, incline me, hold me, master me, do whatever you have to do but don’t let me go? Do you pray that? Or is it just kind of an automatic thing for you? Have you been taught theology is kind of automatic? I just signed a card, or I prayed a prayer and safe, no battle, no fight, no obedience to Romans 8:13, “put to death the deeds of the body” because if you don’t, you perish. Those who live according to the flesh will die. Paul speaks to the church. It’s war and we fight. What is the confidence that we will win this battle of perseverance in faith? There’s only one answer and it isn’t your resolve. It is sovereign, sustaining, persevering grace. So, now let’s go to verses 38 to 41. I’m at a seminary, therefore I’m assuming some things. I’m assuming the ability to make the move from a new covenant, Old Testament text to the cross. I probably shouldn’t assume. But I’ll say it briefly. When Jesus lifted up the cup and said, “this cup is the new covenant in my blood”, he meant at least what this represents is the blood I will shortly shed by which I purchased God’s yes to every new covenant promise in the Old Testament. Anybody who inherits any promise from the Old Testament inherits it because I shed my blood and the only people who inherit the promises are those who are in Christ, covered by the blood, whatever their ethnic connections. And everyone in Christ under the blood inherit verses 38 to 41 of Jeremiah 32. That might be a sermon by itself [inaudible 00:21:20] but that’s enough. We’re at a seminary. Let’s read verses 38 to 41. “They shall be my people and I will be their God and I will give them one heart and one way that they may fear me all their days always for their own good and the good of their children after them. And I will make an everlasting covenant with them that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts so that they will not turn away from me. And I will rejoice over them to do them good, and I will faithfully plant them in this land with all my heart and with all my soul.” I want you to see four promises, four absolutely breathtaking promises made to new covenant members who are in Christ Jesus. Number one, verse 38, God promises to be our God. “They will be my people and I will be their God.” All the promises of the Bible are summed up in this. I will be their God. I will use all my God-ness, all my wisdom, and all my power, and all my love to see to it that you will be my people and I will work with all my deity, all that I am as God, I exert for you. That’s what it means to be God’s people. All His God-ness is on our side. All His God-ness is for us. All His God-ness is working not to bar what is not bliss nor flight from all distress but this, to govern and order our trouble and pain and then in the darkness to be there and sustain and one day, one day wipe away every tear from our eyes and restore us wholly, body, soul, and spirit. But for now, He is our God and all that He is as God, and there isn’t anything greater, He is for us in all of our circumstances, no exception, He never drops the ball, Satan never gets the upper hand. Number two, God promises to change our hearts and cause us to love and fear Him, verse 39. “I will give them one heart and one way that they may fear me always.” Now, look at the end of the middle of verse 40. “I will put the fear of me in their hearts.” In other words, God will not simply stand by to see if we, by our own willpower, will fear Him. He will not do that for His covenant people, for His elect, for His own. He will not stand by and wonder, will they come to fear me? Will they change their hearts? Will this leopard remove his spots? Will this dead person rise? Will this blind person see? Will this deaf person hear? That’s not the way people get saved. “I will give them one heart and one way that they may fear me always. I will put the fear of me in their hearts.” He will sovereignly, supremely, mercifully give us the heart we need to trust Him always. This is sovereign, sustaining grace. Promise number three. God promises that he will not turn away from us and we will not turn away from Him, verse 40. “I will make an everlasting covenant with them that I will not turn away from them to do them good and I will put the fear of me in their hearts,” here it is again now, “so that they will not turn away from me.” So, at the beginning of verse 40, “I won’t turn from them” and at the end of verse 40, “I will not let them turn from me.” That’s why you will wake up a believer tomorrow morning and that’s the only reason you will wake up a believer tomorrow morning. His heart is at work and changes our hearts. This is what’s new about the new covenant. This is what’s different about the new covenant. By His power, by His will, he fulfills the conditions we must have to be saved. You must be a believer to be saved. You much stay a believer to be saved. You become a believer and you stay a believer by sovereign grace. Otherwise, you’re going to get the credit for being one and staying one and rob Him of His glory. “I will put the fear of me in their hearts” and then I will not stand back to see if they keep it there. He doesn’t just get it rolling and then stand back, oh sure hope they pick up the momentum here. He says, “I will see to it that they will not turn from me.” Oh, precious, sustaining grace. Where is your assurance resting that you will be a believer tomorrow? Finally, promise number four. God promises to do this with the greatest intensity of affection imaginable. Verse 41. “And I will rejoice over them to do them good, and I will faithfully plant them in this land with all my heart and with all my soul.” Now, notice two things in that verse. Notice the word rejoice. “I will rejoice over them to do them good.” I’m not doing good to them begrudgingly. My son did not twist my arm on the cross, corner me so that I have to give up the wrath I really like to use. This is the joy of the almighty. And then as if that were not big enough, He bumps it up with the word, in the last part of the verse, with the word all. “With all my heart and with all my soul, I will work for them. I will keep them.” Now, I want to challenge you to imagine something that would prove this false. No sermonic flair, no homiletical or rhetorical trick, just a simple challenge to you. I challenge you and you come to me afterwards. If you want to stand up and say it right here, you can, but you’ll just make a fool of yourself. I challenge you to conceive right now in your wildest imagination of any exuberance or any energy or any power or any overflow of enthusiasm greater than that implied in the words, the joy of the infinite God with all His heart and all His soul. Any takers? If not, you should be blown away. There is no energy, there is no exuberance, there is not joy conceivable than the joy of the almighty acting with all His heart and with all His soul to do you good. Jesus bought that for us when He died. He had to buy it for us if we were to have it. So, I close. I hope that you are enjoying the sweetness of the sustaining power of sovereign grace in your life. I hope that your struggle with assurance will shift from the struggle to be the bottom of your assurance to the struggle to keep God at the bottom of your assurance. And I pray that you will put the beginning of this message and the end of this message together so that when the cancer announcement comes, or the wayward child doesn’t come back after so many years, or the marriage is on the hardest of times, or the email comes with some devastating news, you will not deny this last point. Oh, I guess He’s only working for me a little bit right now. Or maybe He just stopped for a little while, he just stopped. I hope that you will remember saving, sustaining, sovereign grace is not grace to bar what is not bliss nor flight from all distress but this, the grace that orders our trouble and pain and then in the darkness, with all His heart and with all His infinite soul is there to sustain and bring you t a point where one day there will be nothing but joy. Father in heaven, we now undertake to affirm out faith in you. We believe you. We trust you along with all the saints, all the saints. In Jesus name, amen. >>Announcer: You’ve been listening to the Beeson podcast with host, Timothy George. You can subscribe to the Beeson podcast at our website, Beesondivinity.com. Beeson Divinity School is an interdenominational evangelical divinity school training men and women in the service of Jesus Christ. We pray that this podcast will aid and encourage your work and we hope you will listen to each upcoming edition of the Beeson podcast.