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April 13, 2020 2:00 am
Hosts Dave and Ann Wilson and co-host Bob Lepine join Dr. John Piper to discuss his new and timely book "Coronavirus and Christ." Sometimes called "Mr. Joy" because of a life message of finding joy in Jesus and in the sovereignty of God, Dr. Piper says it's time to rid ourselves of our sentimental views of God. He unpacks with profound wisdom the core questions related to how God can be good in the midst of such suffering, including how God is using Coronavirus to awaken us from the slumber of our own sin, and what are the glorious purposes that God is achieving in the world through this.
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Welcome to family life today. Thanks for joining us. We are separated today as we have a special program for you Dave and Ann Wilson are away from our studios in Little Rock but were connected other.
This is our due life these days right were looking at each other on a screen. I've been in it feels like hundreds of screen meetings in the last couple weeks and it's not the same as being side-by-side, but I'm grateful that we have this technology available to us right in God. We are delighted today to be able to have Dr. John Piper joining us and I think most of our listeners know about John from his writing from his years of pastoral ministry at Bethlehem Baptist Church. He is the head of a ministry called desiring God and most of his sermons.
His books are available@thedesiringgod.org website. John's been on family life today with us before and John were thrilled to have you back again with us today.
This moment were living in today is a moment unlike anything I can remember in my lifetime in your years of pastoral ministry is or been anything like this that you've walked through before, no.
But as soon as I say no I mean I send somebody the other day. This is this is not unique just to us. I think it's unique in history the world, even though there been pandemics. There's never been a time when the globe is connected like it is. Everybody knows it's happening everywhere and it passes instantaneous through travel. That's never happened. I mean when we talk about pandemics in the first two centuries over the black plague. We don't know when that touch the American Indians know what we don't know but we know this and this is never happened before. With this kind of connectedness in this kind of awareness so but here's the thing I think is so crucial when you ask has ever happened before, namely its happened every time somebody suffocates I'm not stood beside many beds where people are on ventilators so the unique thing about it is just how many and I think that's really important to say because every one of us is going to go to a coronavirus die in the dying process will be scary and it won't be easy. And so in a sense you know death and suffering are very personal fact that I know people who have this disease are that that 10,000 people are dying right now that's just a statistic but when my throat starts to close up and I can get my breast and that happens to every body before they go out of this world. So in, in a sense it's not personally unique, just historically unique you felt led to write on this subject. And I'm just released a book that could be out in a few weeks.
The audiobook is now available. The e-book is available. In fact, people can go to our website@familylifetoday.com you guys are graciously making that resource available at no cost for anyone who would like to get it. You've written lots of books while you in this moment did you feel the need to write this subject is a book I remember back in the 2004, when the tsunami happened to hundred and 30,000 people swept away in one night hold churches on the east coast of South India gone into night and I was stunned by that or not. I was asked by a lot of people to talk about that.
I did this feels even more stunning to me. I don't know why he is but one of the reasons desiring God exists. It seems, is to talk about suffering that's just been part of our DNA from the beginning, sorrowful, yet always rejoicing is the second printing six tenants we've always struggled always. Is it mean to be sorrowful and always rejoicing to anytime something comes along that is a big threat to joy I feel that's my calling is to talk about joy. That's my calling is to believe that their pleasures at God's right hand forevermore.
Starting now, what about this Piper come on Mr. joy Mr. sovereignty and so this feels about as big as it can get and therefore I look at that little booklets. I did several years ago on the don't waste your hospital stay or something. I forget the name of his Latina book on on know what I learned from the hospital a few years ago and somebody said to me just take that and turn it into something a little bigger and and it will be useful about four days and did nothing but write and it came out to be 100 pages so it just feels necessary.
By the magnitude of the situation necessary because I'm a lover of joy in Jesus and I believe I'm a believer in the sovereignty of God, and a lot of people Put those together sometime.
Help us to put that together because people are looking at this current situation. My thinking way I'm to believe that a good God, merciful God, a God of love is overseeing the thousands of people playing, that is a pandemic. How in the world do I reconcile those things.
Well, I suppose, just to make sure that they're asking the right questions. They realize that God oversees the death of 50,000 people a day every day in the history of the world so they got a problem with God.
And yes, they must've just jettisoned God because death is here and is here to stay until Jesus comes in every one of us is going to die and I think this is a good moment for getting rid of sentimental views of God. They don't work just don't work. I mean, we may as well stop being believers.
If we cannot reconcile God and just so the way I begin is not with coronavirus but with the world as it is and I'm go to Romans eight I love them and say nothing.
Rooms like the greatest chapter in the Bible and it's got this section in it from verses 19 to 23 that talks about God subjected the creation to futility and to corruption and the effect of that subjection is groaning. Even we who have the firstfruits of the Holy Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our body. So if you, why do our bodies need to be redeemed to dancers.
Therefore: and they're falling because God subjected the world to futility and begin it because Adam and Eve sin. When sin came into the world just through sin entered the world. Romans 512 and so God is in charge of the condition of the world in that he subjected the entire world to this kind of misery at the beginning because of sin, and he's going to lift it someday. That's the big picture of the Bible.
Sin enters the world suffering through sin. I thought this through most deeply when it was 9/11 when the planes crashed in the towers came down in 2500 people evaporated in just a few minutes.
I struggled with.
If God subjected the world to futility and sin was the reason sin is an act of the soul that is I contemplate God with my mind and my soul.
I regard him as defective, his advice is not worth following.
I think Satan's got some good ideas here.
I can have more intelligence than God I can decide what's good for me. Thank you God. You may take a vacation. I will go Satan and myself and and then what happens.
Physical suffering happens and I why physical suffering God what it was. The sole issue was that it was a spiritual issue.
Why are you taking it out on our bodies and what my answer as I've reflected on Romans eight is that sin is blinding and blindness means nobody sees how outrageous is our reason against God. Nobody loses any sleep over the fact that they give God less attention than they do their hairstyle body. So what's going to get anybody's attention to the outrage of sin, and I think God's answer is touch their bodies and though will come to terms with this. Maybe right now the touching of our bodies. The touching of our schedules.
The touching of our churches, our families, all this touching, we feel angry or we get irritated and if we had any sense would say that's how serious sin is.
That's how serious our neglect and are despising of God is its great wake up call. So you're saying John one of the things that we can see you mention this in your book. As we look at the world and what's happening in the coronavirus all around the world in a and I know many of us wake up and we read the news everyday is depressing and scary and were filled with anxiety and fear, but you're also saying that reality shows us the moral horror of sin said your book commits a picture of our state of our soul seems to me that the whole Bible is written for two messages and all of Providence happens for two messages. One is the horror of belittling God and the other is the glory of grace and in order for grace to be glorious. You have to recognize the horror of what our souls are doing to God virtually every day and partly anybody, especially in the secular world any sense of the horror of their treason against God by treasonous inflaming this Jesus Christ is the King of the universe. One day, every knee will bow and every toad will confess that Jesus Christ is the Lord of the universe right now most people are in treason against their king.
They don't love him. They don't worship him, they don't obey him. They don't pay any attention to him.
He is marginal at best to their lives and hated worst all of that is worthy of condemnation and short of condemnation.
God gives this world. Thousands and thousands and thousands of days without coronavirus what happens. Nothing, nothing happens that grace is received.
The sun comes up on the evil and the good every day.
The rain comes down the nation prospers. The result, self-centeredness, pride and arrogance, the sufficiency is outrageous that the whole world is indifferent to their maker and their Savior. And so alone comes a coronavirus assay.
John the Baptist remember when when Jesus and John the Baptist were compared in and they said we played a dirge for you and you didn't wait. We danced for you and and you didn't laugh that was John the Baptist and Jesus two messages. One he went to parties, John the Baptist stated wilderness.
Both of those voices were rejected Jesus pours out blessing upon blessing upon blessing upon blessing on this world and they don't pay any attention. He brings a virus and will find out will find out whether this kind of severe word will get the attention of of the world thinking are we at the peak right now within Kentucky only thing going.
Thousands of years of God's grace of God's blessing. Why now and have been thinking the past that you know is if God wake up call to our generation. I can easily imagine more sin than there is now.
But that's not an answer to your question because I don't know what the world will look like in the immediate years leading up to the second coming of Jesus is not crystal clear in the Bible and I think it's left less than clear precisely to keep us off balance.
I don't think God wants us to have this nailed down in the book. I have a section on second coming and my argument is that Jesus repeatedly gave the kinds of warnings I want you to wake up wake up wake up, stay awake, you don't know the day of the hour.
Wake up and so I take all kinds of things to be wake up calls and so I don't know if we're at the peak and I don't know for at the climax I think would be wrong to set dates. It would be wrong to state anything with any certainty about the timing of the Lord's coming up.
I just think we are at a point where God deems it wise to speak the way he speaking I think we don't just will be on our faces. Fasting and praying for the preservation and the purification of the faith of God's elect and the awakening of the unbelief to belief of the folks who are not paying any attention and that's how we can view this moment as a good gift from God. He has done this to awaken us from something. We were not saying I'm been thinking John about the verse where Jesus said what father would give to his son a stone if you ask for bread, and I'm thinking none of us ask for this, and yet it feels a little bit like a stone, but what I hear you saying is this is God in his grace, waking us from our slumber about our own sin definitely you. I wrote a poem couple years ago about that text of which of you who has a son who asks her bread would give him a stone or fiesta fish would give him a snake and the poem takes a turn like this supposed your boat is drifting out to sea and you desperately need a stone for an anchor and you don't realize it and you ask for bread while you're basking in the sun is God's good is going to give you stone instead of bread or what if you have a snake bite and you need to get the venom out of this snakes sayings in order to produce an antidote and not knowing that you asked for fish to put on these two little holes in your arm, which will do you no good whatsoever. Will God hears your cry for fish and he gives you a snake she get the venom so you can get the antidote. In other words, I think the point that text is if you being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father give good things to those who ask good things to those who ask, which may or may not be precisely what you asked for because you know what you need lots of times my son Benjamin when he is off for wanted a snack and he asked for cracker. I got the crackers down. I pulled it open. They were all moldy and I held it up to them with fraudulent notes and then I can't give you this. Got any zoos I'll eat the photos said no you won't, not while I'm your dad. He didn't know he just wanted to snack and I knew better.
It so I think there many times we may need a stone and snake that we don't realize this is a snake and it's good for us if we will trust him. In it Jon I think you saw the article that was in time magazine recently were British theologian asked the question, should we be looking for answers in the midst of this, the headline that I don't know that he wrote that line but the headline was. Christianity offers no answers about the coronavirus. It's not supposed to. And as I look at your book.
It seems to me that your book is providing us with some answers that maybe this British theologian says we shouldn't even be expecting to find from the Bible. Yes, I read that and I was perplexed by that article. I don't want to attribute that title to him. Although things he said in the article warranted that title that was provocative title but so was the article and I didn't like the article for numerous reasons Christianity does offer answers.
It does when he said that I got quotes here are put on the document info in front of me. He said what if there are moments when the only advice is to wait without hope, because we be hoping in the wrong thing.I just cannot believe.
I mean, I know this man. I cannot believe he means that I just cannot mean that's is outrageous. I think to say there are moments I'd say the exact opposite house again, never, never, never, never, is one moment in the life of a Christian, for whom Christ is died, from whom there is no condemnation, who sealed the day of redemption was elect before the foundation of the world was filled with the Holy Spirit that have been promised to him. There's never one moment in his life. When the only advice is to wait without hope so. He must mean something. I don't get but he said it in a way that set people up to really misunderstand. So that statement I regarded simply bonds are not sure why in the world. Such a statement would be made in any says that rationalists rationalists what explanations they want explanations for everything as if the only people as if the only people in the world who long for some word from God for what he's up to why he does what he does are people who are in the grip of some kind of enlightenment rationalism. I think that's absurd.
I think people from every era in church history have had a longing help me father by your word in your spirit to know what I need to know, and I think there are answers in the Bible that I don't mean answers for every question.
I think I said in the book God right now is doing a billion things and that's an understatement. Okay because there's 7 billion people in the world and he's doing more than 10 things in everybody's life.
That's a lot of purposes. God has I don't know 99.99999% of what God's doing.
The question is does the Bible showed me a handful of glorious purposes that are true about all suffering over which God is sovereign and the answer is yes and I try to lay out about six of them. Goodness gracious. There could be more than six so I don't like that article and I think it was very misleading hurtful for people so was I wrong for us as followers of Christ to be looking at this current situation and be asking God in prayer. God, what are you doing and what should I be learning in this moment I think would be crazy not to.
And the reason is this God is sovereign. He works all things according to the counsel of his will.
Ephesians 111 no purpose of his can be thwarted. The Lord gives and the Lord takes a voice of God is sovereign and even if he permits some things through secondary causes like Satan and evil men.
He is sovereign oversight and sovereign over evil men. We know that from Job. We know that from acts 427 and 28. He is sovereign over the evil that people do, and over Satan, and therefore, even when he so called permits a thing.
He is purposeful in it. God never acts whimsically. He never does something it says I have no idea why I just did that he always has purposes of this God is sovereign and he always has purposes.
You can't look at this event, which is one of the biggest events in history the world and say well I guess there's no purpose here that would be insane if you believe the Bible and then at them.
The last question would be, as he revealed any of those purposes and I want to make clear here. I don't hear voices right when I say what is God saying what is God doing. I don't expect ever dream about that. I don't expect to have a prophetic word about that. I expect open my Bible and see what God says about things like this and never take what he says in the Bible and put it next to what's happening. Draw the connections and offered to people as I sit up pointing and pointing pads that I want people to walk down those paths with Scripture well and your new book, coronavirus, and Christ keeps pointing us back to Jesus and back to Scripture and helps us think rightly about our current moment and I were grateful by the way John that you are making the audiobook and the e-book edition of coronavirus and Christ available to family like today listeners for no cost.
Our listeners can go right now to our website family like today.com and you can download either the audiobook or the e-book. John Piper's brand-new book coronavirus and Christ and this is a book that will encourage you help you think clearly and rightly about our present moment.
It will equip you to be able to give an answer to people who ask you about the hope you have even as things in our world continue to worsen and people wonder why you have hope this is a book that will point all of us in the right direction.
Again, the e-book or the audiobook are available as a free download.
When you go to family life today.com and were grateful to the folks who desiring God for that. The print edition of the book is going to be out in another week or two. You can order a copy. You can preorder a copy of the book now again all that information is available on our website@familylifetoday.com and our team is regularly putting together resources for couples for families, so that in the midst of being socially isolated and stand at home and feeling cooped up her crap you got some things to do with the kids. You got some new ideas, some fresh activities some ways that you can make the most of this time and use it strategically and purposefully as you disciple your own children so look for a link that says not canceled because home is not canceled. Family is not canceled and our resources are available at that link on our website. Family life to.com tomorrow order to continue our conversation with Dr. John Piper talking about this present moment and talking about anxiety and worry how we counsel our own heart and soul in the midst of this current pandemic. I hope you can join us back tomorrow for that I want to thank our engineer today key points along with our entire broadcast production team on behalf of our hosts Dave and Ann Wilson and Bob Lapine will see you back next time for another edition of family life today.
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