If we love God's fame and are committed to magnifying His name above all things, we cannot be indifferent to world missions.
John PiperThere are a thousand needs in the world, and none of them compares to the global need for the gospel.
John PiperThat's who Jesus Christ is. He became the final Priest and the final Sacrifice. Sinless, he did not offer sacrifices for himself. Immortal, he never has to be replaced. Human, he could bear human sins. Therefore he did not offer sacrifices for himself; he offered himself as the final sacrifice. There will never be the need for another. There is one mediator between us and God. One priest. We need no other. Oh, how happy are those who draw near to God through Christ alone.
John PiperOh, how rare are the Christians who speak with a tender heart and have a theological backbone of steel.
John PiperDoing things in secret that you are ashamed for others to know is practical atheism. God's knowing doesn't count?
John PiperNeither Muslims nor anyone else truly worships the true God if they reject Jesus as he really is in the Gospels.
John PiperTherefore bread was created for the glory of Christ. Hunger and thirst were created for the glory of Christ. And fasting was created for the glory of Christ. Which means that bread magnifies Christ in two ways: by being eaten with gratitude for his goodness, and by being forfeited out of hunger for God himself. When we eat, we taste the emblem of our heavenly food—the Bread of Life. And when we fast we say, “I love the Reality above the emblem.” In the heart of the saint both eating and fasting are worship. Both magnify Christ.
John PiperThere are only three kinds of Christians when it comes to world missions: zealous goers, zealous senders, and disobedient.
John PiperGod is on the move to rescue people from misery to everlasting happiness, which can only be found in him.
John PiperIsn't it ironic that today people say, 'If you know the love of God, you don't have to worry when you go on in sin.' But the apostle John said, 'If you know the love of God, you won't be able to go on in sin.'
John PiperI sometimes fear that we have so redefined conversion in terms of human decisions and have so removed any necessity of the experience of God’s Spirit, that many people think they are saved when in fact they only have Christian ideas in their head not spiritual power in their heart.
John PiperIt was becoming clearer and clearer that if I wanted to come to the end of my life and not say, “I’ve wasted it!” then I would need to press all the way in, and all the way up, to the ultimate purpose of God and join him in it. If my life was to have a single, all-satisfying, unifying passion, it would have to be God’s passion.
John PiperGod has given us prayer as a wartime walkie-talkie so that we can call headquarters for everything we need as the kingdom of Christ advances in the world. Prayer gives us the significance of front-line forces, and gives God the glory of a limitless Provider. The one who gives the power gets the glory. Thus prayer safeguards the supremacy of God in missions while linking us with endless grace for every need.
John PiperGod in eternity looked upon me forseeing my faultness, my pride, my sin and said 'I want that man in my family, i will pay for him to be in my family with my son's life. That's Love folks. That is mega off the charts love!!!
John PiperThe happiest and holiest children in the world are the children whose fathers succeed in winning both their tender affection and their reverential and loving fear. And they are the children who will come to understand most easily the mystery of the fatherhood of God.
John PiperThe greatest cause in the world is joyfully rescuing people from hell, meeting their earthly needs, making them glad in God, and doing it with a kind, serious pleasure that makes Christ look like the Treasure he is.
John PiperAccording to the spirit of this age, the ultimate sin is no longer the failure to honor and thank God but the failure to esteem oneself. Self-abasement, not God-abasement, is the evil. And the cry of deliverance is not "O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me?" but "O worthy man that I am, would that I could only see it better"!
John PiperIf you must choose between loving someone and acting so that they feel loved, always choose to love them.
John PiperThe offspring of the woman, Jesus Christ, came into the world to save women who have dethroned God, taken His place, defined personhood as tissue, and willed the death of their own child. It can't be reversed, but it can be forgiven. That is why Christ died.
John PiperAll the money needed to send and support an army of self-sacrificing, joy-spreading ambassadors is already in the church.
John PiperA Christian is not a person who believes in his head the teachings of the Bible. Satan believes in his head the teachings of the Bible! A Christian is a person who has died with Christ, whose stiff neck has been broken, whose brazen forehead has been shattered, whose stony heart has been crushed, whose pride has been slain, and whose life is now mastered by Jesus Christ.
John PiperSeek to see and feel the gospel as bigger as years go by rather than smaller. Never let the gospel get smaller in your heart.
John PiperThe dismembering of a human being routinely in 30 minutes on an outpatient bases - or any other way - is barbaric. Four blocks from our church all year long - like churches within smelling distance of Auschwitz or Dachau or Buchenwald.
John PiperThe ultimate difference between God's wisdom and man's wisdom is how they relate to the glory of God's grace in Christ crucified. God's wisdom makes the glory of God's grace our supreme treasure. But man's wisdom delights in seeing himself as resourceful, self-sufficient, self determining, and not utterly dependent on God's free grace.
John PiperGod has ordained that our preaching become deeper and more winsome as we are broken, humbled, and made low and desperately dependent on grace by the trials of our lives.
John PiperGod seldom calls us for an easier life, but always calls us to know more of him and drink more deeply of His sustaining grace.
John PiperChristmas: the Son of God expressing the love of God to save us from the wrath of God so we could enjoy the presence of God.
John PiperI measure Your love for me by the magnitude of the wrath I deserved, and the wonder of Your mercy by putting Christ in my place.
John PiperWhere the Bible is esteemed as the inspired and inerrant Word of God, preaching can flourish. But where the Bible is treated merely as a record of valuable religious insight, preaching dies.
John PiperThe murders of Newtown are a warning to me - and you. Not a warning to see our schools as defenseless, but to see our souls as depraved. To see our need for a Savior. To humble ourselves in repentance for the God-diminishing bitterness of our hearts. To turn to Christ in desperate need, and to treasure his forgiveness, his transforming, and his friendship.
John PiperDarkness comes. In the middle of it, the future looks blank. The temptation to quit is huge. Don't. You are in good company... You will argue with yourself that there is no way forward. But with God, nothing is impossible. He has more ropes and ladders and tunnels out of pits than you can conceive. Wait. Pray without ceasing. Hope.
John PiperFaith begins with a backward look at the cross, but it lives with a forward look at the promises
John PiperIt horribly skews the meaning of the cross when contemporary prophets of self-esteem say that the cross is a witness to my infinite worth. The biblical perspective is that the cross in a witness to the infinite worth of God's glory, and a witness to the immensity of the sin of my pride.
John PiperChristians belive in a sovereign God who never says "Oops". We believe that all our days ... are divine strokes on the canvas of our lives by the Master Artist who certified his skill, his power, and his love in the Masterpiece of Calvary. If you doubt His skill in painting your life - look at the Calvary
John PiperThe goal of Bethlehem College and Seminary cannot be expressed with man as the end point. Christ is the endpoint.
John PiperGod aims to look valuable in the world, and that happens when we treasure him above all else.
John Piper