...our people need to hear God-entranced preaching. God himself needs to be the subject matter of our preaching, in his majesty and holiness and righteousness and faithfulness and sovereignty and grace. And by that I don't mean we shouldn't preach about nitty-gritty practical things like parenthood, and divorce and AIDS and gluttony and television and sex. We should indeed! What I mean is that everyone of those things should be swept right up into the holy presence of God and laid bare to the roots of its Godwardness or godlessness.If every Christian had Jonathan Edwards' view (which was the Bible's view) of God, we wouldn't have to wish for revival. It would be revival.
What our people need is not nice little moral, or psychological pep talks about how to get along in the world. They need to see that everything, absolutely everything – from garage sales and garbage recycling to death and demons have to do with God in all his infinite greatness. Most of our people have no one, no one in the world to placard the majesty of God for them. Therefore most of them are starved for the infinite God-entranced vision of Jonathan Edwards and they don't even know it.
Tuesday, April 08, 2003
I wish every pastor and theological student (really every Christian, for that matter) would read this article by John Piper. Oh that we would have this view--Jonathan Edwards' view--of God in our lives! There is more truth, depth, and glory in this one sermon of Piper's (which, in turn, exposits Edwards) than in most entire Christian bookstores. I want this vision to be my template for an entire life of Christian ministry.
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