http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/16142409/upcoming-changes-to-apj
Audio Transcript
Hello, APJ listeners. Thanks for spending so much time with Pastor John and me over the years. We’re honored to be along on this ride of what God has done — and continues to do — through the podcast. It’s bigger than us.
It’s just me today, with an update for you about a few new programming changes to be aware of. And the first change is an announcement — an exciting one for us here at desiringGod.org because we are now offering a brand-new John Piper sermon podcast. It launched in mid-April. Maybe you heard about it. It’s called Light + Truth. Be sure to subscribe to the new podcast feed to enjoy sermons from Pastor John’s pulpit ministry — classic sermons and new sermons, five days a week, all curated in a new podcast hosted by Dan Cruver. It’ll be a great addition to your podcast feed.
And with the addition of the new podcast come two changes to Ask Pastor John. The first is that we’re going to bring sermon-clip-curation Wednesdays to an end. That was a lot of fun, and you all sent me a ton of great clips over the years. Thank you for sharing those clips with us and sharing your memories too. Many of us have stories about unforgettable moments in life when a sermon from Pastor John met us in a moment of need. But sermon-clip Wednesdays will end in May. Instead of sermon clips, those of you who want to listen to curated John Piper sermons can subscribe to the new Light + Truth podcast.
And that brings me to change two. In removing the Wednesday slot, APJ is moving to two times per week. We will be publishing two episodes per week, now on Mondays and Thursdays. For a number of years now, we’ve been publishing on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Now we’re going to publish new APJs on Mondays and Thursdays. That change begins in June. Just wanted to give you a heads up.
Thank you for listening in, supporting us, and sending in your questions. Keep those coming, which you are — we have no shortage of questions ahead of us. In fact, we already have May and June and all of July, and much of August, now scheduled out with themes. It’s as busy as ever. And Pastor John continues to love investing his time in APJ. In fact, we were recently looking over his schedule for the next year ahead and his ministry commitments, and he said, “APJ remains a deeply satisfying investment of effort. And it’s probably the hardest thing I do.” Ha! Yes — not easy work, but deeply satisfying work. Amen. And I love working on this podcast, and we have much work ahead of us in this second decade of the podcast.
So those are the updates. Subscribe to Light + Truth today. And APJ moves to Mondays and Thursdays in June.
I’m your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast. We’ll see you soon.
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Young Love in a Cruel Land: The Wife Who Sailed with Adoniram Judson
On February 18, 1812, Ann and Adoniram Judson (ages 21 and 22) boarded the Caravan in the New England port of Salem. They had been married for less than two weeks, and set sail for Asia, expecting not to see America again.
They arrived in Burma (now Myanmar) to commence pioneer gospel work in July of 1813 — having already endured a four-month sea journey, a painful separation from their sending body and colleagues (due to their conscientious decision to be baptized as believers), the death of Ann’s friend Harriet, and the stillbirth of Ann’s first child.
The next thirteen years would be punctuated by serious illness, lengthy separations, and continual harassment. Ann’s second child, Roger Williams, died at eight months. She was pregnant with her third child when Adoniram was taken into the notorious Death Prison in Ava in June 1824. They would not know freedom together until February 1826. During that time, both suffered immensely; Ann daily risked her own life to care for Adoniram. These privations resulted in her death, at age 36, in October 1826. Little Maria Eliza would die six months later.
So much suffering. So many tears.
Yet Ann’s determination to serve Christ shone, undimmed, to the end. What fueled her resolve? To answer that question, we have to go back to her profound conversion, which resulted in a passionate concern for God’s glory and a powerful certainty in God’s promises.
Profound Conversion
Ann Hasseltine was born in 1789, in Bradford, New England. Popular and sociable, she would confide in her diary that she was “one of the happiest creatures on earth” (Ann Judson, 20). Ann attended church each Sunday, but her life revolved around friends and parties.
When she was 15, a teacher arrived at Bradford Academy who urged his pupils that repentance was urgent. Many were convicted of sin, including Ann. But she lurched, for months, between fear of judgment and terror of what friends would say if she became “serious.” Ultimately, God drew her to himself. At age 16, she wrote,
A view of [God’s] purity and holiness filled my soul with wonder and admiration. I felt a disposition to commit myself unreservedly into his hands, and leave it with him to save me or cast me off, for I felt I could not be unhappy, while allowed the privilege of contemplating and loving so glorious a Being. . . .
I felt myself to be a poor lost sinner, destitute of everything to recommend myself to the divine favour. [I knew] that it had been the mere sovereign, restraining mercy of God, not my own goodness, which had kept me from committing the most flagrant crimes. This view of myself humbled me in the dust, melted me into sorrow and contrition for my sins, induced me to lay my soul at the feet of Christ, and plead his merits alone, as the ground of my acceptance. (24–25)
Ann joined the Congregational Church in Bradford in September 1806. Her parents and siblings were also converted and joined the church. This is a vignette of what was taking place throughout America — a movement we now refer to as the Second Great Awakening.
“Christ did not issue the Great Commission on the condition that health, comfort, and safety could be assured.”
One outworking of revival was increased concern for those unreached with the gospel. Previously, American Protestants had sent missionaries to the North American Indians, but not overseas. Now, some young Christians were convinced that Christ’s command to go to all nations applied to them too.
Following her conversion, Ann began teaching in a small school. She wanted the children in her charge to follow Christ, but in her prayers she ranged across the globe, praying for the conversion of all nations:
My chief happiness now consisted in contemplating the moral perfections of the glorious God. I longed to have all intelligent creatures love him. (27)
Passionate Concern
Ann now knew that she was here on this earth to serve God. At 18, after reading the journal of David Brainerd, she wrote in her own journal of her passion to pray for all nations, and of her willingness to go wherever Christ would choose.
A year after that, in June 1810, four young students met with the General Association of Congregational ministers in Bradford. They were volunteering to take the gospel to the unreached people of Asia. One of them was Adoniram Judson. The brilliant son of a Congregational minister, he had been converted after a period of rebellion. Like Ann, his conversion resulted in a passionate concern that all nations should praise God.
That day, the would-be missionaries were given lunch at the home of the Hasseltines. Unsurprisingly, Adoniram set his heart upon Ann. One month later, he wrote to her father,
I have now to ask, whether you can consent to part with your daughter early next spring, to see her no more in this world; whether you can consent to her departure, and her subjection to the hardships and sufferings of missionary life . . . to every kind of want and distress; to degradation, insult, persecution, and perhaps a violent death. Can you consent to all this, for the sake of him who left his heavenly home and died for her and for you; for the sake of perishing immortal souls; for the sake of Zion, and the glory of God? (37)
Mr. Hasseltine left the choice to Ann, who resolved to marry Adoniram and to leave all she knew for the unknown:
I rejoice, that I am in [God’s] hands — that he is everywhere present, and can protect me in one place as well as in another. He has my heart in his hands, and when I am called to face danger, to pass through scenes of terror and distress, he can inspire me with fortitude, and enable me to trust in him. Jesus is faithful; his promises are precious. (40)
At this time, sea journeys were hazardous. Letters took months, and some never arrived. There was no established mission network to which these pioneers could go. Nothing was guaranteed: safety, health, toleration — least of all success. Many thought the idea insane.
But Christ did not issue the Great Commission on the condition that health, comfort, and safety could be assured.
Shortly after arrival in Burma, Ann’s journal records her desire that all should honor God, her concern for the plight of people deprived of gospel light, and her conviction that it was a privilege to have been called to sacrifice comfort for the kingdom:
If it may please the dear Redeemer to make me instrumental of leading some of the females of Burma to a saving acquaintance with him, my great object would be accomplished, my highest desires gratified: I shall rejoice to have relinquished my comforts, my country, and my home. . . . When shall cruel, idolatrous, avaricious Burma know, that thou art the God of the whole earth, and alone deservest the homage and adoration of all creatures? Hasten it, Lord, in thine own time. (83–84)
Cruel and avaricious were not malicious terms. Burma’s penal system was indeed brutal, including public torture for minor offenses. And the country’s exorbitant taxation trapped the majority of the population in dire poverty. Ann’s passionate concern was warranted.
Powerful Certainty
The day-to-day routine of surviving in harsh and hostile circumstances, acquisition of a new language, hundreds of hours in discussion with inquirers — all was motivated by the conviction that God is sovereign, and his promises are sure. “We have nothing to expect from man, and everything from God . . . we are in the service of Him who governs the world” (55, 172).
Such confidence liberated Ann to see the long-term perspective. They were laying a foundation for future work:
We cannot expect to do much, in such a rough, uncultivated field; yet if we may be instrumental in removing some of the rubbish, and preparing the way for others, it will be a sufficient reward . . . when we recollect that Jesus has commanded his disciples to carry the gospel to the nations, and promised to be with them to the end of the world; that God has promised to give the nations to his Son for an inheritance, we are encouraged to make a beginning, though in the midst of discouragement, and leave it to him to grant success, in his own time and way. (73, 83)
She longed for Christ to be magnified and souls to be won in Burma — whether she saw the harvest or not.
Permanent Contribution
Ann’s life, albeit short, was hugely influential in the expansion of the missions movement in the nineteenth century. Ann and Adoniram established the first church in Burma. Ann was fully engaged in evangelism. She engaged in translation in both Burmese and Siamese (Thai), including a catechism. She started schools and stirred up support for female education among American women.
Ann died prematurely. Her valiant efforts to secure her husband’s survival in prison had shattered her own strength. He would minister in Burma for another 23 years, during which time a firm foundation for church life was laid (including his magnificent translation of the Bible).
In time, the epic drama of the Judson story inspired generations of Baptist missionaries. Ann’s writings were among the first at a popular level to stir up missionary interest among the Protestant population in America, and beyond. Her Memoir was printed soon after her death, and ran through many editions. She was the childhood heroine of Adoniram’s second and third wives.
In 1815, a 10-year-old American girl, Sarah Hall, wept when she heard of the death of Ann’s baby Roger, and she wrote a poem to mark the sad event. Little did she know that eighteen years later she would become the second Mrs. Judson!
“The epic drama of the Judson story inspired generations of Baptist missionaries.”
In 1828, a 12-year-old factory girl, Emily Chubbuck, was moved to tears by reading of the death of baby Maria. Eighteen years later, she would become the third Mrs. Judson! Emily said to a friend before meeting Adoniram, “I have felt, ever since I read the Memoir of Mrs Ann H. Judson when I was a small child, that I must become a missionary” (253).
Pray for Burma
Ann’s God-centered testimony inspired, and continues to inspire, many. It challenges the self-absorption of our comfort-obsessed culture. It spurs us on to plead with God for many to come to a living faith and a joyous determination to serve God whatever the cost.
It also reminds us of Burma (now Myanmar), where the military regime is brutalizing the population, including many Christians. We can pray that their testimony of eternal hope would win many to Christ, and that God would be honored in the nation Ann Judson so willingly served and departed from into glory.
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Has Wrath Come Upon Israel Forever? 1 Thessalonians 2:13–16, Part 10
http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15560308/has-wrath-come-upon-israel-forever
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Every Marriage Needs a Mission: Three Steps for Husbands
Our typical images of romantic, married love picture a couple facing each other, eyes locked in mutual affection. And for good reason.
Adam’s first words to Eve were a serenade. In the Song of Solomon, the whole world serves as backdrop to the beauty of the beloved. And one day, our Lord Jesus will “present the church to himself in splendor” (Ephesians 5:27), a bride adorned and deeply adored. While friends typically stand “side by side, absorbed in some common interest,” C.S. Lewis writes, “lovers are normally face to face, absorbed in each other” (The Four Loves, 61).
And yet, as most couples know, marriage calls for more than tender clasping. In fact, the inward gaze, if allowed to exclude all else, will turn sick; the Solomonic song will spiral out of tune. For from the beginning, God built into marriage another gaze, another song.
When we hear the Lord God say, “It is not good that the man should be alone,” we may assume the not good refers to a relational lack, an emotional hole in Adam’s heart. No doubt Adam felt that lack, that hole. But God’s next words turn our eyes, surprisingly, to Adam’s vocational need: “I will make him a helper fit for him” (Genesis 2:18). God had given Adam an outward mission (Genesis 2:15–17), and Adam needed help. He needed not only a face before him, but a shoulder beside him.
Marriages today still need a mission. And that means men today still need a mission.
Woman and Helper
This dynamic picture of marriage, this inward and outward posture, finds beautiful expression in Eve’s two titles in Genesis 2. She is, one the one hand, woman. When Adam awakes from his deep sleep, and finds his rib returned to him transfigured, he breaks out in verse:
This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh;she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. (Genesis 2:23)
Lest we imagine marriage as a union of mere usefulness, a practical arrangement for the doing of tasks, God shows us the first husband singing the wonder of his wife. Here, standing before him, is woman — his own humanity refracted through the prism of triune diversity. She answers the longing of his heart, and he hers.
Yet Eve is, on the other hand, helper. When she enters Eden, she meets a man already on a mission to work and keep the garden under the authority of their Maker (Genesis 2:15–17). And then, together, she and her man receive the commission to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28). By God’s good design, the mission of the garden required not just one, but two; not just man, but woman. Adam needed a compatible co-regent, a queen to assist in his reign, a helper of the highest honor. Together, in complementary glory, they would garden the world.
In the pattern of Genesis 2, then, a husband loves his wife as woman, and he leads his wife as helper. He waxes poetic about her beauty, and he labors with her beside him. He rises up to praise her (Proverbs 31:28–29), and he empowers her dominion (Proverbs 31:11–27). He embraces her as lover, and they stride forth as fellow rulers. Their inward romance, like the trunk of a great tree, branches up and out, bearing fruit for outward mission.
Marriage on Mission
Men today, of course, do not receive a direct, specific mission from God as Adam did. Nevertheless, God’s original pattern of creating a man, giving him a mission, and then granting him a wife as both woman and helper tells us much about God’s lasting designs for marriage.
Today’s Adams may not have a literal garden to work and keep, but we have our own spheres for mission: homes to manage, children to father, churches to love and lead, jobs to work, and neighborhoods to reach for Christ. Each is a field to de-thorn and un-thistle, to plow and sow, to take dominion (Genesis 1:28) and make disciples (Matthew 28:18–20). And any honest man, gazing upon those fields, will agree with God’s ancient verdict: “It is not good that the man should be alone.”
Some men, like the apostle Paul, will advance their mission unmarried, with the help that comes from friends and fellow laborers rather than a wife. Most, however, will follow the creation norm, and with their wives they will expand the garden of God’s kingdom in their surrounding spheres. Together, he and she will look with longing — at each other, and also at all the land around them, waiting to be claimed for Christ.
Too often, I fear, I act as if the mission of marriage were simply marriage — that merely a happy home, and not also a happy world, were God’s aim in our union. I live like an arrow at home in the quiver, forgetting the feel of the bow, the rush of outward flight.
How, then, might men like me recover, in Christ, the lost design of Genesis 2? How might husbands live with our wives as treasured women and as precious helpers, together building something beyond ourselves? I find help from a simple three-part framework: dream, draw, do.
Dream
Adam’s leadership began with a vision of what could be: a garden worked and kept, an earth filled and subdued (Genesis 1:28; 2:15–17). A husband’s leadership, likewise, often begins with a dream. He looks out upon home, children, church, neighborhood, imagining what they might look like under the total lordship of Christ — and what he and his wife might do about it. How might they disciple the kids better? How might neighborhood hospitality become more routine? How might the family join the church for corporate prayer more often?
Unlike the sluggard, who “does not plow in autumn,” and therefore “will seek at harvest and have nothing” (Proverbs 20:4), he takes thought for the future long before it comes — anticipating needs, discerning opportunities, noticing possible threats, and learning to plant and plow more faithfully in autumn. And as the seasons of family life change — as new children are born, as the kids grow, and as normal years run their course through spring, summer, fall, and winter — he keeps dreaming, developing fresh vision for the family’s various spheres.
Any godly wife, of course, will do her fair share of dreaming too. She will feel a holy discontent and imagine better ways the family might fulfill their callings. A godly husband will cherish such dreams. As head of the home, however, he also will feel his special responsibility to take the family forward, rather than waiting for his wife to lead the charge. And so, he dreams — and as he dreams, he labors to draw her.
Draw
If the responsibility to dream counteracts the passivity in a man, the calling to draw undermines any tendency he may have toward domineering leadership. As with Adam and Eve, God intends a couple’s mission to be theirs and not just his. So, with patience and tenderness, with wisdom and humility, a man draws his wife in and out.
“God intends a couple’s mission to be theirs and not just his.”
In drawing her in, he welcomes his wife into his dreaming — gathering her impressions, asking for her feedback, hearing her counsel. He knows his dreams are often incomplete and immature without her complementary perspective. He knows, too, that her dreams may often surpass his own in sound judgment. Like the Proverbs 31 woman, “she opens her mouth with wisdom” (Proverbs 31:26) — and he is not too insecure to hear it.
In drawing his wife out, he imagines how their mission together might make full use of her abilities. How might he draw out her strengths rather than diminish them, unleash her potential rather than cage it, see her bloom and flourish rather than wither? Or as Herman Bavinck writes, how might he help her assist him “in the fullest and broadest sense, physically and spiritually, with her wisdom and love, with her head and her heart” (The Christian Family, 6)?
Do
Finally, having dreamed for his family and drawn his wife, a husband does — he acts — taking the first steps toward the garden’s uncultivated edge. Practically, as John Piper has said, he seeks to be the one who says “let’s” most often: “Let’s gather the kids for family devotions.” “Let’s plan a block party for our neighbors.” “Let’s get away just the two of us.” “Let’s go early to serve at church this Sunday.”
Some of us may find dreaming and drawing easier than actually doing. Adam seems to have: though he knew his mission and drew Eve into it, he failed to actually do it in the face of opposition (Genesis 3:6). Doing lays a burden on a man in the most inconvenient hours, attacking his laziness and selfish use of time, calling for energy after long workdays, bidding him rise and step when he would rather sit. I need help remembering that family leadership is not a one-time vision, a momentary inspiration, but a day-in, day-out pursuit, a fashioning of dreams from difficult moments.
“What a gift to a home — and what a reflection of Christ, when a man acts as the first mover most of the time.”
Can a wife take initiative in similar ways? Yes, she can — and sometimes should. Just because her husband says “let’s” most doesn’t mean she never does. But what a gift to a home, and what a reflection of Christ, when a man acts as the first mover most of the time.
The mission of marriage calls for all of a man. And therefore, it calls for a man to give all of his heart to God, and submit all of his life to Christ, and yield all of his will to the Spirit. Such an all-in, all-out man will embrace his wife as woman: his perfect match, his lily of the valley, his home on earth, his heart’s best song. And he also will embrace her as helper: his lover on mission, his indispensable partner, his queen with crown and scepter. And so he will love her, and so he will lead her.