Life as usual, many will come to realize, was never life as usual.

When Christ returns, many will discover too late that they lived within a dream. Years came and years went. Spring turned to autumn, autumn to winter. They grew and grew old but never awoke. “Normal life” lied to them. So, Jesus foretells,

As were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. (Matthew 24:37–39)

The world-ending return of Jesus will be as the world-ending days of Noah. Of what did Noah’s days consist? Busy people unaware — eating, drinking, marrying, and giving in marriage, going about life “as usual.” The very morning of the flood, people simply concerned themselves with whatever laid before them. The immediate seemed most urgent, most real. Planning meals, changing diapers, preparing weddings, working, buying, and selling — these seemed to them the greatest verities of life. Until the rain began to fall.

Texture of Days

Like many today, the people of Noah’s day abstracted the meaning of life from the texture of their average days.

“Life as usual, many will come to realize, was never life as usual.”

They touched Wednesday and it felt like every other Wednesday. They began work and finished work. They ate, ate again, and finished their work to eat. They played with kids on the floor. Busied with homework and house projects. They talked and listened, laughed and yawned, rose from sleep and slept — nothing extraordinary. Each day didn’t feel like it held eternal significance. Nothing otherworldly felt at stake. Today didn’t feel like anything but today.

God, demons, souls, eternity didn’t grow before their eyes like grass that needs mowing. They did not stir to consider the unseen. And when they did, the unreality of it seemed as implausible as rain drowning a dry land days away from sea. They intuited what is ultimate about life from the ordinary experiences of life. A fatal mistake. And as the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.

Man and His Boat

While they considered their daily planners, anxious about what they considered the real contents of Mondays, Tuesdays, and Saturdays, Noah worked with his sons on the unlikely, the unthinkable. While the world ate and drank, he labored. While they went on with things as usual, he and his sons prepared a stadium-sized boat to shelter the family. “By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household” (Hebrews 11:7).

Imagine the scene. Decade after decade, children were born, diapers were changed, houses were built, adults looked out their window and saw what they had seen since childhood: Noah and his sons laboring on the ship. And Noah spoke a message as strange as the boat he was building: he warned of divine judgment. Perhaps some listened the first week. But eventually, the listeners needed to get back to real life.

Noah’s real life was different. Even though he too ate and drank and arranged marriages for his three sons (Genesis 7:13), he did these with an ear bent to hear God’s voice, a hammer in his hand for God’s work, and eyes returning to the skies waiting for God’s promise. His feasting was not forgetful. His drinking was not distracting. His giving in marriage did not deter his mission. Unlike the citizens of this world, he lived ready, he lived prepared. He believed God that the waters would come.

As decades multiplied, Noah kept working, kept proclaiming, kept resisting the temptation to stop and return to life as usual.

Change in the Weather

As it will be at Jesus’s second coming, an unexpected day arrived.

The day began like any other. Wrinkled faces and weathered eyes gazed out worn windows to still find that odd man — now herding skunk, geese, and deer into his finished ship. They could still hear his spent voice saying, “Turn from your sins, repent and cry to God. He is willing to spare you from this impending judgment. This ship stretches long enough for all who would come.”

Perhaps they felt sorry for the old fool. Windows closed, and the day’s cares consumed their thoughts. But that day, Noah and his family entered the ark not to be seen again. “The Lord shut him in” (Genesis 7:16), and the windows of heaven opened.

So, what’s the point? The point is that normal days, then and now, may not be what we think. “Normal days,” unconcerned with eternity, unconcerned with God, sin, and with the second coming of Christ, are fatal fictions.

Lie of Normal Days

What most experience as normal Wednesdays, normal dinner times, normal weekends, arrive as waves carrying judgment and eternity ever closer. The important thing about these “last days” is that they precede the return of the King. But experience will, should we let it, cause us to eat, host, drink, tell stories, laugh, watch the game, go on dates, marry and give in marriage unmindful and unprepared.

Such were the days of Noah. They did not realize that the great thing, the true thing, the most relevant thing dwelt above their experience. A world exists elsewhere; a place where Ultimate Reality lives. And even now his hand grips the doorknob. Consider, what is more real to you, this week’s to-do list or the promise of Christ’s return?

Reality Approaches

When he comes, all plans for next week will die. Books will go unread. Weddings will be canceled. Dinner plans, erased. In a moment, the unbelieving will hear the ark door shut. Life will cast off its common cloak as the wall between worlds collapses.

“When Christ comes, all plans for next week will die. . . . In a moment, most of humanity will hear the ark door shut.”

Jesus calls the world to prepare for him: “You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect” (Matthew 24:44).

To prepare is not to build a boat in the backyard, but to eat and drink, speak and marry all while looking and waiting for Christ’s promised coming. We live mindful of eternal souls. We live expecting rain. We live in reverent fear of God. What does the world see you building? Is there anything in your life that can only be explained by Christ and his return?

Do not be deceived by the texture of the weeks and years as they pass. In each, eternity is at stake. In each, he approaches. Ultimate Reality will not linger out of sight much longer. Forever happiness and forever horror lay just beyond the clouds. Are you ready for his return?

Audio Transcript

Twenty years ago today, at 8:14 a.m., American Airlines Flight 11 was highjacked. And with it began a nightmare no one who lived through it will forget.

I was roofing my house that Tuesday morning, radio on, when national broadcasters broke in to announce that the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City was on fire. The cause was maybe a bomb. Other rumors said it was an accidental plane crash, though doubtful on such a clear day. We now know it was Flight 11. Twenty minutes later, the South Tower was hit by Flight 175, and all doubt was removed. America was under attack.

I remember the FAA grounding all flights immediately. I remember the roll call, as the flight paths of the last twenty commercial jets in the air were anxiously narrated on radio. I remember hearing fighter jets were scrambled to the sky if needed to shoot down hijacked jets. I remember looking up into the atmosphere for confirmation of what was unfolding 1,200 miles away, and finding a clear sky emptied of jets and condensation trails. I remember finding my way to a television in time to watch the towers fall. I remember street-level recordings emerging, the sound of glass raining down on concrete, and the sight of people fleeing from grey clouds of dust and copy paper pouring between buildings. I remember seeing the Pentagon on fire, evidence of a third attack, and unconfirmed rumors of a fourth flight that crashed into a field somewhere. I remember people pulled from rubble piles. I remember footage of jubilation and celebration in foreign places. I remember Air Force One flying the president to the military base sixteen miles from me. The shock of that day remains fresh, even twenty years later.

Meanwhile, in Minneapolis, as the news broke on Tuesday morning, Pastor John gathered his pastoral team into a conference room. They pulled out a radio and put it in the middle of the table. “We listened and turned it off and prayed and listened and prayed,” recalled Piper. The pastors interceded for about an hour total, mingled with radio updates. They asked God to pour out mercy “for wisdom in the mouths of Christian spokesmen who will be called upon to say something” and “for a widespread awakening from banal pursuits.”

Then the pastors gathered the staff and planned out the week. A 7:00 prayer gathering would be held that evening at Bethlehem Baptist Church. It was announced on local radio stations under the title “A Service of Sorrow, Self-Humbling, and Steady Hope in our Savior and King, Jesus Christ.” It was an evening for mourning and prayer. Two hundred attended.

The following morning, Pastor John was called on to be one of the Christians who would speak into the tragedy — for him, on KTIS, a local radio station. Where was God on 9/11? There, for about forty minutes, he spoke wisdom into the shock and sorrow.

We want to share the recording with you today on Ask Pastor John, on this twentieth anniversary. The interview covers the importance of grieving and creating space for sorrow, yet a sorrow under God’s all-encompassing sovereignty. Pastor John explains why 9/11 was a call for national humbling, a wake-up call. God was shaking the foundations of America and calling sinners to come to Christ — a global call not just for Americans but also for Palestinians, Saudis, and Afghans.

In the interview, Pastor John goes deep, explaining how God can, “in his sovereign, overarching providence of the world, ordain that something be permitted or caused” — even a “massive sin” like 9/11 — “and yet disapprove of the very thing that he has permitted or ordained.” The cross of Jesus Christ exemplified this truth, because, says Piper, “I don’t think New York — the hijacking, the terrorism — was a greater sin than the killing of the Son of God. The killing of the Son of God was more horrific, more terrible, more wicked, more horrible, than what we’ve just seen. And yet God planned it” (Acts 4:24–28).

The tragedy of 9/11 foregrounds God’s orchestrating providence, human sin, and the magnitude of the world’s daily suffering. It reminds us Satan is alive and active. And it gives parents an opportunity to explain that, ultimately, God has “billions of purposes,” doing an uncountable number of good things in lives through a tragedy at this scale. The whole interview remains instructive two decades later.

“God was so merciful to me and helped me,” Piper later wrote, reflecting on his studio visit. “I was tired and tense and aching with so many emotions. I think I said what God wanted said. What a kind God — in misery and gladness.”

The forty-minute interview has not, to date, appeared on the website until now. Here’s John Piper, the morning after 9/11, on KTIS, a local FM radio station in Minneapolis, being interviewed by hosts Jon Engen and by Chuck Knapp, whom you will hear first. Here’s the interview.

‘Make Us a Sacrificial People’

Chuck Knapp: Would you bring us before the Lord in prayer and lead us?

John Piper: I’d love to.

Father, make us a sensitive, compassionate, grieving, weeping people. There are so many who are wired not to be able to cry. There are so many, all day long, that if they’d given themselves one opportunity, would have wept like a baby, and they just held it back and held it back. And so, I pray for the capacities to grieve. Christians need to grieve better than we do. So help us to do that, I pray.

And then I pray for a great self-humbling in my heart and the heart of my church. Lord, guard us from anger: “The anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God” (James 1:20). Help us to “be . . . slow to speak, slow to anger” (James 1:19). Let us look to ourselves. O God, I pray that I would look to my own sin and my own bitterness, my own unforgiveness, my own disregard for God, my own indifference to your things that should bring judgment upon me. So grant the church and the country to be humbled before you, our great sovereign King.

And then, Lord, I pray for hope to abound, hope in our Savior and King, Jesus Christ. No hope in horses or chariots or the CIA or the government or the military, but hope in you. Some hope in horses, some hope in chariots, but we hope in the name of the Lord our God (Psalm 20:7). Build that hope into our land. Build that hope into our churches. You’ve gotten our attention. And now, O God, I pray that we would yield to your grace and your power and live for Christ, that we would make you the center of our lives, and not ourselves and not our business and not our vacations.

And then, Lord, make us a sacrificial, serving people, ready to lay down our lives to get the gospel to the unreached peoples around the world. O Lord, set our priorities straight, I pray. In Jesus’s name, amen.

God Has Our Attention

Knapp: We are visiting with Dr. John Piper this morning, and it’s a blessing to have you with us. He is the author of many, many books and pastor for the sheep and the lost. He is a Fuller Seminary graduate. There are so many things we could say. I’m just so thankful that you were here in town and able to come and lead us in a whole healing process that needs to occur.

Piper: Thank you.

Knapp: I saw pictures on television yesterday of young children in Israel in the Arab sections who were cheering. And there were adults there, likewise. And one can’t help but become upset on many levels — anger and frustration — at seeing that image of the world across the television screen. But as I look and as I listened to you talking about humbling ourselves, I think that so much of what the world sees of Americans is anything but humble. And I think that that gives them fuel for what they return to us, that anger that they feel toward us. And so, your message and that part about humbling ourselves really hits me in the heart as I think about that in particular.

Piper: I think one of the missing ingredients — I mean, it’s the main missing ingredient that makes that difficult for people — is that God doesn’t have the place that he needs to have in their lives. I mean, the Bible’s message of humility is not a horizontal message, mainly. It’s not “Humble yourself under terrorists.” It’s “humble yourselves . . . under the mighty hand of God” (1 Peter 5:6). If God doesn’t look mighty in your life, if he isn’t central and supreme and glorious, then humility is going to be a very artificial thing in your life. And if he’s there in his proper, central, supreme place, humility will come naturally.

Somebody said to me out in the hall that Anne Graham Lotz said, “God’s got our attention now,” or “Sometimes God withholds his protection so that things can happen to wake us up.” And I think that’s very, very true. And if you ask, “Well, what does he want to communicate now that he has our attention?” and we say that Jesus is calling us to repentance, you have to ask then what repentance is about. And repentance is turning away from sin. And what’s sin about? And sin is fundamentally about treason against God. But you can’t even grasp the meaning of sin if God isn’t viewed as worthy of infinite adoration and infinite delight and infinite allegiance and infinite love and infinite valuing — which he isn’t for most people in America. And so, the responses that are appropriate are almost emotionally impossible for people because God is so foreign to their experience.

“You can’t even grasp the meaning of sin if God isn’t viewed as worthy of infinite adoration and infinite allegiance.”

One of the things that troubles me about these calamities is that God comes onto the agenda suddenly in people’s lives, and where he finds himself is in the dock, being accused. It’s funny: Why don’t we have a radio program or a big call-in thing to account for God’s mercy every time the sun comes up on New York? Jesus said that God “makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matthew 5:45). This is an inexplicable grace to our land. Why not call God to account for treating wicked people so kindly?

I heard you say this morning, Chuck, when I got up, that you wanted to focus on the cross. And I love that. I love that. And I said, “Oh, good. Good. If we focus on the cross, we’ll be safe today.” But the text that’s most central about the cross in relation to this supremacy of God in all of our calamities is Romans 3:23–25, where it says,

All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood. . . . This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.

Now, if you just think about that for a moment, what he’s saying is this: God said, “I must sacrifice my Son in order to vindicate my righteousness, in view of how leniently I have treated sinners.” Now that’s the gospel. That’s the meaning of the cross that we want to make central here at KTIS. The cross is the moment and the means by which God vindicates his righteousness in the face of how unjust his mercy appears. What American worries about that? What American loses sleep over the injustice of God in the sun rising and people being spared? And when the stock market is climbing and when the interest rates are falling and when the commerce is flourishing, which one of us says, “How can God treat us this way? We’re so bad!” Who says that? But that’s what we ought to say.

Instead, when anybody gets their wills crossed or anybody endures pain — whether it’s cancer or a plane crash — God gets called to account. There’s something wrong here. And what’s wrong is that he’s simply not supreme, and therefore we don’t understand sin, and therefore we don’t understand the cross, and therefore our whole worldview is bent out of shape. So, when others, like I’ve heard in the hallway out here, say, “God’s got our attention,” I think he wants to say, “I am God. I am God. I love people. If they would bow to me, I have put my Son forward to forgive their sins and have them home with me forever and ever. But don’t toy with me.”

Christian Nation?

Knapp: People across the world see that of us: that we, as an American people, are not, for the most part, humble.

Piper: Right. And yet, they call us a Christian nation, and therefore Christianity gets made synonymous with all of America’s music and all of America’s movies. We’re the “Great Satan.” And I just want to, for one, on the air, say, I’m not speaking as an American. I am an alien and an exile on this planet (1 Peter 2:11). My citizenship is in heaven. I await a Savior who will come, who will transform this lowly body into a body like his (Philippians 3:20–21). I’m a foreigner in America. I’m a foreigner in Palestine and Israel and Russia and Indonesia. I speak, I hope, for another King and another allegiance. The Muslim world, the Hindu world, the Buddhist world, the secular world, they need to hear that Christians are not synonymous with Americans.

Knapp: What a perspective. I hope it causes us to stop and really think. I hope it causes us to assess where we all are, personally and in self-examination.

Jon Engen: This is what I was thinking when you were saying that: Colossians 3:16 says, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.” And this is what you were just saying: “And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Colossians 3:17). We are here as aliens, but we are his representatives.

Rebuilding the Foundation

Piper: Yeah, it’s so hard — I feel for you guys. I said to Neil Staven last night — he dropped over and visited us — “I don’t really look forward to being on the radio because it’s hard to talk theology and do pastoral care in this medium. And yet, these guys have to do it.” You’re stuck with it. You can’t run away like other people can. I said, “I feel for these guys. I want to join them there.” And I just want to encourage you to do that: to be representatives of Jesus Christ.

And what makes it so hard for you and me is that we’re speaking into an audience that doesn’t have in place the worldview to make sense out of things that would fall into place for us. I mean, they’ll ask you some just blunt, painful question about a piece of the tragedy, and you’ve got to take them back to the foundation. You’ve got to go deep. You’ve got to go back to the beginning and say, “Where did sin come from, and what has happened to humanity?”

What is the depravity that Romans 1 talks about, where God just hands people over to their own depravity?
What is the futility of Romans 8, where it says that God subjected the creation to futility, which means the pain and the suffering in the world? Even “we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons” (Romans 8:23). All of it awaits redemption.
What is death, which came into the world through one man? “Just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, so death spread to all men because all sinned” (Romans 5:12).

Those massive underpinnings of how we explain everything aren’t in place for your listeners, many of them. And so in order to answer questions at the upper level, we have to go down to the lower level and rebuild some foundations.

“The killing of the Son of God was more horrific than what we’ve just seen — and yet God planned it.”

I just want to encourage you: When you get a tough question, which no doubt you do — we all do — Jesus didn’t automatically just jump in at the level of the questioner. He sometimes just said something that must have made them scratch their head, because he knew they didn’t have the categories for understanding his answer. So we need to rebuild, and we’re doing that right now. That’s part of what we’re doing.

God’s Mysterious Sovereignty

Knapp: I was looking through several excerpts from editorials, and one from Oklahoma that struck me earlier this morning, a part of that article or editorial in the paper, said, “Some will blame God for Tuesday’s events. How could he not protect us from such evil?” So that’s how the world looks at this.

Piper: Right, and the very way that question is crafted is almost unanswerable. Because as soon as you use the word blame, you’ve implied guilt. Blame implies guilt. So they’ve muddied the waters, because they cannot make the theological, biblical distinction of ordaining that something be that you may, in fact, grieve over and disapprove of. See, now there’s a category that is very hard for people to get ahold of. And yet, I find it all over the Bible: that God can, in his sovereign, overarching providence of the world, ordain that something be permitted or caused — he’s involved causally in different ways in different acts — and yet disapprove of the very thing that he has permitted or ordained. People simply can’t get it.

So, the word blame immediately hangs you on the horns of a dilemma you don’t want to be hung on — because when you say, “No, you don’t blame him,” they think, “Oh, you mean he was on a vacation. He’s out there. He had nothing to do with this. He wasn’t watching. He fumbled the ball. He couldn’t manage it.” Or otherwise, you’ve got him as a sinner. I mean, those are your two options with regard to a question like that.

Well, those aren’t the biblical options. God is sovereign. And yet, when he wills and ordains that there be pain and suffering in our lives, he’s not doing it as a sinner or as an evil God. God has ways to ordain things in his mysterious sovereignty that are for our good, in spite of being incredibly painful and — here’s the mystery — in spite of involving massive sin. And the place where that is so vividly clear in the Bible is at the cross.

That’s why I’m so glad you’re staying here at the cross, because I don’t think 9/11 — the hijacking, the terrorism — was a greater sin than the killing of the Son of God. I think the killing of the Son of God was more horrific, more terrible, more wicked, more horrible than what we’ve just seen — and yet God planned it. It’s so clear. Acts 4:27–28:

Truly in this city [Jerusalem] there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.

All the biblical promises of the coming of the Son — to bear our sorrows and to bear our griefs — were predicted seven hundred years before they happened, and yet there wasn’t a more sinful act in the universe than the nailing of the Son of God to the cross. And therefore, if we’re going to be believers in the love of God for sinners at the cross, we have to believe that he has the capacity to ordain that his Son die, and yet not be a sinner in killing him. If he can do that, then I’m going to stand up on Sunday and say, “Though I don’t have all the answers, my God, and your God, reigned on September 11. And he is not cruel, he is not wicked, and he’s not a sinner. And the glory is that because he reigns, he can comfort every soul, he can answer every prayer, he can heal every disease, he can rescue from every calamity, he can hold back from us every harmful thing that would not be good for us. And if he weren’t sovereign, then I don’t know what hope we could ultimately have for our future. And we would lose our gospel.”

Engen: And let me just mention, I appreciate, dear sir, your heart on providing the answer. It’s not necessarily grabbing a piece of the tragedy, and then trying to define that little piece. You have to define it, first of all, in light of the tragedy as a whole, but also the foundation as a whole as well.

Where Was Satan?

And as God’s people, we are not simply representing this tragedy in the United States; we’re representing the whole of Christ and the offering of God and what sin does to us. And we were born broken, and we’re watching this happen again.

Piper: Yeah, and not just the whole of Christ, but the whole of pain, because what’s so strange and irrational about the human heart is that it takes a pulling together, in one cataclysmic calamity, to awaken us to what’s happening every moment of every day, like in hospitals across the country. There are a lot of people right now whose mom or dad or wife or husband is breathing their last with pulmonary disease and gasping — just like some of those folks are gasping right now under the rubble. That’s not unique.

And so it’s awakening us to feel the magnitude of the world’s misery, which forces an issue that we ought to be dealing with all the time: What is this misery all about? And the biblical answer is this: it’s all about sin. And therefore, it’s all about the God who is moral and holy and just and who defined sin as sin and whether there’s redemption. That’s the message. And so, you’re right. We’re forced back to deal with huge things.

There’s a piece that we haven’t mentioned yet, that we probably should, as far as worldview goes, and that’s Satan. Satan is a massive part of the Christian worldview. And we ought to ask, Where was Satan yesterday? And of course, nobody knows precisely, except to say that the biblical picture is that Satan hates God. He hates his purposes. He wants people to dishonor God, mainly. He tries to squash the faith out of everybody’s life. He demanded, it says in Luke 22:31–32, to “sift [Peter] like wheat.” But Jesus says, “I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail.” Now I think that picture means this: just like you’d put wheat in a sieve, shake it, and it would tear at the wheat and rip off the outside to get the kernel, Satan wants to shake Peter, tear off his faith, and just have the natural Peter fall through and live the rest of his life in happiness and peace off in the suburbs somewhere. He’s fine — but without faith. And Jesus said, “I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail.”

And then he says this absolutely sovereign word: “When you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.” In other words, “I know you’re going to turn, and I have effectually interceded with my Father on your behalf. You are going to drop three times tonight, but you’re going to stand again, my friend.”

So Satan is involved in all these things, and he’s moving people to do horrific acts. And I don’t doubt that he was stirring and moving in the evils on those planes and in the weeks and years that led up to it. But “he who is in [us] is greater than he who is in the world” (1 John 4:4). He holds Satan on a leash. He commands the evil spirits, and they do what he bids. So, Satan can never get outside God’s control. That’s the point of the book of Job, I think. He’s got to get permission to mess up this man’s life and take his children and put boils on his face and on his body (Job 1:6–12). And Job stands back and says, when Satan has done all this, “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21).

“Satan is to be hated. Satan is to be fought. Satan is to be resisted. But God reigns over Satan.”

Or when his wife says, “Curse God and die.” What in the world is Job holding fast to his integrity for? Job says, “You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” And we’re kind of shocked, saying, “Wait a minute, Job. You missed it. Satan did that. It says Satan did that. What do you mean ‘shall we not receive evil as well as good at the hand of the Lord?’” And the writer adds, “In all this Job did not sin with his lips,” as though he knew we were going to misinterpret at that point (Job 2:9–10). What Job was testifying to is that Satan is to be hated. Satan is to be fought. Satan is to be resisted. But God reigns over Satan. He’s not running loose in the world without his leash in the hand of an Almighty, sovereign God. If he were, our hope would be very fragile — and, I think, non-existent.

Our Enemy Within

Engen: That’s the thought I had last evening as I was going to sleep: Satan did his work long ago on this one, on the people who were involved in such an incident. We read yesterday Psalm 36, where it says,

Transgression speaks to the wicked     deep in his heart;there is no fear of God     before his eyes.For he flatters himself in his own eyes     that his iniquity cannot be found out and hated. . . .He plots trouble while on his bed;     he sets himself in a way that is not good;he does not reject evil. (Psalm 36:1–2, 4)

Well, he did their work, and I’m imagining Satan just sat back and watched it happen.

Piper: Yeah, he sat back and watched it happen, or he did what he did to Judas: he “entered into Judas called Iscariot” (Luke 22:3). So, Satan has indirect and direct ways of working, and perhaps Satan entered in that morning; he just did a decisive work. But he also does these preparatory works.

Let’s not be too quick to say, “Oh, Satan did this.” Our flesh is plenty evil to do this sort of thing. The world is plenty evil to set things up so that we do it. Paul called sin a power, an indwelling power within us, that rises up and takes us captive (Romans 6:12; 7:9–10). So, we don’t need to blame Satan for every evil thing that happens, because we’re bad enough to do it without bringing him in as an explanatory factor. This is why I think Jesus didn’t focus on Satan when they brought him the news about the tower in Siloam falling on the eighteen or the mingling of the blood of the Galileans with their sacrifices. He simply said, “Repent” — not “Run away from Satan” (Luke 13:1–5).

Engen: On Sunday morning was our communion Sunday at church. And I preached on Paul’s warning to examine yourselves. Why have you come to this table? What have you brought with you? And of course, all the other things Paul talks about up to 1 Corinthians 11, dealing with divisions and dealing with sin in the church and the astonishment he has that they’re kind of pleased with themselves, that they’re accepting all these things. And then he comes to the table, and says that you must examine yourself if you come to worship. I walked away from the sermon on Sunday just beating myself, asking, “Were we too harsh in saying, ‘You and God have got to get this right’?” And this is exactly what you’ve been saying all morning: You and God have got to get this right. What we saw yesterday lies in the heart of all of us.

Piper: In fact, if you go on and read the rest of that passage, something absolutely stunning is said, that would really make you wonder if you’d been too harsh. Because he says that if you don’t discern the body and you don’t examine yourself carefully, “this is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died” (1 Corinthians 11:30).

Engen: We said that. Somebody said it’s the most dangerous service a church can hold because how you approach it has direct consequences.

Piper: But what makes it so mysterious and amazing and wonderful is that the death there is pictured as a way of not coming into condemnation. We are being judged by the Lord that we might not be condemned by the Lord. Even death — and this is relevant; oh, is this relevant — even death can be a mercy from God.

Hope for Everlasting Peace and Joy

Engen: Well, we’re talking to Pastor John Piper of Bethlehem Baptist Church. And we so appreciate you coming in and just opening the word and setting our eyes back on Christ. We mentioned this morning Hebrews 12:3, where the writer says, “Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself” — and that’s what we’re doing — “so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted.”

Knapp: Well, now at three minutes before eight o’clock, I wonder, Dr. Piper, if you would lead us again in prayer for healing and understanding.

Piper: Father in heaven, our hearts go out to hundreds of thousands of family members who to this moment don’t know what’s become of their loved ones. And I pray that you would turn their hearts to you and that you would cause them to submit their wills and their hearts and their lives to you. And to look to you for help and strength.

“Jesus Christ died for all, so that whoever will believe of any color may have eternal life and escape perishing.”

I pray, O God, that you would bring your unique kind of consolation through Jesus Christ, who loved us and gave himself for us. I pray that you would pour out the Holy Spirit upon us, O God, as the church of Jesus Christ and upon the world for awakening. I pray that you would assert your glorious, gracious, kind, merciful, powerful, just, holy supremacy into the American life and make Jesus Christ the issue today and make people see him for who he really is and savor him and love him and trust him and treasure him and count him more precious than anything else in all the world.

O God, let this tragedy not happen in vain, but get people’s hearts for yourself, so that they not only have some relief in this world, but everlasting joy, everlasting peace, everlasting life. Lord, we want to see the greatest possible joy come. And that will come for eternity through Jesus Christ alone. So magnify your Son, Lord, in this calamity, I pray, so that people will reap a harvest of righteousness and a harvest of everlasting peace and joy. Through Christ I pray. Amen.

Knapp: Spoken from the heart. Amen. KTIS-FM in the Twin Cities at ten minutes after eight o’clock. We are visiting with Dr. John Piper, who is helping us “overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21).

God in His Rightful Place

Yesterday I was numb; I was just numbed by all of it. Twenty-four hours ago we were here watching the monitors and saw something go on. We didn’t know what it was. And we thought perhaps it was an accident. Well, then a second plane flies into the other tower. And then within minutes, here we are; we’re in the same shock that I felt as a kid when President Kennedy was assassinated. I felt it again when the shuttle exploded. There’ve been other times in my life as well: when Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated, when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. These are all things that I, in my twenties, have imprinted now. It just feels like it’s in my DNA, this shock. And then the plane goes into the Pentagon. And you realize this is an awful day.

And so now the shock — I don’t know if it’s wearing off, but now it’s like, How do we make any sense? Where do we start? How do we rebuild? And I know the focus needs to be on the cross because I’ve said that. I’ve been taught that in the last ten years, but that’s difficult too. So you’re helping to shape the perspective and then maybe just sharpen the image.

Piper: Well, I think you said it well — that the order is one moving from the immediate, personal experience of emotion, which the Bible cares a lot about, to the more reflective, quiet coming to terms with truth. We need both. We can’t just jump in with both feet at the theoretical, theological level at the most raw moments of life. There’s a time for silence and a time for speaking (Ecclesiastes 3:7). There’s a time for embracing and a time to refrain from embracing (Ecclesiastes 3:5).

And so, as the time goes by, pastors need to step up to the plate with fiber in their tree and give people a rock to stand on and a trunk for the branches to hang on. And whether we’re quite there or not, we’re forced to be there. And my passion is to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples. And so, the reason I come back, again and again, to the supremacy of God in these moments is because, I think, if we lose it, we lose the most precious thing in the world. We lose everything.

And one of the texts that’s been on my mind, in recent minutes especially, is the book of Lamentations. Now there’s not a more horrific book in the Old Testament because it’s after the carnage of Jerusalem by the Babylonians. And it is so horrible that women are boiling and eating their children (Lamentations 4:10). And out of that setting, Jeremiah writes two things that, I think, if you lose the one you lose the other. The one we all love is basis of the hymn “Great Is Thy Faithfulness.” Right in the middle chapter, he writes,

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;     his mercies never come to an end;they are new every morning;     great is your faithfulness.“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,     “therefore I will hope in him.” (Lamentations 3:22–24)

I mean, how can he say that mercies are new every morning when things like this are happening? Mercies are new every morning. And just a few verses later in the chapter, he says,

The Lord will not     cast off forever,but, though he cause grief, he will have compassion     according to the abundance of his steadfast love;for he does not afflict from his heart     or grieve the children of men. (Lamentations 3:31–33)

So there you have, back to back, the Lord causes grief and his mercies are new every morning. So, my gut feeling is this: I want mercy in my life. I want to live by mercy. I want to give mercy. I want to embody mercy for people. And I think I’m going to lose verses 22–24, the mercy verses, if I lose the supremacy verses just a few verses later. Which is why I’m so zealous that God be given his rightful place in these moments and that we not kind of shuttle him to the side and say, “Well, let’s just deal with human misery here,” because my only hope in dealing with human misery is a great, holy, good, gracious, sovereign God who, with all of his mystery, can answer our prayers and can do miracles beyond what all humans can do.

He can restrain sin, like he did with King Abimelech in Genesis 20, when Abraham said, “She’s my sister. Sarah’s my sister.” And so she goes into the harem and could be slept with that night. And Abimelech doesn’t sleep with her. And in the morning, God confronts him, and he apologizes because he didn’t know what was up. And God says, “It was I who kept you from sinning against me” (Genesis 20:6). Now, God can do that. God can keep people from sinning. One puff of his breath, and the plane misses the tower. One slight restraint, and this guy falls down in the plane instead of going into the cockpit. God can do that. And that he can do it creates problems for us in dealing with the calamity, and it creates hope for us in coming out of the calamity into a life where we know he will not let anything befall us but what is good for us (Romans 8:28).

It’s so important to me that, even though it’s painful sometimes to hear in moments of crisis, we give God his rightful place as the sovereign, merciful Lord of the universe, so that we have a gospel for people.

More Than We Imagine

Engen: Well, it’s been quite the morning and, Dr. Piper, we just want to say thank you for sharing your heart with us. I know that it has been a part of the refuge that God has been using to bring some peace to some hearts — maybe raise more questions, I guess, as well. But I pray that they’re questions about the solid rock, the foundation that we’re all standing on as God’s people. When you were speaking about Lamentations, I was thinking of David’s words when he says,

I waited patiently for the Lord;     he inclined to me and heard my cry.He drew me up from the pit of destruction,     out of the miry bog,and set my feet upon a rock,     making my steps secure. (Psalm 40:1–2)

Philosophy can’t do it. Determination can’t do it. Consensus can’t do it. And just a vote at a voting booth can’t do it. It’s God.

Piper: And he goes on and says,

He put a new song in my mouth,     a song of praise to our God.Many will see and fear,     and put their trust in the Lord. (Psalm 40:3)

Which means that the extended time of desolation was the means to a new song, which was the means to people trusting Christ. Those are the kinds of connections our people have just got to see, so that they don’t linger in the desolation without thinking that God has no good designs here.

Engen: Exactly — and that there is a rock, that there is a solid foundation. And as I was speaking to one of our listeners and staff members here on the college campus, he said, I think very vividly, “We’ve watched this house built on sand crumble to the ground. Now, what are we going to do? Are we going to build our new house on the rock, the firm foundation of Christ? Or are we going to try the sand thing again? Well, let’s go to the rock.”

Knapp: Does your life look like the World Trade Center coming down? The trigger word for me in all of that is fear. That’s the word: “Many will see and fear” (Psalm 40:3). And I see that word in so many places: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Psalm 111:10; Proverbs 9:10).

Piper: Right. And I just read in Isaiah when Christ is described. It says, “His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord” (Isaiah 11:3). If we find the covert in the cleft of the rock, where we’re safe in Jesus through the cross, the hurricane of God’s might ceases to be threatening and becomes gloriously satisfying. In the eye of the hurricane is a safe place to look at this mighty God. “Our God is a consuming fire,” Hebrews says (Hebrews 10:27). And yet, he doesn’t have to be frightening to the soul that is safe in Jesus.

And you mentioned to me on the phone yesterday, Chuck, about children and struggling. In fact, I heard on some station people talking about that this morning. I was just trying to find you this morning quick before I came over, and they were talking about children. And I just want to stress to parents that we expect too little of our children. They are capable of discerning and grasping some pretty weighty things about God, and they are probably willing to embrace them more quickly than many adults. When we tell them the story of the flood, we ought to tell them it’s about the judgment of God on humanity, and everybody drowned because of how horrible sin is.

“When you say, ‘What’s the purpose of God in these kinds of things?’ one answer is ‘Billions of purposes.’”

And when we tell them the story of the feeding of the five thousand, we shouldn’t tell them this is just about the sharing of a lunch. This is about a mighty Christ who takes five little loaves of your life and feeds five thousand people. He can do wonders with your little life. Give yourself to him. We need to get our kids into a big vision of God. And I’ve got a little 5-year-old girl. She’s sitting right outside that window there. This is a homeschool outing for her to see how radio works. And she said this morning, “Now a plane was stolen and hit a building?” And I said, “Do you know what happened? God allowed something very terrible to happen, so that he might bring about great good. Let’s pray that millions upon millions of divine, gracious, merciful purposes would happen in people’s lives. For example, Talitha, we’re praying right now. We’re praying. We wouldn’t have been praying like this before.”

I mean, when you say, “What’s the purpose of God in these kinds of things?” one answer is “Billions of purposes.” God is doing things that we can’t even imagine. And we just need to put our hands over our mouths, submit to him, and go back to the cross.

Greatest Thing in the World

I see the clock coming to an end there, and I need to go and you need to go, and I’m so glad Michael Smith is coming. But let me just end on the gospel. Can I?

Knapp: Yes, please.

Piper: I’ve been reveling in Romans for three years at Bethlehem and preached last Sunday: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). And I want the listeners to hear this and know it with all their hearts: the fact that there can be no condemnation is rooted not in our goodness, but in Christ’s sufficiency on the cross. The Son of God died for sinners. Everyone who comes to him can have absolute, total pardon and forgiveness. They can be clothed in a righteousness not their own (Philippians 3:9). When they’re faced with the last judgment or the accusations of Satan, they can say “No, there is over me no condemnation because I am in Christ Jesus.”

But here’s the note I think we need to strike this moment: That message goes out to every nation, every people group, every color, every ethnic group in the Middle East, in Saudi Arabia, in Afghanistan. And that same gospel saves every kind of person. So, I just plead with the church of Jesus Christ not to fall into the trap of starting to stereotype Arab people or Palestinian people or people of a certain color as having a certain bent. That is the essence of racism. It’s the essence of prejudice: lumping a group together, taking one lousy apple and making the whole barrel rotten. Oh, that the church would say, “Jesus Christ died for all, so that whoever will believe of any color may have eternal life and escape perishing.”

Whether they go down in a plane, whether they go up in smoke, Christians have a message in the midst of tragedy — they have a message at funerals, a message at weddings. And it is a glorious thing to be a Christian. I buried an old man when I came to the church 21 years ago, who looked up from the bed to me, and he smiled as he was dying. He said, “Pastor John, the greatest thing in the world is to be saved.” And we can offer that to every single person.

So bless you, brothers, as you keep offering the good news on this station. It was an honor to be here with you.

September 11, 2001, was the day before my twenty-first birthday. I was leaving my first collegiate Classical Greek class when I heard someone say a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. He didn’t sound shocked; just intrigued. I assumed it must have been a small plane, surely an accident, perhaps even no fatalities. I walked back to the dorms, enjoying a few more minutes of peace.

That peace ended on my hall. Doors were open, televisions on. Shock and horror were plain. Now another plane — passenger jets? — had hit the other tower. This was coordinated terrorism, and the nation seemed under attack. We waited to learn whether more planes had been highjacked, whether more assaults would come.

As we come to the twentieth anniversary of 9/11, I suspect many readers have those first horrific moments emblazoned in their memory — where you were, how you heard, what you did for the next several hours. Most, like me, were tucked safely away from America’s largest cities. I can only imagine the experience of those hours, and days, in New York and DC.

Doubtless we remember the day far more than the ensuing weeks, but much was changing in those days. News was changing. Air travel was changing. New and deeper fears were stirring. And many of the changes are still felt and seen today, two decades later. As others pay tribute, and tell of those who died, of how it profoundly affected a nation, and the world, and the ripple effects that followed, my particular interest is theological. What mark did 9/11 leave on our faith?

God Without Christ

In those days, many Christians, churches, and ministries asked fresh questions with deeper interest — about the sovereignty of God, and the problem of evil, and the reality of Islam, the world’s second largest religion. But at the ministry of Desiring God specifically, the enduring theological legacy of 9/11 has been a deeper and more deliberate Christ-centeredness.

“The enduring theological legacy of 9/11 for us has been a deeper and more deliberate Christ-centeredness.”

A year and a half after the attacks, I was in my final month of college when I read a copy of Don’t Waste Your Life, which released that year. I can still picture the top of page 38, the words now emblazoned in my mind like images from 9/11.

I was familiar with John Piper’s own story in chapters 1 and 2 of becoming a “Christian Hedonist” and discovering the life-transforming truth that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him. Now what I found on page 38 was new — at least new clarity, new precision, new explicitness. I had not heard Piper zero in so particularly before, at least in this way, with a seriousness about Christ-centeredness. Writing a little over a year after 9/11, he said,

Since September 11, 2001, I have seen more clearly than ever how essential it is to exult explicitly in the excellence of Christ crucified for sinners and risen from the dead. Christ must be explicit in all our God-talk. It will not do, in this day of pluralism, to talk about the glory of God in vague ways. God without Christ is no God. And a no-God cannot save or satisfy the soul. Following a no-God — whatever his name or whatever his religion — will be a wasted life. God-in-Christ is the only true God and the only path to joy. Everything I have said so far must now be related to Christ.

As Christians living in America at the beginning of the twenty-first century, we often took “God” for granted as the Christian God — the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Even in cities like Minneapolis, and all the more in rural areas, God was assumed to be the God of the Judeo-Christian tradition.

But 9/11 struck us right between the eyes — with terror inflicted by professing monotheists. To many of us, Islam had seemed so distant. Now, all of a sudden, it felt so close, and threatening. And theologically, the question that churches and ministries and Christian publications wrestled with in those days was, Is the God of Islam the Father of Jesus?

Bracing clarity awaited us. The New Testament was not birthed in the presumptions of increasingly post-Christian times. Rather, the early church was at the margins. The first-century world was flagrantly pluralistic. Now, in the harsh wake of the attacks, we began to see explicit, even shocking, Christ-centeredness from the Gospels to Revelation — and its profound relevance to the pluralism of our days.

The One Who Rejects Me

Jesus himself made it stark: “The one who rejects me rejects him who sent me” (Luke 10:16). “Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him” (John 5:23). To reject Jesus on his own terms, as Islam does, is to reject the one, true God. “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).

“To reject Jesus on his own terms, as Islam does, is to reject the one, true God.”

Again and again, the events of Acts turn not on mere monotheism, or the name of Yahweh, but on the name of Jesus. We also were awakened, Desiring God included, to the striking Christ-centeredness we often overlooked in the Epistles. Amazingly, not only did “God the Father” now appear alongside “our Lord Jesus Christ” (more than fifteen times), but he was defined as “the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 15:6; 2 Corinthians 1:3; 11:31; Ephesians 1:3, 17; Colossians 1:3; 1 Peter 1:3).

Paul’s letter to the Colossians is particularly explicit about Christ, and his supremacy, in its God-talk. In perhaps the most stunningly Christ-centered six consecutive verses in all the Bible, Paul celebrates Jesus as “the image of the invisible God,” and the one in whom, and through whom, and for whom, all things were made and exist — “in him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:15–17). And not just this exhaustively in creation, but also in redemption — all salvation is in him, and through him, and for him (Colossians 1:18–20).

Later, Paul goes as far as to say, sweepingly, “Christ is all, and in all” (Colossians 3:11), and the apostle takes the all-encompassing charge of “do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31) and makes it explicitly Christ-centered: “whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Colossians 3:17).

Litmus Test for All

It was not just Colossians that we turned to afresh in those post-9/11 days. It was the magisterial opening verses of Hebrews (1:1–4) and the Gospel of John (1:1–18), as well as John’s final apocalyptic vision at the end — with Christ, the Lamb, lighting the celestial city in the glory of God as its singular lamp (Revelation 21:23).

The implications were freshly clear for us: “No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also” (1 John 2:23). “Everyone who . . . does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God” (2 John 9). So, as Piper went on to say,

Jesus is the litmus test of reality for all persons and all religions. . . . People and religions who reject Christ reject God. Do other religions know the true God? Here is the test: Do they reject Jesus as the only Savior for sinners who was crucified and raised by God from the dead? If they do, they do not know God in a saving way. . . . There is no point in romanticizing other religions that reject the deity and saving work of Christ. They do not know God. And those who follow them tragically waste their lives.

If we would see and savor the glory of God, we must see and savor Christ. For Christ is “the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15). To put it another way, if we would embrace the glory of God, we must embrace the gospel of Christ. The reason for this is not only because we are sinners and need a Savior to die for us, but also because this Savior is himself the fullest and most beautiful manifestation of the glory of God. He purchases our undeserved and everlasting pleasure, and he becomes for us our all-deserving, everlasting Treasure. (38–39)

‘Through Jesus Christ’

In the months that followed 9/11, we realized at Desiring God, and at Bethlehem Baptist Church, that our beloved mission statement needed at least three more precious and clarifying words:

We exist to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things, for the joy of all peoples, through Jesus Christ.

To be sure, Christ is not just the means. We not only do all we do as Christians through him but also, as Colossians 1:15–20 makes plain, in him and for him. He is not just the way, but also the life. He is not just the means, but knowing and enjoying him is also the great end. As Piper had said, It will not do, in this day of pluralism, to talk about God in vague ways. Everything must now relate to Christ.

Blazing Center of the Glory

For Christians desiring God — and the ministry called Desiring God — this has been a great legacy of 9/11.

We don’t say that lightly. We don’t say that without acknowledging the pain, and profound terror, experienced by many in those hours, or the casualties and their friends and family. As Christians, however, neither do we minimize the preciousness of fresh explicitness, and awareness, and appreciation, and worship of Jesus Christ crucified and risen for sinners like us. Perhaps you were among the number newly awakened to the treasure of Christ in the darkness of 9/11. Or maybe here twenty years later, at its remembrance, God would be pleased to stir you to the explicit glories of his Son that set the Christian faith apart from Islam, secularism, and every other confession on earth.

With that, perhaps Piper should have the last word:

Ever since the incarnate, redeeming work of Jesus, God is gladly glorified by sinners only through the glorification of the risen God-man, Jesus Christ. His bloody death is the blazing center of the glory of God. There is no way to the glory of the Father but through the Son. All the promises of joy in God’s presence, and pleasures at his right hand, come to us only through faith in Jesus Christ. (38)

http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/14744655/how-does-christ-fill-all-things

Audio Transcript

#blessed — It’s a social media tag for when someone feels blessed and who has, or is getting, everything they’ve dreamed of getting. It can range from getting a new girlfriend, a new job, or a pay raise, to finding a ten-dollar bill on the sidewalk or getting surprisingly good news. But what does it mean to truly be blessed according to Scripture? Now that’s a different discussion, one initiated by a discerning listener to the podcast named Jordan.

“Pastor John, hello! Of late I have been having discussions with my friends around what it means to be blessed. The term blessed is thrown around in our culture today, and it’s all over our Bibles too. To me, it seems like the way God uses blessed or blessings in the Bible is very different from how it’s used now. I see the term blessed associated with material possessions or family or health. These can all be good things, but I think you could also argue that if these blessings lead us further away from God, they are not truly blessings at all.

“On the other hand, Jesus said, ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit’ (Matthew 5:3). And he said, ‘Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake’ (Matthew 5:10). And he said, ‘Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account’ (Matthew 5:11). Rarely, if ever, do I see people posting about how blessed they are as ‘poor in spirit’ or ‘persecuted’ like we read about in the Beatitudes. With that in mind, what is a biblical definition of what it means to be truly blessed?”

Jordan puts his finger on the nub of the issue, I think, by referring to the Beatitudes in Matthew 5. And I’m going to circle back and probably end there and affirm what he sees and show why it is such a great answer to his own question.

Showcase of God’s Blessing

But first, let me lay down a principle that has helped me grasp why there is such a preponderance of earthly blessings promised in the Old Testament — like the inheritance of land (Psalm 37:22), deliverance from our enemies (Psalm 41:1), fruitfulness in our families and in our fields (Genesis 17:20; 48:3–4) — while in the New Testament, there are very few earthly blessings promised, but rather afflictions are promised, with the material, physical blessings largely postponed until the resurrection.

Here’s the principle: in God’s wisdom, the Jewish religion of the Old Testament was largely a “come and see” religion. Israel was the showcase of God’s blessings among the nations.

Now when the queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon concerning the name of the Lord, she came to test him with hard questions. . . . And when the queen of Sheba had seen all the wisdom of Solomon, the house that he had built, the food of his table, the seating of his officials, and the attendance of his servants, their clothing, his cupbearers, and his burnt offerings that he offered at the house of the Lord, there was no more breath in her. (1 Kings 10:1, 4–5)

I call that the showcasing of the blessing of God on the people of God in the Old Testament.

Into All the World

There’s nothing like that in the New Testament. In God’s wisdom, the church of Jesus Christ is not an ethnic or geographic or political or national entity. It cuts across all ethnicities, all geographies, all politics, nationalities.

There is no geographic center for Christianity.
There’s no great temple-like edifice in Christianity.
There are no places to do pilgrimages in Christianity.
There are no priests or saints through whom we have to go to God, but only Jesus Christ.

“Put all the billionaires together. They are paupers compared to the lowliest Christian.”

And instead of telling the world to come to us — “Come see how I bless my people”; God never says that — he says, “Go — go to the world. And if it costs you your life, lay it down.” Jesus says very plainly, “Any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:33). “Put it at the disposal of me and my mission.” That’s the kind of radical life we’re called to live in the New Testament.

So there’s the principle. And the failure to recognize this distinction between God’s plan for Israel in the Old Testament and God’s plan for the church in the New Testament has caused a lot of people to put way too much emphasis on earthly blessings today.

Eternal Happiness

And I think one of the most illumining texts about how we are blessed as Christians — which we are; I would say we are infinitely blessed — is 1 Corinthians 3:21–23.

Let no one boast in men. For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future — all are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.

Let that sink in. What a verse! I love it. To belong to Christ is to belong to God as our Father and to be heirs of all that God owns — that is, everything. Paul says, “The world is yours. All things are yours.” Jesus said, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5). You cannot be richer than a Christian. Put all the billionaires together. They are paupers — I mean, poverty-stricken paupers — compared to the lowliest Christian.

But notice that in the list of things that belong to us is death. That’s in the list: “All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death.” Death is yours. This means that you do not get all your blessings in this life, but that death itself belongs to you as a gift, as a doorway to infinite, eternal, immeasurable blessing. Death becomes your servant because of Christ’s triumph over death. The apostle John heard a voice from heaven saying, “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord” (Revelation 14:13). Why is that? Paul answers in Ephesians 1:3: God “has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing” — every blessing that heaven can conceive for the eternal happiness of God’s people will be ours.

“In God’s wisdom, the church of Jesus Christ is not an ethnic or geographic or political or national entity.”

But Jesus taught us explicitly not to expect them now. For example, in Luke 14:13–14, he said, “When you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you.” I love Jesus’s logic: “You will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.” That’s the orientation of Jesus Christ the king. That’s the New Testament pattern: sacrificial generosity and service now; spectacular blessing later at the resurrection. Or here’s the way James puts it: “Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him” (James 1:12).

First the trial, then the blessing, the crown.

Our Great Reward

Let’s circle back now to Jordan’s reference to the Beatitudes. I think the Beatitudes, taken together, provide a beautiful summary of the blessings promised to the followers of Christ: six immeasurable blessings are sandwiched between the summary promise “Theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3, 10).

These six blessings summarize what it means to live forever under the kingdom, the heavenly rule of God:

We will see God: “They shall see God” (Matthew 5:8). The pure shall see God.
We will be shown mercy: “They shall receive mercy” (Matthew 5:7).
We will be part of God’s family: “They shall be called sons of God” (Matthew 5:9).
We will experience God’s comfort: “They shall be comforted” (Matthew 5:4).
We will be co-owners of the whole world: “They shall inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5).
We will be satisfied with personal and universal righteousness: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied” (Matthew 5:6).

So in summary, (1) the presence of God seen and enjoyed in the face of Christ, (2) covering us with mercy because of all our sins, (3) calling us his children, (4) comforting us for all pain and loss in this world, (5) bequeathing to us the universe for a familiar homeland, and (6) everything set right in our souls and in the social order of the new world — this is our great reward. This is what it means to be truly blessed.

Where are we in missions to the Muslim world on this twentieth anniversary of 9/11? If we look only at surface realities, we may easily lose hope.

Just recently, of course, Afghanistan was completely overrun by the Taliban. Missionaries fled the country — if they could. America’s poorly considered and poorly executed departure resulted (and will result) in untold numbers brutalized at the hands of the Taliban. These tragedies mark an ironic and sad anniversary to 9/11, especially for Afghani Christians. Afghanistan alone seems to give reason to lose hope for missions in the Muslim world.

But Afghanistan is hardly alone. The Muslim world is known for head fakes of hope: the Arab Spring promised to move the Muslim world into a free society; the seeming openness of Saudi Arabia gave hope for a less medieval country; street protests in Iran offered light against the cruel and oppressive government. Yet all of these movements were crushed or discredited or snuffed out.

The list goes on: economic ruin in Lebanon, dystopian landscapes in Iraq, sectarian conflict in Egypt, refugee horrors in Syria, oppression of Christians in Turkey and Indonesia, ever-more-brutal sectarian conflict in Africa.

Even the most progressive and open countries of the Muslim world foster such unimaginable violations of human rights that most Westerners scarcely have a category to understand them or even believe them to be true. These realities make missionary-minded people feel like grasshoppers before giants.

Gardening One Fateful Day

I know such feelings well. I remember a day that threatened to crush my hope for missions in the Muslim world. What a day it was: clear skies and perfect temperature — just right for working in the yard. But my yard work wasn’t merely yard work; it was part of a vision for the Middle East.

We desired to do something not done before: develop student ministry on the new universities in the Arabian Peninsula. So a year before, after much research, we had set our course for Dubai, a gleaming modern city springing up out of the desert of the United Arab Emirates. We recruited a team of like-minded couples. They were skilled, gospel-centered, committed. We shared a long and deep friendship developed over the years in ministry together. We garnered financial support. We set up a business. We saw God’s favor all around us. I’m still astonished with how everything fell into place.

The last step before buying our plane tickets was to sell our house. “Let’s put it on the market mid-September,” I said. “How about the 12th?” my wife said. Done.

Thus, I was sprucing up the yard on 9/11 before hammering in a for-sale sign.

Falling from Buildings

That same clear-blue day, planes fell from the sky, ramming home death and destruction on unsuspecting victims going about their work.

I remember not quite believing the reports. I remember the rush to the TV and seeing the unbelievable. I remember the copper taste in my mouth as the world changed before our eyes. Not that we had any understanding of the implications, but we sensed it. The events made regular life feel small and insignificant — much like the discovery of a serious illness, or the sudden death of a close friend.

As I prayed with my young sons at bedtime that night, my oldest, fourteen at the time, said, “Daddy, I close my eyes, but I keep seeing people falling from buildings.” I so wished he hadn’t seen that. Yet it marked the horror of the day, and as I closed my eyes that night, I saw them too. I still do.

Following Jesus’s Words

As the story of 9/11 unfolded, it became apparent that this was a premeditated Islamic attack, carried out by men mostly from the United Arab Emirates. So we faced some questions. Chief among them was this one: “Since the terrorists came from the very place we intend to live, should we go at all?”

I felt the temptation to give in to fear and lose hope. And there were deeper questions.

Do we believe that Jesus has “all authority on heaven and on earth” (Matthew 28:18)?
Do we believe that, in the same breath he spoke of his power, he said, “Go” (Matthew 28:19)?
And most of all, do we cling to his promise to be with us always (Matthew 28:20)?

Yes, yes, and yes. The house sold on 9/13.

Later that year, we went to make our life in the Middle East, where we would live for the next twenty years through fears, war, threats, death, and great joy. We lived first in the Arabian Peninsula, and then later in Iraq.

It could not have been a better time to go. Going when circumstances looked so dark made a statement to our new neighbors: we weren’t afraid because we knew Jesus went with us. It also bore testimony that we loved the people of the Arabian Peninsula, and that we had something important to share with them.

And unquestionably, it has been the greatest privilege of our lives.

‘Give Me Nineteen Men’

We never expected to see the kind of fruit God granted.

On the plane to Dubai in 2001 (which was completely empty except for our family), I prayed, “O God, if you would allow me to see nineteen young men come to you, and have a heart for you, and be a part of more change than those nineteen young men who flew planes into buildings, I would be ever so grateful.”

“O you of little faith.” We will not know the number God provided this side of heaven, but it surpasses nineteen. Students came to faith — a trickle at first, then many, and then entire fellowships of believers, formed on campus. We discipled and evangelized and recruited more workers to join us. Many of those who came to faith on campus came on our staff team to be campus ministers themselves.

The staff and students were tightly integrated into churches that were rapidly being revitalized. We didn’t do all the work of church planting and revitalization, but our team helped see it happen. God was pleased to grant fruit that may grow until Christ’s return.

Reasons for Hope

So how about today? Where are we in Muslim missions as we mark the twentieth anniversary of 9/11?

To talk of the “Muslim world,” of course, is a bit misleading. Muslims do speak of an Ummah, much like Christians speak of the body of Christ or the church universal. But in reality, the Muslim world is an incredibly diverse global community that is often at odds. So, we can speak of the “Muslim world” only in the broadest of terms. With that said, a survey of this diverse world offers reasons for hope.

Indigenous Christians

First, many deeply committed indigenous Christians live all over the Muslim world. They give great hope for the future, and we have much to learn from them. Some come from historic Christian communities. Others have converted. Still others are members of evangelical churches. But for all, the boot of Islam rests on their necks. They need love and support from believers around the world.

Conversions

Perhaps the greatest myth held by Christians in the West is that Muslims don’t come to Jesus.

People in the Muslim world are much more willing to talk about spiritual life than those in the West. They are more willing to read the Bible with a Christian than unbelievers in the West are. They feel drawn to genuine Christian community.

“Perhaps the greatest myth held by Christians in the West is that Muslims don’t come to Jesus.”

Furthermore, the harsh application of Islam does not help its cause. Thoughtful Muslims see the brutality of ISIS and Boko Haram and the Taliban, and they want nothing to do with this form of traditional Islam — but where do they turn? In my experience, many Muslims who hear of the love of Christ find faith in Jesus compelling.

Many people from Muslim backgrounds come to faith in Christ. Their stories are not trumpeted on social media: the death penalty for conversion in some Muslim communities is real (as prescribed by the Quran). But those who think about missions in the Muslim world need to remember that God will call to himself those he wills as we are faithful to proclaim the gospel.

Cross

Finally, remember the way of the cross.

The Christian faith shines bright to a world in despair. We have much to say to people who are brutalized by wicked religious men, because Jesus was brutalized by wicked religious men. Who would have foreseen that the Roman gibbet — an instrument of torture and death — would be the very tool God would use to offer peace and love and forgiveness to an evil world? What men intended as supreme evil, God used for supreme good.

In the same way, the horror of 9/11 was an evil event, coordinated by evil actors perpetrated on unsuspecting people who did not deserve to die at the hands of such a wicked plan. Yet it too has been and will be used by God for his higher purposes.

Ways Forward

Over my twenty years in the Muslim world, I’ve also learned several lessons, lessons to know and remember when we think about missions in the Muslim world today.

Workers

There are more Christian workers in the Muslim world than ever before. Some are tentmakers, others are full-time workers with churches or agencies, some are on short terms, and many are with aid and relief NGOs. But the need is for even more Christian workers of all stripes in the Muslim world — and for all of us to be bold and clear about our commitment to Jesus and the gospel.

Do we have any choice but to obey the Great Commission? God does not rescind Matthew 28:18–20 in hard times. He never promises to spare us from difficulties. Actually, he promises difficulties. At the same time, he promises his presence.

“God promises difficulties. At the same time, he promises his presence.”

The fact is, if we wait to obey Christ’s commission until circumstances in the Muslim world are safe or calm, no one will ever go or speak. But we need to go and speak. We want to alleviate suffering, and even more importantly, we want to warn of the eternal suffering to follow death without Christ.

Endurance

The Muslim world needs mature believers, who have years of ministry experience, to come and stay for decades, not months. The great need is for missionaries to focus less on technique or the latest missiological trend, and rely more on the ability to adapt and grow and share our faith while overcoming obstacles in a cross-cultural environment. This comes only from experience and maturity.

Our team left for the Middle East when I was 45 years old. Our combined ministry experience totaled forty years. We were at the top of our game in ministry. Our combined insights on ministry and missions proved invaluable for the work.

Churches

Though many may come to faith in Christ, if they do not become part of a healthy church, we might as well throw them to the wolves. Yet indigenous healthy churches are a rarity in the Muslim world. So, planting healthy churches is a first priority.

Surprisingly to many in the West, the Quran actually prescribes that Christians be allowed to establish churches as “people of the book.” (Anyone who is in a position to do so should press this truth home with Muslim friends or Muslim government officials.)

By healthy church, I mean a cross-focused, gospel-proclaiming, Bible-drenched church of baptized believers, covenanted together to care for each other in gospel love as a display of God’s glory under the leadership and teaching of the elders, who studiously practice the commands of the Bible for the church.

Their Only Hope — and Ours

So, are these dark days for missions in the Muslim world?

Nothing could be further from the truth. There have never been more opportunities for the faithful to follow the Great Commission in the Muslim world. Does doing so involve sacrifice and risk? Of course — what important pursuit doesn’t? But is it worth it? Unquestionably.

The hope of the Muslim world is not economic development, or military might, or political will, or better education. The hope of the Muslim world is Jesus. He is the only one who can transform a world locked in darkness into a place of marvelous light.

http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/14740468/did-jesus-descend-into-hell

“Judge not.” Few words of Jesus are more familiar, even to non-Christians. And when understood, few are more devastating.

Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. (Matthew 7:1–2)

In the face of others’ aggravations and sins — their thoughtless comments and annoying tones, their insensitive laughter and failures to follow through — how natural it feels to convict them in the court of our imagination. How gratifying to hear our inner prosecutor give their words or actions the worst spin, and then to close the case before the defense can even speak.

And how easy to forget that one day, the judgments we laid on others will be laid on us; the measures we used to assess others will be used to assess us. One day, we will enter the court of our imagination — and this time not as judge, but as defendant.

How many emails would be abandoned and text messages unsent, how many thoughts would be discarded and words unsaid, how many conversations would be redirected and posts unread, if only we heard our Savior say, with eternal sobriety in his voice, “Judge not”?

Wrong Judgment

Of course, “judge not” does not mean what some would like it to mean. Matthew 7:1 is the life verse of many who simply would like to live in sin undisturbed. Rarely do they read the rest of the chapter, where Jesus warns against “dogs,” “pigs,” and “false prophets” — and expects us to judge who they are (Matthew 7:6, 15–20). Rarer still do they read Matthew 7 alongside John 7, where Jesus commands, “Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment” (John 7:24).

Critical thinking, discernment, and “right judgment” belong to every mature disciple of Christ. But there is another kind of judgment to which Jesus says, “Judge not” — a kind produced in the factory of our unredeemed flesh, marked by a tendency to (1) indulge hypocrisy and (2) withhold mercy.

Hypocritical Judgment

“Let me take the speck out of your eye” (Matthew 7:4). Our words of judgment, whether spoken or merely thought, may seem unobjectionable, perhaps even kind. We really do notice a speck in another’s eye — some small pattern of sin or folly that our brother has failed to see. And don’t we all appreciate the friend who points out the spinach in our teeth or the shirt tag climbing our neck?

But wait: “There is the log in your own eye” (Matthew 7:4). The spinach-noticer has ketchup smeared across his cheeks; the tag-discerner forgot to put his pants on; the speck-remover has a birch tree jutting from his left eye. In other words, “You hypocrite” (Matthew 7:5).

The faults and annoyances of others — that is, their specks — have a way of taking our eye from the mirror and putting it over a magnifying glass. In the moment of offense, how easily many of us assume, without prayer and with scarcely three seconds’ worth of thought, that we are only the observers of specks and logs, and not also the bearers of them. We hear her retort without remembering our own exasperating comment; we bristle at his third reminder while forgetting our own failure to communicate well. We quickly play the role of prosecutor, but refuse to cross-examine ourselves.

Those who “judge with right judgment” do not pass by others’ specks without comment, but they spend some time searching their own eyes before poking another’s. “First take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye” (Matthew 7:5).

Merciless Judgment

Hypocrisy, of course, is never the friend of mercy. When we spend more time noticing others’ sins than our own, we struggle to wear the “spirit of gentleness” that Paul speaks of (Galatians 6:1). Numb to our own desperate need for mercy, our judgments burn without soothing, cut without healing.

“We have a way of swelling others’ specks into logs, and of shrinking our own logs into specks.”

“With the measure you use it will be measured to you,” Jesus warns (Matthew 7:2). But in the grip of wrong judgment, we often use one measure for others, and another for ourselves. A spouse’s sharp words are plain cruelty, full stop. But our own sharp words are warranted by the circumstances — or at least excused by tiredness, stress, hunger, or provocation. We have a way of swelling others’ specks into logs, and of shrinking our own logs into specks.

John Stott writes, “The command to judge not is not a requirement to be blind, but rather a plea to be generous” (The Message of the Sermon on the Mount, 177) — or as the apostle James puts it, to show mercy (James 2:13). But generous, merciful judgment takes energy and time. It requires an eye for complexity, a willingness to give the benefit of the doubt, a self-distrusting posture and a prayerful heart. Far easier to madly swing the gavel.

Two Great Judgments

How, then, do we shut the mouth of our hypocritical judgments? How do we lay down our merciless measures and “judge not,” especially when faced with real offenses? We begin where Jesus begins in this passage and remember that we are not first the judge, but the judged. And to that end, we live today in light of two great judgment days, one past and one future.

Judgment Past

Every Christian knows something of the experience Paul describes in Romans 3:19:

Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God.

At one point or another, we stood, mouth stopped, before the judgment seat of God. Every excuse was stripped away; every defense failed. We faced the holy, holy, holy God, and could plead only guilty.

“Mercy met us at the judgment seat of God, bidding us to go and speak a better word than judgment.”

Jesus assumes as much earlier in the Sermon on the Mount. How else would we be “poor in spirit” and “meek”? How else would we “mourn” and “hunger and thirst for righteousness” (Matthew 5:3–6)? We remember what it feels like to be weighed and found wanting. We can’t help but remember. As Sinclair Ferguson writes, “To be silenced before the throne of God is an unforgettable experience! It shows every time we speak with and to others” (The Christian Life, 41).

But of course, we were not only silenced before the throne of God; we were also forgiven there. God’s burning coal of grace touched our lips, saying, “Your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for” (Isaiah 6:7). Mercy met us at the judgment seat of God, bidding us to go and speak a better word than judgment.

When we remember judgment past, unrighteous judgments no longer rest upon our lips so easily. The pardoned criminal cannot condemn his fellows as he did before. Mercy has touched him — and mercy cannot help but beget mercy.

Judgment Coming

Jesus then lifts our gaze to the judgment yet to come:

Judge not, that you be not judged. With the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. (Matthew 7:1–2)

The day is coming soon when “we will all stand before the judgment seat of God” (Romans 14:10) — great and small, rich and poor, well-known and unknown. And what will happen when we stand there? The rubric we raised against others will be raised against us.

Those who have judged without mercy, consistently and unrepentantly, will face “judgment . . . without mercy” (James 2:13). Their merciless judgments will become evidence that they never received, never treasured, the mercy of God in Christ, and so they will reap the same judgments they sowed.

Yet those who have learned, by grace and through much repentance, to take up a measure of mercy will be, amazingly, “not judged” (Matthew 7:1). Not judged on judgment day! Only the grace of a cross-bearing Christ could craft such a wondrous thought.

Those who revel in that future day now cannot help but think and speak differently now. They do not throw away discernment or critical thinking; they strive, with God’s help, to “judge with right judgment” (John 7:24). But even when they must confront, rebuke, or remove a speck from another’s eye, they do so as those who once were headed toward judgment, but now are wrapped with eternal, unchangeable mercy.

Audio Transcript

In the ninth chapter of the Gospel of John, we read a remarkable story of a man born blind who was made to see by the miraculous healing power of Christ. It was the kind of miracle, like so many of them, that could not be kept a secret. Word spread far and wide of what Jesus had done to this young man. But the power players of the day rejected the news. And so we read that

the Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight, until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight and asked them, “Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?” His parents answered, “We know that this is our son and that he was born blind. But how he now sees we do not know, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age [that is, he’s at least 13 years old]. He will speak for himself.” (His parents said these things because they feared the Jews, for the Jews had already agreed that if anyone should confess Jesus to be Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue.)

So there’s a power move here, an intimidation factor at play. John continues,

Therefore his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.” So for the second time they called the man who had been blind and said to him, “Give glory to God. We know that this man is a sinner.” He [the healed man] answered, “Whether he is a sinner I do not know. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” (John 9:18–25)

“Was blind, but now I see” — a famous line, worked into John Newton’s famous hymn “Amazing Grace.” John 9 is a key chapter in explaining God’s plan for physical disability. But it’s also a key chapter for understanding how we as Christians, changed by the grace of God, can testify of Christ before the world’s most powerful and educated people. Here’s Pastor John to explain.

Here we see the full-blown courage of a beggar — a mere beggar standing up to the most religious, most educated people of the land. And we see here full-blown blasphemy in response to that kind of courage.

Testifying Power

Verse 24: “Give glory to God. We know that this man is a sinner.” In other words, “Join us in blasphemy, or we’ll excommunicate you out of the synagogue.” That’s not like being excommunicated out of Bethlehem, because do you know what happens if we do discipline on an unrepentant person? They go join another church. In spite of any letter we might send, there are churches of all kinds, and people just move on.

That can’t happen here. When you get kicked out of a synagogue, you get kicked out of Judaism. This is life. This is like being in a Muslim-dominated context. You can’t be there as a Christian. It won’t work. This is huge. Don’t just hear, “We’ll kick you out.” Getting rid of you from the synagogue means you’re out of the community. This is huge, what this man was standing up against.

“A personal testimony trumps arguments when they’re bad arguments — and they’re all bad when they’re against Jesus.”

Verse 25 is his most famous sentence. People all over the world know this sentence, even if they don’t know the Bible: “Whether he is a sinner I do not know. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” I hope you feel something here. You don’t think of yourself as a theologian and you don’t think of yourself as a scientist, but you’ve got people coming against your faith with every manner of argument — historically, scientifically, experientially. They’re coming against you if you try to be a bold, regular witness.

And I want you to feel the power of this: a personal testimony trumps arguments when they’re bad arguments — and they’re all bad arguments when they’re against Jesus. Don’t be intimidated. This man was way less educated than everybody in all these rooms, and he’d been blind all of his life. And he just simply said with all boldness, “Look, you may know some things I don’t know, but I can see.”

Doctrines of Courage

One of the reasons I teach and preach on the doctrines of grace is because there are so many Christians who don’t know how they got saved, so that they don’t know they have a stunning testimony that they sheer believe. Your belief is a miracle; you didn’t choose it.

Of course, if you have a theology that says, “I did it,” then you’ve got no testimony to the power of God in your life. But at age 6 or 16 or 36, when you saw Jesus as needed and beautiful and sufficient, and you confessed, “I’m a sinner, I need you, I receive you,” a miracle happened. A miracle happened. That’s why these theological things matter.

You can stand up in front of the Senate and say, “I don’t know much about what you guys deal with here. I just know one thing: I was blind once, and now I see the glory of Christ as self-evidencing and compelling, and I will die for him. I’ll stake my life on the truth of what I’ve seen in Jesus.” That’s what you can say. That’s very powerful. It is here. It will come to a point where they can’t handle him anymore. That’s what he said. I hope you’re willing to say it. I hope you have enough understanding to say it, and if you don’t, I hope you study about how you got saved, so that you will know that if you’re saved, you can say it.

Blind Hearts

His courage becomes scorn. Verse 27: “Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?” Whoa, what are you doing, man? You’re going to get yourself killed. They’re very hostile, of course. Verses 28–29: “They reviled him, saying, ‘You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.’”

Now the controversy has revealed another deceit: They’re not disciples of Moses. They think they are. They’re not, because Jesus said in John 5:46, “If you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me.” “You don’t know Moses, and you don’t know God. You talk about Moses. You read Moses. You talk about God. You read God’s word. And you don’t know God, because if you knew God and you knew Moses, you’d know me.”

Again, the controversy is revealing what’s really going on in the Jewish leaders’ hearts. Now we are seeing who’s really blind here. They take the first five books of their Bible, and they read them, and they don’t see anything. They’re blind. We’re watching a man whose sight is becoming clearer and clearer and clearer, and whose courage is becoming stronger and stronger, and we’re watching these Pharisees reveal more and more blindness. You don’t want to be a part of that.

Jesus in Pursuit

Jesus and the beggar have a conversation in verses 35–38, after the Jewish leaders cast the beggar out. What makes this conversation so amazingly significant is that Jesus sought him out and found him. Verse 34: “‘You were born in utter sin, and would you teach us?’ And they cast him out.” Now, that’s really serious. To whom will he turn when he’s just been cast out of the community? To whom will he turn?

He doesn’t have to turn anywhere. Jesus turns to him. We’ve seen this before, haven’t we? Jesus found him. Jesus seeks him. It is no accident that the next chapter is about the Good Shepherd who gathers his sheep. It’s no accident. John knows what he’s doing. He found him. “That’s one of mine. Nobody else wants him right now. I want him.” That’s what I’m praying he’ll do to you in the next five minutes of this sermon. He is after you. He is going to find you. That’s why you’re here. That’s why you’re there.

Jesus heard that they had cast him out, and having found him he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” He answered, “And who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?” Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and it is he who is speaking to you.” He said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him. (John 9:35–38)

“Do you confess Christ openly and defend him with your simple testimony, ‘I was blind, and now I see’?”

Then the beggar is gone out of this story. He never says another word. We never see him again. The last thing he does is worship Jesus. I pray that’s the last thing I do. Jesus does the works of God. Jesus is the glory of God. Jesus is to be worshiped. That’s the point of the story. The beggar is blind. He calls Jesus a man. Then he calls Jesus a prophet. Then he defends him at huge risk to his life. And then he worships him after he is found by Jesus.

‘Finally, I Saw’

Jesus came into the world to seek worshipers. That’s why he’s here. Do you confess him openly and defend him with your simple testimony? No big apologetic reasoning. Some of you are called to that, but most of you aren’t. You’re just called to be witnesses. If you see a car hit a person, you can be a witness. You don’t need any education at all.

“I saw” — 95 percent of Christians are saved that way. No big argument — just, “I saw. Finally, I saw. I was reading the Gospels, and I couldn’t resist this man anymore. He was real. He’s real. He’s true. He’s exactly what I need. He’s what the world needs. He’s real. This is not made up. I saw.”

I simply ask, Do you confess him openly and defend him with your simple testimony, “I was blind, and now I see”?

The kingdoms and governments of this world have frontiers, which must not be crossed, but the Gospel of Jesus Christ knows no frontier. It never has been kept within bounds.

More than thirty years ago, in the early years of my ministry, I walked from a Berlin train station down a wide chasm that snaked through the city. Until recently, it had been “No Man’s Land.” But now the mines and barbed wire were cleared, and the Berlin Wall lay in heaps. The Iron Curtain was collapsing, mapmakers were busy redrawing borders, and new flags were being stitched.

During these first forays into Eastern Europe, I often laughed in disbelief at the freedom and ironic opportunities for the church. I recall how we published gospel tracts in Moscow using the now-idle presses of the Communist newspaper Pravda (Russian for “Truth”). Pravda had published lies and smeared Soviet Christians for years — but now the presses were turning out the truth of the gospel!

I remember standing in Berlin at what had been the epicenter of the Iron Curtain. Tens of thousands of Christians on both sides of the East-West divide had tried every kind of way to get the gospel over and around and under this wall, but God saw fit to simply tear it down. I fished out a large chunk from the rubble and tucked it into my backpack.

Today, as I pen these lines, the old souvenir sits on a shelf before me. It is a constant reminder of Samuel Zwemer’s words — words that have shaped my thinking, my prayer life, and my expectations in all the years since I stood in the debris of the Wall. Zwemer, a pioneer missionary to Arabia, wrote, “The kingdoms and governments of this world have frontiers, which must not be crossed, but the Gospel of Jesus Christ knows no frontier. It never has been kept within bounds.”

In a few lines, Zwemer captures the power and progress of the gospel and the unmatched authority of our risen King.

No Lines

Most world maps are covered with lines and colors that define country borders — about two hundred countries in the world. The number of nations has quadrupled in the last century. Our maps and our world are filled with lines. But if we could see a map of Christ’s kingdom, there would be no lines, for the citizens of this country are ransomed from every tribe and language and people and nation.

Zwemer captures this power and progress of the gospel to cross every kind of barrier — geographic, ethnic, political, religious. The gospel cannot be contained because it is not a man-made work. It is a Christ-made work. He builds his church in every place to the ends of the world.

“Neither the gates of hell nor the borders of the most God-hating regimes on earth can prevail against Jesus.”

Neither the gates of hell nor the borders of the most God-hating regimes on earth can prevail against Jesus. No countries are closed to Christ. They may be closed to us — either because we can’t get a visa or because our passport is the “kiss-of-death” for gaining entry — but Jesus has never been dependent on our access or resources to accomplish his mission.

Let me give you an example of this border-crossing, gates-of-hell-shattering gospel with what might be the least impressive missionary story you’ve ever read.

Unlikely Missionary

In 1995, a poor farmer named Marah with his wife and child crossed the border of Vietnam into Cambodia. They were driven by hunger and came in search of work. They were Jarai.

Despite being a marginalized minority, the Jarai were a strong and proud people who had long held tenaciously to their hill country lands in central Vietnam. When South Vietnam fell to the Communists, the Jarai lost everything — but the one single thing that Hanoi couldn’t crush or confiscate was the Jarai church. The gospel had first been sown among the Jarai by missionaries during the war. Although numbering just a few hundred believers, after their defeat, God sent a great awakening among the Jarai of Vietnam — and tens of thousands turned to him. One of them was Marah.

This was no easy crossing for this poor family. The Cambodian borderland was known for its minefields and renegade Khmer Rouge soldiers. But hunger and hope are powerful motivators, and Marah knew Jarai people lived in Cambodia. These ethnic cousins, long divided by political and geographic boundaries, shared a common language; so he hoped to find work. But unlike the Jarai of Vietnam, these Jarai had never been reached with the gospel.

Gossip the Gospel

At the village of Som Trawk, Marah looked for work — and he told them about Jesus. Two or three Jarai believed through Marah’s witness. They were the first drops before a downpour. As it was said of first-century Christians, the Jarai of Cambodia “gossiped the gospel” from house to house; and believers numbered over a thousand within a year.

As I said, this is an unimpressive missionary story. No one enacted a grand strategy for reaching the unreached people group: no planning retreats, no funding, no planeloads of short-termers. An unlikely but willing witness simply spoke the name of Jesus to people from an unbroken line of animists and demon worshipers, and the prison bars of their darkness were snapped like a stick by the God who raises the dead. He is the God who “chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God” (1 Corinthians 1:28–29).

The story doesn’t stop there. Twenty years after Marah walked into Som Trawk, I worshiped there with a thriving church. The Jarai have planted other churches and they have also taken the gospel to other people groups in the region. They even began praying and planning to take this every-tribe gospel across the border into Laos.

King of Impossible Places

Zwemer’s observation that the gospel of Jesus Christ “never has been kept within bounds” is anchored in our Lord’s sovereign rule, for he has “all authority in heaven and on earth” (Matthew 28:18). It is upon this commanding truth that he calls and sends his servants to go and cross cultures and continents to the ends of the earth with his unbound, unhindered gospel.

However, though the gospel is unhindered, its messengers are not. There will be hardships and setbacks. There will be closed doors. But on this point, Zwemer wrote, “Opportunism is not the final word in missions. The open door beckons; the closed door challenges him who has the right to enter.”

“Our King is king over the hard and the impossible places.”

Our King is king over the hard and the impossible places. His saving work is not stopped by borders and bricks and barbed wire. His messengers are to follow him there, too, because in his name they have the right to enter. Whether through a lifetime of faithful ministry or the witness of an untimely grave, the gospel will advance in those places.

Samuel Zwemer’s confidence that the gospel never has been kept within bounds was not crafted in the emotions of a moment but honed in one of the hardest, most neglected places on the planet: Arabia. Today there are still many kingdoms and governments with borders which “must not be crossed.” But no wall made by the hand or heart of man is a match for the King with scars in his hands. His servants, ransomed from many nations, continue to reach the nations with his unbound gospel.