I’m a pastor, and I sometimes deal with doubt.

I have doubted the efficacy of prayer. I have wrestled with the problem of evil, especially in light of natural disasters, terminal childhood illnesses, and a hundred other horrors. I have struggled with the fate of those who never hear the gospel. None of these questions is comfortable or easy for me.

If a Christian told me he had never dealt with doubt, I wouldn’t believe him. Or at least I would respectfully conclude he was in denial, or lacked self-awareness, or wasn’t a serious-thinking person.

A unique feature of life in the modern West, observes philosopher Charles Taylor, is the experience of a “cross-pressured” existence. The plausibility of faith has become contested — implicitly and constantly. This is a new development in human history. In premodern times, it was “impossible not to believe.” The Enlightenment then made it “possible not to believe.” Now it is increasingly “impossible to believe” — or at least to believe in a faith-nurturing world.

Bewildered and Terrified

As sophisticated modern people, we can sometimes flatter ourselves and think, I have a college education; I live in a scientific age; I don’t believe in resurrections — as if first-century men and women were dim-witted people looking for miracles everywhere. It’s true that if you could transport yourself back to the first century, you would have a hard time finding atheists. Virtually everyone you’d encounter would be a supernaturalist — believing in some kind of God or gods. But that doesn’t mean ancient folks were gullible.

“Even the strongest believer wouldn’t have imagined that one man could be raised before the end of time.”

When Jesus performed miracles, people were often more bewildered than impressed — the response was less “Do it again!” and more “Who are you?” Or take the virgin conception. Such a notion was just as laughable then as it is today. First-century people knew how babies were conceived. As I once heard someone quip, when Joseph learns Mary is pregnant, he doesn’t break into a rendition of “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.” No, he assumes what any of us would — and sets out to divorce her.

The same applies to the empty tomb. Despite Jesus’s repeated predictions, not a single eyewitness exclaims, “Ah, day three — of course!” They respond the same way we would: with confusion and downright terror (Matthew 28:8; Mark 16:8; Luke 24:9–11, 36–41; John 20:11–13). They assume his body has been stolen; they assume he’s a ghost; they assume anything except, “He’s back.” Thomas can’t even bring himself to believe after all his most trusted friends have looked him in the eye and told him!

Even the Great Commission is given to doubters: “Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted” (Matthew 28:16–17 NIV). We import a triumphant mood into the scene; in reality, some of these guys are still reeling, still grappling, still coming to terms with their whole world being capsized.

No Category for a Single Resurrection

It’s also worth noting that first-century Jews, although culturally disposed to believe in God, were anti-disposed to believe that someone could be resurrected in the middle of history. This is why, when Jesus tells Martha that Lazarus will rise again, all she can do is sigh: “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day” (John 11:24). Like most Jews, she believes in a general resurrection at the end of history (see Daniel 12:2). But she has no category for a single resurrection in the middle of history. Nobody did. Even the strongest believer wouldn’t have imagined that one man could be raised before the end of time.

And the disciples were no different. But something occurred after Jesus’s death that utterly changed them. Something occurred that pulled them out of the hiding places where they’d fled in hopeless fear (Mark 14:50). Something moved them to start publicly insisting, at the risk of their lives, that the Carpenter was — wonder of wonders — alive. And when the blows came, something propelled them to keep preaching all the more boldly, even rejoicing that they’d been counted worthy to suffer disgrace for his name (Acts 5:41).

No Category for a God-Man

Remember, too, that while first-century Jews were (unlike many modern people) disposed to believe in God, it was unthinkable to worship a man as God. This is why the Pharisees repeatedly accused Jesus of blasphemy — he was claiming for himself the prerogatives of God alone. Even near the beginning of Jesus’s public ministry, the Pharisees “held counsel with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him” (Mark 3:6).

So, were some ancient people just inclined to believe in a god under every rock? Sure — if they were polytheists. But not Jews. They were radically different from their Roman neighbors. To put it bluntly: a modern secular Manhattanite is far more likely to start believing in a God than a first-century Jew was to believe in a God-man.

No Category for a Dead Messiah

In sum, arguments about the “plausibility” of faith cut both ways.

On the one hand, faith in a transcendent deity is more contested, more embattled, more difficult than ever before. It’s not that ancient believers never battled serious doubt (see the Psalms); it’s that doubt takes on a certain shape and texture when, for the first time in history, life feels explainable without God. This is the cultural wallpaper — largely unnoticed but everywhere present — of our WEIRDER (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic, Ex-Christian, Romanticist) world. So, we shouldn’t be surprised if our doubts carry a certain buoyancy — if overcoming them can feel like trying to keep a beach ball underwater.

On the other hand, it is naive, if not a touch haughty, to assume that prescientific people woke up looking for outlandish things to believe. Sure, faith in God was more intuitive then, but no one found it easy to imagine a virgin getting pregnant or a corpse getting up. Especially a messianic corpse — that would’ve been an oxymoron, and an offensive one. No Jew believed God’s Messiah could possibly die. (How could he? The Messiah sits on David’s throne forever.) So, the sight of “mighty” Jesus pinned to a Roman cross, suffocating to death like some weak and pathetic slave, was conclusive proof that the gig was up: just another imposter, not Immanuel.

“If the disciples had no category for a dead Messiah, they certainly had no category for a resurrected one.”

And if the disciples had no category for a dead Messiah, they certainly had no category for a resurrected one! Again, theologically speaking, no Jew could imagine an individual resurrection in the middle of history. And above all, no right-minded Jew would ever be disposed to look at a Galilean day laborer from an obscure backwater in the Roman empire and worship him as Yahweh, the Lord of heaven and earth.

But that’s precisely what happened.

Unthinkably Plausible

We may think of a miracle as the least probable explanation for an event. And it is — for ordinary events.

But the events of Easter Sunday were not ordinary, not in the least. Again, see the disciples’ reaction! They didn’t wish each other a happy Easter. They were dumbstruck, terrified. They lacked a natural category for the resurrection, and so do we. And yet, I’ve never heard a more plausible explanation for the disciples’ overnight transformation and the birth of the Jesus revolution.

All of which (among other things) leads me to take a deep breath: I believe the unthinkable happened after all.

The word revival speaks of life renewed. It’s about depletion lifted to restoration, refreshing reinvigoration. It’s about weary you and me reenergized with new sparkle in our eyes, new spring in our steps, new steel in our spines. And isn’t that very renewal our constant need?

God did not create us as perpetual motion machines, grinding life out by our own energies. He created us to need him, and to have him, in his fullness of “grace upon grace” (John 1:16). His endless grace meeting our endless need is why the gospel speaks of “newness of life” (Romans 6:4) as normative Christianity — not only at conversion, but constantly thereafter, even moment by moment.

How could it be otherwise? The Bible summarizes our earthly journey like this: “The Spirit helps us in our weakness” (Romans 8:26). It doesn’t speak of our “weaknesses” (plural) but of our “weakness” (singular). Why? Because it’s not as though we have a weakness in this area of life over here and another weakness in that area of life over there. The truth is, weakness pervades the whole of our existence. Weakness is not one more experience we have alongside other experiences. Rather, weakness is the platform on which we have all our experiences. We have never yet known a single moment of non-weakness. But the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. And revival is a mighty surge of Spirit-given help for weak Christians like all of us.

What Is Revival?

What then is revival? Revival is ordinary Christians experiencing extraordinary power from on high, so that the gospel gets traction in us and through us with astonishing impact. It cannot be scheduled — not by us, anyway. It is of God.

My dad and mom were speaking at a Christian college in the early 1970s. The Holy Spirit was moving with reviving power. With happy wonder, the students kept saying, “Can you believe this is happening to us?” That is not the kind of comment we tend to make when we execute our own ministry plan really well. The divine and miraculous nature of authentic revival is why we make no allowance here for false, worked-up “revivals” of our own making.

We disagree with Charles Grandison Finney (1792–1875), who famously said, “A revival of religion is not a miracle” (Lectures on Revivals of Religion, 10). Finney influenced later generations to believe that a revival is the result of “the right use of the constituted means.” I disagree. I see revival as a glorious mega-miracle.

The Bible encourages us to pursue this kind of revival with this wonderful prayer: “Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you?” (Psalm 85:6). Let’s think that simple prayer through, asking three questions.

1. Who Does the Reviving?

God does: “Will you not revive us again?” In fact, the word you is emphatic in the Hebrew text. Revival is a work of God. That’s why we pray for revival.

Do we also labor toward revival? Yes. We always want to serve in such a way as to “prepare the way of the Lord” (Isaiah 40:3–5). Like Elijah, we build the altar. But it is God, and God alone, who sends down the sacred fire (1 Kings 18:30–39).

If our churches become swept up into any movement, any dynamic, generated by our own brilliance or cool, why should anyone even care? Why should we care? If our churches grow by socially acceptable forms of shrewd marketing and trendy programs, then we’re left with a tragedy: churches that are total failures brilliantly disguised as massive successes. We are to be living proof that the risen Jesus is actually moving in this world — and nothing less. That is success (if such a word even applies).

When our Lord above pours out his Spirit upon us (Acts 2:33), he lifts us into new experiences of his wonder-working grace, with surprising conversions, hidden sins openly confessed, broken relationships tenderly restored, timid Christians publicly emboldened, and so forth. That miracle is revival. To quote the title of a J.I. Packer book, it is “God in our midst.” When this happens, a merely routinized Christianity crumbles, yielding to the powers of revived Christianity.

Jonathan Edwards certainly understood revival this way — as an intervention by God. It’s why, in his writings about the First Great Awakening, he had to use words like surprising, remarkable, extraordinary, and wonderful to describe what he saw happening. Far from threatening Reformed theology, the God-centeredness of revival validates Reformed theology.

And the great thing about the miracle of revival is that we, even we, can receive it. We can be as unimpressive as we truly are, but with the gospel and the Holy Spirit, we simple, plodding, and sometimes exhausted Christians are equipped in every essential to receive afresh the felt presence of the risen Christ with powerful effect.

2. Who Needs Revival?

We do. The people of God need revival: “Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you?” Does the world need revival too? Of course. In fact, the old prophecy declares that “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (Habakkuk 2:14). And our Lord won’t stop until the very “trees of the forest sing for joy” (Psalm 96:12)! But revival starts among us, his own people.

“Revival is a work of God. That’s why we pray for revival.”

Can we deny that we need revival? Over the last decade or so, we Bible-believing Christians in America have suffered significant losses. We were surging forward. Personally, looking around at the gospel-driven movements among us, I was thinking, “If we stay low before the Lord and steward this blessing wisely, this could accelerate into historic awakening over the next ten or twenty years.”

But we’ve faltered. Our moral failures, our doctrinal betrayals, our relational fractures — we have taken many hits. From my vantage point, we are not in the position of strength we were just a few years ago.

If we think we don’t need revival, how much further must we fall before our hearts break and we humble ourselves? I believe that we orthodox, serious-minded, gospel-loving Christians need revival — now. Let’s seek the Lord for it.

3. What Difference Does Revival Make?

A wonderful difference! “Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you?” Revival gushes with overflowing joy in Christ. It is so cheering to get right with God and with one another, to get free from past regrets, to stop hanging back in timidity and face the future with new confidence in the One who holds “all authority in heaven and on earth” (Matthew 28:18).

I remember a turning point in my own life during the Jesus Movement of the late 1960s. It was my junior year in college. I was tied up in knots with doubts about Christ. My deepest foundations were being shaken by some bad teaching. Then God mercifully moved in on me, when some friends invited me to a Christian rock concert on New Year’s Eve 1969.

When I walked in that evening, my heart was heavy with doubt. Three hours later, I floated out with a joy I had never known before. What made the difference? Not a brilliant argument (though I certainly respect brilliant arguments). No, God gave me something deeper, and even primal. He gave me happy certainty. He gave me joy from above, as a first-order, self-authenticating, direct and immediate experience of Reality — his very presence.

That night, I was sitting in the Pasadena Civic Auditorium with my friends, minding my own business. The curtains parted. There stood a rock band of “Jesus freaks” with their long hair and electric guitars. They began to play. Imagine a mash-up of Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton. I loved it.

But what got me was their simple message. The song that absolutely wrecked me riffed on this call-and-response lyric: “Jesus loves me; I love Jesus.” (Needless to say, this was not the traditional children’s song “Jesus Loves Me”!) These direct, honest, uncomplicated gospel words landed on me as an astonishingly bright and luminous new thought.

Prayers We Won’t Regret

By God’s reviving power, on that night in Pasadena, his message was experientialized to my heart as real — more real than anything else in all this world. It entered my being at a level down beneath my doubts. Those words exploded in my experience with a joy I could not deny — and I didn’t want to. Naturally, I still had many questions, and even more questions. But now I was free to think it all through with a joyous confidence that Jesus offered everything I was seeking. And I’ve never been the same since.

What if we examine ourselves for every trace of improperly limited Christian experience? What if we dare to ask the Lord to lead us into fresh green pastures and beside new still waters, so that we rejoice in him as never before? What if we let him decide whether our Christianity today is all that he can give us? What if all we offer him is our humble openness — our open Bibles with our open hearts? Do we really fear that we would ultimately regret going that low before our gracious Lord and Savior?

“Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you?” May Psalm 85:6 grab our hearts and never let us go!

Audio Transcript

Good Monday morning. We’ve been talking about God’s sovereignty recently. Does his sovereignty in salvation make him unfair? That was APJ 2028. And then should his all-sovereignty make us less prayerful, since we can just resign all things to him? That was APJ 2029. And today we talk about God’s sovereignty over our suffering. That’s because, Pastor John, today in the Navigators Bible Reading Plan we read Psalm 71 together. And listeners who have already completed their reading this morning will have already come across the verse that Bridget wants to stop and reflect on more deeply. Here’s her email.

“Pastor John, hello to you from New Zealand. For many years I have thought — like I think many Christians do — that God would stop pain from getting into the lives of his children if he could. But he cannot really stop it all. Or he simply allows some of it to pass. Either because he is helpless or passive, we suffer. So, we ask for his deliverance, and he will eventually help us out.

“But when I read a verse like Psalm 71:20, I am struck that it seems to say that the same God who caused that suffering is the same God the psalmist has confidence to pray to for deliverance from that suffering. Here’s the full verse: ‘You who have made me see many troubles and calamities will revive me again; from the depths of the earth you will bring me up again.’

“Can you explain this verse, and how important it is for us to see God’s sovereignty over our suffering as the ground for our confidence that he is powerful enough to deliver us, too? This seems profoundly important, and so counterintuitive to how I and many other Christians naturally speak of suffering. But I see it there in the Bible. Thank you!”

Yes, it is profoundly important. As I have read my Bible over the years, and as I have dealt with suffering people, the conclusion that I come to has been the same in both cases — namely, that the sovereignty of God over suffering is better news than either his supposed inability to remove it or his supposed cruelty in not removing it. In other words, what I have found is that not only does the Bible teach that God governs all things, including our sufferings, but also that those who trust his goodness and his wisdom in that sovereignty find the greatest strength and even joy through the hardest seasons of life.

So, let me say a word from Scripture about the sovereignty of God over our sufferings, and then try to make that connection with why that is encouraging, why that’s good news, to those who trust his goodness and wisdom through their sorrows.

All-Pervasive Sovereignty

God declares in Isaiah 46:9–10, “I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me . . . saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose.’” So, none of his purposes is thwarted. He’s God. Paul put it like this: “[God] works all things according to the counsel of his will” (Ephesians 1:11). “Not a sparrow,” Jesus said, “not a single tiny bird anywhere in the world falls to the ground apart from our Father’s will” (see Matthew 10:29). The dice are thrown on the table — Proverbs says, “The lot is cast into the lap”; just translate it — and “its every decision is from the Lord” (Proverbs 16:33). Every time my wife and I reach our hand into the bag of letters playing Scrabble, God appoints which letters we pull out. That’s how detailed his sovereignty is, according to the Bible.

“The very power and wisdom and love that governs our sorrows now is the same power that will deliver us.”

Lamentations 3:37–38 asks, “Who has spoken and it came to pass, unless the Lord has commanded it? Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that good and bad come?” That is, prosperity and calamity — they’re all from God. James says, “Don’t boast as if you know tomorrow” (see James 4:13–14). “Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that’” (James 4:15). Staying alive, doing this or that, will be ultimately decided by the Lord, not us and not Satan.

Hebrews 12:6, 11 says, “The Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives. . . . For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.” Or Psalm 60:3: “You have made your people see hard things; you have given us wine to drink that made us stagger.” Or Psalm 66:10–11: “You, O God, have tested us; you have tried us as silver is tried. . . . You laid a crushing burden on our backs.” And it was God who gave Paul his thorn in the flesh to protect him from being proud (2 Corinthians 12:7).

There’s a reason why my book on Providence has seven hundred pages. That’s how long it takes to even come close to laying out the vastness of the biblical foundation of the all-pervasive, all-governing, all-wise, never-meaningless, never-whimsical, never-random, never-unjust, always-purposeful, always-good sovereignty of God.

‘You Will Bring Me Up’

And here’s the wonderful truth that Bridget is drawing out of Psalm 71 (rightly): namely, that the very sovereignty that brings our sufferings is the same sovereignty that enables us to be confident that God can save us — in them, from them, according to his wise and loving purposes. The psalm says, “You who have made me see many troubles and calamities will revive me again; from the depths of the earth you will bring me up again” (Psalm 71:20).

In other words, since it was not ultimately me or natural forces or satanic opposition or the evils of human adversaries that made me see many sore troubles and calamities, but rather it was you, O God, my Father — my all-wise, all-loving, all-powerful Father — therefore, I have every reason to be confident that the same power and love and wisdom will bring me up out of those troubles according to your promise.

So, I think we should think this way: If God does not have the power or the wisdom or the right or the love to restrain deadly natural forces or hostile human forces or destructive satanic forces — if he doesn’t have the wherewithal to restrain them from hurting you — on what basis are you going to count on him to give you endurance in sufferings, or to give you relief from the suffering in this life, or to give you final happiness in the age to come? If you are hoping for a pain-free eternity with God (which I am), then at some point you are hoping that God will play the sovereignty card and say to natural forces and human forces and satanic forces, “No more! No more!”

What the Bible teaches is that sovereignty is not a card that he plays at the end. It’s not a card at all. It is a right and authority and power that belongs to his very God-ness and is always there, always active.

This is why thousands of people have found that the sovereignty of God over their suffering is a precious reality, because it means none of our suffering is meaningless, none of it is owing to the weakness of God or the folly of God or the cruelty of God, but all of it is owing to wise and loving and holy purposes of God for those who trust in his goodness in the midst of it. And the very power and wisdom and love that governs our sorrows now is the same power that will deliver us in God’s all-wise timing.

Let me close with Lamentations 3:31–32 (I love the way Jeremiah puts it): “The Lord will not cast off forever, but, though he cause grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love.” So, it’s the same sovereignty in causing grief and in showing compassion.

I don’t want to go to hell. In some part of me, I don’t want there to be a hell. I became a Christian, at least in part, to escape the prospect of hell. And at times, I’ve intensely studied Christian theology, at least in part, to find a scriptural case for nobody staying in hell.

On the personal level, I’ve found assurance that, united to Jesus, my future is secure with him. But I cannot, with theological integrity, scrub out hell from the Bible. Nor can I ignore the witness of the church through the centuries that everlasting separation from the triune God remains a fearful possibility. My heart may at times want to be a universalist, but the word will not let me.

It’s vital that we do not avoid considering the reality of damnation. So, I’d like to make three observations about hell from Scripture that lead to one astounding hope.

Beyond the Dead

Hell is a place yet to be. As I read Scripture, prior to the resurrection of Jesus, when someone died, his spirit separated from the body and entered a shadowy nonphysical realm. Sheol (in Hebrew) and Hades (in Greek) express this state, or place, of the dead. It was a lonely, twilight kind of existence. It was devoid of experiencing the personal presence of the Lord in prayer or worship (Psalm 6:5). Both the evil and the faithful went there, though (it seems) to different parts. In the unfolding revelation of Scripture, however, we come to see Sheol/Hades as but an intermediate state for the human spirit.

With the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, we learn that Sheol/Hades is not a permanent state, either for believers or unbelievers. For those united to Christ, our spirits get to go directly into God’s presence (Philippians 1:23). For those not united to Christ, some traditions, following Hebrews 9:27, believe that these persons enter judgment immediately. To my reading, Scripture doesn’t give us enough information to say definitively what happens to the spirits of those who die without Christ. Sheol/Hades as an intermediate state may still be a possibility. What is abundantly clear, however, is that for every human spirit there is more to come.

With the return of Jesus at judgment day, all the dead will be raised (1 Thessalonians 4:16). As Paul writes, “We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. . . . The dead will be raised imperishable” (1 Corinthians 15:51–52). Human beings don’t go out of existence. Our spirits live after death. Then, “at the last trumpet” (1 Corinthians 15:52), we will be raised into spiritual bodies.

This rising, however, is not as hopeful as it first sounds. We all will give an account. Paul writes, “We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil” (2 Corinthians 5:10). Jesus chillingly clarifies, “An hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment” (John 5:28–29).

What follows for those judged and found wanting is Gehenna, properly translated as “hell.” Gehenna is the same word in both Hebrew and Greek, designating the fiery place of everlasting punishment. Gehenna is a variation on the Valley of Hinnom, a place outside Jerusalem where children had been sacrificed in idolatrous rites (Jeremiah 7:31; 32:35). It later became a garbage dump, and its fires smoldered continually. By Jesus’s time, the name of this notorious valley had become equated with punishment in the afterlife, a condition to occur after the intermediate state of Sheol and after the day of judgment. Gehenna is what we usually think of as hell.

The Bible describes the suffering of hell in vivid terms. Jesus speaks of “the outer darkness.” “In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 8:12). He also quotes from Isaiah in describing hell as a place “where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched” (Mark 9:48). These images suggest an endless devouring from both inside and outside.

“Jesus warns us about hell precisely so we do not have to experience it.”

In his final parable, Jesus depicts the Son of Man saying to the wicked, “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire” (Matthew 25:41). Hebrews speaks of “a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries” (Hebrews 10:27). Revelation starkly describes “the lake that burns with fire and sulfur” (Revelation 21:8) in a torment that goes on forever (Revelation 20:10).

All this language is imagistic, but it is not imaginary. Taken literally, it’s hard to picture how one could be in the brightness of a burning lake and in the outer darkness at the same time. And would not such a fire consume our teeth beyond all gnashing? These descriptions seem metaphorical. But metaphorical doesn’t mean unreal. The true words of Scripture point to realities beyond description in this world. Scripture likens the experience of hell to horrors we can picture, but the actuality will be more terrible, not less.

So, Paul sums it up as he writes of those who reject the gospel: “They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might” (2 Thessalonians 1:9).

Beyond Myself

The reality of hell shakes us awake from the delusion of our own sovereignty. It turns out that we do not belong to ourselves. And we’re getting away with nothing! Hebrews tells us, “No creature is hidden from [God’s] sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account” (Hebrews 4:13).

Similarly, Jesus warns his disciples of hypocrisy: “Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. Therefore whatever you have said in the dark shall be heard in the light” (Luke 12:2–3). Nothing is lost in the past. Everything will be exposed for what it is. For God to set all things right, the stark truth about us must be told. Just as it’s supposed to, that thought terrifies me. Jesus continues, “I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more that they can do. But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell” (Luke 12:4–5).

Lest we comfort ourselves that such words are merely for the notoriously reprobate, Jesus throws an easy-grace theology into a tailspin by linking our failure in works of love with the punishment of Gehenna. He says to his disciples, “I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment . . . and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell [Gehenna] of fire” (Matthew 5:22).

Metaphorically, Jesus directs us to cut off a hand or tear out an eye should either cause us to sin. For these painful extremes would be far better than to be thrown into Gehenna for our sin (Mark 9:42–49). Jesus uses the term Gehenna, then, as a kind of shorthand for what he describes elsewhere as the “eternal punishment” that awaits those who fail to do acts of kindness to “the least of these my brothers” (Matthew 25:40, 45–46). The word also encapsulates Jesus’s teaching on the exaction of the Father against those who do not forgive their brother from the heart (Matthew 18:35).

Jesus, more than anyone, declares us accountable to God for our lives. He does not spare even his beloved first disciples from moral, spiritual, and relational responsibility, nor from the consequences of failing.

Beyond Wildest Hope

Since Jesus’s words are the standard, then I can only agree with him that I am liable, deserving, due, and bound for the fires that ever burn. With David, I plead, “If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?” (Psalm 130:3).

Indeed. Yet, David anticipates, “With you there is forgiveness” (Psalm 130:4). How can that be? Because our judge is “Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come” (1 Thessalonians 1:10). Jesus warns us about hell precisely so we do not have to experience it! He became accountable for us as he engaged a life of sinless righteousness and love.

At the end of his ministry, of course, his disciples did fail him. They betrayed, denied, and deserted their Lord. But Jesus took on the responsibility for their (and indeed our) failures. Jesus entered the fiery judgment for his people. On the cross, he endured the hell of God-forsakenness. He underwent the fearful second death of Gehenna before he had entered the first death! He knew the utter darkness and the fiery lake. But not for himself. For us.

And so, for those joined to Christ, the fires of judgment get transformed. We will still stand before the throne. And surely we will weep when so many of our words and deeds are found worthless. As Paul says, “The fire will test what sort of work each one has done” (1 Corinthians 3:13). But we ourselves will be saved through our union with Christ. The fires will be cleansing rather than penal. Beyond all deserving or even our most daring hope, Jesus, who set the impossible standard, is also “Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come” (1 Thessalonians 1:10).

Hell cannot be excised from Scripture. But we need not go there. Joined to Jesus, we can experience the promise made through Isaiah in greatest depth: “When you walk through fire you shall not be burned” (Isaiah 43:2).

It was a November evening in 1983, the time of year in Minneapolis marked by light snow and fog and drizzle as the temperatures grow colder and winter approaches. Tom Steller — a 28-year-old associate pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church — was at home with his wife and one-year-old daughter on the upper level of their duplex, just a couple of blocks south of downtown.

Sleep eluded Tom that night, and so at 2:00 am, he slipped out of bed, quietly making his way to the living room so as not to disturb his young family. He picked up an audiocassette by Christian folk singer John Michael Talbot, put it in his tape recorder, pressed play, and sat on the couch to listen.

Road of Glory

The eleventh track, “Lord, Every Nation on Earth Shall Adore You” — based on Psalm 72 — begins with a guitar plucking in the background and Talbot’s solo tenor singing,

Lord, every nation on earth shall adore you.Lord, every people will call on your name.Every knee shall bow,Every tongue confess your name:Jesus the Lord.

The same words repeat, this time with a choir joining Talbot in the background as the praise ascends.

The cry of the psalm set to music began to come alive to Tom in a way it not had before. Tom’s heart already beat for the glory of God, but he had never before seen the connection between the fame of God’s name and the proclamation of his name to the ends of the earth. Jesus would rule to the ends of the earth as he saves his people. A revolution was happening in Tom’s heart — one that would reverberate for decades to come.

For an hour that night, with tears rolling down his cheeks, he worshiped with “a mingling,” he would later say, “of joy at the vision of God’s glory filling the earth and penitent longing to be involved in that great purpose of God.”

Road of Joy

In a way that providentially paralleled what was happening at the Steller residence, a strange and exhilarating awakening began to happen in the home office of John Piper, just a few blocks away. Every fall, Bethlehem held a missions conference and brought in a guest speaker. But for that November, the mission board did something they had never done before: they asked the senior pastor to deliver the message.

John Piper had come to the church in 1980, at the age of 34, leaving Bethel College to enter his first (and only) pastorate. In 1983, Piper was in the middle of a sermon series on Christian Hedonism, the seed of his first popular-level book, Desiring God, which was published four years later. He thought it might work to incorporate missions into the series, calling missions “the battle cry of Christian Hedonism.” So, he accepted the invitation, though he had hardly written or preached about missions up to this point.

As he began to work on his message, God was at work behind the scenes. During the evening service that night, Bethlehem would be commissioning David and Faith Jaeger, who would leave just two days later for Liberia, the first Bethlehem missionaries to be sent in over a decade. What might the Lord be doing and stirring?

“God, speed the day of Christ’s return, when every knee will bow and every nation will be glad in him.”

On Sunday morning, November 13, Piper stood behind the pulpit and looked out at his beloved flock. If God moved in the way he was asking, some of these people would set a new trajectory for their lives, moving to foreign lands to proclaim the glory of God and the way of salvation. Some of them might even lose their earthly lives for the sake of Christ. “I want to push you over the brink this morning,” Piper preached. “I want to make the cause of missions so attractive that you will no longer be able to resist its magnetism.”

The congregation, for the first time, was hearing the biblical language and logic of Christian Hedonism coming to bear on the call to the nations. Here was their pastor imploring them to increase their own joy in God. “I do not appeal to you to screw up your courage and sacrifice for Christ,” he said. Rather:

I appeal to you to renounce all that you have in order to obtain the Pearl of pearls.

I appeal to you to count all things as rubbish for the surpassing value of standing in the service of the King of kings.

I appeal to you to take off your store-bought rags and to put on the garments of God’s ambassadors.

While Piper was writing the sermon, a seminary had called, wondering if he might want to return to academia. He said no right away, and he told the congregation why he wanted to stay:

I want to build a world church with you at Bethlehem.

I want to see new missionaries go out from this body every year.

I want to be here to welcome home David and Faith on their first furlough.

I want to travel to some of our fields and minister to our missionaries and bring back reports of what God is doing.

I want to preach and write in such a way that young, and old, and men, and women cannot go on with business as usual while there are more churches in the Twin Cities than there are missionaries in half the world.

The challenge is great. God is greater.

The rewards are a hundred times better than anything the world can offer. The battle cry of Christian Hedonism is: Go! Double your joy in God by sharing it on the frontiers.

Roads Converge

A few years later, Piper reflected on what God was doing in that season of global awakening at Bethlehem:

Tom was coming on the road of glory, and I was coming on the road of joy.

What hit us both in November of 1983 with life-changing force was this: God does everything he does for the glory of his name. He loves his glory above all things. He is committed radically and unswervingly to preserve and display that glory throughout the universe and to fill the earth one day with nothing but the echo of his glory in the lives of the redeemed — that is, with worship. And the knowledge of the glory of the Lord will fill the earth as the waters cover the sea.

But God has conceived a universe in which the magnifying of his own glory is accomplished in the delight and joy and satisfaction that the redeemed find in him. And therefore, God’s pursuit of his glory and my pursuit of my joy are not finally in conflict. They are, in fact, one pursuit.

If our passionate joy in the glory of God is the very thing in which his glory is most fully reflected in this world, and if our joy is multiplied as God extends the praise of his glory among the peoples, then how could Tom and I, as lovers of God’s glory and Christian Hedonists, not give ourselves to the global cause of God in world missions?

In short, “Everything came together to make an electric moment in the life of our church, and it all flowed from a passion for the glory of God.”

Piper and Steller — and, for that matter, Bethlehem Baptist Church — have never been the same. God would answer these prayers. Hundreds of missionaries would go to the nations, and God would use the influence of Piper and Steller in remarkable ways.

Piper has helped mobilize mission efforts around the world through books and messages and conferences, challenging the church to take the gospel to the ends of the earth. And Steller has helped to found institutions (like Bethlehem College & Seminary) and organizations (like Training Leaders International, where he now serves) that share the same desire to see God receive glory from every tribe and nation and tongue, as they discover that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.

What About Us?

Forty years later, their passion remains, these truths endure, and the work is not finished.

There are men and women and children who woke up this morning in people groups that have never heard the name of Jesus. No one has yet arrived to tell them in their own language the greatest news in all the world: “The gospel is the good news that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died for our sins and rose again, eternally triumphant over his enemies, so that there is now no condemnation for those who believe, but only everlasting joy.”

For the faithful, inaction is not an option. So, how will you and I respond? Will we go? Will we send? Will we pray? Will he find us faithful to this task when he returns? “This gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come” (Matthew 24:14).

God, speed the day of Christ’s return, when every knee will bow and every nation will be glad in him.

I love starting in on sermon prep.

Oh, the possibilities! Any passage in the God-breathed Book holds glories waiting to be spotted and meditated on and shared. And all the prospects for application! How might this text speak to our generation, and our specific church, and individual hearts, at this particular time? And what concrete illustrations and examples might I bring in from elsewhere in the Bible, or from history, or my own life, that would illuminate the text and hold the hearers’ attention? Brainstorming sermon possibilities can be thrilling.

Then, alas, comes the hardest part: narrowing down all those insights, questions, stories, warnings, and encouragements to what actually fits in the few minutes I have this Sunday. Widening out the prospects of what might be is one thing; narrowing it down to what actually makes it in — and what’s out — is often the most difficult work.

How, then, might we navigate this frequent trial and decide what to preach this Sunday? After wrestling hard with our text — and grasping its meaning in its context, in Christian theology, and in our lives — how do we decide what gold to leave on the cutting-room floor?

And if we find we’ve prepared an overlong sermon, how might we go about shortening it?

Tragedy of Boring Preaching

First, I’ll share a conviction: boring sermons are a great tragedy. Either the hearers did not hear well-preached glories, or the preacher did not proclaim them well.

Of course, on any given Sunday, the spiritual condition of those hearing the message will be all over the map. Some hearts are tender, full of the Spirit, ready to hear with faith; others are dull, apathetic, distracted. As pastors and preachers, we can help our people with this over time, but what we have most control over is ourselves. Ask first, Does the tragedy begin with me? To what extent is the sermon boring because of the preacher, rather than the hearers?

The word of God is objectively and emphatically not boring. The problem is never with God, his glories, and the revelation of himself in this book and in his Son. The problem is with us: in our minds and hearts, in our words and expressions, with our ears and dullness. God, his word, his grace, his mercy, his Son, his cross, his resurrection, his Spirit, his church, his coming return — these are truly the most thrilling and important realities in the universe. Who God is, and what God does, is never boring. It’s only because of our sin and weakness that we yawn at such majesties.

So, as a preacher — unable to control my hearers, but able to control myself — I’m resolved to do my level best, as far as it depends on me, not to bore the church with the most fascinating, amazing, wonderful, marvelous truths in all the universe. That’s the conviction.

How, then, might such a conviction prove practically helpful to preachers in our preparation? When faced with the predicament of what not to preach, how might this conviction help me know which glories to leave on the cutting-room floor for now and what to include in the few precious minutes of my sermon this Sunday?

What Are You Excited to Preach?

I’ll give the summary counsel, then put it in a larger framework to guard against abuse and distortion. First, the counsel: among all the possibilities that are true to your text and true to the needs of your church, prioritize the three or four you’re most excited to preach. In other words, let your own (hopefully sanctified) enthusiasm help you decide what to preach now, and what to leave for another time.

“As preachers we want to affect our hearers with the glory of God and the wonders of his grace.”

Now, your own excitement (however sanctified) to say something from a pulpit could prove dangerous without some qualifications. Critical to being able to trust your own enthusiasm like this are some real checks of holiness: the presence and influence of the ungrieved, indwelling Spirit; growing conformity over time to patterns of God’s word, rather than the world; a heart of pastoral love and concern for the church to care best for the people’s souls, to build them up, rather than entertain them and make much of the preacher.

To adequately check ourselves, then, we might bring in a triperspectival approach based on (1) the biblical text itself (the normative perspective), (2) the context and congregation (situational), and then (3) the heart and enthusiasm of the preacher himself (existential).

Norm: God’s Word

First and foremost, Christian preachers are stewards. We are not apostles, but we say with them,

This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found faithful. (1 Corinthians 4:1–2)

And if the apostles are servants and stewards, then how much more we lowly, local-church officers charged to preach the apostolic word?

As pastors, with “the aim of our charge” being love for our people (1 Timothy 1:5), our burden in the sermon will take its cues from the burden of our text. And our own hearts will pulse to “not shrink from declaring,” but expose our people, over time, to “the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27). We cannot let our personal preferences and weekly whims undermine our stewardship and undercut their diet. Our thoughts and desires are not the norm of our preaching; the word of God is.

To be clear, brother preachers, don’t presume your enthusiasm for God’s word. Check it. Ask yourself, Does the Book still excite me? Can I still sing along with King David, “More to be desired are [God’s words] than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb” (Psalm 19:10)? Do I savor the responsibility of laboring over these God-breathed words, discerning their meaning, and connecting them with real needs in my church?

Context: Church’s Need

Also vital to faithful and effective preaching is humbling ourselves to speak into the particular people and church and moment to which God has assigned us. We intentionally preach not only to “humans” (and all within internet earshot), but to our specific flock, the local church that is our lot, the little patch of earth where we’ve been assigned as undershepherds.

According to 1 Peter 5:1–2, good pastors are doubly among our people. And so, as both sheep and overseers, we are aware of and sensitive to the specific needs and temptations, right now, in this congregation. With a heart of love for this people, this Sunday, we ask, What would be most helpful to emphasize and visit from and through this text? How might the sermon serve as a bridge between the text God has given us this week and the needs of this flock this Sunday, this year, in this generation?

And so we might check ourselves, Does my heart still rise to meet the needs in this church? Am I keeping watch over this flock “with joy and not with groaning” (Hebrews 13:17)? Am I still eager to see these brothers and sisters home to glory (1 Peter 5:2)?

Joy: Preacher’s Heart

With those qualifications in place, then, I’d like to encourage some preachers to consider taking more of their cues from the desires of their healthy, guarded, holy hearts. Given that your soul has been steeping in this text, and given that you deeply love your people and are sensitive to your specific context, ask yourself sometime deep into your brainstorming, with all these wonderful possibilities before you, What am I most excited to preach?

One reason for this self-check is that it’s hard to inspire others with what doesn’t inspire you. In general (without pushing this to extremes), the people will get more from you preaching what you are most excited to preach from this text. And besides, if the preacher has a good heart, and knows his text and congregation well, his heart will rise to meet their needs with faithfulness to the text. The burden of the text and the needs of the people will draw out the preacher’s heart and influence what he’s most excited to preach on this particular occasion.

Preach with Holy Affection

For most of us, the white-hot zeal of spiritual enthusiasm in our hearts rarely translates into white-hot zeal in communication. What we feel at an eight (out of ten), we might communicate at a five or six, and our hearers will experience in a range of intensity in their own hearts. Some get it at a five or six. A few blessed souls, already pulsing with the Spirit, might get the eight with us, despite the dampening of our communicative abilities. They might even glow with a nine. Others experience it at a two or three. Others still, apathetic or distracted, are totally unaffected.

But as preachers we want to affect our hearers with the glory of God and the wonders of his grace. We want to first be affected ourselves by the biblical text, and then, through the miracle of preaching, model how the Christian soul is rightly affected by our text. We want to help our hearers to be appropriately affected by the truth of our text, however much their personalities and momentary circumstances color and veil their responses.

And so we preachers will do well to say with Jonathan Edwards,

I should think myself in the way of my duty to raise the affections of my hearers as high as I possibly can, provided they are not disagreeable to the nature of what they are affected with.

How might we do this? By lifting up and pressing home the glories in our text that have raised our own affections highest.

Let’s dream about something together.

Let’s imagine that “revival,” the nearly undefinable reality we often talk about, comes to your church, your community, your nation. Let’s envision that what we’ve prayed for comes to pass, and the Holy Spirit falls upon us.

Then what? What would happen? What could we expect? More than that, would we even want “revival”?

Like some, you might cringe at that word revival. Manipulation, emotionalism, fake news, and high-intensity situations make us skeptical, if not downright hostile, toward the idea of some big, dramatic movement of God. The “Asbury Outpouring” last year placed revival at the center of attention again, but why, many ask, do we even need revival? Why are we dissatisfied with the ordinary work of the Holy Spirit?

After all, when we look at revival history — including Jonathan Edwards’s roller-coaster of a life, the “anxious bench” of the Second Great Awakening, the dissension surrounding the Azusa Street Revival, the controversial rise of the Moral Majority amid the late-twentieth-century revivals — we may wonder, Do we actually want revival?

The answer to that question, of course, depends on what we expect to find should revival come. So, what would revival look like if it came?

1. Revival will be costly.

When they heard [the gospel] they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” (Acts 2:37)

When revival comes from the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, we find an immediate, visceral response. On the one hand, skeptics hear the disciples speaking in tongues and mock them: “They’re drunk!” (see Acts 2:13). On the other hand, convicted listeners are “cut to the heart,” and the weight of their guilt brings them to their knees, begging the disciples to tell them how to be saved. The disciples then have to figure out, on the fly, how to organize thousands of new believers and deal with deepening persecution.

Revival is costly. Revival costs others’ perception of you. It costs your perception of yourself. And it costs an incredible amount of time and energy.

In the First Great Awakening, Jonathan Edwards, in writing about his wife, Sarah, found that the intensity of the joys and pains of revival could “overcome the bodily frame.” For this reason, “compassion towards [the lost world] . . . would allow of no support or rest, but in going to God, and pouring out the soul in prayer for them” (Works of Jonathan Edwards, 4:338).

The process of revival is spiritually violent — the piercing sword of the Spirit will demand more of us than we could dream (Hebrews 4:12; Ephesians 6:17). This word will cut out calloused hearts and replace them with new ones at an astonishing rate. During revivals, the speed and size of these surgeries often bring overwhelmingly strong (and sometimes fake) emotions — which bring cynics, who love to bring division. Thus, during revivals the sword of truth tends to carve boundaries between revived communities and anti-revival communities.

“Revival brings an irresistible, consuming focus on unseen things.”

Our society will fear the exclusive, dangerous nature of revivals. But if we pray for new hearts, we must let the word of God do its work.

If we see revival, it will cost us far more than we dare to believe, because the Holy Spirit will give us faith that he is worth far more than we risked believing before.

2. Revival will be easy.

The word of God increased and multiplied. (Acts 12:24)

Ironically, if we were to see revival, we could expect that much of the strain and stress and costliness would feel somewhat easy. In Acts 12, even as James is killed, Peter is imprisoned, and much of the leadership of the early church is being hunted, the gospel increases and multiplies. And as it multiplies, everyone in the revived community seems impossibly happy (Acts 2:46; 8:8; 13:48, 52).

Like dry leaves picked up by a strong wind, when the Holy Spirit comes in power, hearts are stirred with unusual ease. Martin Luther would agree. Here’s how he interpreted the spread of the Reformation:

I simply taught, preached, and wrote God’s Word; otherwise I did nothing. And while I slept, or drank Wittenberg beer with my friends Philipp and Amsdorf, the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that no prince or emperor ever inflicted such losses upon it. I did nothing; the Word did everything. (Luther’s Works, 51:77)

What if you inexplicably lost all appetite for scrolling but felt a craving for the Bible that you usually force yourself to pick up? What if you forgot sports-talk or small-talk or social media but began pouring forth God-talk? What if you went to war with that addiction, that grudge, that not-so-secret insecurity and happily handed your hard-earned money to the poor? Now multiply that sort of transformation by a very large number of folks around you.

For whole communities, the bright and blaring distractions of the god Entertainment would be slain by the one true God, like a stone idol crushed to dust. Why? Because the presence of God is tangible, and when we turn our eyes on Jesus, so much else grows strangely dim. Revival brings an irresistible, consuming focus on unseen things.

If our Lord sends revival, its comparatively effortless nature may startle us. And we’ll wonder why we ever spent a moment ignoring the Love who knocks on our doors so relentlessly. After all, what on earth could steal your gaze when the King of glory enters the room?

3. Revival will be surprising.

The people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them. (Jonah 3:5)

When I posed the question “What should we expect when revival comes?” one friend said, “I just sort of think that’s a dumb question.” She meant, rightly, that God’s plans rarely come at the time or in the circumstances we expect (Isaiah 55:8–11). In revival, a people is awakened to a need they hadn’t realized.

Jonah was a prophet who didn’t want revival. He even accused God of being too merciful (Jonah 4:1–2). Nineveh was the capital of Assyria, one of the most despicable nations in world history. Why would God choose to revive them? Or why would God choose to awaken the Gentiles rather than Jews (Acts 18:6)? Or why would God choose the grandson of Manasseh, Judah’s vilest monarch, to lead revival (2 Kings 21:11–13)?

One of the few things that will be unsurprising about revival is that it will be surprising. Both the people who receive revival and the way in which revival comes may shock us.

From George Whitefield’s scandalous open-air preaching to the controversial institution of song leaders and songbooks in the Second Great Awakening, revivals have always been full of innovation, intrigue, and controversy. In many ways, more recent American revivals have stood on the shoulders of past creativity; in the generations after Whitefield and Edwards and Finney, D.L. Moody and Billy Graham found striking ways to modify old modes of worship and preaching. One might even argue that the worship at Asbury University in February 2023 was a creative surprise: no gadgets, no flashiness, no excess, only a reversion to modest production and maximal passion.

The point of revival is for the word of God to shine a light on what has dwelt in darkness (Isaiah 9:2). Inevitably, the revived community will inwardly and outwardly change in ways they did not anticipate. So, be careful when asking for revival. It will bring much we don’t expect.

4. Revival will be normal.

When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law, he tore his clothes. (2 Kings 22:11)

In the greatest revival of the Old Testament, a young king by the name of Josiah hears the words of God for the first time and repents.

This is not new. This is not revolutionary. It is the basic practice of listening to God that speaks life into a church, community, or nation. It is simple, tear-stained confession that beckons the floodwaters of revival.

Tim Keller was right in teaching that in every revival there is “a recovery of the gospel.” In Josiah’s day, the people of God had literally lost the word of God; in our day, we can still “lose” the word we have. Sometimes, a church refuses to listen to its Shepherd’s voice. We have lost, forgotten, or ignored his words and have found words that fit what our itching ears wish to hear (2 Timothy 4:3). When we resort to our own words, we beckon death. Therefore, John Calvin writes, “The restoration of the Church is the work of God. . . . It is the will of our Master that his gospel be preached. Let us obey his command, and follow [wherever] he calls. What the success will be it is not ours to inquire” (Calvin’s Tracts Relating to the Reformation, 1:200).

“One of the few things that will be unsurprising about revival is that it will be surprising.”

Revival is not about new words; it is about a fresh, impassioned, revived belief in the almost unbelievable: that the eternal Word of God named Jesus died for us. This is why, as Michael McClymond writes, “within the context of awakening, people are almost invariably orthodox theologically” (Encyclopedia of Religious Revivals in America, 1:2). The Holy Spirit needs no new additions to his word — we need only return to what has always been the most stunning story in the history of the world. This story alone, undiluted by us, can bring about the results that we see in every revival.

And what are those results? Simple: love of God and love of neighbor. If love is not increased, then you know it is not a revival. It’s probably somebody trying to make noise — like a clanging cymbal.

Do You Want Revival?

Several words have been used to describe what happened at Asbury University last year. The word revival was avoided for the most part. Even so, words like costly, easy, surprising, and normal could certainly describe those weeks of worship. The emphasis on the manifest presence of God Almighty was central, and where he, the Great Paradox, is central, revival can be expected.

When God comes, his presence is severe because he demands that we destroy whatever idol sits on the throne of our heart; and his presence is gentle for the same reason. If you want to know what to expect when revival comes, identify the gods that have taken the place of the Holy One. Revival is the expedited removal of those idols. Revival is God revealing his unchallenged kingship. Revival is the glimpse of a hot flicker of light called paradise. It is the first note of a song called heaven.

Revival is beautiful because it is the briefest image of life under King Jesus. Revival can also be ugly because there are other powers that do not take kindly to our gentle Lord’s strength.

So, now that we have a vague idea of what we can expect, the question remains: Do you want revival?

Audio Transcript

God is all-sovereign, all-powerful. And he is all-happy in himself. He lacks nothing. And he wants things from us. So, does he need us or need what we can give him? Matthew is trying to put these pieces together in his email to us today. “Pastor John, hello and thank you for your ministry,” Matthew writes. “Early in your wonderful book Providence, on page 43, you talk about how God has full glory. We don’t give him any glory he doesn’t inherently possess already. What God creates is never essential to God. That seems to be the point of Acts 17:25. So, we ascribe glory to God, ‘the only God,’ and we ascribe that glory to him ‘before all time’ — before creation even existed (Jude 25).

Considering this, does this mean if we glorify God by enjoying him, we can say that he created us not because he needed anything from us, but that he created us solely to share in his delight of delighting in himself? In other words, God’s self-delight in himself seems to have nothing to do with his neediness, but it is the greatest gift conceivable to the creation! That God is self-sufficiently happy, in himself, is the best news in the world for us to hear. Am I following your line of thought here? If so . . . wow!”

Wow, indeed. And Matthew is following me.

God is self-sufficiently happy in himself.
God created us not because he needed anything from us. He has no needs, no deficiencies.
He created us so that we would share in the delight that he has in himself.

On those three points, he’s tracking perfectly with what I think and what I believe the Bible teaches. As Jonathan Edwards put it, “It is no deficiency in a fountain that it is prone to overflow.” But what Matthew is really following here is not so much me as the Bible. So, let me try to sum that up.

Self-Sufficient God

We read in the Bible that God the Father says he loves the Son with pleasure. “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17). God the Father takes pleasure in God the Son. And in John 14:31, the Son says, “I love the Father.” So, in the fellowship of the Trinity, there is an eternal mutual love — not the kind of love (this is so important to get) that loves in spite of defects, the way God loves us, but the kind of love that is only delight. The Father and the Son find in each other the totally satisfying reality of a perfect, all-glorious God.

“The eternal happiness of God in God is the foundation of our eternal happiness in him.”

In 1 Timothy 1:11, Paul refers to the glory of our happy God: makariou theou, “blessed God.” It’s not the kind of blessedness that is translated “praise” or “honor,” but rather “happy,” the same as in the Beatitudes — the “happy God.” It belongs to God’s nature from eternity to be perfectly happy in the fellowship of the Trinity. That’s the foundation of saying he has no needs. He did not create us to meet any needs or to make up for any deficiencies.

Act 17:25 says, “[God] is [not] served by human hands, as though he needed anything [How clear can that be? He doesn’t need anything], since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.” Mark 10:45 says that the Son of Man did not come into the world to recruit servants to meet his needs. “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

And Psalm 50:12–15 says,

If I were hungry [God says], I would not tell you,     for the world and its fullness are mine.Do I eat the flesh of bulls     or drink the blood of goats?Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving,     and perform your vows to the Most High,and call upon me in the day of trouble;     I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.

That’s the glorious dynamic of God’s self-sufficiency. Did we notice, as we heard Psalm 50, that in that text (and in Acts 17:25 and in Mark 10:45) the effect is such good news? The effect of God having no needs — that is, being self-sufficient — is the basis of his meeting our needs. That’s the glory of talking about this.

In other words, God’s self-sufficiency is the basis of grace, the overflow of grace, which is why Paul says in Ephesians 1 that everything is done to the praise of the glory of his grace (Ephesians 1:6, 12, 14). Because grace is the apex. It’s the highest point of God’s God-ness. He spills over. His self-sufficiency is the basis of his grace, his love.

Glorifying by Enjoying

Now, I think we need to just pause and let that sink in, Tony, because I think a lot of people hear us — you, me, Desiring God — talk about God’s self-sufficiency, and they feel like we’re dealing in some high-level, obscure, irrelevant, theological speculation about the nature of God that has no bearing on our daily lives. Good night! How absolutely wrong is that?

When the Bible speaks of God’s infinite, ultimate self-sufficiency, it ties it together with God’s being a generous, gracious, overflowing, need-meeting God. So, in Acts 17:25, the fact that God is not “served by human hands, as though he needed anything” leads to this: “He himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.” And in Mark 10:45, the fact that “the Son of Man came not to be served” leads to this: “[Instead, he came] to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” And in Psalm 50:15, the fact that God doesn’t need to be fed by anybody else leads to this: “Call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you.” And that next phrase in Psalm 50:15 ties it together with the glory of God. It says, “Call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.”

In other words, the giver gets the glory. The one who meets the needs of others gets the glory because it shows his overflowing fullness. When Isaiah 43:7 says that God created us for his glory, it means God created as the overflow of his fullness, the overflow of his greatness, his beauty, his worth (we call it his glory), so that his glory would be our all-satisfying treasure. That’s how you glorify an infinitely valuable treasure: by treasuring it, by treasuring it above everything else, by being satisfied in his self-giving revelation above everything else.

God did not create to become glorious. He created to share his glory for the enjoyment of his creatures. And wonder of wonders, our enjoyment of the all-glorious God is the very means by which his glory shines most brightly in the creation. The eternal happiness of God in God is the foundation of our eternal happiness in him. And our supreme happiness in God is the seal that we put on the supreme worth of God’s glory, which is why we never tire of saying that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.

It all happened so slowly, so silently. Each step seemed so small, and even so reasonable in the moment. You didn’t pack up and run like the prodigal son. But somehow, when you look back, you find yourself farther from God than you thought you were.

Maybe you overheard someone praying with simple, childlike love for Jesus, and you can’t even remember the last time you prayed like that. Maybe months have passed since you have woken up and wanted, really wanted, to read your Bible. Maybe corporate worship has become a mere habit, a hollow sound, a form of words without wonder. Maybe you just committed some sin, or entertained some thought, you couldn’t have imagined a year ago.

Maybe you know exactly how you got here: a subtle worldly compromise, a Christless relationship, a slow but deep neglect, a secret sin unconfessed. Or maybe you struggle to trace the path you walked from there to here. You just know that you are not where you once were.

And now, perhaps, like that son in the far country, you think of your Father. You remember home. You wonder if you could find your way back.

‘He Restores My Soul’

At one time or another, all of us in Christ find ourselves in need of returning to Christ. Maybe we’ve wandered from him only for a few days or a week, or maybe we’ve allowed months or more to pass. Either way, our feet have strayed; our love has waned; our zeal has cooled; our eyes have dimmed. We love Jesus less today than we did yesterday. We need renewal.

Yes, but how? What road will lead us back to our Father’s house, back to the land of our first love? We might begin by remembering a line from David’s most famous psalm:

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.     He makes me lie down in green pastures.He leads me beside still waters.     He restores my soul. (Psalm 23:1–3)

Our Lord Jesus specializes not only in saving the lost, but in restoring the saved. He calls himself shepherd, the good shepherd, and as such he does not rest easy while one of his dear sheep wanders from his fold. And therefore, however far we feel from Jesus, and however unable to see the paths back to him, he knows how to restore our souls. He can bear us on his shoulders and bring us home.

And when he does, he often carries us along four restoring paths.

1. Remember

Remember . . . from where you have fallen. (Revelation 2:5)

Personal revival often begins when we remember how far we have fallen, just how far we have wandered. And by remember, I mean really remember. Ponder the past. Relive former, more spiritually alive times in your life. Feel the sorrow of first love lost.

Do you remember the way you once treasured God’s word in your heart like so much gold and silver? Do you remember how prayer felt sweet as honey on your tongue? Do you remember how you hurried to arrive at corporate worship lest you should miss some song, some part of the sermon? Do you remember telling others about Jesus not from guilt but from the natural overflow of your joy? Do you remember how you once fasted with freedom; gave your time and money with a happy, open hand; killed your sin with radical resolve; and heard the name of Jesus as the most wonderful sound in all the world?

“Our Lord Jesus specializes not only in saving the lost, but in restoring the saved.”

We may feel tempted to run from such remembrance, to pretend all is well for fear of facing how much we’ve lost. But don’t run, and don’t pretend. If there is sorrow here, Jesus has promised to sweeten it. Painful remembrance is often our first step toward home. And if we humble ourselves under the comparison of us then and us now, God pledges to make us the special objects of his reviving love:

Thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.” (Isaiah 57:15)

The only spirits God revives are lowly spirits; the only hearts he restores are contrite hearts. And so often, the fruits of lowliness and contrition grow from the soil of honest, unflinching memory.

2. Return

Return, faithless Israel, declares the Lord. I will not look on you in anger, for I am merciful. (Jeremiah 3:12)

There is, no doubt, a sick kind of remembrance, a kind that leaves us more lost than we were before. Some, forgetting God’s mercy, remember themselves right into a pit of despair. They recall home from the far country, but they don’t dare to hope that their Father is waiting for them, ready for them, scanning the horizon with ring and robe in hand. And indeed, we would have no reason to hope unless God himself told us not only to remember, but to return — unless he said, again and again to his lost children, “Come home.” But he does.

Note how God speaks to his wandering people in Jeremiah 3:12. They have not yet done anything to reform themselves. They are, in his eyes, “faithless Israel,” their faithlessness having driven them far from him. But he will not allow their faithlessness to become a reason for staying far from him. “I will not look on you in anger,” he says, wooing, “for I am merciful.” However far we’ve wandered, we find in God a mercy far deeper than our faithlessness.

He gives only one condition for his welcome: “Only acknowledge your guilt, that you rebelled against the Lord your God” (Jeremiah 3:13). Only confess. Only repent. Only own your sins without excuse and receive the blood of Jesus. And then believe that whatever faithlessness has led you far from God, he still says gladly through Jesus, “Return, O faithless children, declares the Lord; for I am your master; I will take you” (Jeremiah 3:14).

3. Remove

Remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes. (Isaiah 1:16)

True remembrance plus faithful return does something deep in a soul. As with the godly grief the apostle Paul describes, we feel a renewed “indignation . . . fear . . . longing . . . zeal” (2 Corinthians 7:11). Freshly forgiven in Christ, and now no longer wandering, we rise like men and women newly alive, ready to remove whatever we have allowed to take us from God.

Revival brings a kind of holy violence to those it touches. In the Old Testament, we read of revived kings like Josiah taking hammer and torch to the idols throughout Israel (2 Kings 23:4–20). In the New Testament, we read of a more spiritual, but no less real, violence. The saints of Christ still know how to handle hammer and torch, toppling and burning idols of heart and life that have stood all too long.

We should beware at this point of a common danger that threatens the Spirit’s restoring work. Even as we labor to remove idols — habits and hobbies, entertainments and relationships, websites and apps — we can nevertheless fall short of removing all. Like the Israelites who left some enemies in the land, or like the kings who allowed the high places to stand, we can rest satisfied with half-reformations, quasi-revivals, near-renewals.

In all likelihood, such partial measures will only leave us in need of revival again, and probably sooner than we think. Don’t hesitate, then, to smash and burn your once-loved foes. Every swing of the hammer clears more space for Christ. Every piece of scorched ground becomes a garden where the Spirit’s fruit can grow.

4. Restore

Do the works you did at first. (Revelation 2:5)

Ultimately, the work of soul restoration belongs to God. “He restores my soul,” not I. But as he restores us, he also grants us to play a part in the restoration process. Just as King Josiah not only cleared the land of idols but also reinstated the Passover, so we not only remove sins but also restore those holy habits we have long neglected. We “do the works [we] did at first” (Revelation 2:5).

Such restoration has been God’s purpose from the beginnings of his dealings with us. Every painful removal was meant to make way for something better. When God brings personal revival, he inevitably brings with it a closer, holier walk with him, a fellowship with him on his “paths of righteousness” (Psalm 23:3). And oh, how great is our joy!

Then the Bible becomes hallowed ground again. Then the door of our prayer closet becomes a doorway to heaven again. Then sermons become feasts again, and evangelism becomes a privilege again, and offenses become overlookable again, and God’s people become again “the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight” (Psalm 16:3). Then we see that our God is not only the God who saves, but the God who restores — who delights to restore, who restores beyond all that we could ask or imagine.

A few weeks ago, my seven-year-old informed me that he wanted to be eight — but not any older than that. “Buddy, why don’t you want to be any older than that?” I asked. “Well, because when you get old, you die.” Fair enough. Eight seemed safe and exciting enough, I guess (he has some eight-year-olds in his class), but nine — now nine was a different story. Who knows what might happen then? Better stick with eight.

It’s a sobering thing, isn’t it, to watch your children begin to wrestle with a reality like death (and then to force you, as a dad or mom, to try and explain something like death). I think our verses this morning are a great help to dads and moms (and teenagers and twenty-somethings and sixty-somethings) in answering the biggest questions we ever ask. What’s going to happen when we die? What does it mean to really live?

A couple of years ago, on June 28, 2021, my (then) 64-year-old dad had a heart attack. I’ll never forget the moments I spent beside his hospital bed that week, as he waited for quadruple-bypass surgery. I felt my own mortality, watching the strongest man I’d ever known now fighting for his life. I know some of you have experienced this. When you’re growing up, Dad is the embodiment of strength, almost immortal. I mean what can’t Dad do? A toy breaks? Oh, Dad will fix it. Want to know what makes an airplane fly? Dad will know that. My three-year-old’s been worried that skunks are going to get into her room at night (longer story there), but I’ve said to her, “Honey, I promise, Daddy won’t let any skunks in your room.” And she believes me! Because I’m Daddy.

And then dads grow older, and their arteries fail — or they get really sick, or their minds begin to go. Slowly, they’re a little less superhero, and a little more human. And in the process, we realize just how human we are.

By God’s grace, my dad’s doing really well, but I thought of him leading up to this message because our conversations over these last couple of years (one in particular) remind me of these verses. He told me that he’s more aware than ever that every day he has is a day he’s been given for Christ, that however many days he has left — whether hundreds or thousands or just one — he wants them to honor Jesus. My dad came close enough to death to be able to remind his son how to live.

And that’s what we have in Philippians 1:19–26: we have a man, a spiritual father, who has come close enough to death that he’s able to tell us (whether we’re 8 or 38 or 68) how to live and die well.

The Happy, Driving Passion

As we’ve learned over the last several weeks, Paul wrote this letter from prison in Rome. The situation’s serious enough that his friends in Philippi are worried if they’ll ever see him again. And on top of the dangers and hardships of his imprisonment, he had enemies (even in the church) trying to make things even worse for him.

“Death, for believers, is better than life because death finally gives us Christ.”

I don’t want it to be lost on us over these next few months in Philippians that the most joy-filled letter in the New Testament was written in horrible circumstances. That tells us something, doesn’t it, about how much joy we can expect to experience even on our hardest days. Look how joyful he is even now, even in prison! And they tell us about how much we can still help others enjoy Jesus — even on our hardest days.

As Pastor Jonathan showed us last week, Paul responds to all of this — imprisonment, mistreatment, betrayal — in an otherworldly way, because he had a different passion than the world. And what was that passion? The glory of God magnified through the advance of the gospel. That passion is why he can rejoice while his enemies preach Christ (verses 15–18). That’s why he can rejoice even while he sits in prison (verses 12–14). That’s why he prays like he does (verses 9–11). That passion is why his love for these people runs deeper and richer than many of our relationships (verses 3–8). And now, in our verses this morning, he’s going to tell us about that passion. He leans in, after all of that, as if to say, Do you want the secret? “To live is Christ, and to die is gain.”

What Kind of Deliverance?

Our passage begins in verses 18–19:

Yes, and I will rejoice, for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance.

Now, right away, what kind of deliverance do you think he’s talking about? What’s he going to be delivered from? Is he talking about deliverance from prison (which is what we probably assume) — or is he talking about some other kind of deliverance?

Let’s keep reading: “I know that . . . this will turn out for my deliverance, as it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death” (verses 19–20). Why do I expect that all of this will turn out for my deliverance? He doesn’t go on to talk about judges changing their minds, or about him developing some goodwill with the jailers, or about a large group of Christians putting together a petition.

“No,” he says, “I’m confident this will turn out for my deliverance because I’m confident that, whether I live or die, Christ will be honored in me.” That phrase — “whether by life or by death” — is the biggest reason I don’t think he’s talking mainly about being delivered from prison. He can’t die in prison and be delivered from prison. “I might die here in prison,” he’s saying, “but I’ll still be delivered. Even if I’m never released from these chains, I’ll still be set free.” How could that be? How could he be delivered without being delivered?

I think that question is massively relevant for us, because some of you are praying for deliverance right now. Not from prison (because you’re here) — but what you’re suffering might feel worse than prison some days. Intense, prolonged conflict with someone you love. Hostility where you work. Cancer. A child who’s walked away from the faith — and maybe from you. By the end of this sermon, I’m praying that you’ll be able to say, to anyone who cares about you, “Yes, and I will rejoice, for I know that this pain, this conflict, this cancer will turn out for my deliverance” — not mainly because the pain might finally let up in this life, or because the relationship will necessarily get better, or because the cancer will go into remission, but because I believe my life, and my suffering, and even my death will say something true and beautiful and loud about how much Jesus means to me. About how much he’s done for me. About how much I’m dying to go and spend the rest of my life with him.

What kind of deliverance is Paul expecting? Not mainly deliverance from prison (although, as we’ll see, he clearly expects that too). No, deliverance from spiritual ruin, from the intense temptations that come with suffering, from walking away from Christ. “I’m confident I will be delivered,” he says, “because I’m confident that, whether I live or die, Christ will look great — and that’s all I really want.”

“I count everything as loss,” he’ll say in chapter 3, “because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him” (3:8–9). That’s what deliverance looks like, the most important kind of deliverance, the kind we all need, especially when suffering comes.

These next verses, then, are a mural of the delivered life — the life freed from self and sin and death, and filled with Jesus. Again, they teach us how to live and die well: “I know that . . . Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death.” Verse 21: “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” We know that verse, and we think we get it — but do we really get it? Could you explain it to a seven-year-old? These next verses help us see both sides of this precious, life-altering (and death-altering) verse.

To Die Is Gain

Let’s start with death, though, with the second half of the verse: “I know that . . . Christ will be honored in my body . . . by death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” How is Christ honored in a dying person’s body? Our death honors Christ, he says, when we begin to see our death not as loss — not as the end, not as defeat, not ultimately as a tragedy — but as gain.

So how could Paul look at death, even a death alone in horrible circumstances, and see victory, see reward? The next verses take us deeper. Beginning now in verse 22: “If I am to live in the flesh” — to live is Christ — “that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.”

“Jesus is not just the only way to heaven; he is what makes heaven worth wanting.”

Now, of course, Paul doesn’t really get to choose. “Which of you by being anxious,” Jesus asks, “can add a single hour to his span of life?” (Luke 12:25). Paul’s not actually choosing life or death here; he’s just letting us see what he wants. “I am hard pressed between the two,” he says. “A big part of me wants to stay and live a little longer here with you” — and we’ll see why in a minute — “but if I’m honest, I’d rather go home. I’m so ready to feel my last aches and pains, to have my last hard conversations, to wipe away my last tears. More than anything, though, I’m so ready to finally, at last, see him, to set aside this old, foggy mirror and look at him face-to-face: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace in the flesh — the seeable, huggable, high-five-able God. To get to know him, to know Jesus, as well as he’s known me all these years (1 Corinthians 13:12).

“Oh, how badly I want to stay,” Paul’s saying, “and help you see more clearly, and understand more deeply, and love more fully, and obey more joyfully, but it will be so much better for me if this apostle left you (for now) and went on to be a kindergartner, a beginner, in glory.”

Better Than This World’s Best

Notice, he doesn’t diminish the goodness of this earthly life. From an earthly perspective, Paul’s life wasn’t all that great (it was horrible) when he wrote these verses — and he still wanted to stay. God has filled this broken, sinful world with people and pleasures and experiences — with really good gifts — that hint at heaven and help us long for heaven. I have three small kids, and there are moments every week when I stop and think, I just want this to last forever. (There are plenty of other moments when I think, When will this ever end? But there are so many moments I want to hold onto.) When we tickle them and they giggle until they cry. When they say certain words really wrong. When they learn how to do something for the first time, and then do that same thing a thousand times every day for a week. When they come, snuggle up next to you, and tell you they love you for no reason at all.

Having a Philippians 1:21 heart doesn’t mean you despise the God-given joys and giggles of life on earth — it means you realize that another life’s coming, another world, one that’s better than this one, even at its best. And not better by a little, but better by far. “My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better” (verse 23).

And what’s the better? It’s not weeks without work or years without taxes. It’s not endless tee times on the golf course or more girls nights with your best friends. It’s not your favorite foods at your favorite restaurants (and you never have to wait or pay). (I, for one, by the way, believe all of that will happen in heaven, and that it’s all going to be better than we can even begin to think or imagine. Believe me, nothing you enjoy here is going to get worse in heaven.) He tells us what the best better will be, though, in the same verse: “My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.” He puts a face to the gain. Death, for believers, is better than life because it’s death that finally gives us Christ — all of Christ, with all our senses, meeting all our needs and satisfying all our lingering, gnawing desires. He is our gain.

In college, I read a paragraph that I’ll never forget. It still haunts me, in the very best way. It goes like this:

Christ did not die to forgive sinners who go on treasuring anything above seeing and savoring God. And people who would be happy in heaven if Christ were not there, will not be there. The gospel is not a way to get people to heaven; it is a way to get people to God. (God Is the Gospel, 47)

I still remember where I was on campus when I read that chapter. It felt like I had stumbled into a land I had never seen before, an ocean I’d never sailed before, a favorite meal I’d never tasted before. I really believe those were the moments when God became heaven for me. When he was no longer the God who makes heaven, or who lets sinners like me into heaven, but the God who himself is what makes heaven heaven — that he would always be (even after thousands and thousands of years) the best part of living there. This Jesus is not just the only way to heaven; he really is what makes heaven worth wanting. He is the great meal. He’s the ocean. He is the treasure hidden in the field and the pearl of great price.

Doorway to Deepest Gain

And if that’s true — if we really think that way — how awesome will he look when we die? While everyone around us in the hospital clings to the last days they have here — while they scramble to try and make it to a couple more things on their bucket lists — we’re going to be the really strange people who have this deep and abiding peace, who talk about how much better life’s about to get, who feel free to spend the last days and hours we have on other people and their needs, who still smile even through horrible pain. We’re going to be the strange and beautiful people who use our last breaths — on the hospital bed, in hospice care, covered in wires and monitors — to sing. When we die like that, what will that say about Jesus? You know if you’ve ever seen a saint die well. In those moments, Jesus looks more valuable than anything life could ever give — or that death could ever take. Don’t you want to die like that?

As we turn to the first half of verse 21, then, I want us to see the relationship between these two phrases: “to live is Christ” and “to die is gain.” We’re about to see what “to live is Christ” means as a way of life — what strange people like this does with the weeks and months and years they have. But before we even get to that, to the kinds of things they do, we’re already seeing who they are — we’re seeing their heart, their passion. You see, the kind of people who honor Christ with their life will always be the kind of person who sees death as better than this life. They glorify God with their life because they want Jesus more than life. I first learned this, like many of you, from John Piper: “God is most glorified in us — in life and death, in joys and sorrows, in marriage and parenting and singleness — when we are most satisfied in him.” God will be most glorified in our lives when death is gain, when we know that the day we die will be the greatest day we’ve ever lived — yet.

To Live Is Christ

Now, in the next couple verses, he turns to explain “to live is Christ.” How does he explain that? He’s already said, in verse 22, “If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me.” Fruitful labor — that’s the first part of our answer. But what does “fruitful labor” actually mean?

He goes on to tell us: “My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account” (verses 23–24). It would be better, far better, to go and be with Jesus, but I’m convinced it’s more necessary, for now, that I stay and keep laboring among you. And what is the labor? What does he need to stay and do for them?

Convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with you all, for your progress and joy in the faith. (verse 25)

The fruitful labor Paul stays to do is to work for others’ progress and joy in the faith. He stays to help them grow in their faith in Jesus (progress), and to help them find greater joy in that faith. If we live for another day or month or year, it’s because someone needs help believing in and enjoying Jesus. That’s how Paul thinks about his life — and yours. This is why you’re alive: to help someone else keep believing in Jesus. Do you think about your life that way? Do you look at your days, or weeks, or decades of life as a gift God has given you to give other people God? To live is Christ — to hold up Christ for one another.

But what does it really mean, practically, to live for someone else’s “progress and joy in the faith”? Does Paul give us any hints about what we’re supposed to actually do? He gives us lots of hints. His letters are filled with this kind of life. But we’ll limit ourselves to just Philippians for now. What does it look like to live for one another’s “progress and joy in the faith”?

It looks like praying for one another, and especially for each other’s souls (1:9–11).
It looks like calling one another to obey Christ, to live a life worthy of the gospel (1:27).
It looks like meeting practical needs for one another, as this church did for Paul (4:14).
It looks like honoring one another, as Paul honors Epaphroditus (2:29).
Sometimes it looks like warning one another: “Look out for the dogs, look out for the evildoers, look out for those who mutilate the flesh” (3:2).
It looks like reconciling believers with one another when there’s conflict or division, as Paul does in 4:2: “I entreat Euodia and I entreat Syntyche to agree in the Lord.”
It looks like reminding one another of heaven: “Our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body” (3:20–21).
It looks like, get this, just having more conversations about Jesus.

Any of you can do all those things. These aren’t things only apostles do, or even things only pastors do; these are things Christians get to do for one another. We live, for however long we live, for one another’s progress and joy in the faith — to live is Christ.

Paul strikes one more note here, in verses 25–26: “I know that I will remain and continue with you all, for your progress and joy in the faith, so that in me you may have ample cause to glory in Christ Jesus, because of my coming to you again.” “If I live,” he’s saying, “I want to give more reasons to worship Jesus — and not just a few reasons, but plenty of reasons” — “so that in me you may have ample cause to glory in Christ Jesus.” Paul’s not living for a bare-minimum Christianity, a bare-minimum spiritual influence on others. No, day by day, he wants to pile on the reasons, as many as he possibly can, for those he knows and loves to trust and enjoy Jesus.

So, when God brings others into your life, are they better off spiritually for being there? Are they a lot better off spiritually for being there? What if you started looking at your relationships — family, community group and life group, neighbors, coworkers, friends — and tried to give them ample cause to love and glorify Jesus? How much more spiritual good could you do? How might the good you do then multiply through them into all of their relationships?

“If we live for another day or month or year, it’s because someone needs help believing in and enjoying Jesus.”

Again, notice he says, “I am hard pressed between the two.” So even though to depart and be with Christ is far better, Paul really does want both. It’s gain to die, no question, but it’s not loss to stay and live for Christ. To live for Jesus — despite how much it cost him, despite how little fruit he saw at times, despite the fact that he might live the rest of his life in prison — to live for Jesus was its own reward. Therefore, he could gladly say, To die is gain for me, and to live is Christ for you, my joy and my crown (4:1).

Because You Pray for Me

Before we close, then, I want to go back briefly to the beginning of our passage and look at how this kind of Christ-honoring life and this kind of Christ-honoring death happen. If God delivers us from walking away from Christ, from giving into temptation, from slowly drifting into worldliness, if he helps us honor Christ until the very end, how does that happen? Where do we get the strength and focus we need to keep going? Paul gives us two quick glimpses (so quick we might completely miss them), but I think they’re too good to pass over as a church. You’ve already heard these verses, but we need to hear them one more time:

Yes, and I will rejoice, for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance. (verses 18–19)

Why is Paul so confident that he’s going to make it to the end, that he’ll keep honoring Christ, even in prison, even under persecution, even if it costs him his life? What does he say? Because you’re praying for me.

Do you ever pray like this church prayed for Paul? Does anyone pray like this for you? If we commit to praying like this for one another, Cities Church, we’ll be able to say things like we heard Paul say in verse 6: “I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” — because we’ve prayed for you. I know you’ll honor Christ, whatever happens to you, because we’ve prayed for you. Or, as in verse 19, “I know this horrible circumstance will turn out for my deliverance” — because you prayed for me. Prison can’t overcome these kinds of prayers. Cancer can’t overcome these kinds of prayers. All the armies in the world couldn’t overcome prayers like these.

Why? Because God answers prayers like these — and he doesn’t answer from afar. No, he comes and helps us from inside of us, by his Spirit (“through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ”). His Spirit lives within us. And as he does, his strength becomes our strength, his peace becomes our peace, his love becomes our love.

By the Spirit, right now, in whatever callings you have been given, you have everything you could possibly need to honor Christ — whether by life or by death — because that Christ lives in you. He’s going to help you.