http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15086535/how-is-christ-head-of-the-church

Audio Transcript

Last time, we looked at how non-Christians fight for faith. We Christians also fight for faith. We fight for faith because the world and the flesh and the devil conspire to spiritually deaden us. They come at us with sleeping pills, with tranquilizers of relaxation, with the offer of a life filled by the hypnotic trance of digital amusements. And what Jesus wants us to see is that “faith and hope and love are the antidotes to the soporific effects of the world always trying to get you to go to sleep.” So how do we stay awake? And how do we fight to stay awake in the entertainment age? Here’s Pastor John, preaching in 2005 at an outdoor venue — a conference maybe. I’m not sure about the context, but you’ll hear the wind at times. Here is John Piper.

“Salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed” (Romans 13:11). Today is the 80th birthday of Dan Fuller, which doesn’t mean anything to most of you, but means a great deal to me because Dan Fuller was for me in 1968, ’69, ’70 and ’71 God’s instrument for turning my world upside down and opening my eyes to the Scriptures and the glory of God. So, I got on email yesterday, and I wrote him a long letter of appreciation and gratitude. And among the other things that I said, I said, “Dan, salvation is closer to you now than it was the day you believed, and every groan of your 80-year-old body is groaning closer to Jesus. Every heartbeat in your fragile old body is a heartbeat closer to the glory of Jesus Christ.”

I hope he takes heart in his 80-year-old frame. And I hope you take heart from knowing your salvation — which is the completion of your redemption, with a new body and the end of battling with sin — is closer today than it was yesterday. And every groaning of your aching body means, “I’m one groan closer to the glory that is arriving.”

Sleepwalking and Skydiving

Then the third thing he says in verse 11, in the first half of the verse, is this: “The hour has come for you to wake from sleep” (Romans 13:11). And you remember what we said about that? Most of the world that is not treasuring Jesus Christ as its supreme treasure is sleepwalking. Even though their life is very glitzy, it’s just bombarded every day with advertisements to say, “Do this, and you will live,” when in fact, it’s the devil wringing his hand, saying, “Do this, and you will go sound asleep” — sound asleep to what that sun is really saying today.

How many people in Mounds View do not hear the glory of God being declared from the heavens? Why? Because they spent all night watching television. They’ve saturated their lives with an entertainment mentality, and their spiritual eyes have gotten smaller and smaller and smaller until most people without Christ can’t see anything glorious in spiritual reality. And Paul says, “The day has come. This is not a time for sleeping. This is not a time for sleepwalking.”

It’s not a time for being like skydivers — this is like a parable of the world without Christ. The skydivers are leaping out their planes, and they are watching the air go at 120 miles an hour through their fingers, and feeling this is the apex of the thrill of life. But there’s just one problem: they have no parachutes. And the gravity that is pulling them inexorably toward what will happen in about a minute or two is called the wrath of God. Because Jesus said in John 3:36, “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.” And they think they’re so alive.

One of our great tasks is to so let the light of the gospel shine that, by the power of the Holy Spirit, eyes will wake up to the fact that day has come. Christ has come. The sun of righteousness has risen over Mounds View and over the Twin Cities. Wake up to the glory of your Savior, and believe him and enjoy him. Don’t be a sleepwalker. Don’t be a sleep-skydiver. It’s time to wake up. It’s time to get dressed. That’s what this text is about today. Get dressed. Take off your pajamas. Stop going to work in your pajamas.

Entering the War

So, we start now at verse 12. And what we’re finding here is that we’re being told what to wear as the light has come and what to do in this clothing. Romans 13:12: “The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then cast off the works of darkness.” You see the logic? “Because it is day, so then . . .” These are pajamas. Cast off the works of pajamas. One way to define sin is pajamas. You should be embarrassed to go around sinning. I mean, who would go to work in his pajamas? But people go to work in the works of darkness every day when it’s day. Wake up! It’s day. The King of kings has come.

So, “cast off [take off] the works of darkness and put on” — and then he chooses a word that is surprising. I didn’t expect him to choose this word. It’s a word that signals that the Christian life is not just wakeful; it’s war. You see that word? The day is at hand; so then, take off your pajamas — that is, the works of darkness — “and put on the armor of light.” I mean, I would expect it to say, “Put on a shirt or a cloak” or “Dress well for work” or something. And he says, “Put on the armor of light.”

“The Christian life is not just wakeful; it’s war.”

So, out of the blue comes — I mean, we don’t just go from pajamas to clothes to armor; we go straight from pajamas to armor. What does that say about life? It says life is war. The Christian life is a battle — though God has been so merciful to give us a foretaste of heaven today, and we may wonder, how can we even think in terms of life as being war and a battle and darkness to be overcome?

Armor of Light

So, put off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Now, here’s my question: What is the armor of light, and what does putting it on mean? But let’s make the question a little broader. Verse 12 and verse 14 both used the words “put on.” Notice verse 14: “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ.” So, now you’ve got two “put-ons”: put on the armor of light when you take off your pajamas of sin, and put on the Lord Jesus Christ. So, my question really is, What’s the relationship between putting on the armor of light and putting on the Lord Jesus Christ? What do those two things mean? And I think the answer is given in 1 Thessalonians 5:7–8.

So, if you want to go there with me, you can, or you can just listen. I read this two weeks ago because 1 Thessalonians 5:7–8 is the closest comparison in all of Paul’s writings to what we have here in Romans 13:12–14. When I read it, you’ll hear the relationship. So listen carefully to 1 Thessalonians 5:7–8:

For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, are drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on [now there it is: we have armor, so we know we’re in the same sphere of thought] the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.

So, Paul mentions two pieces of armor: breastplate and helmet. We know there are more from Ephesians 6, but that’s all he’s dealing with here. We’ve got a breastplate to cover your heart and your will, and we’ve got a helmet to cover your brain, because those are the only three things the devil’s interested in. He wants your heart; he wants your will; he wants your brain — so get yourself covered good here and here. And he says there are three things that this armor stands for: faith, love, hope. Sound familiar? These three are the great ones — faith, hope, and love.

Staying Awake in a Sleepy World

So, now I come back to Romans 13:12, and see if this will help us. “So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.” That is, let us put on faith, and let us put on hope, and let us put on love.

“Faith and hope and love are the antidotes to the soporific effects of the world.”

In this world of sleepwalking, the message is coming at you all day long — every day from television and from advertising and from all other kinds of things — to say, “Go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep with regard to God, with regard to Christ, with regard to the Bible.” And the less you want the Bible, the less you want Jesus, the less you want God, the more effective you know the sleeping pills of the world have been in your life. And what he’s saying here now is that faith and hope and love are the antidotes to the soporific effects of the world always trying to get you to go to sleep. So, combat that sleep-producing effect of the world by putting on faith and putting on hope and putting on love.

The gospel is not a way to get people to heaven; it is a way to get people to God. (God Is the Gospel)

People often describe pivotal moments in their lives as “the day when God turned my world upside down.” Some experience, some conversation, some trial radically reshaped how they viewed themselves, their lives, their relationships, and the world around them. Well, in my sophomore year of college, God turned heaven upside down for me.

I grew up in a Christian home with loving Christian parents, and had been a Christian myself for a number of years at that point in college. I read the Bible and prayed most days. I was part of a faithful Bible-preaching church and was surrounded by mature and intentional Christian friends. I was even doing ministry among high school students, sharing the gospel and discipling them in the faith. And then, in a moment — in a sentence — God suddenly flooded the gospel with new meaning, new colors, new intensity and joy.

To draw me deeper into the gospel, though, God had to first confront me, but it was the sweetest kind of confrontation, the most satisfying kind of rebuke. The sentence tackled me where I sat and has never let me go.

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)

Question for Our Generation

The gospel is the way to get people to God. The gospel is the way to get me to God. It was the kind of rare epiphany that is both devasting and thrilling. Devastating, because you realize just how much you’ve had wrong until now. Thrilling, because you have stumbled into a land you’d never seen before, an ocean you’d never sailed before, a favorite meal you’d never tasted before.

God is not just the only way to heaven; he is what makes heaven worth wanting. He is the great meal. He is the wild and wondrous ocean. He is the treasure hidden in the field and the pearl of great price (Matthew 13:44–46). John Piper presses home the surpassing gift of God himself with a haunting question:

The critical question for our generation — and for every generation — is this: If you could have heaven, with no sickness, and with all the friends you ever had on earth, and all the food you ever liked, and all the leisure activities you ever enjoyed, and all the natural beauties you ever saw, all the physical pleasures you ever tasted, and no human conflict or any natural disasters, could you be satisfied with heaven, if Christ were not there? (God Is the Gospel, 15)

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

Could you?

Could I? That was the question that turned heaven on its head for me. Could I be content in a heaven without Christ? And if not, if Christ really was what made heaven an eternity worth wanting, why wasn’t I doing more to know and enjoy him now on earth?

Who Is Heaven?

“The gospel is not a way to get people to heaven; it is a way to get people to God.” But what does God say? Does he talk about himself, the gospel, and heaven that way?

The apostle Paul knew that God was the greatest gift of the gospel. “Whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss 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” (Philippians 3:7–9). The real treasure, the one that surpasses all others, is to know him, to gain him, to have him.

Why did Christ die on the cross? The apostle Peter says, “Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18). He suffered, bled, and died not just so that we might be forgiven and relieved of hell, but so that we might have God. The worst consequence of sin is not the fire, but the separation (2 Thessalonians 1:9). Hell will be agonizing and miserable for many reasons, but none more than being deprived of God himself. The damned will still experience the presence of God (Revelation 14:10), but it will be in horrifying wrath, rather than in grace and joy. They will never have God.

“The real treasure, the one that surpasses all others, is to know him, to gain him, to have him.”

The redeemed, however, sing, “I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy” (Psalm 43:4). “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11) — not only joys and pleasures beside him or around him, but above all, joy in him. He is the joy. He is the pleasure. His presence is paradise — and it would be so even if everything else we loved and wanted was taken away.

And, in Christ, we experience that presence in part even now. Yes, our remaining sin and the consequences of sin interfere with that experience, but when God is our joy, we taste real joy now. We savor pleasures in everyday life now, pleasures that will last forever. And so we pray prayers like Psalm 42: “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God” — not for deliverance, or forgiveness, or healing, or provision, or relief, or reconciliation, but for you — “My soul thirsts for God, for the living God” (Psalm 42:1–2). Not for the good and perfect gifts God gives, but for the far better gift that God is.

Heaven of the New Heavens

As we wait and long for heaven, many of us have clung to promises like Revelation 21:4: “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” No more tears, no more death, no more mourning or crying or pain. We can hardly imagine the sweetness of these absences — a whole world without shadows.

Heaven, however, will not be defined by absences; paradise will be defined by an all-satisfying presence. When God becomes heaven for us, verse 3 rises and eclipses even the precious promises of verse 4:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. . . . And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.”

What’s better than a world without sin, sorrow, and death? A world with God. Yes, he will wipe away our tears. Yes, he will heal our wounds and cure our diseases. Yes, he will finally do away with that awful enemy, death. But those blessings, while infinitely great, will be as puddles next to the ocean of having him and being his. A God capable of drying every tear under every eye will be our God. A God capable of curing every cancer will give himself to us — even us. A God capable of emptying graves and overthrowing death will live with us, and for us, forever.

Don’t let all that God can do for you blind you to all that he can be for you. Don’t spend so much time splashing in puddles that you never get to see the ocean. Don’t settle for any offer of heaven that doesn’t have him at the center.