Audio Transcript

This podcast often addresses gospel boldness, risk-taking, and personal suffering. On occasion, those three themes — boldness, risk, and suffering — merge together, like they do in today’s sermon clip from the ministry of John Piper. Today, we look specifically at how the assurance of the hope of heaven releases us for radical, risk-taking love that makes people look at our lives and ask for “the reason for the hope that is in you,” as Peter says it (1 Peter 3:15). So, how do we escape the natural love of safety? Here’s Pastor John’s answer, from thirty years ago, in a sermon on Revelation 21.

Richard Baxter was a very effective pastor in the seventeenth century in England. He’s well known for his book The Reformed Pastor. Not many people know, however, that Richard Baxter labored for all the years of his life under tremendous pain. He had frequent nose bleeds, constant cough, headaches, digestive ailments, kidney stones, gallstones.

He believed in supernatural healing, and he testified several times that God had delivered him out of a deadly disease to keep on ministering via direct intervention. In fact, he told the story one time of entering the pulpit, and he could see in the looking glass a big cancerous tumor on the back of his throat that vanished while he was preaching and testifying to the grace of God.

Preciousness of Heaven

And yet, all his life, from the age of 21 on, he testified that he was “seldom an hour free from pain.” One of the effects on Richard Baxter’s life is that it made him keenly aware of how short life is, how certain death is, and how precious heaven is. When he was 35 years old, he became what he thought was mortally ill. And he was on his bed, and he thought he was dying.

And he formed a habit, which as it turned out, lasted for forty years, because he didn’t die. The habit was meditating a half an hour a day on the glories of heaven. The reason he formed this habit and maintained this habit is because of the profound effect that it had on his life, keeping him awake to the things of God and to the brevity of this life. He wrote down those reflections in those days, and they became a book called The Saints’ Everlasting Rest, which is still in print three hundred years later to testify to the power of this man’s vision of what he had seen of God’s glorious hope for the believer. He commended it to us, that we would take time each day to set our minds on heaven.

This is the way he said it:

If you would have light and heat, why are you not more in the sunshine? For want of this recourse to heaven your soul is as a lamp not lighted, and your duty as a sacrifice without fire. Fetch one coal daily from this altar, and see if your offering will not burn. . . . Keep close to this reviving fire, and see if your affections will not be warm.

Set Your Mind on Things Above

Now, that’s good advice. I think it’s the same advice that Paul gave in Colossians 3. He said, following up on last Sunday’s message, as it were,

If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. (Colossians 3:1–4)

“How frequently do you set your mind on things that are above and dwell there?”

Now, I want to ask you, do you do that? Do you obey that? How frequently do you set your mind on things that are above and dwell there? How frequently do you seek the future? Do you seek the age to come? Do you look to where your life is hid with Christ in God and anticipate the glory that will be you when you come with him, and you in your true life are revealed?

We are so addicted to the world. So, I just want to invite you, with Richard Baxter, to do what he did, and every day to set your mind on things that are above. And I want you to repudiate with me a lie that goes like this: “Well, if you spend time thinking about heaven, if you dwell on the age to come, and the glories of your hope, you are going to become of no earthly good whatsoever.” Now, that’s a lie. It’s a common one.

Risk-Taking Hope

I think exactly the opposite is the case. It’s the people who know their hope, who know that their destiny is rock-solid and sure, who know that their destiny is glorious, who are free to take risks of love, free to “let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also. The body they may kill; God’s truth abideth still.” I’ve got a destiny. I’ve got a future. I cannot die. Mark it. It is not the people who have that hope, who have that security, who live in that confidence, who live their lives gathering treasures on earth and ignore the needs of people.

It’s people who are free, who don’t need money, who don’t need comforts, who don’t need worldly acclaim because they’ve got it all in Jesus, who are free to take risks for others. First Peter 3:15 says, “. . . always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you.” Now, have you ever had anybody ask you a reason for the hope that is in you? Have you had anybody look at your behavior and say, “My, what hope must be behind that behavior?” I ask you, what kind of behavior would that be?

If somebody jumps out of an airplane, you don’t jump out behind them with no parachute. Two dead people aren’t better than one. So, if somebody falls out of an airplane with no parachute on, you might jump out after them, if you have a parachute on, and you try one of those bullet dives to catch them. So they’re falling kind of loose and stopping a lot of air, 110 miles an hour, maybe, and you go bullet-like, 150 miles an hour, maybe. You might do that, because the security and the hope of this parachute free you for that kind of love — free you for that kind of risk-taking. So, if somebody’s in the airplane, and they see you about to jump, and they ask you, “What’s the reason for the hope that you have, to jump out of this airplane to try to catch somebody? What’s the reason for your hope?” You say, “The parachute. It’s called the hope of glory. The parachute, that’s my hope.” And then you jump.

Free to Change the World

Now I want to ask you, what kind of lifestyle will move people to ask you questions like that about your hope? Gathering money? No, because they’ll assume money is your hope. Gathering comforts? Comforts are your hope. Spending all your time watching television? No, television is your hope. Hope frees for a radical new lifestyle.

“People in love with heaven are the ones that are free to change this world.”

So, I want to call you with Richard Baxter, and I want to call you with the apostle Paul, if you have been raised with Christ, if your life is hid with Christ in God — out there secure. It’s done. Absolutely. You cannot die. You cannot lose. If it’s that sure, I want to invite you to set your mind on things that are above. Seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated. Let your mind dwell on the glories of the age to come.

And you know what’ll happen? You will become a free person. And free people are dangerous people to the kingdom of Satan, because they don’t ask cautionary questions about what it will cost in this life. They throw that to the wind, and they love, and they sacrifice, and they go, and they serve, and they change the world — this world, of all things. Of all things, can you imagine that? People in love with heaven are the ones that are free to change this world.

As you grow older, you increasingly find yourself at milestones that feel a bit surreal. For instance, this July, John Piper and I will mark three full and wonderful decades of ministry partnership that, by God’s grace, resulted in the birth of the mission we call Desiring God.

Why does the milestone feel surreal? Well, for starters, it’s strange to think that John and I have now been working together for the majority of my life. It’s also strange to realize that I’m entering the fourth quarter of my vocational career (should the Lord sustain my life and abilities). And a strange dimension of seeing the end of my vocational ministry on the horizon has been preparing for and experiencing the natural, necessary series of ministry disappointments.

What I mean by disappointments is not what you probably think of as disappointments. What I mean are the times when the Lord “dis-appoints” us from roles and responsibilities to which he had once “appointed” us. For every appointment, there will be a corresponding disappointment; for every calling we embrace, there will eventually be a corresponding calling to release.

Preparing for our eventual disappointment is a crucial aspect of faithful Christian stewardship. But in my observations over the years, it’s also often a neglected aspect. We find plenty of resources aimed at helping Christian leaders enter their leadership seasons, but it’s surprising how comparatively few there are to help leaders exit those seasons — despite the fact that how we end often says more than how we begin (Ecclesiastes 7:8; 2 Timothy 4:10).

“For every calling we embrace, there will eventually be a corresponding calling to release.”

I don’t claim to be an expert in leadership disappointments, but I can share with you some core values I gleaned from Scripture that helped prepare me for the disappointments I’ve experienced. And to do that, I need to provide you with a little historical context.

Appointed and Disappointed

In 1993, when John Piper graciously extended me the offer to become his first full-time administrative assistant, he didn’t know he was hiring Desiring God’s first CEO — because Desiring God (DG) didn’t exist yet (we launched it together the next year). This was fortunate for me because I likely wouldn’t have gotten the CEO job. I didn’t have a degree in theology or business. I was an anthropology major with no experience leading an organization. God does like to choose unlikely people.

What I did have, when John and I decided to start this ministry, was his trust. He knew that we shared the same theological vision and passion for spreading it. And despite my deficiencies, God had equipped me with enough leadership ability, creativity, risk tolerance, and resourcefulness to be an effective catalyst — to get things up and going and recruit other gifted people to join us as the ministry rapidly grew.

I realized in those first years, however, that if God granted DG growth and longevity, I would need to hold my leadership role with open hands. God had appointed me to steward it for a season, but sooner or later seasons change. The ministry could outgrow my ability to lead it effectively, or God could choose to redeploy me somewhere else. At some point, God would disappoint me from my leadership role and appoint someone else to lead. So, all along I asked our board to watch me carefully and help me discern when a change needed to be made.

Though I served as the founding CEO for about twenty years, much of my tenure was comprised of a series of delegated disappointments, of handing off responsibilities and initiatives I started or conceived to others more gifted than I was. Eventually, this included handing the role of CEO to someone who could fill it more effectively than I could. Looking back, these disappointing decisions were among the most consequential I ever made as a leader. And the most consequential of those tended to sting, since they required me to assess and discuss my deficits honestly with colleagues and board members. This forced me, though, through repeated practice, to internalize and be guided by the following four core values.

1. Love Jesus’s increase supremely.

Over the years, John the Baptist became one of my biblical-leadership mentors, mainly because of the way he responded to his disciples who were concerned that the crowds were leaving him to follow Jesus.

You yourselves bear me witness, that I said, “I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him.” The one who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. Therefore this joy of mine is now complete. He must increase, but I must decrease. (John 3:28–30)

I love this man. John was more in love with the God of his calling than his calling from God. What gave him joy was seeing the bride increasingly drawn to the bridegroom. And when his role in helping make that happen began to diminish, it didn’t diminish his joy. He quietly and happily began to step aside.

“John the Baptist taught me to love the increase of Jesus’s glory more than my role in that increase.”

John the Baptist taught me to love the increase of Jesus’s glory more than my role in that increase. And he taught me that the way a leader relinquishes his role for Jesus’s sake might just speak loudest of his love for Jesus.

2. View yourself as a steward.

The apostle Paul also became a leadership mentor for numerous reasons, but I’ll focus here on one. When it came to the ministry he received from the Lord Jesus, Paul viewed himself primarily as a servant of Christ and a steward of the gospel entrusted to him (1 Corinthians 4:1). And since “it is required of stewards that they be found faithful,” the way he carried out his ministry was shaped by his constant awareness that someday he would “give an account of himself to God” (1 Corinthians 4:2; Romans 14:12).

Consequently, Paul’s example profoundly shaped how I came to view myself and my role. I am a servant-steward tasked with laboring for the joy of others (2 Corinthians 1:24), and I must labor in such ways as to avoid giving unnecessary offense to my Christian brothers and sisters as well as to unbelievers (1 Corinthians 10:32).

3. Watch for and support your successor.

Leaders often keep their eyes peeled for possible successors — and often for the wrong reasons: to eliminate the competition. Which is what Saul tried to do when he saw David’s star begin to rise in Israel (1 Samuel 18:9–11).

But Saul’s son, Jonathan, the heir apparent to Saul’s throne, saw something very different in David: a kindred God-entranced soul (1 Samuel 18:1). Eventually, Jonathan discerned that God had chosen David, and not himself, to be the next king. And the way he responded is why he became another mentor for me:

Jonathan, Saul’s son, rose and went to David at Horesh, and strengthened his hand in God. And he said to him, “Do not fear, for the hand of Saul my father shall not find you. You shall be king over Israel, and I shall be next to you. Saul my father also knows this.” And the two of them made a covenant before the Lord. (1 Samuel 23:16–18)

Jonathan’s humility and faith is stunning, and so rare in this world. He didn’t merely step aside for David, but he loved, comforted, defended, and encouraged him in God’s calling on his life.

If, out of “bitter jealousy [or] selfish ambition,” we feel threatened by a potential successor, it’s crucial that we recognize this Saul-like response as “earthly, unspiritual, demonic” (James 3:14–15) and repent of it. Because it poses a clear and present danger to whatever mission we serve.

I learned from Jonathan that, when circumstances allow it, a Christian leader can and should befriend his successor and do everything within his power to help him launch well into his season of leadership.

4. Love them to the end.

Jesus is, of course, the perfect model of leadership, but we never see him disappointed from his role because he is the Lord himself. However, this description of the way Jesus loved his disciples made a huge impact on me as a leader: “He loved them to the end” (John 13:1). Whatever circumstance resulted in the end of my leadership season, I wanted the same to be said of me. A faithful Christian leader loves those he leads to the end.

In 2010, I knew that DG had outgrown my abilities to lead it effectively. And to put simply what wasn’t simple in experience, the Lord made it clear that my colleague, Scott Anderson, was the leader he was raising up for the next season. So, we worked with our board to create a transition process that culminated in Scott being installed as our CEO in 2015. And I officially took a role as a member of DG’s teaching team.

Due to Scott’s leadership, as well as the remarkable team he has assembled, the ministry is more fruitful, more focused on our mission, more efficient, and healthier than it’s ever been. And my profile within the ministry is as small as it’s ever been. The next generation has taken over, and they are doing everything better than I ever could.

Humble Joy of Heaven

How do I, as the founding leader, feel about all this? Honestly, it’s hard to imagine being happier. This is what I had prayed for in the early days. I think it’s a taste of the humble joy of heaven, where every saint overflows with joy as they see Jesus increase and remember how God so graciously gave them each a small, temporary role in that increase.

I wish I could say I embodied these values perfectly through my disappointments. I didn’t. But they nonetheless shaped and guided me. And I believe the Lord honored my imperfect striving and blessed my friendships with the men who were appointed to take over after me.

I love everything about Christ-centered weddings. I love the love songs, the festive decorations, the contagious smiles, the time-honored traditions. I love the theology that marriage pictures and the miracle God performs by joining a man and a woman together as one. And I hate divorce. I hate all the damage it leaves in its wake. I hate how sin attacks what God has blessed and all that Satan does to undermine these vows.

So, when my wife and I start premarital counseling with a couple, I tell them that we will seem like good cop and bad cop. My wife openly expresses her joy to the engaged couple, while I keep a poker face over the six meetings, deliberately poking holes to see if their relationship is sufficiently built on the solid foundation of Christ.

Too often, couples stumble into marriage blinded to the problems in front of them because they look at their relationship through the distortion of rose-colored glasses. Then, shortly after the honeymoon (if it takes that long), the glasses fall off, and the couple becomes overwhelmed by what feel like painful, “irreconcilable” issues. Equally sad and tragic are the marriages that make it through earlier years only to yield to feelings of loneliness, resentment, or indifference, and then the couple gives up on the marriage in their later years.

I don’t know where you are relationally, but I’m writing to encourage couples married or about to be: if you and your spouse love Christ, your marriage can survive and thrive. So, for the purpose of thriving in your covenant, I’ll share three common challenges that all marriages between sinners face, holding up Christ as the only reliable solution for each.

1. Remember who the real enemy is.

If your marriage often feels more like a battleground than a bed of roses, you’re not crazy. In the Christian movie War Room, an elderly wise patron, Ms. Clara, tells a young wife struggling in her marriage, “You’re fighting the wrong enemy.” Oh, if every Christian couple took full heed of this danger! Satan studied Adam, and developed a specific and tailored plan — and what did he do? He went after Adam’s bride. He deceived Eve in his successful attack on their union (Genesis 3:1–6; Revelation 12:9). The Bible warns us that his war plan against marriage has not changed.

Before the apostle Paul tells Christian husbands and wives what he expects of them in Ephesians 5, he writes three whole chapters to ground us in the abundant grace that is ours in Christ. That grace is the means by which couples can make our marriages reflect Christ and his love for the church (Ephesians 5:22–31). Without regularly walking in the gospel of Ephesians 1–3 together, marriage easily becomes marred in fights centered around felt needs and grievances.

Then, in Ephesians 6, Paul tells believers why we need all the blessings from chapters 1–3: Satan and his horde of demons are still waging war against us (Ephesians 6:10–12), just as they did against Adam and Eve. You are at war with Satan, and your marriage is the battleground.

What’s the prescription? Remember that your spouse is not your enemy. How often do we turn our weapons against each other and unleash our anger there? That’s how Satan slowly builds a beachhead to launch his attacks against marriage (Ephesians 4:26–27). Our Lord taught us that a house divided against itself can’t stand. Satan’s strategy is to use friendly fire — spouses attacking each other — to defeat our marriages.

It’s imperative, then, for couples to learn how to engage in spiritual (not spousal) warfare. And spiritual wars can be won only with spiritual weapons. So, put on the whole armor of God, all the gracious gifts God has given you in Christ. “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7).

2. Reject any voices who reject God.

Satan spoke through the serpent to confront Eve with a choice: believe what God had said, or accept what she was hearing now. She chose to believe the serpent’s lie. She believed that she could step out from God’s authority and decide for herself what was right and wrong. As Satan led, Eve followed, and as Eve led, Adam followed. The order of creation was turned upside down, with God at the bottom. And lest we think we would have fared better, this is always how sin works in a marriage — yes, even our sin.

God has not called the husband to lead because he is superior to his wife (he’s not). A husband must lead because God intentionally made the man to lead and his wife to help (Genesis 2:18). God looked at that kind of marriage, and he saw that “it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). Satan saw the same dynamics, and he hated them, so he came to overturn them. He sought to make the wife the head; the head, the helper; and God, the enemy. And, again, he’s whispering the same lies today. He wants women to chafe under the idea of submission and for men to run from the calling of headship.

What’s the prescription? Again, notice how Paul weaves the marriage story in Ephesians. Wives are called to submit to their husbands (Ephesians 5:22–24), and husbands are called to sacrificially love and serve their wives the way Christ loved the church (verses 25–30). This kind of marriage is possible only when wives and husbands are filled with the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 5:18). Elsewhere, Paul adds that believers are filled with the Holy Spirit when we are filled with God’s word (Colossians 3:16).

So, regularly read God’s word, on your own and as a couple, and follow what you read by faith. And know that when you hear a voice that contradicts God’s word — in society, in your circles of relationships, in your own sinful mind — you hear the enemy’s voice (1 Timothy 4:1). Satan stirs the zeitgeist of societies to rebel against God’s ways (Ephesians 2:2–3). When I counsel struggling couples, I make sure I ask questions like these: What has your time in God’s word been like? How consistently are you attending Bible study and adult Sunday school? Not surprisingly, couples struggling in their marriages usually aren’t consistently listening by faith to the word of God.

3. Resist the urge to idolize marriage.

So far, I’ve only mentioned Eve’s failure in the fall, so let me shift to the principal one responsible for the fall: Adam. Where was he?

The indictment God raised against him was that he “listened to the voice of [his] wife” (Genesis 3:17). What could be sinful about Adam listening to his wife? We know that God gives a wife to help her husband, and he assumes the man will listen well to her counsel. The book of Proverbs personifies wisdom as a woman whom a man should embrace and listen to. It climaxes with a man finding a wife whose wise words are immensely helpful to him (Proverbs 31:26). However, preferring anyone or anything to God (or against his will) is to make that person or thing an idol.

We don’t know much about the first woman, Eve, but Moses makes at least one thing about her clear: her husband delighted in her (Genesis 2:23). The serpent, then, seems to have used the man’s delight against him. Satan used her to get him to choose her over God. And if we let him, he’ll do the same in our marriages today. How often couples sin to try to get what they want from each other (James 4:1–2)! Anytime you are willing to sin to get something (or to sin because you don’t get something), you have an idol.

What’s the prescription? If you are sinning in your marriage, follow that pattern to the idol and repent of it. God blessed couples to enjoy each other in marriage, but we’re never to allow our delight in marriage to supplant our desire for God. Whether your spouse gives you much or little, true contentment will never come from him. It can’t. So, stop telling yourself that. If your spouse could satisfy your soul, why would we need the bread of life and the fountain of living water (John 6:35; 7:37–38)?

Embrace the secret to contentment (in marriage and in all of life): that you won’t find contentment in getting what your flesh wants, but in being satisfied in what God has given you in Christ (Philippians 4:12–13).

Greater Than Our Challenges

Sadly, because of sin and the consequences of sin, we’ll have to face more challenges than these in our marriages. The fall robbed us of shalom with God, with our spouse, and with the world. The hope for our marital challenges is the last and better Adam, Christ. God, who knows the end from the beginning, promised in Genesis 3:15 that he would send another man who would subdue the serpent and restore God’s righteous reign over our rebellious creation. Through his death and resurrection, that man is reconciling all things back to God. He is the hope for your marriage, and his name is Jesus.

No, he has not lifted the curse from creation yet. So, none of us has a struggle-free marriage. However, he has overcome sin and Satan for us. He is Immanuel — God with us — and he is all the grace we need to overcome the challenges common to our marriages.