Audio Transcript

Happy Monday. Welcome back to a new week on the podcast, week number six hundred of APJ. Remarkable. And today we are praying, “Lord, let your word smash our bad theology. May the Bible turn into rubble every lofty thought about you and your ways that is false. Purge from us every error we believe.” A prayer like that was vividly answered by God in a season of your life, Pastor John. And that story is a theme on the podcast too.

When you came to discover God’s sovereignty in salvation, such a revelation shattered your assumptions. So, we’re not talking hypotheticals here today when we read Paul say, “We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5). These are moments when everything we thought was true crumbles to the ground. You’ll see how this worked in Pastor John’s life in the episodes I pulled together from the podcast in the APJ book (on pages 23 and 24).

So, how do we cultivate the mental discipline and fortitude that would position us to experience this for ourselves? This is huge. And it’s a wonderful question from a listener named Sarah. Sarah writes in to ask this: “Pastor John, hello to you! What does it mean to ‘take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ’? And how can I take this command and apply it to my incorrect or sinful thoughts, that I may obey Christ and have more joy in him?”

Well, here’s the text. Let’s read it and then we’ll see if we can figure this out. Second Corinthians 10:4–5, “For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh” — that is, they’re not merely human; this is not a mere battle between one philosopher with some human wisdom against another philosopher with human wisdom. “But [the weapons of our warfare] have divine power to destroy strongholds.”

And then he defines this powerful, stronghold-destroying activity in two steps. First, “We destroy arguments and every lofty [or proud] opinion raised against the knowledge of God.” And second, we then “take every thought captive.” So, you move in a battle and you destroy the fortress, and then you take captives. “We . . . take every thought captive to obey Christ.”

So, Sarah asks, how can she take 2 Corinthians 10:5, taking every thought captive, and apply it to herself to be more obedient to Christ in her thought life?

Capturing Whose Thoughts?

The first thing I think that needs to be said is that when we apply this to ourselves, we have to make sure we’re in the right place in the text. When Paul says, first, that he’s destroying arguments and arrogant opinions against God and, second, that he is taking thoughts or minds captive, we need to realize it’s the minds and thoughts of others. He’s not talking about taking his own thoughts captive; it’s the thoughts of others. “I’m moving in to these rascals in Corinth who are so boastful in their philosophical prowess that I am going to demolish them not by counter-philosophy, but by divine power. I’m going to show power, and they’re going to collapse in their thinking, and then I’m going to take their thoughts captive so that they now obey Christ.”

So, he’s the warrior, and the enemy is these people whose minds and arguments are proud and lifted up against God. And when Paul defeats those minds and arguments in the power of the Holy Spirit, their thoughts and their minds are taken captive, and they become people with the mind of Christ or obedient to Christ.

“Lay yourself open to the risen Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit through the words of the apostle Paul.”

I think Sarah might be misreading just slightly. I’m going to come around and say she’s on the right track, but she just might be misreading the verse when she says, “How can I take this command and apply it to my incorrect, sinful thoughts?” It’s not a command. It’s a statement about what Paul is doing to his opponents. He’s demolishing their worldview and then taking their defeated thoughts captive for Christ so that they become right thinkers — they’re obedient in the way they think about Christ. So, 2 Corinthians 10:5 is not a command to do this ourselves, but Sarah’s question is still a very good question.

Humble Captives of Christ

There is a way to apply this to ourselves. We just have to get ourselves in the right place. And the place we belong in is the group whose opinions and thoughts Paul is trying to demolish. That’s where we belong. “We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive.” So, when John Piper reads that, or when Sarah reads it, I should say, or she should say, “Okay, Paul, here I am. Do your demolishing work on me. Do your captive-taking work on me. Destroy in my mind any faults or proud thoughts that I have about God.”

This means really two things, I think, that Sarah and I and anybody else, any Christian, should do.

1. Submit every thought.

First, we should listen to Paul, and submit all our thoughts and ideas and feelings about God and about life. We should submit them to Paul’s teaching, God’s apostle, for scrutiny. And if anything is out of sync with Paul’s teaching, we should let it be destroyed.

I have experienced this very painfully. I mean, if you put your mind and thoughts really at the disposal of the apostolic teaching and say, “Anything in my thinking that needs to be destroyed, destroy it,” it can utterly undo you. There have been seasons in my life where I have wept over the dismantling of what felt like really important structures in my brain. So, I think that’s the first thing we do. We listen to Paul. We submit everything we think — all our ideas, all our worldview, all our viewpoints — to God, and we say, “Paul, let your word dismantle me if necessary.”

2. Pray for power.

The second thing we should do is we should ask the Holy Spirit to work, because Paul said, “We don’t fight with mere human, fleshly arguments; our ministry has power.” So, we should expose ourselves to that power. Second Corinthians 10:4 says, “The weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power.” In other words, he’s tearing down arguments and God-belittling ideas, but he’s not doing it merely by argument. So, when I come to the Bible, there’s a lot of study I do, and I love to study, and I love to assess arguments and figure them out, but I should also be crying out, “O God, I know that mere intellect will not dismantle the deeply rooted errors of my mind. So, I avail myself, I open myself to the Holy Spirit, and I seek your face.”

Paul said in Romans 15:18, “I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me to bring the Gentiles to obedience.” Now, I think that’s the same obedience as in 2 Corinthians 10:4–5, when he brings our thoughts into obedience to Christ. And here he says, “I won’t speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished.” So, that’s what I’m getting at when I say to expose yourself, lay yourself open to the risen Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit through the words of the apostle Paul, so that everything can be dismantled, and then your brain, your mind, your thoughts can be taken captive, and everything brought into conformity to Christ.

Audio Transcript

Happy New Year, everyone! 2023 is here. We launch the new year with a more informal episode than normal. This one was recorded live in Nashville in front of two thousand friends of ours who were quite engaged, as you can hear.

The direction of our podcast is shaped by you, the listeners, right? You send us the questions; we sift through those; I ask John Piper the questions. I ask John Piper your most awkward questions. I’m willing to do that for you because I serve you, our listeners. And I’ve been wanting to do something like this for a long time on the podcast, and I figured, Let’s do this in Nashville. Let’s hear from John Piper about his favorite things.

Over our decade of podcasting, we’ve received over a hundred questions from listeners asking random questions about John Piper’s favorite soft drink, movies, novels, poets — things like that. So I just compiled all of those questions. I’m going to pose them to Pastor John, and he’s got to rapid-fire respond, okay? So you can’t elaborate very long. I’ve boiled down these questions to twelve. Twelve questions. Okay, here we go. Ready, John Piper?

Yeah, but listen, some of these are going to be really short — like one-word answers. Which means I can go longer on others, okay?

All right. John Piper’s favorite things. Here we go.

Movies

In APJ 696, you said, “I have my favorite movies.” And you left us at that; you never told us. So, what are your top three favorite movies?

I consulted my wife about this. I knew this question was coming, and we agreed that at the top would be Henry V, Kenneth Branagh’s Shakespearean movie. There’s an amazing speech that a pastor cannot listen to and not be moved to tears: “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; / For he to-day that sheds his blood with me / Shall be my brother.” And then England defeats France at 5-1 odds. And they sing, “Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory” (Psalm 115:1). It’s just a riveting, dramatic Shakespearean piece. That’s number one.

Number two would be Chariots of Fire, which you have seen. And the scene of him opening the note that says “God glorifies [or God honors] those who honor him” — that’s a powerful statement that moved me deeply.

And my wife said, “You really have to say Princess Bride.” But you don’t know why I have to say Princess Bride. And the reason is because when I first saw it, I was preaching through Hebrews, and there is one scene that’s serious in this hilarious movie. It’s the scene where — now I had to go back and remind myself the names because I forget names — Inigo Montoya, he’s standing at the top of the cliff, and Westley’s climbing the cliff, and he’s going to fall down if he doesn’t hold on. And Inigo says, “I could drop you a rope.” And he says, “Yeah, and then you would let go of the rope.”

And a seriousness comes over his face, and he says, “I swear on the soul of my father, Domingo Montoya, you will reach the top alive.” And Westley gets serious and says, “Drop the rope.” I used that in the next Sunday sermon because of the power of a promise and an oath in Hebrews.

All right. That’s really good. That was a little more elaborate.

I won’t do that. I won’t do it anymore — might be tempted to.

Novels

Your favorite novel?

I’m going to cheat again, but I won’t elaborate. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, a contemporary — that is, in the last ten years — is a beautifully written book about World War II and the interweaving of lives of a young blind girl during the bombing of the Germans on France. All the Light We Cannot See.

A Man at Arms by Steven Pressfield is also contemporary — written in the last five years, probably. It’s a dramatic telling of a young speechless girl carrying the Corinthian correspondence to Corinth, Paul’s letters to Corinth. And a man at arms steps up to be her protector. Amazing book.

And then historically, if I had to pick a classic, it would be Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky, just because the power of the description of the tormented soul of Raskolnikov is unparalleled.

Bible App

Your favorite, most frequently used Bible app?

Logos.

Logos Bible software?

Yes.

iPhone, iPad, laptop — all three?

All three. Right now, I’m on a leave working on Look at the Book. I’m on Logos nine hours a day. I ran it into the ground. We had to call them to get them to figure out how to make it work after nine hours of work. And they fixed it for me. I use my iPad for my devotions, and it’s Logos that I use. I’m very indebted to Logos.

Poet and Poem

Your favorite poet not in Scripture?

George Herbert — died in 1633, wrote a collection called The Temple with 164 poems. None of them has the same rhyme scheme or meter. It’s an absolutely amazing collection. The content, the craft — those two things together — I think in Herbert are without peer.

Your favorite poem not in Scripture?

Well, I thought a lot about that. “My Song Is Love Unknown” is a hymn, but if you take away the beautiful music and the beautiful tune, Samuel Crossman’s poem by itself is magnificent — simply beautiful. The rhyme structure and the meter are very unusual, and it’s very hard to put solid, deep, moving words without sounding corny into structures of rhyme and meter. So, “My Song Is Love Unknown” would be it.

And if I had to choose a non-religious one, it would be If by Rudyard Kipling. “If. . . . If. . . . If. . . . [then] you’ll be a Man, my son!” I love it.

Love that Crossman line, “Love to the loveless shown that they might lovely be.” Such a great line.

Yes.

Soft Drinks

Your favorite — oh, this is important; this is what the people want to know — your favorite pop, soda, soft drink.

It moves back and forth between Diet Dr. Pepper and Diet Coke. If I get tired of one, Noël will order the other, and back and forth they go. Which means — in the Washington, D.C., airport, there are no Coke products. And if you walk around here, there are no Coke products. It’s just appalling. Where are we?

Dinner and Restaurant

Your favorite dinner at home?

My wife’s spaghetti. She’s sitting over there.

There’s Noël.

Yeah, so there’s just no — hands down, she would know the answer to that right away. And so, I’m just on her case to make it as often as possible when we have company and elsewhere.

Favorite restaurant?

Well, we talked about that one, and she said, “You can’t say Chick-fil-A, and you can’t say Chipotle, because he doesn’t mean fast foods. He means real bona fide restaurants.” And so I said, “Well, how about, then, Olive Garden?” And she said, “Well, that would work.”

When our sons were growing up, we didn’t very often go out to eat, and when we did, we went to the places I like, like Chick-fil-A. And then, if we stepped it up, we would go to Olive Garden. And they thought Olive Garden was fine dining. It is. Why would you want to go any higher than that? Food tastes weird if you go higher than that. The more expensive the restaurant, the weirder the food. I don’t know why expensive gourmet chefs make food taste strange — it’s just strange.

A man of refined palate.

I don’t want my food to taste strange.

Hobbies

Your favorite hobby?

I love to play Scrabble with my wife. I love to work in the yard. I like to pull grass out of sidewalk crevices. I hate grass growing in sidewalks. And I like straight borders. I like it when the sidewalks are smooth. I don’t like weeds growing around the boxwoods. I get a deep satisfaction from making things look Edenic or eschatological, whichever way you want to look at it.

Breakfast

Your favorite breakfast? A lot of you know what his favorite breakfast is, but why don’t you say it.

So the first layer is Grape Nuts, and the second layer is Mini Shredded Wheats — not the sweetened kind. And the last layer is Great Heartland Granola, and then blueberries on top. I’ve eaten that for years and years. When we go on vacation, Noël puts it all in a big sack, and we take my breakfast so I don’t have to eat the stuff they serve here. I can eat that.

Songs

Your favorite song by a Christian.

That’s impossible. But just right off the front burner, since I’m 76, and death is just coming on very quickly, the fresh rendition of Matt Merker’s “He Will Hold Me Fast” has risen in my affections and in my personal singing and my church singing to a level of sweetness that few songs have in recent years.

Over the decades, I’ve had favorite hymns. But if you pushed my button right now and asked, “What would you like to sing? What’s your emotional quotient right now?” It would be, “He holds me. He’s holding me. I’ll get through. He’s holding me.” And the music that he put to that old hymn is perfect.

Your favorite song by a non-Christian?

I don’t listen to much music by non-Christians, but I did in the sixties. I think beautiful tunes were written in the sixties. I think The Beatles wrote beautiful tunes. I think Simon & Garfunkel wrote beautiful tunes, and The Seekers wrote beautiful tunes. And so I have a playlist in my phone called “Sixties Instrumental.” Get rid of the words. The words were usually nihilistic or vain, and so they’re not helpful to me.

So maybe “Bridge over Troubled Waters” by Simon & Garfunkel. “Bridge over Troubled Waters” is a song I would default to. Or I was playing a tune for Noël the other day. I said, “Can you recognize this tune?” And she said, “I recognize the tune, but I can’t name it.” And it’s “Here, There, and Everywhere” by the Beatles. So I’ve got a sixties heart left in me.

There it is, John Piper’s twelve favorite things.

Audio Transcript

In the last year, global tensions have risen to a boil. It’s hard to believe how often “World War III” has been a top trend on Twitter in the past couple of years. (Too often, to be honest.) And this leads to today’s question from Malcolm, who lives in Fishers, Indiana. His email resonates with a lot of other emails in the inbox in the past year.

Malcolm writes, “Pastor John, hello to you. I’m a 22-year-old and often anxious about the state of the world. For several years, we enjoyed relative peace, and things were looking calm. But now there are wars in Ukraine and in Palestine, and a threat of war looms over Taiwan. All the world’s major armies seem to be awakening from a long slumber. NATO is growing. Enemies of the West are uniting. The weapons manufacturers are in overdrive.

“As we step into this new age of global tension, and as you see the news — the wars and rumors of wars — what are your spiritual reflections about global conflicts? The Bible seems to say a lot about warfare between nations. How do you comfort yourself with biblical truth, and with God’s sovereignty, when it seems that the world is growing more hostile, and World War III is talked about more and more openly as a real possibility in the near future?”

Well, I could, I suppose, answer Malcolm’s question with a very general biblical observation about the absolute sovereignty of God over nations and over the church and over my life, and then combine that sovereignty with the sweet, precious promise that he works everything together for the good of those who love him (Romans 8:28). I could do that, and it would be wonderful. It would be glorious.

However, I want to answer his question with something much more specific, just because I saw it while preparing a message on missions last October. And it did for me just what Malcolm is asking: “How do you comfort yourself, Pastor John, in light of these kinds of upheavals in the world?”

And so, that’s what I want to do. I want to address one specific worry that rises in this setting that we’re in right now, wars and rumors of wars and social upheavals — namely, what happens to the global missionary enterprise in times of wars and rumors of wars? That’s the specific thing that creeps into my heart with anxious thoughts.

Missions in Wartime

I think many of us feel, from time to time, the anxiety arising that social upheaval and political and military disruption will so distract the church, and so intimidate the church, that we forsake or neglect or minimize the command of Jesus to make disciples among all the peoples of the world.

We just feel like, “Well, that’s got to be put on hold because the world’s about to blow up and go to hell in a handbasket. What good does it do to send the missionaries to so-and-so when the place is about to explode in war?” I think that’s the kind of feeling that rises in our hearts with regard to world missions in wartime.

So, I’m reframing Malcolm’s question to be more specific: Not just “How do I comfort myself in a world about to be engulfed in war?” but “How do I steady my hand and keep my focus and press on in the cause of world evangelization even while the world’s moving toward annihilation?” That’s the question I’m trying to face.

White-Hot Christians Will Go

And what I saw last October when I was preparing for my global-focus sermon at Bethlehem was from Matthew 24:5–14 and the connection between war and missions. I had never made this connection before. So, here’s what Jesus says about the times we live in — and I think these words from Matthew 24:5–14 are intended by Jesus, in every generation where these things show up, to make us lift our eyes and pray that our redemption is drawing near. Here’s what he says:

Many will come in my name, saying, “I am the Christ,” and they will lead many astray. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom [these are the international upheavals, and now come the natural upheavals, the disasters], and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are but the beginning of the birth pains. (Matthew 24:4–8)

So, Jesus is picturing the coming of the kingdom of God that he will bring as a kind of new birth for the cosmos, and natural disasters are like labor pains. He goes on:

Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake. And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. And 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 24:9–14)

Now, I have said in lots of missions conferences over the decades that even though in the very last days of history the love of many in the visible church will grow cold (verse 12), this promise that the gospel will be preached to all the peoples of the world — even while we are being hated, he says, by all these peoples — this promise is going to come true.

But the Christians who take the gospel to the nations during this time of great trouble will not be among those whose love has grown cold, right? They will be the people who have white-hot, not cold, love for Jesus in the face of persecution and killing. Not everybody’s love is going to grow cold in the last days, in other words. The Great Commission will be completed by faithful Christians, while millions are leaving the church like lukewarm coals rolling away from the fire.

All that I had seen before, but this time, while I was meditating on this passage, I saw the connection between war and missions — not just the de-churching of cold love and missions, but the connection between military upheavals and missions.

Far from Stopping the Advance

So, verses 6–7 and 14: “You will hear of wars and rumors of wars. . . . Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. . . . And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.” This connection makes plain that “wars and rumors of wars” will not stop God’s mission. That’s the lesson that I saw fresh in this text. The mission will be completed in spite of, sometimes because of, nation rising against nation.

Now, even as I say it, I know there could be an objection, even a biblical objection, because peacetime is good for the church. We’re not naive. We know that, historically, wars and social upheavals have hindered missions. Yes, they have. That’s true. But how many of those setbacks proved to be advances in disguise?

For example, the removal of missionaries from China, which felt like such a setback, between 1949–1953 — was it a setback? Thirty years later, it appeared that the church had grown by tenfold in China without the missionaries.

So, who knows what are advances and what are setbacks in God’s strange ways? Whatever disruptions in missions are caused by wars and rumors of wars, the words of Jesus stand firm. Wars and rumors of wars will not stop world evangelization. In the midst of hatred, coldness, and wars, this gospel will be preached to all the peoples, and then the end will come.

What History Has to Say

To test my new insight against historical experience, I did a little research, and here’s what I found. What has God done in missions during wartime?

During the American Civil War (1860–1865), Sarah Doremus founded the Woman’s Union Missionary Society for sending single women to Asia. The Episcopal Church opened work in Haiti. The Paris Evangelical Missionary Society opened work in Senegal. The London Missionary Society published the first dictionary of the Samoan language. The China Inland Mission (today OMF) was founded by James Hudson Taylor, which has sent — what? — thousands of missionaries to Asia. All of that while Americans are consumed with the Civil War.

What about World War I (1914–1918)? C.T. Studd was glorying in a great revival movement in the Congo during the First World War. The Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association, IFMA, was founded during World War I.

What about World War II (1939–1945)? William Cameron Townsend founded Wycliffe Bible Translators. New Tribes Mission was founded with a vision to reach the tribal peoples of Bolivia. The Conservative Baptist Foreign Mission Society was founded, now named WorldVenture. The Baptist General Conference started its own missionary-sending agency, which is the denomination that our church belongs to, during the Second World War. Mission Aviation Fellowship was started, Far East Broadcasting Company was founded, Evangelical Foreign Missions Association was formed — all during that horrific Second World War.

What about the Korean War (1950–1953)? The World Evangelical Alliance was organized. Bill and Vonette Bright created Campus Crusade for Christ. Trans World Radio was founded.

You get the picture. This is just a tiny taste of the truth that wars and rumors of wars are not going to stop God’s promise to complete the task of world missions. So, Malcolm, this is what the Lord has been using recently in my life to strengthen my heart, and encourage me to press on in this great work.