If I were in your shoes, and a new preacher comes to town and presumes to stand in this sacred place where the word of God has been so faithfully proclaimed by your pastor, I would want to know, “Who are you?” Not your name. Not your address. Not your job. Not your education. But, “What do you stand for? What are you committed to? What’s your standard of truth? What’s your authority? What’s your aim in coming here?”

Let me begin with three statements about my commitments so that you can decide whether you want to lean in or not.

Committed to Scripture, God — and You

First, I come with a total allegiance and submission to the Bible — the Christian Scriptures — as our only infallible authority. Which means I come to you with no authority except what I am able to see in the Scriptures, to savor in my own soul, and to show in the power of the Holy Spirit for your building up. If you don’t see what I say in the Bible, don’t believe it just because I say it.

Second, my life mission statement is “I exist to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ.” Which means: I’m not in Cincinnati and in this church willy-nilly, or aimlessly, or to tickle anybody’s ears. I am here on a mission. My aim in this message is to speak God’s word to you in the hope and the prayer that your passion for the supremacy of God in every area of your life will soar, with joy, through Jesus Christ. Which leads me to the third commitment (about how God’s supremacy and your joy fit together).

Third, I am driven by a particular truth that became clear to me from Scripture about 56 years ago (when I was 22 years old), which has a profound and pervasive effect upon the way I think and feel about the glory of God and the joy of the human soul. That truth is this: God is most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in him, especially through your suffering in the path of love.

In other words, when you experience the living God himself (not his precious gifts, but himself), through his Son, Jesus Christ, as so satisfying to your soul that no suffering in your life can rob you of that satisfaction in God, you make him look great! Which he is. I call that kind of joy “serious joy.” You can hear what I mean by “serious joy” in Paul’s phrase in 2 Corinthians 6:10: “sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.”

How Can We Be Freed?

Therefore, under those three commitments, I invite you to look with me in the Scriptures at Hebrews 12:1–2. And what I hope to show is that this kind of joy is the spring of love — and I mean love for people, especially the kind of love that is very costly. So, the question I am trying to answer is, How can I be set free from selfishness so that — at any cost to myself — I will love other people in a way that makes Christ look great?

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

We’re not going to focus on everything in the text, but rather almost entirely on these words in verse 2: “for the joy that was set before him [he] endured the cross.” But let’s at least get these words situated in the flow of thought so that they don’t dangle in isolation.

Run, Christian, Run

Chapter 11 celebrates the faith of Old Testament saints who, though they are dead, yet continue to speak (Hebrews 11:4). That is, their lives remain a living witness to us about the value of living by faith. So, you can see at the beginning of chapter 12, in verse 1, that the writer pictures us as running our own race, with the lives of these saints, as it were, crying out to us, “You can do this! You can make it to the end! We finished our race in faith. You can finish yours. Don’t quit!”

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses [all those stories from chapter 11], let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.

In other words, life is a marathon. It’s not a 100-meter dash. It is long, and there are hills that make your muscles burn to the point where they are screaming at you, “You can’t finish this!” And all these witnesses are saying, “Yes, you can!” There may be hills and sleet and heat and wind in your face. But the book of Hebrews was written to help us finish in faith and love.

And verse 1 says that you don’t run this marathon with an overcoat on your shoulders and that you don’t run this marathon with performance-enhancing drugs in your veins. Do you see that in the middle of verse 1? “Let us lay aside every weight, and sin.” We’re not stupid, and we don’t cheat. It’s stupid to wear an overcoat, and it’s cheating to use drugs. Weights and sins.

I tried to raise four sons and one daughter in the Lord. And I recall times of them wanting to do something I disapproved of. They would ask, “What’s wrong with it?” With this text in my mind, I would say, “Don’t ask about your music, your movies, your parties, your habits, ‘What’s wrong with it?’ Ask instead, ‘Does it help me run the race? Does it help me to run with all my focus and energy and love for Jesus? Does it help me to be the best Christ-exalting marathon runner I can be?’” Don’t set your sights on the minimal standard of avoiding cheating. Set your sights on the maximal standard: “How can I be the most devoted, Christ-exalting runner possible?”

So, the main point of this text is this: Run! Get rid of all the sins that you can. Get rid of all the weights and hindrances that you can. Take hold of the marathon of your life, and don’t just set the pitifully low standard that asks, “What’s against the rules?” But rather: “How can I train, and eat, and think, and dress to be the best runner possible? How can I live my life and finish my course with maximal, Christ-exalting faith and sacrificial love?”

Selfishness-Killing Power

Verse 2 now gives us perhaps the deepest answer to that question. You are going to face the hills, and cold, and heat, and wind, and the burning in your legs, and the thundering of your heart and the thoughts of hopelessness about finishing — you are going to face them like this:

. . . looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

You are going to look to Jesus as you run. And what you are going to focus on, as you look to him, is this: He too ran. His race was 33 years long. And it ended with a horrific gauntlet of opposition and suffering — namely, with the unspeakable torture of the cross and the immeasurable shame of such a death. He ran it. He finished it. How?

“Go deep with Jesus until he is the all-satisfying joy set before you at the end of your marathon.”

Mark the words in the middle of verse 2: “for the joy that was set before him [he] endured the cross, despising the shame.” And surely you will agree that the marathon Jesus ran was a marathon of love. He ran the last several hundred yards of the marathon with nails in his hands and his feet, and a spear in his side, and a crown of thorns on his head. Surely this was the greatest act of love that has ever been performed in the history of the world — because he was dying for our sins, not his own.

My question for my life — and your life — is, How can I run like this? How can I be set free from my selfishness so that — at any cost to myself — I will love other people in a way that makes this Christ look great? And the central answer of this verse is that the greatest act of love that was ever performed was performed “for the joy that was set before him.”

So, perhaps you can see where I got the title for this message, namely, “How Is Joy the Root of Sacrificial Love?” Verse 2 teaches us that Jesus was sustained through the cross and through the shame by the joy that he anticipated at the end of his marathon. That does not mean that there is no powerful, sustaining experience of joy on the marathon itself, that there is only joy at the end.

And I say that because the book of Hebrews defines faith, by which we run the marathon, like this: “Faith is the assurance [or substance] of things hoped for” (Hebrews 11:1). Which means that the full, complete, all-satisfying, everlasting joy in God that we are hoping for at the end of our marathon becomes, in some measure, an experience right now, by faith, in the midst of our “cross,” in the midst of our “shame” — our marathon. That’s why it has such selfishness-killing, cross-bearing, shame-enduring power.

Selfishness Wouldn’t Die

What if someone says, “Doesn’t that turn the love of Christ, at the cross, into selfishness? If he’s just seeking his own joy at the end of the race, is he loving us?” The answer is this: in being sustained through the cross by the joy at the end of his race, he’s not being selfish, because selfishness is when you use other people to get your own happiness.

But nobody calls it selfishness when you’re willing to die to include other people in your happiness. This joy, which Jesus was sustained by at the end of his marathon, was precisely designed to be shared by everyone for whom he died. It was the joy of being surrounded by countless blood-bought people supremely happy in Jesus.

Which means that for you and me, in all the sufferings of our marathon, it is not selfish — it is love — to be sustained by the hope of everlasting joy in God, into which we are bringing as many people as we can. That’s what the marathon is for — joy in Christ, sustaining you through the sacrifices of love, that makes Christ look so satisfying, others want to go with you.

So, let’s ask this question: If this joy that’s set before us — this spring, overflowing from the future back into the present — is so powerful in producing and supporting the sacrifices of love, and if this is not only the way Jesus was sustained in the greatest act of love, but the way we should be sustained in our acts of love, are there examples elsewhere in the book of Hebrews that would show us what this experience is like?

Yes, there are. I’ll show you two.

Joyfully Plundered People

First, consider Hebrews 10:32–34. Listen for echoes of “for the joy that was set before him [he] endured the cross.”

Recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, and sometimes being partners with those so treated. For you had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one.

Cincinnati, where you live, and Minneapolis, where I live, need to see Christians like this more than anything. Some of them had been thrown into prison. The others had to decide whether to identify with them as fellow Christians and risk the plundering of the property or to go underground and save their skin. They conquered their fear and selfishness, and they took the risk of visiting the prison and paid the price of plundered property.

How did that happen? How did they become people like that? How did they overcome their selfishness and their love of comfort and security? The answer is that joy streamed from hope in the future back into the present and sustained them and empowered them for love. Let’s read it in verse 34: “For you had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property [How? Where did that costly compassion come from? Answer:], since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one.”

This was the joy that was set before them. They might lose their reputation. They might lose their houses. They might lose their positions. They might lose their lives. But those were not the spring of their joy. That was with Christ, in the future, streaming back into the present, by faith, making love possible. If this world is your treasure, rather than the immeasurable pleasures of being with Christ forever, you will not be able to love in a way that makes Christ look great. But if Christ is the all-satisfying joy set before you, you will.

Joyfully Reproached Leader

Here’s the second example: Hebrews 11:24–26, a description of how Moses was able to choose the hard path of loving the people of Israel rather than staying in the comforts of Pharaoh’s palace.

By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God [like Jesus chose the cross] than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin [there are sinful pleasures, but they’re not the ones we’re after, because they are too short — they only last eighty years or so]. He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward.

This was the joy set before him. More precious, more satisfying than all the treasures of Egypt was the reward of finishing his marathon with Israel through the wilderness — through the cross, the shame — and joining all those Old Testament witnesses in the presence of the Messiah.

Go Deep with Jesus

My concluding plea is this: Get to know Jesus Christ. Go deep with Jesus until he is the supreme Treasure of your life and the all-satisfying joy set before you at the end of your marathon.

Go deep with the vastness of his wisdom, far greater than Solomon’s.
Go deep with the greatness of his power, upholding the universe with his mind.
Go deep with his majesty, this very day above all governments and armies.
Go deep with the tenderness of his kindness — blessing children and everyone like them.
Go deep with the uniqueness of his words — no one ever spoke like this man.
Go deep with the length of his patience, perfect toward all penitent sinners.
Go deep with the suffering of his love, even for enemies.
Go deep with his mercy, touching lepers, putting ears back on to attacking soldiers.

Get to know him until he is the joy set before you at the end of your marathon.

If he becomes that for you, three things will happen: (1) Your joy, even in the sufferings of this life, will overflow. (2) That joy will sustain a life of sacrificial love for others. And (3) that joy-sustained love will make Jesus look like the all-satisfying Savior that he is.

If I were still an enemy of God, if I still dwelled in rebel camps outside his kingdom, if I still played the madman slinging stones at my Creator, this audible response to our amassed assault would empty my blood of courage. I would sooner hear the threats of the archangel, the blast of the trumpet, the opening of his gates, the rhythm of his war drums, the wheels of his chariots, than this. After our rage had been spent, our God presumed defeated, our terms of surrender sent, “He who sits in the heavens laughs” (Psalm 2:4).

What was true in David’s generation is true in every generation: the nations rage, the peoples plot in vain, the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and his Anointed (Psalm 2:1–2). Mankind does not just walk a broad way; we march along it. We bring the battering ram to the door; our soldiers spend quivers shooting over walls. You and I were born in their ranks, children of wrath by nature (Ephesians 2:3).

And the nations do not just oppose God; they “rage” at him. Their lives spit upon the ground at the mention of his name. Their hearts speak sedition: “Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us” (Psalm 2:3). And they gather, each man’s disgrace torching another’s — “the peoples plot in vain.” Heads of state sit stately, nodding their approval, strategizing — “the rulers take counsel together.” The body fevers mutiny. Samson’s foxes dart into the King’s fields with fire at their tails.

And after they unleash their hate and let slip the dogs of war, they thought the battle decided. They thought his strength broken, his cords snapped, the immortal dead. And then they hear it. Scorn and mirth that strip the forests bare and shake the earth to the foundations. His laughter, the noise to shatter the shield and stop the heart as the hunter realizes he is the hunted.

Sinister Soundtrack

Psalm 2:1–3 depicts how every age wars against God. Every generation of unbelief swarms and swaggers, taking counsel together to escape his rule. Fools pretend to deny him. Most pretend to ignore him. Nations defy his law. Our time flaunts its sexuality and kills its children. Every age seeks to break his reign, and every generation will hear his dreadful laughter.

But the specific fulfillment of this rising against God’s Anointed happened two thousand years ago. This was the D-Day of the world. The Master sent his own beloved Son to a people who had beaten his servants, as if saying, “they will respect my son” (Matthew 21:37). They did no such thing. They took him, cast him out of Jerusalem, and crucified him amid the garbage heap.

Consider the soundtrack of their unholy day, foretold in Psalm 22. Mankind scorns him; the people despise him (verse 6). All who see him mock him, hurl expletives at him, wag their heads at him (verse 7). They taunt, “He trusts in the Lord; let him deliver him; let him rescue him, for he delights in him!” (verse 8). Bulls surround him (verse 12). Lions roar at him (verse 13). His dry tongue sticks to his jaws as dogs bark and growl, as they pierce his hands and feet (verses 15–16). They gloat over him as soldiers cast lots for his garments (verses 17–18). They snarled over their prey, the ageless war decided, so they thought. Until a curious key change occurs (verses 21–31).

His enemies, no doubt, thought themselves very manly, exulting over the anguish of the Master’s Son. With violence they cast his cords from them; with what disdain they threw his shackles back at him. They must have assumed themselves mighty indeed to have subdued this lion like a lamb. They had failed so many times to trap him. Where now his whip, his woes, his questioning whether we have read the Scriptures? Where now his rebukes, his blasphemies, his boastings about his Father and being the Man coming on the clouds. Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe him; let him now extend his hand to us, and we shall kiss his ring!

What musical sounds in their minds. The victory, they thought, was final. They slew him, slowly, as one might roast the Passover lamb. Oh, how the mighty have fallen — or rather, how that serpent had finally been lifted up. He who stood and beckoned the thirsty to himself now cries, “I thirst.” Is this God’s Anointed King? Well then, we have lifted him to his throne — we, his royal footstools (Psalm 110:1). If you are the Son of David truly, shake off this unproven and wooden armor, come down at these taunts, and sling the stone at Israel’s enemy.

Hunters Hunted

How quickly did their revelries end. But two days they enjoyed cigars. The Lord’s silence was their favorite song. On the third day, though, laughter. Laughter that kills courage. Laughter that bursts champagne bottles. Laughter that replies, “Your havoc only wakes my slumbering wrath.” They cannot discern how death lies dead at his feet, how the sins of his people lie still, alone in the tomb. A voice speaks, through a smile, “As for me, I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill” (Psalm 2:6).

The war room is mic’d with a megaphone — omnipotence cares not who overhears. He speaks to someone, but to whom? The riddle does not remain unsolved.

The Lord said to me, “You are my Son;     today I have begotten you.Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage,     and the ends of the earth your possession.You shall break them with a rod of iron     and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.” (Psalm 2:7–9)

And when was his sonship publicly declared? We might think only of his baptism, but overhear Paul’s revelation:

What God promised to the fathers, this he has fulfilled to us their children by raising Jesus, as also it is written in the second Psalm, “You are my Son, today I have begotten you.” (Acts 13:32–33)

But they killed him. Let him reintroduce himself: “I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades” (Revelation 1:17–18). The seed perished and was buried, corruptible, but raised incorruptible, indestructible. He lives. The one they fixed to the cross with iron nails has forged those nails into a rod of iron to dash the nations apart. All authority has been given to him. Who can stand in the day of his terror?

His empty tomb speaks a command to all, including kings and all in high places:

Serve the Lord with fear,     and rejoice with trembling.Kiss the Son,     lest he be angry, and you perish in the way,     for his wrath is quickly kindled.Blessed are all who take refuge in him. (Psalm 2:11–12)

Checkmate

Publish it in Gath, tell it in Los Angeles, speak it forth in Minneapolis, alert the Supreme Court, hail it in China, chant it in Honduras, light beacons in Brazil, declare it in Denmark, announce it in Afghanistan and Argentina: Christ is King. All authority is his; he offers amnesty to the humble who repent, and he will judge the nations and dash the unrepentant with his scepter.

Write it upon the gates of Jerusalem; post it for all to see: “Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified” (Acts 2:36). The Son reigns. “Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. But we see him . . .” (Hebrews 2:8–9). We see him by faith. We hear him in his word. We love him by his Spirit. And the time hastens for all to see him face to face — even those who will soon cry out to the rocks and mountains, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?” (Revelation 6:16–17).

Yet today is the day of his kindness, the day he offers terms of shalom. Surrender to his Son who freely gave his life, bore his Father’s almighty wrath and your curse willingly, that by faith in his finished work on the cross you may enjoy his peace and glory and life with him and the Father, forever. He does not ask — he demands you come be forgiven, welcomed, loved.

The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead. (Acts 17:30–31)

But this day of salvation is drawing late. John calls it “the last hour” (1 John 2:18). The time is arriving when he will say, “As for these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slaughter them before me” (Luke 19:27).

Hail Him While You Can

O man, see the disaster of your rebellion. You have always been Satan’s pawn — “captured by him to do his will” (2 Timothy 2:26) — and never close to checkmate. Come to your senses and escape his snare. Your plots and plans have served his courses. Overhear how the early church prays Psalm 2:

“Why did the Gentiles rage,     and the peoples plot in vain?The kings of the earth set themselves,     and the rulers were gathered together,     against the Lord and against his Anointed” —

for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place. (Acts 4:25–28)

Sinner, he laughs at your rebellion, and it is a harrowing laugh. He holds the nations in derision. He has equipped his Son with a rod. You stand outflanked, surrounded, defenseless. Only one safe space exists — not in his mother Mary, not in morality, not in Muhammed, not in your own positive vibes or self-defined spirituality — only in the Son, Jesus Christ, so violently put to death to bring the guilty dead to life. “Blessed are all who take refuge in him.” By faith, kiss this Son, lest he be angry with you, and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled.

Are you still raging? Your insurrection causes him no loss of sleep. Your revolt gives him no worry. The loss is yours alone. Know that it will soon be sung to God, in praise, concerning all such rebellion: “The nations raged, but your wrath came” (Revelation 11:18). Celebrate his grace in this day of salvation, receive his kindness while you can, lest you glorify his justice and power in hell. All uprising is futile; sinner, come to Jesus, kiss his ring, bow to his love, and live.

Audio Transcript

Welcome back on this Wednesday, a rare Wednesday episode, with Pastor John and myself together. No sermon clip today. We’re both in the studio with an update. This is John Piper’s year-in-review — I guess we could call it that, Pastor John — as we look back at God’s kindness in 2022. It was a busy year for you. We have a lot of ground to cover today. So let’s start with the personal life of John Piper. Don’t go into the books or conferences or ministry memories just yet. Start by giving us highlights from your life. What stands out to you personally?

That’s a trick question in a sense because personal pleasure and pleasure from ministry are really hard to distinguish. So it seems to me like you’re asking the impossible, but I think I get what you’re asking: the joys of the personal dimension of my life, apart from the work I do for Desiring God and Bethlehem College & Seminary. Let me mention maybe two or three things.

Probably the least important thing to mention, but amazingly ever-present in our home life, is that we got a new dog, a goldendoodle. Now, we had a goldendoodle for fourteen years. This dog, however, is more doodle than golden. We’re trying to come to terms with that and having a little bit of a hard time. That’s the least important thing to mention, and yet there she is all the time in the kitchen as part of our lives now.

Far more important was a once-in-a-lifetime fishing trip with all four of my sons and two grandsons at a wilderness lake in Canada where you have to fly in, land on the water, and fish for walleye and northern pike. And these fish were so hungry — they were so hungry! — we were catching them with hooks and pieces of orange duct tape. That’s not an exaggeration. My boys were having a blast experimenting. “What will they bite?” These were big fish — big edible fish. I love the sounds of my sons laughing, and when you get four quick-witted, fast-tongued Piper brothers together in one place, you better be prepared to be knocked over by the verbal rough-and-tumble and laughter. It was a really precious high point, which I pray God will use in their lives for good.

Let me just mention one more. I know it’s cheating because it mingles ministry pleasure and personal, but I can’t help but mention that I get a tremendous personal pleasure from teaching the preaching course at Bethlehem College & Seminary, where I serve as chancellor. The give-and-take with these fourteen guys this fall, for example, in the class about the glories of preaching God’s word is simply too satisfying for me personally to leave out.

Ask Pastor John

I think probably most of us feel the same way you do about ministry joys being some of the best personal joys. But let’s move into your ministry joys or ministry highlights from 2022. The fact that you and I are talking right now, of course, means that in 2022 God enabled us to record another 150 episodes of this podcast, Ask Pastor John. We’re closing in now on 1,900 total episodes as we finish up ten years together on this podcast.

Absolutely amazing. I won’t get to say very often, Tony (in public, at least, though I might say it to you more often), that I am so profoundly thankful for your partnership particularly. I know a lot of people make things happen at Desiring God. But the amount of planning, praying, curating, editing, and hosting that you do for this podcast to make it possible is mostly invisible but absolutely essential to the life of this ministry. I am so thankful.

Wow. That’s very meaningful to me, Pastor John. Thank you. As I’ve told you before, and I’ll say it again, Ask Pastor John is the honor of a lifetime for me. This will be — I am very sure of it — the most impactful ministry I will ever be a part of. You tell me I cannot know that.

Right, you cannot know that.

But I’m saying I know that. And I thank God for APJ, and I thank God for you and your very hard work that is really the engine behind it all. I love building this podcast with you. I enjoy every single week of this work because I know one day our building of it will end. And I do not look forward to that day.

Look at the Book

But APJ is not the only podcast you spent time on this year. Maybe we shouldn’t even classify it as a podcast. You spent a lot of time creating these almost-unique visual online teaching videos called Look at the Book. I think we have almost a thousand of those episodes available now at Desiring God. Anything unusual about this past year on the Look at the Book front?

Well, there is, but let me step back and give the bigger picture, because what’s special won’t make as much sense without that. Several years ago, God, I believe, put it in my heart to try to create a Look at the Book episode — these are about ten-to-fourteen minutes long — on all thirteen of Paul’s letters. The team at Desiring God thought that was an amazing thing and a good idea and got behind it and began to structure my life to that end, weaving Look at the Book creation into my weekly routine.

But we discovered that, at the pace we were going, that probably was not going to happen in my lifetime because that’s hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of episodes, given all of Paul’s letters and how long some of them are. So we decided to experiment last summer — so just a few months ago — with what we call a “lab blitz.” Desiring God sends me away for about seven weeks where that’s all I do. And bless their hearts, 9Marks and Capitol Hill Baptist Church provided Noël and me with a nice secluded place to stay, and the guys from Desiring God set up a studio in a bedroom. And so, for nine hours a day, five days a week, for seven weeks, all I did was Look at the Book creation. We did about 150 episodes in that time and did all of 1 and 2 Timothy.

If we now take that model of these blitzes and do that for the next two or three years, the goal actually looks doable. It looks doable. We could drop dead any time, no matter how old we are. But if I stay healthy, if my mind stays clear for the next two or three years, then it actually looks doable. I love doing it this way. I am so thankful. Staying really focused day in and day out is so much more efficient than fitting in those efforts at Look at the Book to a day here and there during my other responsibilities. We’ll probably be doing both, and I’m excited that it looks like, if God gives me life, I could do Look at the Book on all of Paul’s letters.

‘Come, Lord Jesus’

Wonderful. Any special takeaways from seven weeks of your attention being riveted on Paul’s letters?

Yes, but we don’t have time to talk about them. They’re so good, so deep, so many. You can’t look at God’s book as long as I have looked at it and not be amazed — at least I can’t. My prayer every time I start one of those days of focusing all day long on looking at God’s book is, “Lord, open my eyes that I may see wonderful things out of your word,” like the psalmist prayed in Psalm 119:18.

But maybe what would be most interesting for folks is to see the connection between doing Look at the Book on 2 Timothy and a new book that will be out in a few weeks — namely, a book on the second coming of Christ, which we’re calling Come, Lord Jesus and that Crossway is publishing.

I’ve wanted to write a book on Christ’s coming for many years. Well, here I was focused. Now this wasn’t last summer, this was earlier, as I was pondering 2 Timothy in preparation. I was focused on 2 Timothy, and I got to the end. This was probably Paul’s last letter, and these are among the last verses that he wrote in 2 Timothy 4:7–8:

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing.

All who have loved his appearing. That was it. That’s what it took to get me over the edge to say, “Now I know how I want to write this book on the second coming.” So I wrote a book focused mainly on helping myself, and I hope others, love — not just hope for or understand or think about, but love — the appearing of the Lord Jesus. I finished the editing earlier this year, and it’s scheduled to be out I believe in January sometime.

Learning, Technology, Eldership

Yes, and it’s a great read. And I guess that answers one of my other questions: whether this new Look at the Book blitz that you just mentioned earlier will replace your other writing priorities.

Well, it might. I’m not sure yet about what it will look like over the summers for the next two or three years. In fact, it’s not going to replace writing in the foreseeable future because we’ve set aside some time, just a few weeks from now in January, to team up with Joe Rigney, the president of Bethlehem College & Seminary, to write a short book on how to be a lifelong learner. I know that book is in the planning stages, and the blitzes aren’t going to preempt that one, but I am, as you know, not the only writer of books or articles at DG.

When I look back over this year, what an amazing stream of substantial, insightful, Bible-saturated articles flow out daily at Desiring God. Not to mention in this past year the new books that you and David Mathis published. I mean, Tony, your book God, Technology, and the Christian Life is still, in my mind, in a class by itself. I don’t know anything like it with the combination of rich biblical reflection, a high view of providence, and a fascinating grasp of the present lay of the land of technology. I’ve got juicy favorite quotes. You’re a good writer, and you rise to some sweet levels of quotability. Here’s two of them: “Angels don’t bend down in awe of Silicon Valley. Angels kneel in awe to study the glories and agonies of Jesus Christ” (278). That’s gold. Or, “Obviously, we can escape from God’s providence like a fish can escape water for a life in outer space” (269). That’s great. Your book is worthy of people’s getting just to poke around and find those nuggets like that.

As if that were not enough for a great year at Desiring God, Mathis — David Mathis, our executive editor — published a book for church leaders. It’s called Workers for Your Joy. I think it’s one-of-a-kind because there are a lot of books on eldership, a lot of books on pastoring — goodness, there are hundreds of them — but there are not a lot built on 2 Corinthians 1:24, with the point that we are workers with our people for their joy. That’s the note of the book. This is Christian Hedonism pressed into the corners of the leader’s life.

It was a great year of publishing, I think.

‘What Is Saving Faith?’

You have not mentioned yet your book: What Is Saving Faith? That was also published in 2022. In fact, just a few weeks ago, at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society in Denver, a whole three-hour block was devoted to your book. Why was that? That’s never happened before, has it, that one of your books would be part of a debate at ETS.

“True saving faith has in it an affectional or heartfelt dimension, which I call treasuring Christ.”

No, that was a first, I think, and I was really glad for it. I feel privileged that that happened. The book has stirred up some discussion because not everyone agrees with my main point — namely, that true saving faith has in it an affectional or heartfelt dimension, which I call treasuring Christ. Saving faith is a receiving of Christ as a treasured Savior, a treasured Lord. Without that treasuring aspect, I think we may be just using Christ as competent, but not trusting him as an all-satisfying Savior. So I was really glad for the ETS event to try to bring some clarity to the pushback we’ve received, and I hope people will read it for themselves rather than just what others are saying. I think there are not many issues more important than whether we really have true saving faith.

Global Expansion

Yes. Well, we need to wrap this up. Any other encouraging things you see at Desiring God, more broadly, that you think our listeners might be interested in?

“It’s simply remarkable what God is doing globally to raise up young leaders with a passion for the glory of God.”

I think what is most exciting and most worthy of thanksgiving to God and to our financial supporters is the incredible expansion of the ministry globally. We now have something like thirty partners worldwide translating Ask Pastor John, books, articles. It’s simply remarkable what God is doing globally to raise up young leaders with a passion for the glory of God and for publishing — and who are amazingly savvy on the Internet — for everywhere in the world. This is invisible to most people. This growth, this exciting dimension of our ministry, is mostly invisible for people, and yet it may be the most important thing we are doing right now at Desiring God — namely, partnering with these brothers and sisters as an increasing part of our annual plan and our annual budget. I think this is a great place to end the year, thanking God for what he’s doing outside of our little sphere called America through this ministry.

Amen. Speaking of God’s work outside America, this year included my first international trip, preaching in Brazil in June, to launch my technology book in Portuguese. It launched there this summer. I got to hold the translation in hand. I met and spent time with the translator there and had lunch with our publishing partner in Brazil. So all this international work you just mentioned became very tangible for me in 2022. Because I think, if all you know of Desiring God is the English website and English resources that we create, there’s a whole other world of labor happening right now that we want to introduce you to. And we are going to introduce you to that work, beginning next time. We have thirty international partners, as you said, Pastor John. And we’re going to hear from seven of them in the next seven APJ episodes — brief updates from leaders reaching the world through the languages of French, Portuguese, Farsi, Dutch, German, Arabic, and Albanian. Each of these seven updates inspires me. And it is my joy to share them with you in these final weeks of the year.

And if you’re hearing all these updates and you want in, you can join us today. We’re looking for new ministry partners like you to come alongside us to support us as we continue to make new resources in English — including our books and articles and Look at the Book videos and this podcast — and as we get these resources translated and distributed across the globe in dozens of languages. We can only do all this with your help. So consider becoming a monthly ministry partner with us today. Much of our financial support comes from friends of ours who give, on average, $30 a month to support all of this work, everything we mentioned today (and more). To set up monthly giving, go to give.desiringGod.org. Very much appreciated.

Pastor John and I are back next time. We’ll see you Friday.