Audio Transcript

Twenty years ago today, at 8:14 a.m., American Airlines Flight 11 was highjacked. And with it began a nightmare no one who lived through it will forget.

I was roofing my house that Tuesday morning, radio on, when national broadcasters broke in to announce that the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City was on fire. The cause was maybe a bomb. Other rumors said it was an accidental plane crash, though doubtful on such a clear day. We now know it was Flight 11. Twenty minutes later, the South Tower was hit by Flight 175, and all doubt was removed. America was under attack.

I remember the FAA grounding all flights immediately. I remember the roll call, as the flight paths of the last twenty commercial jets in the air were anxiously narrated on radio. I remember hearing fighter jets were scrambled to the sky if needed to shoot down hijacked jets. I remember looking up into the atmosphere for confirmation of what was unfolding 1,200 miles away, and finding a clear sky emptied of jets and condensation trails. I remember finding my way to a television in time to watch the towers fall. I remember street-level recordings emerging, the sound of glass raining down on concrete, and the sight of people fleeing from grey clouds of dust and copy paper pouring between buildings. I remember seeing the Pentagon on fire, evidence of a third attack, and unconfirmed rumors of a fourth flight that crashed into a field somewhere. I remember people pulled from rubble piles. I remember footage of jubilation and celebration in foreign places. I remember Air Force One flying the president to the military base sixteen miles from me. The shock of that day remains fresh, even twenty years later.

Meanwhile, in Minneapolis, as the news broke on Tuesday morning, Pastor John gathered his pastoral team into a conference room. They pulled out a radio and put it in the middle of the table. “We listened and turned it off and prayed and listened and prayed,” recalled Piper. The pastors interceded for about an hour total, mingled with radio updates. They asked God to pour out mercy “for wisdom in the mouths of Christian spokesmen who will be called upon to say something” and “for a widespread awakening from banal pursuits.”

Then the pastors gathered the staff and planned out the week. A 7:00 prayer gathering would be held that evening at Bethlehem Baptist Church. It was announced on local radio stations under the title “A Service of Sorrow, Self-Humbling, and Steady Hope in our Savior and King, Jesus Christ.” It was an evening for mourning and prayer. Two hundred attended.

The following morning, Pastor John was called on to be one of the Christians who would speak into the tragedy — for him, on KTIS, a local radio station. Where was God on 9/11? There, for about forty minutes, he spoke wisdom into the shock and sorrow.

We want to share the recording with you today on Ask Pastor John, on this twentieth anniversary. The interview covers the importance of grieving and creating space for sorrow, yet a sorrow under God’s all-encompassing sovereignty. Pastor John explains why 9/11 was a call for national humbling, a wake-up call. God was shaking the foundations of America and calling sinners to come to Christ — a global call not just for Americans but also for Palestinians, Saudis, and Afghans.

In the interview, Pastor John goes deep, explaining how God can, “in his sovereign, overarching providence of the world, ordain that something be permitted or caused” — even a “massive sin” like 9/11 — “and yet disapprove of the very thing that he has permitted or ordained.” The cross of Jesus Christ exemplified this truth, because, says Piper, “I don’t think New York — the hijacking, the terrorism — was a greater sin than the killing of the Son of God. The killing of the Son of God was more horrific, more terrible, more wicked, more horrible, than what we’ve just seen. And yet God planned it” (Acts 4:24–28).

The tragedy of 9/11 foregrounds God’s orchestrating providence, human sin, and the magnitude of the world’s daily suffering. It reminds us Satan is alive and active. And it gives parents an opportunity to explain that, ultimately, God has “billions of purposes,” doing an uncountable number of good things in lives through a tragedy at this scale. The whole interview remains instructive two decades later.

“God was so merciful to me and helped me,” Piper later wrote, reflecting on his studio visit. “I was tired and tense and aching with so many emotions. I think I said what God wanted said. What a kind God — in misery and gladness.”

The forty-minute interview has not, to date, appeared on the website until now. Here’s John Piper, the morning after 9/11, on KTIS, a local FM radio station in Minneapolis, being interviewed by hosts Jon Engen and by Chuck Knapp, whom you will hear first. Here’s the interview.

‘Make Us a Sacrificial People’

Chuck Knapp: Would you bring us before the Lord in prayer and lead us?

John Piper: I’d love to.

Father, make us a sensitive, compassionate, grieving, weeping people. There are so many who are wired not to be able to cry. There are so many, all day long, that if they’d given themselves one opportunity, would have wept like a baby, and they just held it back and held it back. And so, I pray for the capacities to grieve. Christians need to grieve better than we do. So help us to do that, I pray.

And then I pray for a great self-humbling in my heart and the heart of my church. Lord, guard us from anger: “The anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God” (James 1:20). Help us to “be . . . slow to speak, slow to anger” (James 1:19). Let us look to ourselves. O God, I pray that I would look to my own sin and my own bitterness, my own unforgiveness, my own disregard for God, my own indifference to your things that should bring judgment upon me. So grant the church and the country to be humbled before you, our great sovereign King.

And then, Lord, I pray for hope to abound, hope in our Savior and King, Jesus Christ. No hope in horses or chariots or the CIA or the government or the military, but hope in you. Some hope in horses, some hope in chariots, but we hope in the name of the Lord our God (Psalm 20:7). Build that hope into our land. Build that hope into our churches. You’ve gotten our attention. And now, O God, I pray that we would yield to your grace and your power and live for Christ, that we would make you the center of our lives, and not ourselves and not our business and not our vacations.

And then, Lord, make us a sacrificial, serving people, ready to lay down our lives to get the gospel to the unreached peoples around the world. O Lord, set our priorities straight, I pray. In Jesus’s name, amen.

God Has Our Attention

Knapp: We are visiting with Dr. John Piper this morning, and it’s a blessing to have you with us. He is the author of many, many books and pastor for the sheep and the lost. He is a Fuller Seminary graduate. There are so many things we could say. I’m just so thankful that you were here in town and able to come and lead us in a whole healing process that needs to occur.

Piper: Thank you.

Knapp: I saw pictures on television yesterday of young children in Israel in the Arab sections who were cheering. And there were adults there, likewise. And one can’t help but become upset on many levels — anger and frustration — at seeing that image of the world across the television screen. But as I look and as I listened to you talking about humbling ourselves, I think that so much of what the world sees of Americans is anything but humble. And I think that that gives them fuel for what they return to us, that anger that they feel toward us. And so, your message and that part about humbling ourselves really hits me in the heart as I think about that in particular.

Piper: I think one of the missing ingredients — I mean, it’s the main missing ingredient that makes that difficult for people — is that God doesn’t have the place that he needs to have in their lives. I mean, the Bible’s message of humility is not a horizontal message, mainly. It’s not “Humble yourself under terrorists.” It’s “humble yourselves . . . under the mighty hand of God” (1 Peter 5:6). If God doesn’t look mighty in your life, if he isn’t central and supreme and glorious, then humility is going to be a very artificial thing in your life. And if he’s there in his proper, central, supreme place, humility will come naturally.

Somebody said to me out in the hall that Anne Graham Lotz said, “God’s got our attention now,” or “Sometimes God withholds his protection so that things can happen to wake us up.” And I think that’s very, very true. And if you ask, “Well, what does he want to communicate now that he has our attention?” and we say that Jesus is calling us to repentance, you have to ask then what repentance is about. And repentance is turning away from sin. And what’s sin about? And sin is fundamentally about treason against God. But you can’t even grasp the meaning of sin if God isn’t viewed as worthy of infinite adoration and infinite delight and infinite allegiance and infinite love and infinite valuing — which he isn’t for most people in America. And so, the responses that are appropriate are almost emotionally impossible for people because God is so foreign to their experience.

“You can’t even grasp the meaning of sin if God isn’t viewed as worthy of infinite adoration and infinite allegiance.”

One of the things that troubles me about these calamities is that God comes onto the agenda suddenly in people’s lives, and where he finds himself is in the dock, being accused. It’s funny: Why don’t we have a radio program or a big call-in thing to account for God’s mercy every time the sun comes up on New York? Jesus said that God “makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matthew 5:45). This is an inexplicable grace to our land. Why not call God to account for treating wicked people so kindly?

I heard you say this morning, Chuck, when I got up, that you wanted to focus on the cross. And I love that. I love that. And I said, “Oh, good. Good. If we focus on the cross, we’ll be safe today.” But the text that’s most central about the cross in relation to this supremacy of God in all of our calamities is Romans 3:23–25, where it says,

All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood. . . . This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.

Now, if you just think about that for a moment, what he’s saying is this: God said, “I must sacrifice my Son in order to vindicate my righteousness, in view of how leniently I have treated sinners.” Now that’s the gospel. That’s the meaning of the cross that we want to make central here at KTIS. The cross is the moment and the means by which God vindicates his righteousness in the face of how unjust his mercy appears. What American worries about that? What American loses sleep over the injustice of God in the sun rising and people being spared? And when the stock market is climbing and when the interest rates are falling and when the commerce is flourishing, which one of us says, “How can God treat us this way? We’re so bad!” Who says that? But that’s what we ought to say.

Instead, when anybody gets their wills crossed or anybody endures pain — whether it’s cancer or a plane crash — God gets called to account. There’s something wrong here. And what’s wrong is that he’s simply not supreme, and therefore we don’t understand sin, and therefore we don’t understand the cross, and therefore our whole worldview is bent out of shape. So, when others, like I’ve heard in the hallway out here, say, “God’s got our attention,” I think he wants to say, “I am God. I am God. I love people. If they would bow to me, I have put my Son forward to forgive their sins and have them home with me forever and ever. But don’t toy with me.”

Christian Nation?

Knapp: People across the world see that of us: that we, as an American people, are not, for the most part, humble.

Piper: Right. And yet, they call us a Christian nation, and therefore Christianity gets made synonymous with all of America’s music and all of America’s movies. We’re the “Great Satan.” And I just want to, for one, on the air, say, I’m not speaking as an American. I am an alien and an exile on this planet (1 Peter 2:11). My citizenship is in heaven. I await a Savior who will come, who will transform this lowly body into a body like his (Philippians 3:20–21). I’m a foreigner in America. I’m a foreigner in Palestine and Israel and Russia and Indonesia. I speak, I hope, for another King and another allegiance. The Muslim world, the Hindu world, the Buddhist world, the secular world, they need to hear that Christians are not synonymous with Americans.

Knapp: What a perspective. I hope it causes us to stop and really think. I hope it causes us to assess where we all are, personally and in self-examination.

Jon Engen: This is what I was thinking when you were saying that: Colossians 3:16 says, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.” And this is what you were just saying: “And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Colossians 3:17). We are here as aliens, but we are his representatives.

Rebuilding the Foundation

Piper: Yeah, it’s so hard — I feel for you guys. I said to Neil Staven last night — he dropped over and visited us — “I don’t really look forward to being on the radio because it’s hard to talk theology and do pastoral care in this medium. And yet, these guys have to do it.” You’re stuck with it. You can’t run away like other people can. I said, “I feel for these guys. I want to join them there.” And I just want to encourage you to do that: to be representatives of Jesus Christ.

And what makes it so hard for you and me is that we’re speaking into an audience that doesn’t have in place the worldview to make sense out of things that would fall into place for us. I mean, they’ll ask you some just blunt, painful question about a piece of the tragedy, and you’ve got to take them back to the foundation. You’ve got to go deep. You’ve got to go back to the beginning and say, “Where did sin come from, and what has happened to humanity?”

What is the depravity that Romans 1 talks about, where God just hands people over to their own depravity?
What is the futility of Romans 8, where it says that God subjected the creation to futility, which means the pain and the suffering in the world? Even “we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons” (Romans 8:23). All of it awaits redemption.
What is death, which came into the world through one man? “Just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, so death spread to all men because all sinned” (Romans 5:12).

Those massive underpinnings of how we explain everything aren’t in place for your listeners, many of them. And so in order to answer questions at the upper level, we have to go down to the lower level and rebuild some foundations.

“The killing of the Son of God was more horrific than what we’ve just seen — and yet God planned it.”

I just want to encourage you: When you get a tough question, which no doubt you do — we all do — Jesus didn’t automatically just jump in at the level of the questioner. He sometimes just said something that must have made them scratch their head, because he knew they didn’t have the categories for understanding his answer. So we need to rebuild, and we’re doing that right now. That’s part of what we’re doing.

God’s Mysterious Sovereignty

Knapp: I was looking through several excerpts from editorials, and one from Oklahoma that struck me earlier this morning, a part of that article or editorial in the paper, said, “Some will blame God for Tuesday’s events. How could he not protect us from such evil?” So that’s how the world looks at this.

Piper: Right, and the very way that question is crafted is almost unanswerable. Because as soon as you use the word blame, you’ve implied guilt. Blame implies guilt. So they’ve muddied the waters, because they cannot make the theological, biblical distinction of ordaining that something be that you may, in fact, grieve over and disapprove of. See, now there’s a category that is very hard for people to get ahold of. And yet, I find it all over the Bible: that God can, in his sovereign, overarching providence of the world, ordain that something be permitted or caused — he’s involved causally in different ways in different acts — and yet disapprove of the very thing that he has permitted or ordained. People simply can’t get it.

So, the word blame immediately hangs you on the horns of a dilemma you don’t want to be hung on — because when you say, “No, you don’t blame him,” they think, “Oh, you mean he was on a vacation. He’s out there. He had nothing to do with this. He wasn’t watching. He fumbled the ball. He couldn’t manage it.” Or otherwise, you’ve got him as a sinner. I mean, those are your two options with regard to a question like that.

Well, those aren’t the biblical options. God is sovereign. And yet, when he wills and ordains that there be pain and suffering in our lives, he’s not doing it as a sinner or as an evil God. God has ways to ordain things in his mysterious sovereignty that are for our good, in spite of being incredibly painful and — here’s the mystery — in spite of involving massive sin. And the place where that is so vividly clear in the Bible is at the cross.

That’s why I’m so glad you’re staying here at the cross, because I don’t think 9/11 — the hijacking, the terrorism — was a greater sin than the killing of the Son of God. I think the killing of the Son of God was more horrific, more terrible, more wicked, more horrible than what we’ve just seen — and yet God planned it. It’s so clear. Acts 4:27–28:

Truly in this city [Jerusalem] 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.

All the biblical promises of the coming of the Son — to bear our sorrows and to bear our griefs — were predicted seven hundred years before they happened, and yet there wasn’t a more sinful act in the universe than the nailing of the Son of God to the cross. And therefore, if we’re going to be believers in the love of God for sinners at the cross, we have to believe that he has the capacity to ordain that his Son die, and yet not be a sinner in killing him. If he can do that, then I’m going to stand up on Sunday and say, “Though I don’t have all the answers, my God, and your God, reigned on September 11. And he is not cruel, he is not wicked, and he’s not a sinner. And the glory is that because he reigns, he can comfort every soul, he can answer every prayer, he can heal every disease, he can rescue from every calamity, he can hold back from us every harmful thing that would not be good for us. And if he weren’t sovereign, then I don’t know what hope we could ultimately have for our future. And we would lose our gospel.”

Engen: And let me just mention, I appreciate, dear sir, your heart on providing the answer. It’s not necessarily grabbing a piece of the tragedy, and then trying to define that little piece. You have to define it, first of all, in light of the tragedy as a whole, but also the foundation as a whole as well.

Where Was Satan?

And as God’s people, we are not simply representing this tragedy in the United States; we’re representing the whole of Christ and the offering of God and what sin does to us. And we were born broken, and we’re watching this happen again.

Piper: Yeah, and not just the whole of Christ, but the whole of pain, because what’s so strange and irrational about the human heart is that it takes a pulling together, in one cataclysmic calamity, to awaken us to what’s happening every moment of every day, like in hospitals across the country. There are a lot of people right now whose mom or dad or wife or husband is breathing their last with pulmonary disease and gasping — just like some of those folks are gasping right now under the rubble. That’s not unique.

And so it’s awakening us to feel the magnitude of the world’s misery, which forces an issue that we ought to be dealing with all the time: What is this misery all about? And the biblical answer is this: it’s all about sin. And therefore, it’s all about the God who is moral and holy and just and who defined sin as sin and whether there’s redemption. That’s the message. And so, you’re right. We’re forced back to deal with huge things.

There’s a piece that we haven’t mentioned yet, that we probably should, as far as worldview goes, and that’s Satan. Satan is a massive part of the Christian worldview. And we ought to ask, Where was Satan yesterday? And of course, nobody knows precisely, except to say that the biblical picture is that Satan hates God. He hates his purposes. He wants people to dishonor God, mainly. He tries to squash the faith out of everybody’s life. He demanded, it says in Luke 22:31–32, to “sift [Peter] like wheat.” But Jesus says, “I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail.” Now I think that picture means this: just like you’d put wheat in a sieve, shake it, and it would tear at the wheat and rip off the outside to get the kernel, Satan wants to shake Peter, tear off his faith, and just have the natural Peter fall through and live the rest of his life in happiness and peace off in the suburbs somewhere. He’s fine — but without faith. And Jesus said, “I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail.”

And then he says this absolutely sovereign word: “When you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.” In other words, “I know you’re going to turn, and I have effectually interceded with my Father on your behalf. You are going to drop three times tonight, but you’re going to stand again, my friend.”

So Satan is involved in all these things, and he’s moving people to do horrific acts. And I don’t doubt that he was stirring and moving in the evils on those planes and in the weeks and years that led up to it. But “he who is in [us] is greater than he who is in the world” (1 John 4:4). He holds Satan on a leash. He commands the evil spirits, and they do what he bids. So, Satan can never get outside God’s control. That’s the point of the book of Job, I think. He’s got to get permission to mess up this man’s life and take his children and put boils on his face and on his body (Job 1:6–12). And Job stands back and says, when Satan has done all this, “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21).

“Satan is to be hated. Satan is to be fought. Satan is to be resisted. But God reigns over Satan.”

Or when his wife says, “Curse God and die.” What in the world is Job holding fast to his integrity for? Job says, “You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” And we’re kind of shocked, saying, “Wait a minute, Job. You missed it. Satan did that. It says Satan did that. What do you mean ‘shall we not receive evil as well as good at the hand of the Lord?’” And the writer adds, “In all this Job did not sin with his lips,” as though he knew we were going to misinterpret at that point (Job 2:9–10). What Job was testifying to is that Satan is to be hated. Satan is to be fought. Satan is to be resisted. But God reigns over Satan. He’s not running loose in the world without his leash in the hand of an Almighty, sovereign God. If he were, our hope would be very fragile — and, I think, non-existent.

Our Enemy Within

Engen: That’s the thought I had last evening as I was going to sleep: Satan did his work long ago on this one, on the people who were involved in such an incident. We read yesterday Psalm 36, where it says,

Transgression speaks to the wicked     deep in his heart;there is no fear of God     before his eyes.For he flatters himself in his own eyes     that his iniquity cannot be found out and hated. . . .He plots trouble while on his bed;     he sets himself in a way that is not good;he does not reject evil. (Psalm 36:1–2, 4)

Well, he did their work, and I’m imagining Satan just sat back and watched it happen.

Piper: Yeah, he sat back and watched it happen, or he did what he did to Judas: he “entered into Judas called Iscariot” (Luke 22:3). So, Satan has indirect and direct ways of working, and perhaps Satan entered in that morning; he just did a decisive work. But he also does these preparatory works.

Let’s not be too quick to say, “Oh, Satan did this.” Our flesh is plenty evil to do this sort of thing. The world is plenty evil to set things up so that we do it. Paul called sin a power, an indwelling power within us, that rises up and takes us captive (Romans 6:12; 7:9–10). So, we don’t need to blame Satan for every evil thing that happens, because we’re bad enough to do it without bringing him in as an explanatory factor. This is why I think Jesus didn’t focus on Satan when they brought him the news about the tower in Siloam falling on the eighteen or the mingling of the blood of the Galileans with their sacrifices. He simply said, “Repent” — not “Run away from Satan” (Luke 13:1–5).

Engen: On Sunday morning was our communion Sunday at church. And I preached on Paul’s warning to examine yourselves. Why have you come to this table? What have you brought with you? And of course, all the other things Paul talks about up to 1 Corinthians 11, dealing with divisions and dealing with sin in the church and the astonishment he has that they’re kind of pleased with themselves, that they’re accepting all these things. And then he comes to the table, and says that you must examine yourself if you come to worship. I walked away from the sermon on Sunday just beating myself, asking, “Were we too harsh in saying, ‘You and God have got to get this right’?” And this is exactly what you’ve been saying all morning: You and God have got to get this right. What we saw yesterday lies in the heart of all of us.

Piper: In fact, if you go on and read the rest of that passage, something absolutely stunning is said, that would really make you wonder if you’d been too harsh. Because he says that if you don’t discern the body and you don’t examine yourself carefully, “this is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died” (1 Corinthians 11:30).

Engen: We said that. Somebody said it’s the most dangerous service a church can hold because how you approach it has direct consequences.

Piper: But what makes it so mysterious and amazing and wonderful is that the death there is pictured as a way of not coming into condemnation. We are being judged by the Lord that we might not be condemned by the Lord. Even death — and this is relevant; oh, is this relevant — even death can be a mercy from God.

Hope for Everlasting Peace and Joy

Engen: Well, we’re talking to Pastor John Piper of Bethlehem Baptist Church. And we so appreciate you coming in and just opening the word and setting our eyes back on Christ. We mentioned this morning Hebrews 12:3, where the writer says, “Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself” — and that’s what we’re doing — “so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted.”

Knapp: Well, now at three minutes before eight o’clock, I wonder, Dr. Piper, if you would lead us again in prayer for healing and understanding.

Piper: Father in heaven, our hearts go out to hundreds of thousands of family members who to this moment don’t know what’s become of their loved ones. And I pray that you would turn their hearts to you and that you would cause them to submit their wills and their hearts and their lives to you. And to look to you for help and strength.

“Jesus Christ died for all, so that whoever will believe of any color may have eternal life and escape perishing.”

I pray, O God, that you would bring your unique kind of consolation through Jesus Christ, who loved us and gave himself for us. I pray that you would pour out the Holy Spirit upon us, O God, as the church of Jesus Christ and upon the world for awakening. I pray that you would assert your glorious, gracious, kind, merciful, powerful, just, holy supremacy into the American life and make Jesus Christ the issue today and make people see him for who he really is and savor him and love him and trust him and treasure him and count him more precious than anything else in all the world.

O God, let this tragedy not happen in vain, but get people’s hearts for yourself, so that they not only have some relief in this world, but everlasting joy, everlasting peace, everlasting life. Lord, we want to see the greatest possible joy come. And that will come for eternity through Jesus Christ alone. So magnify your Son, Lord, in this calamity, I pray, so that people will reap a harvest of righteousness and a harvest of everlasting peace and joy. Through Christ I pray. Amen.

Knapp: Spoken from the heart. Amen. KTIS-FM in the Twin Cities at ten minutes after eight o’clock. We are visiting with Dr. John Piper, who is helping us “overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21).

God in His Rightful Place

Yesterday I was numb; I was just numbed by all of it. Twenty-four hours ago we were here watching the monitors and saw something go on. We didn’t know what it was. And we thought perhaps it was an accident. Well, then a second plane flies into the other tower. And then within minutes, here we are; we’re in the same shock that I felt as a kid when President Kennedy was assassinated. I felt it again when the shuttle exploded. There’ve been other times in my life as well: when Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated, when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. These are all things that I, in my twenties, have imprinted now. It just feels like it’s in my DNA, this shock. And then the plane goes into the Pentagon. And you realize this is an awful day.

And so now the shock — I don’t know if it’s wearing off, but now it’s like, How do we make any sense? Where do we start? How do we rebuild? And I know the focus needs to be on the cross because I’ve said that. I’ve been taught that in the last ten years, but that’s difficult too. So you’re helping to shape the perspective and then maybe just sharpen the image.

Piper: Well, I think you said it well — that the order is one moving from the immediate, personal experience of emotion, which the Bible cares a lot about, to the more reflective, quiet coming to terms with truth. We need both. We can’t just jump in with both feet at the theoretical, theological level at the most raw moments of life. There’s a time for silence and a time for speaking (Ecclesiastes 3:7). There’s a time for embracing and a time to refrain from embracing (Ecclesiastes 3:5).

And so, as the time goes by, pastors need to step up to the plate with fiber in their tree and give people a rock to stand on and a trunk for the branches to hang on. And whether we’re quite there or not, we’re forced to be there. And my passion is to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples. And so, the reason I come back, again and again, to the supremacy of God in these moments is because, I think, if we lose it, we lose the most precious thing in the world. We lose everything.

And one of the texts that’s been on my mind, in recent minutes especially, is the book of Lamentations. Now there’s not a more horrific book in the Old Testament because it’s after the carnage of Jerusalem by the Babylonians. And it is so horrible that women are boiling and eating their children (Lamentations 4:10). And out of that setting, Jeremiah writes two things that, I think, if you lose the one you lose the other. The one we all love is basis of the hymn “Great Is Thy Faithfulness.” Right in the middle chapter, he writes,

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;     his mercies never come to an end;they are new every morning;     great is your faithfulness.“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,     “therefore I will hope in him.” (Lamentations 3:22–24)

I mean, how can he say that mercies are new every morning when things like this are happening? Mercies are new every morning. And just a few verses later in the chapter, he says,

The Lord will not     cast off forever,but, though he cause grief, he will have compassion     according to the abundance of his steadfast love;for he does not afflict from his heart     or grieve the children of men. (Lamentations 3:31–33)

So there you have, back to back, the Lord causes grief and his mercies are new every morning. So, my gut feeling is this: I want mercy in my life. I want to live by mercy. I want to give mercy. I want to embody mercy for people. And I think I’m going to lose verses 22–24, the mercy verses, if I lose the supremacy verses just a few verses later. Which is why I’m so zealous that God be given his rightful place in these moments and that we not kind of shuttle him to the side and say, “Well, let’s just deal with human misery here,” because my only hope in dealing with human misery is a great, holy, good, gracious, sovereign God who, with all of his mystery, can answer our prayers and can do miracles beyond what all humans can do.

He can restrain sin, like he did with King Abimelech in Genesis 20, when Abraham said, “She’s my sister. Sarah’s my sister.” And so she goes into the harem and could be slept with that night. And Abimelech doesn’t sleep with her. And in the morning, God confronts him, and he apologizes because he didn’t know what was up. And God says, “It was I who kept you from sinning against me” (Genesis 20:6). Now, God can do that. God can keep people from sinning. One puff of his breath, and the plane misses the tower. One slight restraint, and this guy falls down in the plane instead of going into the cockpit. God can do that. And that he can do it creates problems for us in dealing with the calamity, and it creates hope for us in coming out of the calamity into a life where we know he will not let anything befall us but what is good for us (Romans 8:28).

It’s so important to me that, even though it’s painful sometimes to hear in moments of crisis, we give God his rightful place as the sovereign, merciful Lord of the universe, so that we have a gospel for people.

More Than We Imagine

Engen: Well, it’s been quite the morning and, Dr. Piper, we just want to say thank you for sharing your heart with us. I know that it has been a part of the refuge that God has been using to bring some peace to some hearts — maybe raise more questions, I guess, as well. But I pray that they’re questions about the solid rock, the foundation that we’re all standing on as God’s people. When you were speaking about Lamentations, I was thinking of David’s words when he says,

I waited patiently for the Lord;     he inclined to me and heard my cry.He drew me up from the pit of destruction,     out of the miry bog,and set my feet upon a rock,     making my steps secure. (Psalm 40:1–2)

Philosophy can’t do it. Determination can’t do it. Consensus can’t do it. And just a vote at a voting booth can’t do it. It’s God.

Piper: And he goes on and says,

He put a new song in my mouth,     a song of praise to our God.Many will see and fear,     and put their trust in the Lord. (Psalm 40:3)

Which means that the extended time of desolation was the means to a new song, which was the means to people trusting Christ. Those are the kinds of connections our people have just got to see, so that they don’t linger in the desolation without thinking that God has no good designs here.

Engen: Exactly — and that there is a rock, that there is a solid foundation. And as I was speaking to one of our listeners and staff members here on the college campus, he said, I think very vividly, “We’ve watched this house built on sand crumble to the ground. Now, what are we going to do? Are we going to build our new house on the rock, the firm foundation of Christ? Or are we going to try the sand thing again? Well, let’s go to the rock.”

Knapp: Does your life look like the World Trade Center coming down? The trigger word for me in all of that is fear. That’s the word: “Many will see and fear” (Psalm 40:3). And I see that word in so many places: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Psalm 111:10; Proverbs 9:10).

Piper: Right. And I just read in Isaiah when Christ is described. It says, “His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord” (Isaiah 11:3). If we find the covert in the cleft of the rock, where we’re safe in Jesus through the cross, the hurricane of God’s might ceases to be threatening and becomes gloriously satisfying. In the eye of the hurricane is a safe place to look at this mighty God. “Our God is a consuming fire,” Hebrews says (Hebrews 10:27). And yet, he doesn’t have to be frightening to the soul that is safe in Jesus.

And you mentioned to me on the phone yesterday, Chuck, about children and struggling. In fact, I heard on some station people talking about that this morning. I was just trying to find you this morning quick before I came over, and they were talking about children. And I just want to stress to parents that we expect too little of our children. They are capable of discerning and grasping some pretty weighty things about God, and they are probably willing to embrace them more quickly than many adults. When we tell them the story of the flood, we ought to tell them it’s about the judgment of God on humanity, and everybody drowned because of how horrible sin is.

“When you say, ‘What’s the purpose of God in these kinds of things?’ one answer is ‘Billions of purposes.’”

And when we tell them the story of the feeding of the five thousand, we shouldn’t tell them this is just about the sharing of a lunch. This is about a mighty Christ who takes five little loaves of your life and feeds five thousand people. He can do wonders with your little life. Give yourself to him. We need to get our kids into a big vision of God. And I’ve got a little 5-year-old girl. She’s sitting right outside that window there. This is a homeschool outing for her to see how radio works. And she said this morning, “Now a plane was stolen and hit a building?” And I said, “Do you know what happened? God allowed something very terrible to happen, so that he might bring about great good. Let’s pray that millions upon millions of divine, gracious, merciful purposes would happen in people’s lives. For example, Talitha, we’re praying right now. We’re praying. We wouldn’t have been praying like this before.”

I mean, when you say, “What’s the purpose of God in these kinds of things?” one answer is “Billions of purposes.” God is doing things that we can’t even imagine. And we just need to put our hands over our mouths, submit to him, and go back to the cross.

Greatest Thing in the World

I see the clock coming to an end there, and I need to go and you need to go, and I’m so glad Michael Smith is coming. But let me just end on the gospel. Can I?

Knapp: Yes, please.

Piper: I’ve been reveling in Romans for three years at Bethlehem and preached last Sunday: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). And I want the listeners to hear this and know it with all their hearts: the fact that there can be no condemnation is rooted not in our goodness, but in Christ’s sufficiency on the cross. The Son of God died for sinners. Everyone who comes to him can have absolute, total pardon and forgiveness. They can be clothed in a righteousness not their own (Philippians 3:9). When they’re faced with the last judgment or the accusations of Satan, they can say “No, there is over me no condemnation because I am in Christ Jesus.”

But here’s the note I think we need to strike this moment: That message goes out to every nation, every people group, every color, every ethnic group in the Middle East, in Saudi Arabia, in Afghanistan. And that same gospel saves every kind of person. So, I just plead with the church of Jesus Christ not to fall into the trap of starting to stereotype Arab people or Palestinian people or people of a certain color as having a certain bent. That is the essence of racism. It’s the essence of prejudice: lumping a group together, taking one lousy apple and making the whole barrel rotten. Oh, that the church would say, “Jesus Christ died for all, so that whoever will believe of any color may have eternal life and escape perishing.”

Whether they go down in a plane, whether they go up in smoke, Christians have a message in the midst of tragedy — they have a message at funerals, a message at weddings. And it is a glorious thing to be a Christian. I buried an old man when I came to the church 21 years ago, who looked up from the bed to me, and he smiled as he was dying. He said, “Pastor John, the greatest thing in the world is to be saved.” And we can offer that to every single person.

So bless you, brothers, as you keep offering the good news on this station. It was an honor to be here with you.

In the hinterland of Senegal, in the middle of a remote field on the outskirts of a village, stands a white metal sign. Emblazoned in blue is the name of a humanitarian organization and the date of its mission: August 2015. According to the sign, the organization’s mission is “to provide water for the waterless.” Behind the sign stands a small, concrete water tower, about ten feet in height, positioned next to an open well. Surprisingly, however, when I came across this well in January 2016, there were no footpaths to the site, no signs of recent use. Upon inspection, the well was dry.

To the one who thirsts, there is nothing quite so disheartening as an empty well. Parched tongues long for water, and God prepares his people to be cupbearers for the thirsty. He intends for us to dig new wells, to feed hungry mouths, to clothe the naked, to visit the sick and imprisoned (Matthew 25:35–36). Yet as Christians move toward need, we do so not as the world does. For we know that even if we could provide access to water throughout the whole world, only Christ can fill the soul’s deepest well. Christian charity is unlike the world’s because, in every act of serving, we aim to meet a deeper need and slake a deeper thirst.

Churches for the Poor

From their earliest days, Christian churches have served the needs of surrounding communities, especially the poorest among them. Members of the early church were quick to sell their belongings in order to care for those among them who had need (Acts 4:34–35). And this generosity overflowed beyond the church. The Roman Emperor Julian (who reigned from 361–363), known in history as “the apostate” for his total rejection of Christianity, famously wrote in a letter to a pagan priest, “The impious Galileans [read Christians] support not only their own poor but ours as well” (Mission in the Early Church, 128).

One such “impious Galilean” was the fourth-century bishop Basil of Caesarea, who served during a time when a famine in the region brought economic devastation. “I shall be like Joseph,” he declared, “in proclaiming the love of my fellow man” (137). Basil opened the storehouses of the church, advocated for the relief of the hungry, and even oversaw the construction of a complex outside Caesarea called the basileas, which included housing, a hospital, and opportunities for work and the development of job skills. In a funeral oration for the beloved Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus said of him, “According to the Scripture [he] dealt food to the hungry and satisfied the poor with bread” (Oration 43.35).

The annals of Christian history are replete with examples such as Basil, followers of Christ who have understood that pure and undefiled religion includes visiting orphans and widows in their affliction (James 1:27). True faith, James explains, expresses itself with material care, giving those in distress “the things needed for the body” (James 2:16). The poor are everywhere and always with us, and one of the church’s tasks, and privileges, in the world is to care for their needs.

True religion basks in the abundance of God’s generosity and joyfully gives to others as an expression of the overflow of love received. Christians know that the fullest expression of God’s generosity is the gift of Christ, who left wealth and took up poverty so that he might make us rich (2 Corinthians 8:9). As recipients of God’s generosity, we are free to lavish on others what we have received, since we know that our heavenly Father will richly provide for us.

On its own, however, even the greatest humanitarian aid offers just a few drops of water to parched tongues. All who drink from these wells will thirst again, for suffering people’s greatest need is not the alleviation of their temporal suffering.

One Well Never Runs Dry

Adam and Eve’s cataclysmic fall from grace fractured every relationship for which they were designed. It fractured human relationships, generating strife between husband and wife (Genesis 3:16), brothers (Genesis 4:8), and mankind in general (Genesis 4:23–24). It also fractured their relationship with the rest of creation (Genesis 3:17–19). Their lives in the world would now be marked by untold suffering.

“In every act of serving, we aim to meet a deeper need and slake a deeper thirst.”

But the worst result of sin goes deeper. Their decision also fractured their relationship with God, leading them to hide from God’s presence rather than delight in it (Genesis 3:8). Restored relationship with God is every person’s greatest need. Service that stops with restoring human relationships or relieving physical or emotional suffering provides only momentary relief by comparison. Without calling people to repent of their sin and turn to the God who offers eternal life, all the humanitarian assistance in the world is like trying to extinguish a forest fire with a thimbleful of water. As Jeremy Treat writes,

While Christ makes us whole again, the greatest accomplishment of the cross is that we are made at-one with God. And this is the key. If all the ills of the world were healed, all the injustices made right, and all the sadness undone, but we still were not right with God, then it would only be a momentary relief in our suffering and in our eternal longing for God. (The Atonement, 158)

Christians’ work in the world doesn’t stop with serving at a local soup kitchen or helping a next-door neighbor with a meal in a time of distress. We move relentlessly toward suffering and need with the knowledge that everyone we meet has a deep thirst in the soul. Our primary aim as Christians is to point people to living water, a well that never runs dry (John 4:13–14).

How to Love Your Neighbor

Jesus said that the two greatest commandments, on which depend all the Law and Prophets, are “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” and “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:37, 39).

Reflecting on the two great commandments, Augustine writes, “Our good, the final good . . . is nothing other than to cling to [God]. . . . We are enjoined to love this good with all our heart, all our soul, and all our strength.” That is, God himself is the final good, “the source of our happiness” and “the end of all desire.” Turning then to consider what it means to love oneself, Augustine says, “He who loves himself wants nothing other than to be happy.” And true happiness is found only in clinging to God. What then does it mean to love one’s neighbor as oneself?

When a person who now knows what it means to love himself is commanded to love his neighbor as himself, what else is he commanded to do but, so far as possible, to urge his neighbor to love God? (City of God 10.3)

To put it simply, if we want to do people the most good, we will point them to God.

To really love our neighbors, to serve others in this world as Christians, our ministry cannot simply supply people with the sorts of wells that will soon run dry. Reflecting further on Basil’s ministry to the poor, Gregory says that he also provided “the nourishment of the Word . . . wherewith souls are fed and given to drink . . . a food which does not pass away or fail, but abides forever” (Oration 43.36). Basil saw what Augustine discovered: the truest fulfillment of every need, longing, and desire can only be found in the one who is the source of all happiness and the end of all desire.

After rising from the dead, Christ sent his disciples as his witnesses into the world (Luke 24:48; Acts 1:8). He made them ministers not of mere alleviation but of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:18–19). Their message concerned the forgiveness of sins and the restoration of relationship with God in Christ. This hope is ultimately what we have to offer. And we offer it as we express with deeds of kindness and service the generous grace of God. While we work hard to alleviate the ills in the world due to the curse, we ultimately point people to the curse lifter.

Come and Drink

Opportunities to offer water to the thirsty surround us every day. We find them in our family members, our neighbors, our friends, and our coworkers. We see them on the street and in the news. People suffer from broken and damaged relationships, unexpected losses and failures, deprivations of basic human needs, and much more. As individuals and as churches, we rightly steward what God has given to meet those needs.

True religion still expresses itself in selfless, humble giving and serving. But our service is always designed to point people to the one who offers them eternal life. As we minister to the poor, we tell them about the one who became poor for our sake (2 Corinthians 8:9); as we offer food to the hungry, we speak of the bread of life (John 6:35); as we visit the sick and dying, we point to him who took our illnesses and bore our diseases (Matthew 8:17); and as we give cups of water to parched tongues, we tell them of him who said, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink” (John 7:37).

The right use of authority or power can make people glad. In our age, however, power is often immediately viewed with skepticism or outright disdain.

Of course, some level of skepticism isn’t completely unwarranted given the abuses of power in the world. These abuses have their roots all the way back in the garden, where we find that first misuse of power. In Genesis, God made Adam and Eve vice-regents over creation, but they failed to use their power in God-honoring ways. Instead, they took (an exercise of their power) what they never should have taken. The world has been suffering for their abuses ever since (Romans 8:20).

Today, when we scroll through headlines, we read plenty of stories of executives, politicians, and even pastors who have leveraged their positions in selfish and unethical ways. As a result, many people tend to view anyone who has power or authority with suspicion.

It’s absolutely necessary to identify, challenge, and rebuke sinful leadership. It ensures that people are cared for and God is honored. While many have rightly lamented abuses of power and authority, though, I do not see a corresponding celebration of godly displays of power and authority. If we want to cultivate healthy families, churches, and communities, we need more than negative reactions to bad leadership; we need a positive vision and good examples.

‘Happy Are Your Men’

In 1 Kings 10, the queen of Sheba, having “heard of the fame of Solomon concerning the name of the Lord” (1 Kings 10:1), wanted to see for herself whether these reports about Solomon were true. The queen poses hard questions to Solomon, and his answers take her breath away. She says,

The report was true that I heard in my own land of your words and of your wisdom, but I did not believe the reports until I came and my own eyes had seen it. And behold, the half was not told me. Your wisdom and prosperity surpass the report that I heard. (1 Kings 10:6–7)

Now hear what she says next: “Happy are your men! Happy are your servants, who continually stand before you and hear your wisdom” (1 Kings 10:8). The queen not only observes the shrewd leadership of Solomon, but also and extols the happiness of his people. The result of living under the wise rule of Solomon is gladness.

This kind of flourishing wasn’t limited to Solomon’s kingdom, but happens wherever godly leaders lead well: “When one rules justly over men, ruling in the fear of God, he dawns on them like the morning light, like the sun shining forth on a cloudless morning, like rain that makes grass to sprout from the earth” (2 Samuel 23:3–4).

Power That Makes You Glad

Have we been so busy lamenting the abuse of leadership that we’ve forgotten the value of leadership? Authority and power in and of themselves are good. Indeed, power rightly wielded is a pathway to joy. It might be helpful, then, to paint a positive picture of wise and good uses of authority. By casting some specific dimensions of such leadership, I want to help leaders lead in joy-producing ways and thus provide examples that are worthy of commending and imitating.

1. Humility

Leaders who make people glad do not think too highly or too often of themselves (Philippians 2:2–3). That is, they are lowly people who live among the people instead of hiding behind their privileges. Good leaders realize that God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble (James 4:6). This does not mean leaders are timid or unsure of themselves. Instead, it means that they are aware of their weaknesses (2 Corinthians 12:9), depend on Jesus (John 15:5), and consistently lean toward others.

One other note to strike: humble leaders link arms with those around them. That is, good leaders know they are part of team; they know how to listen, integrate others’ wisdom, and check for blind spots as they attempt to wisely navigate complex situations. Rather than going off by themselves to make decisions, humble leaders know how to work with others to pursue collective wisdom as they move forward. They are not the type of people who act as lone rangers from a foolish sense of self-sufficiency.

2. Servanthood

The greatest leader to ever walk the earth came to serve, not to be served (Matthew 20:28). In the Gospels, Jesus serves his people at every turn. He provides wine when it runs out at a wedding, he multiplies bread and fish when there isn’t enough to go around, and brings healing to the sick and broken. Most importantly, Jesus serves his people by going to the cross “to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28). The King of the kingdom is a servant-king. In fact, Jesus tells us, “Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all” (Mark 10:43–44). This kind of service does not abdicate its call to lead to appease unholy grumbling, but it does employ authority for the genuine good of others. And when that kind of holy servanthood begins with the leaders, it comes to mark the entire community of God’s people as we “through love serve one another” (Galatians 5:13).

3. Courage

Good leaders are courageous. When God calls Joshua to lead his people into the promised land, he tells him three times in four verses to “be strong and courageous” (Joshua 1:6, 7, 9). The idea of courage does not mean a total lack of fear. Instead, the courageous leader may have bouts with fear, but he does what needs to be done despite the fear. I remember standing between my sons and a fierce dog once. I felt some level of fear, but because I loved my boys, I overcame that fear and stood my ground.

At times, courageous leaders will have to make hard and unpopular decisions. When faced with difficult decisions, though fear may rear its head, the courageous leader presses on and fulfills his God-given calling.

4. Sober-Mindedness

Joe Rigney has described sober-mindedness as clarity of mind, steadiness of soul, and readiness to act. This description of sober-mindedness intersects some with the last point. Courageous leaders are ready to lead. Sober-mindedness adds the components of clarity of mind and steadiness of soul. When people are led by someone who sees the issues clearly and endures opposition with resilience, they themselves are better prepared to face the challenges of the day. Sober-mindedness is a picture of a man seated comfortably in his chair, facing an onslaught of criticism for his decisions or challenges to his ideas, and instead of thrusting himself forward, he remains calm and self-controlled. He knows who — and whose — he is. And he’s ready to act. After all, God calls leaders to lead.

If you ever have the chance to live through an active combat situation (I have), you’ll be glad for leaders who think clearly, remain steady, and courageously act in the moment.

5. Faithfulness

One of the greatest needs in our world today are leaders who are simply faithful. They are not trying to make themselves famous or lead the next revolution. Instead, they simply want to come to the end and hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master” (Matthew 25:23).

Someone once described a faithful friend at my church as having a “high say/do ratio.” In other words, if he says he’ll do something, you can be sure he’ll follow through. People will be happier when leaders consistently do what they say they’ll do.

6. Joy

Lastly, truly good leadership is marked by joy. I do not mean these leaders are chipper or superficially happy. They know how to weep when people weep, make tough decisions when they need to make tough decisions, and yet also laugh and smile when the world seems to be falling apart, because they know who has the whole world in his hands. Perhaps we could say these are seriously joyful leaders.

Good leaders know the world is broken, but they have a joy in Jesus that is deep and immovable. No matter what comes their way, they know that their greatest problem has been solved by Christ and that their future with Jesus is a fixed reality. And the joy of a leader very often gives rise to joy in his people.

This is what the world needs: leaders who are humble, courageous servants, are able to graciously receive criticism, maintain a sober mind, and are faithful and joyful to the end. If you are privileged to benefit from this type of leader, one who wields power in a way that makes people glad, then celebrate that reality as a gift from God. And pray that God would multiply such leaders in the days ahead.