Several months ago, the main drainage line from our house backed up — an unpleasant experience for any homeowner. One of the worst, really. The root of our unpleasant problem was, it turns out, a root — a tree root (likely many of them). So, we called someone with extensive experience with such unpleasantries: Larry.

Larry is everything you might expect from a man who’s spent thirty-plus years dealing with homeowners’ nightmares. He clears drains with an extraordinarily heavy machine that he built himself using spare parts. It looked like something out of a Ghostbusters movie and weighed about as much as our Honda Odyssey. As I helped him carry the minivan down our front stairs, he told me about his farm outside of town. He was especially excited about the poultry barn. “Oh, you have chickens?” I asked. “No, pheasants. I raise pheasants.” Every year, he went on to explain, Larry buys three hundred pheasant eggs and incubates them until they hatch. Once the birds hatch, he cares for the birds for six to eight weeks (with as much watermelon as he can afford). “Oh they love watermelon. That’s a special treat on Sundays. . . . They go crazy for watermelon.”

Larry goes on to tell me that on average half — half — of the three hundred pheasants die by the end of eight weeks. “So, what do you do with the rest? Do you sell them?” “No, no, I let them go in the wild.” “Oh, so do you hunt?” “No, no, I don’t hunt ’em.” “So why do you do it?” [Long pause. . . . He looks like he’s never had to answer that question before, like he’d never really had to have a good reason to incubate hundreds of pheasant eggs each year.] Unsure, he finally mumbled, “I guess it’s just my way of giving back . . .” Then he smiled, “Man, you should see ’em fight over that watermelon.”

As I helped Larry load his machine back into his truck and watched him drive off down our street, I was left with something of a haunting question: Does anything God has made make me feel like he feels about those birds?

Of all the people in the world, lovers of God ought to be the most captivated by what he’s made — shouldn’t we? And yet, too often, simple guys like Larry see and feel far more than we do (more than I do, anyway). And his fresh watermelon and warm smile are just a faint whisper of how God feels about pheasants. The real question before us this morning is, Does anything God has made make us feel like God feels about it all? That’s where I want to go and what I want to try to awaken in our time together in Psalm 104.

Do You Still Marvel?

Do your prayers ever sound like the 35 verses of Psalm 104? I don’t mean the length, or the poetry, or even the mountains, the streams, and the rock badgers, but do you ever stop, slow down, and marvel at something God has made and bless him for it? Does creation still arrest your attention and lead you to worship?

I say still because I have three kids under seven, and you don’t have to convince people under seven to marvel at what God’s made. Every rock is a precious rock, a rock worth keeping, protecting, and displaying. Every animal — bunnies, deer, racoons, turtles — may as well be a unicorn. Every bug is an all-hands-on-deck crisis. Children’s eyes are smaller than our eyes, but almost always wider too. They see things we’ve forgotten how to see.

Well, I want to see more of what they see, more of what God sees, and for that, I think Psalm 104 is a great park to walk through. As we do, I want to stop briefly at four great views along the way: First, God creates. Second, God delights. Third, we delight. And finally, we create. God creates. God delights. We delight. And we create.

God Creates

So, first, God creates. It’s interesting to compare Psalm 104 with the psalms that come immediately before it and after it. All three psalms set out to do essentially the same thing: awaken Godward awe and joy and worship.

Bless the Lord, O my soul. (Psalm 103:1)

Bless the Lord, O my soul. (Psalm 104:1)

Oh give thanks to the Lord. (Psalm 105:1)

We see the same goal in all three, but they pursue that awe and joy and worship in three noticeably different ways. Psalm 103 focuses on the glories of salvation: He forgives your iniquity. He heals your diseases. He redeems your life from the pit. Forget not all his benefits.

He does not deal with us according to our sins,     nor repay us according to our iniquities.For as high as the heavens are above the earth,     so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him;as far as the east is from the west,     so far does he remove our transgressions from us. (Psalm 103:10–12)

Psalm 103 revels in the rescue, in the pardon, in the “the steadfast love of the Lord . . . from everlasting to everlasting” (Psalm 103:17).

Psalm 105 pursues that same soul-awakening awe and joy and worship from a different angle. Again, same goal: “Glory in his holy name; let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice!” (Psalm 105:3). But where’s the focus this time? “Remember the wondrous works that he has done. his miracles, and the judgments he uttered” (Psalm 105:5). The choosing of Abraham. The land he gave to Jacob. The freeing of Joseph from prison. The sending of Moses. The humbling of Egypt. The psalmist wants our hearts to seek and rejoice in God, and so he does a history lesson; he relives moments when God’s hand broke in to save and prosper his people. He traces God’s providence.

Psalm 104 pursues the same awe and joy and worship — “Bless the Lord, O my soul!” — but it sits beside yet another window (of the three, maybe a more neglected window in our circles). When the psalmist sees the disconnect between what he believes about God and how he feels about God, when he wants to stir the coals of his love for God into flame, he doesn’t rehearse God’s mercy and forgiveness again, and he doesn’t run back to all the many times God had rescued them. No, this time he lets his mind wander over hills and through valleys. He climbs mountains and wades into oceans. Creation was his chosen weapon against temptation. Creation was his rallying point back to reality.

Nature or Creation?

I say creation with deep conviction and purpose, because it is, all of it everywhere, conceived and performed by a real, divine imagination. As T.M. Moore writes in Consider the Lilies,

One of the central teachings of Scripture is that the natural world is not at all natural. It is the creation of a supernatural God. What we routinely call “nature” is in fact “creation.” (100)

Nothing we encounter is purposeless, or gloryless, or truly “natural.” We may notice the purpose and glory more in the grander aspects of creation, like oceans, lions, or mountains, but as Scripture teaches, even birds and lilies are saying something profound about God. Psalm 104 wants us to see and feel this throughout:

He stretched out the heavens.
He stacked the mountains and carved out the valleys.
He drew the shores of the oceans.
He taught the moon where to stand in spring and winter.
He cooks for the birds, badgers, goats, and lions.

The psalmist is pointing in every direction, highlighting as much as he can bring to mind — “Look at that! Look at that! And that and that and that!” — but really he’s saying again and again, “Look at him.” He did that. He did that. Oh and he did that too. Isn’t he stunning? Isn’t he terrifying? Isn’t he lovely? “O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom have you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures” (Psalm 104:24).

This God-centeredness, the glory of this Creator, crescendos in verses 27–29:

These all look to you,     to give them their food in due season.When you give it to them, they gather it up;     when you open your hand, they are filled with good things.When you hide your face, they are dismayed;     when you take away their breath, they die     and return to their dust.

When you. . . . When you. . . . When you. . . . And never otherwise. He upholds the universe by the word of his power. They all, great and small, land and sea, sit and wait for him. They exist when and how and where he chooses. No creature is below him; no detail escapes him.
Every mouth bows before his cosmic farmers market.

Your Corners of Creation

All things are truly from him, through him, and for him (Romans 11:36). Creation is preaching the meticulous attention, power, creativity, and generosity of God. So do we hear it anymore? Do we regularly stop and look long enough to listen — or are we slumped in the back rows, barely paying attention, slowly nodding off?

And remember, the psalmist didn’t have Netflix or National Geographic. He didn’t have Google or YouTube. He couldn’t plan a trip to the Pacific Ocean or the Rocky Mountains or even the local zoo. No, he could see as far as he could walk (and then only through the stories of others). He had to make the most of whatever was outside his front door. So don’t hear “creation” and first think of some grand adventure somewhere far away or through a screen; think of whatever’s growing in your front yard (the things you want to grow and the things you don’t). Don’t first think of rare and exotic animals; think of the moles or squirrels that are ruining whatever you want to grow in your front yard. Yes, he mentions lions and Leviathan, but he also mentions birds and grass and night skies. By all means, take advantage of all of the ways we can see more today, but don’t miss the ordinary, breathtaking glimpses in your own little corners of creation.

The God we worship is a creative and creating God. We’re literally surrounded with the work of his hands. Nothing anywhere is untouched by his wisdom and creativity, by his brush. Because he wants us to see and savor him, he not only speaks; he also creates — and he speaks through his creating. So, first, God creates. The second stop, now, is God delights.

God Delights

As we keep walking through the park of Psalm 104, we see the hand of God again and again — building, intervening, producing, feeding, sustaining — creating. Everything there is, everything we see, everything we know, our God has made. Bless the Lord, O my soul.

This isn’t a conference, however, about the power and creativity and wisdom of God. We want to know what makes the happy God happy. And in Psalm 104, we not only see the strong hands of God; we also get a glimpse of his smile.

May the glory of the Lord endure forever; may the Lord rejoice in his works. (Psalm 104:31)

Not, “May the glory of the Lord endure forever; may we rejoice in his works.” No, “May he rejoice in his works.” He’s not just putting on a show that a few nature-loving people might enjoy. No, he loves high mountains and winding valleys; he loves full moons and brilliant sunsets; he loves badgers, storks, and wild donkeys. The God of the universe genuinely enjoys the universe he’s made — the one we get to live in every day.

This shouldn’t surprise us. It should be a familiar melody from the very first chapter in the Bible. Genesis 1:3–4: “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. And God saw that the light was . . . good.” We’re so used to hearing that word, we might pass right over it. Right there, though, in the very first verses of the Bible is the first hint — no, the loud, repeated chorus (“good . . . good . . . good . . . good”) — that this world was not made to be a functional place to live and raise a family. No, God meant for the place he made to be beautiful, awe-inspiring, worshipful — in a word, good.

“God made a world that even God could admire.”

Night and day were not just needed, but good. Mountains and oceans were not just enormous, but good. The bushes, flowers, and trees were not just fertile and productive, but good. The birds and fish and beasts of the field were all intentional, unique, and captivating in their own ways. They were good. In other words, God made a world that even God could admire. How strange and tragic, then, that our eyes so often grow dim with it all.

God’s Pleasure in God

God not only makes; he delights in what he makes. He admires his creation. He steps off the stage, as it were, to take in and savor what he’s done — the stories he’s conceived, the lighting he’s staged, the flooring he’s laid, the scenery he’s built, the characters he’s developed, the colors and textures he’s woven together, the melodies he’s written under it all. And why is it all so good in his eyes? Because everywhere he looks, he sees something of himself, his glory. The pleasure of God in creation is the pleasure of God in God.

Derek Kidner sees this in the first verses of the psalm — “covering himself with light, stretching out the heavens, laying his chambers on the waters, making the clouds his chariot.” Kidner writes,

The metaphor of his taking up its parts and powers as his robe, tent, palace, and chariot invites us to see the world as something he delights in, which is charged with his energy and alive with his presence. (Psalms 73–150, 402)

He delights in what he’s made because it’s charged with his energy and alive with his presence. He is creation’s splendor and majesty.

Good and Very Good

And in the midst of everything good — the light was good, the land was good, the lions were good, the honey was really good — in the midst of everything else, God outdid himself. He made creatures in his own image — man and woman, you and me. And only then did he say, “very good.” You can almost taste his pleasure in the words. “Very good.”

Why very good? Why especially delightful? We don’t have time here to explore all the goodness of the image of God in mankind, but one vital difference between humanity and everything else he had made is that, of all the wonders he had conceived and created, only this creature could share in his pleasure over what he made. Only the man and woman had the capacity to experience fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore. Only to them could he one day say, “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full” (John 15:11). And only this creature, among all the creatures on earth, would be a creating creature, taking what he had made and making something new. And those are our next two stops in the park: We delight, and we create.

We Delight

At our third stop, we finally arrive where the psalm begins. Verse 1: “Bless the Lord, O my soul! O Lord my God, you are very great!” Notice, the first words of the psalm are not cast into the heavens, but directed inward, at the heart. Bless the Lord, O my soul! Wake up! Stop nodding off before the splendor and majesty all around you.

I mentioned earlier that, in our circles, we do Psalm 103 reflection pretty well (rehearsing the glories of redemption) and Psalm 105 pretty well (recounting the stories of what God has done in Scripture and history). How often, though, when our hearts grow cool or dull or distracted, do we think to immerse ourselves not in more books, but in trees and fields and birds and streams — in fall leaves and maybe even in some snow? How often have you thought of the outdoors as a means of grace?

Prescription for an Anxious Age

As I watch, over and over again in Scripture, how creation deepens faith, and quiets fears, and instills confidence, and inspires courage, and awakens joy, I can’t help but wonder if creation isn’t one of the great prescriptions we’re missing in our modern and anxious age. So much of our technological lives today carry the illusion of control — deciding what we eat, where we eat, when we eat; deciding what we watch, where we watch, when we watch. Our phones tell us we’re in control. Our cars tell us we’re in control. Our heating and air-conditioning tell us we’re in control. Creation disagrees. Creation dispels the mirage of my sovereignty. Creation shouts, “You’re not in control! And this world isn’t about you.”

That’s a sermon we need to hear and rehear and rehear, especially today. You can’t decide the weather. You can’t grow grass in that corner of the yard. You can’t control the squirrels or moles. You can’t tame a thunderstorm. You can’t survive the bitter cold. You can’t outlive an oak tree. But God can, and does, and will.

In the introduction to Pleasures of God, Pastor John says,

Unless we begin with God in this way, when the gospel comes to us, we will inevitably put ourselves at the center of it. We will feel that our value rather than God’s value is the driving force in the gospel. We will trace the gospel back to God’s need for us instead of tracing it back to the sovereign grace that rescues sinners who need God. (22)

Souls centered on self are homes built on sand. If we subtly believe that we’re in control, that our value is driving history, that God really needs us, it’s no wonder we’re so anxious. Watch where our wild safari ends. Verse 34: “May my meditation be pleasing to him, for I rejoice” — not in mountains or moons or donkeys, no: “for I rejoice in the Lord.” Those who see the most in creation are never left with just creation; no, they’re drawn into a higher, more intense love — a higher, more intense good: God himself.

Wild Glimpses of God

Everything God has made is preaching, with loudspeakers cranked high and embedded everywhere we turn — and yet we often have our heads down, scrolling on our phones. So put the phone down for a moment (turn it off if you have to) and lift up your eyes.

When the sun rises each morning, God means for that flaming ball of ferocity, a star the size of a hundred earths and heated to ten thousand degrees, to remind us that he is strong, massive, reliable, and radiating with joy. Psalm 19:4–5: “He has set a tent for the sun, which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber, and, like a strong man, runs its course with joy.”

When we see the stars scattered in a clear night sky, an estimated one hundred billion in our galaxy alone, God wants us to see how detailed and personal he is. “He determines the number of the stars; he gives to all of them their names” (Psalm 147:4). Why would he name stars? Not for their sake (they’re stars!), but for ours — so that we would know that he knows and cares for each and every one of us.

When clouds crawl across the sky and over our heads, they are not meant to be massive, miraculous afterthoughts (or depressing inconveniences, for that matter). No, they should draw our attention into heaven and stretch our imaginations, far beyond them, into the faithfulness of God. “Your steadfast love, O Lord, extends to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds” (Psalm 36:5).

When we make out a mountain in the distance (or drive through them as my family did on vacation earlier this year), we’re meant to see enormous shadows of the majesty of God. “Glorious are you,” we sing, “more majestic than the mountains full of prey” (Psalm 76:4).

When we hear the rush of a river or stream, it can inspire us to drink more deeply from all that God is for us in Christ, the well who quenches every thirst forever. “They feast on the abundance of your house,” David writes, “and you give them drink from the river of your delights” (Psalm 36:8).

And that’s to say nothing of all we see and experience of God in the boom of thunder (Psalm 29:3), the ruthlessness of lions (Psalm 7:2), the fragility of sheep (Psalm 78:52), the sweetness of honey (Psalm 19:10), the strength of horses (Psalm 20:7), even the defenselessness of snails (Psalm 58:8). The heavens, the earth, and the seas (and all that fills them) are declaring the glory of God to us. How much richer, sweeter, and more tangible might our theology be if we were willing to stop and look and delight more than we do?

What About Sin?

Before we move away from stop three — our delight in who God is and what he’s made — the psalm ends in a strange but fitting place:

May my meditation be pleasing to him,     for I rejoice in the Lord.

We delight. Next verse:

Let sinners be consumed from the earth,     and let the wicked be no more! (Psalm 104:34–35)

When I first read that, I thought, Now that’s a strange way to respond to all he’s seen. “Look at the heavens! Look at the mountains! Look at the lions! Let sinners be consumed from the earth, and let the wicked be no more.” Seems strange, right? It’s not how many of us would think to pray after seeing so much of God in what he’s made.

It’s not strange. The psalmist lets his mind wander over wonder after wonder until his heart is set on fire again for God, and then he opens his eyes, and he realizes just how broken this world is, how far it’s strayed from its Creator. He feels, again, that the wondrous creation is enslaved to futility, in bondage to corruption. It’s magnificent as it is, but it’s nowhere near what it could be. Nowhere near what it once was. Because of sin, we live in the ruins of paradise. And the awful, tragic disparity between what was and what is exposes the seriousness of sin — the seriousness of my sin.

Sin vandalized the satisfying glory of God in creation. Sin introduced disease and hostility and death. Enjoying what remains of the beauty of creation should make us hate sin all the more, especially our own sin. And it should make us long for God to make it all new again. Verse 29 again: “When you take away their breath, they die and return to their dust” — sin did that. Next verse: “When you send forth your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the ground.”

Death doesn’t get the last word here. The light will invade the darkness. God will make all these things, including us, new. All who oppose him will be consumed. The wicked will be evicted. We’re destined to live on a real earth like ours, with real bodies like ours, surrounded by wonders and blessings and experiences like ours, but without the weakness, mortality, and sin that plague all we know and enjoy now. That world will be like ours, but glorious. We will be ourselves, but glorious. The psalmist knows how this will all end, and so he ends not with despair, but hope: “Bless the Lord, O my soul! Praise the Lord!” (Psalm 104:35).

God creates. God delights. We delight. And now, finally, we create.

We Create

The pleasure of God in creation and human culture: that was my assignment. When I say culture, I mean all the good that humans do and make. I’m thinking of the cultural mandate in Genesis 1:28: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” We won’t get to spend nearly as much time here, but we don’t have to travel far in our park to see what we need to see.

The young lions roar for their prey,     seeking their food from God.When the sun rises, they steal away     and lie down in their dens.Man goes out to his work     and to his labor until the evening. (Psalm 104:21–23)

Man goes out to his work, and works a full day. It feels a little anticlimactic, right? The trees climb into the heavens, the mountains shake with wildlife, the lions roar their hunger for all to hear, the moon ushers in fall and winter and spring, the sun chooses when the sky goes from blue to red to purple to dark — and Larry heads over to Pike Lake Drive to clear another drain (or whatever ordinary work God has given you to do).

“The ordinary work of man is one of the manifold works of God.”

“Man goes out to his work and to his labor until the evening.” Now listen to this in the very next verse: “O Lord, how manifold are your works!” — trees and mountains and lions and the work that man can do. “In wisdom have you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures” (Psalm 104:24). The ordinary work of man is one of the manifold works of God. No other creature can do what you do. What you can do in eight or ten or twelve hours with your mind and hands and gifts says as much or more about God as a sunset or a canyon or a thunderstorm.

Only God could conceive of a creature capable of doing the work you do. Every working human you meet (white collar or blue collar; paid or unpaid; student, employee, manager, or stay-at-home mother) is a living canvas covered in the creativity of God — whether they believe in him or not, whether they see the glory in their work or not. That they can do what they do, whatever they do and however well they do it, reminds us of just how much more God can do.

Human Hands at the Table

We get one more small glimpse in Psalm 104 into the pleasure of God in human culture, in verses 14–15:

You cause the grass to grow for the livestock     and plants for man to cultivate,that he may bring forth food from the earth     and wine to gladden the heart of man,oil to make his face shine     and bread to strengthen man’s heart.

Wine to gladden the heart of man. Bread to strengthen man’s heart. Grapes transformed through crushing and waiting. Wheat transformed by mixing and baking. Wine and bread. I wanted to end here because tomorrow (or in the next couple of weeks) we’ll each gather in our churches and we’ll hold and enjoy bread and wine together, the Lord’s Supper. This isn’t the point of verses 14 and 15; bread and wine were ordinary fare for Israel in those days. But they’re not ordinary fare any longer, not on the other side of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday.

Is there a more subtle and yet stunning marriage of God’s pleasure in creation and culture than in the feast we eat over and over to remember all he is for us in Jesus? I want this to be a tangible, holdable, edible reminder for you of what we’ve seen here. Jesus chose to serve bread, not wheat. And he chose to serve wine, not water. Both are products of human creativity and effort — of culture. Both quietly dignify all that mankind can do and make.

And then, through Psalm 104, we taste even more meaning in the wine. Bread strengthens man’s heart. Wine gladdens the hearts of men. Peter Leithart writes,

Jesus did not give his disciples grapes, but the blood of the grape, which is the creation transformed by human creativity and labor. Like bread, wine assumes a degree of technological sophistication, as well as a measure of social and political formation. Wine, however, is a drink of celebration and not mere nutrition. If Jesus had wanted to depict man’s relation to creation and to God in purely utilitarian terms, bread and water would have sufficed. This Bridegroom, however, changes water to wine, and in doing so, clarifies man’s purpose in the world. (Blessed Are the Hungry, 169)

And what’s that purpose? In both work and rest, to enjoy what God has made and done. Ultimately, to enjoy God himself. “Then I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy” (Psalm 43:4). Cup after cup, the wine reminds us that the Lord’s Supper is not a eulogy, but a toast. It plays an old, beloved chorus: “In your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11).

The Beauty in Every Beauty

We don’t, however, need the bread and wine in Psalm 104 to get to the carpenter from Nazareth. We’d be just fine with birds and grass and badgers. Hebrews 1:1–2:

Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.

And then, quoting Psalm 104 of all places, he writes, “Of the angels God says, ‘He makes his angels winds, and his ministers a flame of fire.’ But of the Son he says, . . .

You, Lord, laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning,     and the heavens are the work of your hands;they will perish, but you remain;     they will all wear out like a garment,like a robe you will roll them up,     like a garment they will be changed.But you are the same,     and your years will have no end.” (Hebrews 1:7–12)

“When the Father looks out over the goodness of creation, at the center of it all, he sees his Son.”

When the Father looks out over the goodness of creation, at the center of it all, he sees his Son. And he loves what he sees. “All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:3). Steve Dewitt writes, “Until we see the beauty of Christ, we will never see the true beauty in anything else” (Eyes Wide Open, 116). That means if we really want to hear what God is saying in the blues of bluebirds and waddle of penguins, in the raging of rivers and stillness of lakes, in the opening of lilies and landslides along cliffs, we first and forever fix our eyes on Jesus. All the Scriptures, beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, are about him (Luke 24:27). And all of creation is preaching in that same series.

Who’s the star of the Psalm 104 galaxy — sun and moon, birds and lions, oceans and forests? The one who became flesh and dwelt and worked among us. “He had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him” (Isaiah 53:2) — and yet he’s the beauty in every beauty, the paradise hiding in our fallen world, the Creator born in the likeness of the creature, the sun dawning on the darkness around us, the crucified, risen, reigning — creating and sustaining — Jesus. And so whenever we enjoy and use creation rightly, it will surely lead us to him.

When we, as a society, stopped reading and started watching, we began thinking and talking less — at least with the same substance or effectiveness. That was the bright red flag Neil Postman began waving in the sixties, captured for future generations in his classic work, Amusing Ourselves to Death. The book was published in 1985, the year before I was born.

With the introduction of the television, Postman observed, entertainment did not merely become a bigger and bigger part of our lives — it became our lives. And everything else in our lives — news, politics, education, even religion — was increasingly forced to perform on its stage. Suddenly, everything had to be entertaining. Newspapers gave way to “the nightly news”; classroom lessons made their way to Sesame Street; worship services transformed into televised concerts with TED talks.

“The television slowly taught us that nothing was worth our time unless it was entertaining.”

The television slowly taught us that nothing was worth our time unless it was entertaining. And anything entertaining, almost by definition, requires less of us — less thinking, less study, less work. Entertainment, after all, isn’t meant to be taken seriously. But when everything is entertainment, doesn’t that mean little, if anything, can be taken seriously?

For those who take the glory of God seriously, and our joy in him seriously, that becomes a very serious question.

What Will Ruin Society?

Postman warned about this devolution long before others noticed what was happening. He writes,

[George] Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in [Aldous] Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity, and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think. What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. . . . In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us. This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right. (Amusing Ourselves to Death, xix)

When he wrote those words, television had only been around for thirty years (invented much earlier, but not common in households until the fifties). The internet would not become publicly available until the 90s. Social media didn’t come along for another fifteen years (and really didn’t become widespread until the iPhone in 2007, several years after Postman died).

If Postman was right about the early years of television, how much more today — a day when we no longer have to schedule time to sit and watch our favorite shows, but carry our entertainment with us literally everywhere we go? If entertainment could control our lives from a small box in the living room, how much more so when it’s nearly surgically attached to us on our phones?

Postman, I believe, was more correct than even he realized — and the implications are not just social or cultural, but spiritual.

Irrelevance Binds Us

What makes television such a terror to the collective mind of a culture? Postman begins by arguing that the “medium is the metaphor.” Meaning, any given medium — whether text, television, or social media — doesn’t only distribute content, but unavoidably shapes the content. How we consume, he argues, is as important as what we consume. Mediums determine how we take in information. For instance, over time typography (despite its own limitations) generally taught us to follow arguments, test conclusions, and expose contradiction. Television, by contrast, consistently does away with arguments, strips away context, and darts from one image to the next.

Television, however, not only teaches us a new way to process information, but it also floods us with information and from far beyond our everyday lives. The telegraph, of course, had begun doing this with words long before the television, but notice what was happening then, even with the telegraph:

In the information world created by telegraphy, everything became everyone’s business. For the first time, we were sent information which answered no question we had asked, and which, in any case, did not permit the right of reply. We may say then that the contribution of the telegraph to public discourse was to dignify irrelevance and amplify impotence. (68–69)

For the most part, the kind of information that would interest people in both Los Angeles and Minneapolis, would need to be nonessential to life in either place (irrelevance), and all the more so with news from around the globe. Stories had to transcend ordinary life in a real place (part of the appeal for people looking to escape the malaise of ordinary life).

And, for the most part, the information had to be the kind of information neither could do anything about (impotence). Postman asks a pointed question of all our media consumption: “How often does it occur that information provided you on morning radio or television, or in the morning newspaper, causes you to alter your plans for the day, or to take some action you would not otherwise have taken, or provides insight into some problem you are required to solve?” (68).

Television only made the irrelevance that much more accessible and that much more appealing (actual images and videos of celebrities doing everyday activities as opposed to the short descriptions the telegraph could produce). And how much more is this the case through social media? We know more and more about our favorite athletes, actors, and musicians and yet often less and less about our neighbors and the places where we might actually make a difference.

Worth a Thousand Images

But isn’t a picture worth a thousand words? In 1921, the marketer Fred Bernard famously said so, promoting the use of images for advertising on the side of streetcars. He was probably right as far as streetcars go. If you want to make a memorable impression on someone in a couple seconds, by all means use a picture — but is this effective communication or just effective marketing? Maybe it’s more accurate to say a picture is worth a thousand more sales, or clicks, or likes. Even then, though, can a picture really convey what a consumer needs to know about a new phone, or clothing line, or dish soap? For serious shoppers, haven’t we learned that one coherent sentence of honest description might be worth a thousand pictures?

Postman saw that as images overtake words as the dominant form of communication in a society, communication invariably suffers. “I will try to demonstrate that as typography move to the periphery of our culture and television takes to place at the center, the seriousness, clarity and, above all, value of public discourse dangerously declines” (29). We descend into “a vast triviality,” he says. We get sillier.

As he attempts to summarize his warning to the ever-entertained, he says, “Our Ministry of Culture is Huxleyan, not Orwellian. It does everything possible to encourage us to watch continuously. But what we watch is a medium which presented information in a form that renders it simplistic, nonsubstantive, nonhistorical, and noncontextual; That is to say, information packaged as entertainment. In America, we are never denied the opportunity to amuse ourselves” (141).

In the Beginning Was the Word

According to Neil Postman, America (and much of the modern world) has laid our collective minds on the altar of entertainment. But why should followers of Christ care about television (or websites or social media)? Should we spend much time worrying about how much we watch and how little we read?

Yes, because the fullest Christian life is firmly anchored in words and sentences and paragraphs. When God revealed himself to his chosen people, of all the infinite ways he could have done so, he chose to unveil himself with words. “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son” (Hebrews 1:1–2). God didn’t build a gallery or start a YouTube channel, he wrote a Book (2 Timothy 3:16). “In the beginning was the Word. . . . And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:1, 14). From the beginning, God has put the Word, his Son, at the center of reality, and, in doing so, he has given words unusual power and importance in anticipating, explaining, and celebrating him.

Yes, the heavens are declaring the glory of God (Psalm 19:1). Yes, his eternal power and divine nature have been seen, from the beginning, in the things that have been made (Romans 1:20). But “faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17). For now, faith looks “not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:18). And we look to the unseen through words. We may see God in mountains and oceans and galaxies, but we only know him savingly through sentences. He wrote the story that way.

Serious Joy in Silly Days

If the way we’re using entertainment erodes our ability to reflect, reason, and savor truth, it erodes our ability to know and enjoy Jesus. “Blessed is the man . . . [whose] delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night” (Psalm 1:1–2). If we lose the ability to think, we lose the ability to meditate. And if we lose the ability to meditate, we lose our path to meaningful happiness. The life of the mind, and heart, is a pivotal battleground in the pursuit of real and abundant life.

“The life of the mind is a pivotal battleground in the pursuit of real and abundant life.”

The medium is not the enemy — television and YouTube and Instagram are not the enemy. But if Postman was right, the medium can be wielded by our world, our flesh, and our enemy when we soak up entertainment and ignore the consequences. What, if any, of your entertainment habits need to be curbed or redirected for the sake of your soul? What are ways you are seeking to cultivate the spiritual gift of your mind — slower Bible study or memorization, reading substantive books, meaningful conversation with friends, more time in unhurried reflection and meditation?

As we learn to guard and nurture our minds as our God-given pathways to God, the kinds of mindless entertainment that are undoing millions today will be far less appealing and far less dangerous. And we will find pleasures deeper, and far more enduring, than what we see on our screens.

Jason Helopoulos: I’m told that about 50 percent of those that are here are either somewhere between zero and five years of pastoral ministry. You’ve both pastored for a long time, so maybe we could start here. Could you tell us your sense of calling to ministry and how it was that the Lord called you to the pastorate?

John Piper: Let me give you the stages because it happened in stages. Stage one was the summer of 1966. I was gloriously confident in God that I should be a medical doctor because he had made it plain to me in April of that year that’s what I should do, which is a great lesson in not overstating your subjective sense of God’s leading. Confident as I was, I went to summer school to catch up on chemistry because I was behind as a literature major. God smacked me down in the hospital at the end of that summer with mononucleosis for three weeks and I had to drop organic chemistry. Harold John Ockenga was speaking in the chapel and I was listening on the radio and everything in me — another wonderful subjective reality — said, “I would love to handle the Bible like that.”

I had fallen in love with Noël about four weeks earlier and we were crazy in love and talking about marriage already. She came to visit me and I said, “I know you fell in love with a pre-med student, but that ain’t going to happen. I really do sense God leading me.” So, that was stage one, a call to the word. If you had said at that moment I would be a pastor, I would have said, “Never.” I couldn’t speak in front of a group. I had no intention or desire to be a pastor, but I loved the Bible and I wanted to know it and maybe teach it.

I went to seminary and taught for six years. Now it’s October 1979. That was 1966. At this point, I’ve never been a pastor. I’ve preached maybe ten sermons in my life, never buried anybody, never married anybody, and never visited anybody in the hospital, not as a pastor anyway. At about midnight there was another subjective experience. It was like Pascal said: fire. I could not resist the desire to preach. I was writing a book on Romans 9, which is one of the weightiest passages on the might and sovereignty of God in his freedom. Everything in me was saying — and I think it was God — “I will not just be analyzed. I will not just be explained. I will be heralded.”

So, I waited for my wife to wake up the next morning and dropped another bomb on her and said, “What would you think if I were to resign from my six-year teaching career at Bethel College and look for a church?” And she said, “I could see that coming.” Because she had heard me make so many comments about sermons either being wonderful or terrible. So, I went to the denominational official and said, “I believe God is calling me to the pastorate. Would you help me find a church?” And they said, “We think you should go to Bethlehem.” And that’s where I was for 33 years.

Helopoulos: Wow. Praise God. Joel, how about you?

Joel Beeke: I was brought under a very deep conviction of sin for about 18 months before I found deliverance from the age of 14 to just about when I turned 16. When God finally delivered me in Christ it was in good measure by reading the Puritan books in my dad’s bookcase. I read the whole bookcase late at night every night.

When I found that freedom I was so shy. I never raised my hand in class ever in my whole life and I hated standing in front of the class, but my tongue was unloosed. I started going to all the neighbors up and down the block. I had to bring them the gospel, but ministry never entered my mind at that point because the youngest minister in our denomination I think was 52, and I was 16. I thought old men were ministers. We lived in a very sheltered denomination. It was very conservative. No ruling elder in the church was under 50 years of age. So, that was just out of the question. I didn’t even think about it.

But I was working for my dad as a carpenter and there was a man who was very fussy. My dad had built a house for him and there were all kinds of weeds growing in his lawn. He would not put weed killer on it. He said, “Do you have some low person on the totem pole who could possibly pull all these weeds by hand over a period of one month?” Of course, I was the lowest guy on the totem pole, so I spent a month just pulling weeds.

I’ll just tell you like it is. I’ve given up trying to label it or trying to put fences around it. But this is exactly what happened. I was pulling weeds and not thinking even about God. I know it wasn’t a physical voice but it sure felt like one. It was a very subjective experience. I heard, “Go forth and preach the gospel to all the nations.” It was so powerful that I just stood up and my hands were shaking. I looked around and there was no one there. I was just overwhelmed. I couldn’t shake it off. I was just overwhelmed. I went to my pastor, who was very wise, and he said, “Well, maybe that’s the beginning of a call, but the Lord will confirm it in other ways.” And that’s what happened.

About six months later, I was asked to speak to all the young people of the denomination, which was only done by ministers. I was 16 years old. I just couldn’t understand how I got the invitation, but I was scared stiff. But that was a turning point in my life when I spoke on that occasion because the Lord, I think, gave me some freedom to speak. Then I started getting confirmations from other elders and ministers who said, “Have you ever considered the ministry?” Things began to escalate from there. But from the day that I received those words, “Go forth and preach the gospel to all the nations,” until today I never really doubted in the depths of my being for one second that God’s hand was in this. I could say, even as a 16-year-old, “Woe unto me if I preach not the gospel.”

Then it was a long process to get into the ministry in that denomination, but the Lord opened all those doors. When you’ve been a minister basically your whole life and your whole heart has been in it, you just can’t do anything else. You can’t even think about doing anything else. This is all-consuming. I think the call to the ministry varies a lot. A lot of men, when they come to our seminary, they think they’re called, but they’re not 100 percent sure. They’re testing the waters and that’s fine. God calls his servants in many different ways, but that’s how I was called. God is sovereign. Had I not been called in that incredibly overwhelmingly powerful way, there’s no way I ever would have been accepted in that denomination as a minister because that’s exactly what they were looking for. But I had no knowledge of all that. It’s just that God gave me what I needed to be accepted into the ministry.

Piper: So, you have to be a Dutch Reformed charismatic in order to be in that denomination? That’s what they were looking for?

Beeke: You have to read my two chapters against charismatics in my Reformed Systematic Theology.

Helopoulos: It is interesting that both of you were shy, that you didn’t want to stand up in front of people, and yet you felt the call to ministry. There are probably young men in this room saying, “Well, I’m an introvert. I’ve never been comfortable standing in front of people.” Was that something that you worked through? Is that something that you grew in? Was that something that you felt like once you started heading down the path of ministry that was just supernaturally provided for?

Piper: The summer of 1966 was the most important summer in my life so far. I not only found a wife that summer, Noël, who’s been my wife for 55 years, and not only heard that call but I wasn’t shy. I was paralyzed. I don’t joke about this at all. I didn’t have butterflies. I had paralysis. My folks took me to psychologists and no Christians believed in psychologists in 1964. This was mega serious and disabling.

I went off to Wheaton knowing that they required a speech course and knowing that I would save that till the end and drop out of school. I would go to a state school and finish there. That is exactly what I thought because there was no way I would do a speech class. This is an answer to your question. I didn’t work through it. It was a gift. And it came like this.

Chaplain Evan Welch came up to me that summer and said, “Johnny, will you pray in chapel?” Summer school chapel at Wheaton had about 500 students in it. And out of my mouth came the words, “How long do you have to pray?” And he said, “30 seconds or a minute.” And I said, “Yes.” To this day, I have no idea how that happened. I don’t know why I said yes. I walked back and forth on the front campus. I think I’ve made two vows in my life and this is one of them. I said to God, “If you will get me through a 30-second prayer behind that gigantic pulpit in Edmond Chapel, I will never say no to you again out of fear for a speaking opportunity.” And he got me through. A dam broke. It just broke. As I’ve looked back on it, I can’t help but think that a wife and a calling together produced that under the Holy Spirit.

This is just a guess but it’s worth thinking about. To have a woman come into your life when you’re a pimple-faced, insecure young man, who has never dated in your life, wondering if any girl could ever like you, and she likes you? This is very powerful. I really do believe this — and I don’t know how all the spiritual pieces fit together — that Noël’s love for me and God saying, “You’re going to study the Bible for the rest of your life,” did something together with that opportunity in chapel. So, I did take that speech class. I gave that speech on how to lift barbells because I thought if I moved around enough and showed barbells that it would distract people from how nervous I was. I won the Clarence Roddy Preaching Prize at Fuller Seminary three years later and I was on my face in those days thinking, “How did that happen?” To this day, I don’t know how it happened. It was just a gift.

Beeke: Well, the gospel unloosened my tongue. So I started speaking to people about the gospel at work, at school, every friend I had, and even strangers. When I was still in regular social situations where there was nothing special, I still felt kind of withdrawn and shy, but the ministry itself got me over that as well. It was just a matter of time there but I was painfully shy.

Helopoulos: When you think about the pastorate, most of us have different pastors in our minds that we’ve served with, or been under, or watched from afar. When you think, “This is the best pastor I know,” what is it that marks him?

Piper: You have to go first on this one.

Beeke: I would say he is marked by a passionate love for his people and being there, as that one book is called (Being There), and caring deeply and being very prayerful with your people. I was ordained on March 30, 1978, and two days later a minister came over who was 50 years a minister. So I asked him, “What advice would you have to give me? Give me all the advice you have from all those years of ministry.” He said, “I’ll give you one thing. And if you do that, everything else will fall in place.” I was all ears. He said, “Always pray with your people in everything you do and before everything you do. If you do it a thousand times in the ministry, pray before everything you do.” That impacted me tremendously. When a minister really prays with his people, when they walk in and they sit down to visit and they pray, beforehand and afterward, and they feel like he loves their soul more than they do, I think that’s a real pastor. He’s someone who really cares.

As you grow in ministry, especially long-term ministry when you’re there 10 or more years or more, you might go a whole generation or the next generation and you become like a father to the whole congregation. This is like your extended family. I think that’s a sign of a really good pastor too. You become a kind of a father figure where people feel very free to come to you for anything. They’ll tell you secrets that they’ve told nobody else and know you will hold it confidential. You’re just a real pastor to them.

Helopoulos: That’s good, Joel.

Piper: I don’t like questions that ask for the best anything, except God, Bible, Christ, and gospel. Those are all the best. Because I’m fallible I just don’t know. So, I reject the question.

Helopoulos: I’ll take it.

Piper: I’m going to change the question because I think I can answer what you are asking without claiming to know what’s best.

Beeke: This is getting very complicated, John.

Piper: I really like dead pastors better than living pastors. What pastor alive has a significant influence on me? I’m going to say Mark Dever and I’m going to tell you why. Number one, he is solid as a rock theologically. Number two, he loves the church and I’m convicted because I don’t think I love the church as much as Mark does. He takes membership really seriously. I don’t think I took membership seriously enough. And then there are two things that are most significant (and that’s like best significant): He’s thick-skinned and happy. I’m looking at the camera now. Mark is going to watch this. I’ve never met anybody like him who, no matter what happens, seems to be able to ride the wave of criticism and stay happy without being stoic. So thank you. I wish I were more like that. I tend to get angry.

The last thing is evangelism. The first time I ever met Mark, he took me up on top of his church. This was 15 or 20 years ago. He just walked around the rim of the top of his church pointing out the unbelievers’ homes where he was working on people. For those four reasons, at least, I like hanging out with Mark Dever. It mainly makes me feel guilty. But that’s good for me. You don’t want to just hang out with people that make you feel affirmed. You need to feel convicted.

Helopoulos: Mark does have thick skin and he can be very clear in what he says and he does it with a smile. I remember last time we had him at URC, I was standing next to him at our church. A Baptist member of our congregation came up to him and said, “I’m in this PCA church, a presbyterian church, I don’t believe what they do about baptism, what should I do?” He said, “Leave and find a baptist church.” He said it with a smile right while I was standing next to him so we may have different appreciations of Mark, but I do appreciate some of the same things about him.

Let me ask you this. Starting out in ministry, what were some of the things that you were too concerned about when you first started out in ministry and what are other things that took decades for you to figure out that you needed to be more concerned about as you pastored your congregations?

Piper: Let me give one concrete example because I think it’ll be helpful to people who might struggle. I don’t think I understood for about 30 years that Jesus’s radical command to gouge your eye out because of lust, and Paul’s command to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, should apply with equal violence to nonsexual sins. I learned early on that as a young man lust in your head and in your body — and the temptations to act it out in pornography or worse — had to be killed the way Jesus said so. He said, “If, if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out” (Matthew 5:29). I mean, that’s crazy radical. He is saying, “Use a screwdriver and your eyeball comes out.” I mean, that’s crazy language, right? That’s about as violent as you can get, so go after lust that way. Now I got that as a young man and I think I did it. I’ve never committed fornication. I’ve never cheated on my wife. I fight any temptation to look at anything inappropriate and I fight with violence.

That was a given and I hope it’s a given in this room. That’s what he said. Do that. Better to go to heaven with one eye than to go to hell with two eyes. And you’re going to go to hell if you give into lust. That’s what he said. Why? Why did it take me until 2010, give or take, to learn you can do the same with self-pity? You can do the same with anger. You can do the same with sullenness. I had these habitual sins ruining my marriage for years and they were making life hard for me and for her. I had this passive notion about sanctification with regard to that kind of sin. I thought the only way you fought that kind of sin is by getting happy in Jesus and the expulsive power of a new affection pushes it out. It wasn’t working, whereas the Bible says that, and then it says, “Kill it.” Be killing sin or it will be killing you. Take the same screwdriver to your self-pity.

For some reason, in 2010, I thought, “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling” doesn’t just apply to lust.” Fear and trembling applies to when you walk in the house. Your wife and daughter are having a really happy time looking at some girl show on the computer and you came home expecting to be welcomed and treated with some acknowledgment that you’re there and have a pleasant evening together. And they barely look up. Guys, this is where the rubber meets the road in terms of ego and sin. I know the sequence of sins that follow at that moment — self-pity, anger, withdrawal, sullenness, and everything goes bad in the family. That’s my problem. That’s not their problem. That’s my problem.

So, I walk in, it happens, and I see it coming. It’s like lust. You see it coming. And I take hold of the sword of the Spirit and say, “You’re not going to win this one.” And I smile. Now you might think that’s fake. Well, it was a little bit. I smile. I greet them like everything’s just fine, even though they’re paying no attention to me at all. I go upstairs and I get down on my knees and I fight like hell to kill that sin. Actually, I fight like heaven to kill that sin. I fight until it’s dead. It’s dead. And I can go downstairs as a new man, loving my family and not feeling self-pity. It took me a long time. Now, that’s not just pastoring, but it really messed me up, I think, a lot. I hope I’m a better husband and a better father in the last 14 years or so than I was before. That’s one example of something that took me a long time to learn.

Beeke: My response is not going to be that dramatic, but it was good. It was very good what you said. I think that when you’re really a young minister and you’re with a lot of older ministers and you’re being watched and examined and feeling pressed into a certain mold, I think I was too concerned about myself and how I did. It was a huge relief to really break out of that and be more concerned about God’s glory. It wasn’t about how well I preached, but it was what the Lord did with that sermon in so and so’s life.

I’ve come to a greater appreciation over the years with the complexity of what God uses for the conversion of someone and their growth in grace. I’m just happy now to have a little place in the back of the watch as I was talking about. Maybe it’s this sermon, maybe it’s that book I wrote, or maybe it’s that conference I was at. It just had a little place to play in someone’s spiritual growth and I’m just very content with that. As you get older, you lose that sense of jealousy of others and you just feel more comfortable I think in your own skin to be who God wants you to be and use the gifts that God has given you and not worry about the gifts of someone else.

I remember when I was first married to Mary. I’m a very close friend of Sinclair Ferguson. One time we were sitting down and he had a book to write in two weeks. I said, “Two weeks? Weeks?” He said, “Weeks.” It was due to Zondervan. I said, “Well, how are you going to do it?” He said, “Well, I write one chapter a night. It doesn’t work for me to go over what I’ve written. So I just write one draft and then I send it off.” I said, “You’re going to write 14 chapters in two weeks?” He said, “Yeah.” So I came home to my wife and I said, “Wow. Can you imagine if I was Sinclair Ferguson how many books I could write?” And she said, “Honey, I think you better be content with the gifts God has given you.” Ouch. But she was so right. She said it so sweetly and mildly. Just be content. You pastors, be content in your own skin. Don’t try to use gifts God hasn’t given you, but do cultivate the gifts he has given you to the max. And then just be God-centered and try to focus on his glory and the salvation of souls and their growth in grace.

I have a little sign in my bathroom that says this, “A minister’s real wages are when he sees his people coming closer to Christ.” And that gives me more satisfaction than any paycheck or anything else. If I see someone growing in grace, oh it’s so satisfying. So, be more concerned about God’s glory and the welfare of souls, and less concerned about yourself. Just be faithful and do what you can do.

Helopoulos: That’s really good and it’s one of the things I appreciate most about both of you. You use your gifts where the Lord has placed you for the benefit of the body, the greater body, your local church, and you’re committed to it.

One of the things I’ve watched about both of you is that you’re willing to contend for the faith when it’s necessary in ways that are public, when it’s being assaulted, and yet you’re not contentious for the faith. We live in a day where people are trying to wrestle through that. I think pastors are more and more put in positions like that. John, I think about you and complementarianism. You felt like that was something that to be contended for in our day. You also focused on the new perspective on Paul. Joel, I think about you with assurance of salvation in your own context in the Dutch Church, seeing how that was affecting people in the Dutch Reformed world. You were contending for a right view.

How have you decided with the gifts you’ve been given when it is that you are to speak to something, contend for it in that kind of way, and then at other times decide, “No, I’m not going into that battle”? Some are always fighting and some are never willing to fight. If everyone loves you, there’s a problem. If everyone hates you, you’re a problem. It seems like you guys have done this well. How have you decided what to contend for and what not to?

Piper: As I’ve looked at the things that I’ve contended for — you mentioned two of them like complementarianism, justification, sovereignty of God, Reformed theology, the five points of Calvinism, and several others — I don’t think I operate from a set of principles on that. But when I step back and look, there are principles at work. To what degree is the authority of Scripture being undermined? To what degree is the gospel being compromised? To what degree is the nature of God being minimized or called into question? And to what degree is the imago dei being diminished? I say that because I’m a real hater of abortion. I will stand in front of Planned Parenthood in three weeks and lead in prayer. I hate killing children in the womb. I think it’s wicked. And I think, “Why do I feel so urgent about that?” I think it’s because God is the one who is knitting us together in our mother’s womb. This is his business to make images of himself like that. We better not intrude upon that. That’s really evil. So those are four categories — Scripture, God, gospel, image of God. To what degree is a false teaching starting to spread that is making those doctrines obscure, that is upsetting or ruining them?

And I think some of it is just subjective regarding what you love. I love the sovereignty of God. I became a Calvinist late — that is, I didn’t grow up with it. I would date my conversion to Calvinism in the fall of 1968. I was about 22 years old. Guys came to Fuller Seminary from Reformed schools and they were tired of Calvinism. They had it running out of their ears since they were six, and I was leaping for joy at the sovereignty of God in my salvation as I saw it in the Bible. To this day, I’ve never stopped leaping. I love sovereign grace. So I would go to the mat for that over and over again. I want to be a part of movements, schools, ministries, and conferences that highlight the absolute sovereignty of God’s grace and salvation. So I think what you love is a big piece of it.

Beeke: I agree with that answer. What you love and what you feel really passionate about and you feel the Lord has laid on your heart will kind of shape your ministry. You will preach the whole counsel of God if you’re a faithful minister and you’re exegeting through Bible books and you’ll do it with love and passion, but there are certain things that stand out especially with the passing of the years.

You mentioned the assurance of faith, I feel the same way about Reformed experiential preaching. When I was in an Eastern European country, I was assaulted and my hands were tied behind my back, I was tied around my ankles, and they put a rag in my mouth and tied me around my eyes. I was on the ground and they were running a knife up and down my back and they were shouting out that they were the mafia. People had just told me all day long that if you ever get in the hands of the mafia, you’re a dead man. I thought I was going to die.

Well, I found out in the end that they really weren’t the mafia and they took the keys out of my pocket, went to the seminary where I was teaching, stripped the seminary of all the computers, sold them on the black market, and left me alone. I finally worked myself free. I didn’t even pray for myself during those 45 minutes because I was sure I was dying. I was just praying for my wife and ministries and kids. But I had a light bulb moment when I sat up and actually was alive. I just said, “Lord, I vow that I will spend every moment of my waking life from here on to do what I was already doing but I will do it more intensely, to promote Reformed experiential preaching and teaching all around the world.”

That’s why I train men from all around the world. Everything in my ministry and my book ministry is channeled in that, much like John has the passion about delighting in God and God getting his most glory. It comes through in all his writings, and this comes through in all my writings and all my commitment. I want people to understand what it means. I think the joy of the Christian life becomes so much greater when you really experience the doctrines of grace and don’t just have them in your head. My focus is there. So I’m not really an apologetics guy, defending this or defending that all the time. But when push comes to shove, abortion is one thing I feel very strongly about. I preach very strongly against that. But I think you need to find the right balance for you as a minister and what God is calling you to.

Family worship is another big thing for me. I’ve preached on it in 50 different countries around the world. I just feel so strongly that we have to get back to the old family worship style where dads are speaking to their children every day, as they did in the Reformation and Puritan times, about the truths of God. If you call that apologetics in a way, I’m big on that. But I just don’t think it’s my business nor my gifting to get involved, for example, in other seminaries’ intramural debates. This seminary is pitting this against the seminary and people come up to me and say, “As a seminary president, what do you think of that?” I’m not going to enter into that. I’m going to stay above that fray, unless it’s a really heretical doctrine.

I’m going to put my energy, for the most part, into promoting positive things, especially where the church is not realizing its calling. I will speak out strongly against worldliness in churches because I think that’s a huge problem. When I have to preach a really warning sermon against a particular sin, I do it because I feel compelled to do it and I think I do it with all my heart, but afterwards I am just completely wiped out. I think you each have to find your own way as pastors and know yourself but also be faithful to God and what he’s calling you to do.

Piper: I want to just underline that. In your pulpit over time, you shouldn’t want to be known for being about controversy. It should be that your pulpit is about Christ, salvation, joy, heaven, and holiness. Having a robust sense of walking in hungry and walking out fed with the glories of the gospel and the glories of Christ can happen with sprinkled controversies. You do need to say things about the horrible things in the culture, but you don’t need for that to be the symphonic theme so that people say, “Oh, that’s the church where they’re always fighting somebody.” But rather let it be said, “That’s the church where they seem to be really happy in God, where they seem to love the glory of God.” But they know where you stand on just about everything.

I think it’s a mistake when churches and pastors are not clear where they stand on homosexuality, on transgenderism, on abortion, and on all kinds of things that come along in the culture, though they’ll change over time. But if it’s not plain what’s going to happen is that people are going to just start coming to church and want to know what you believe and that will breed a lukewarm Church in the long run that’s wishy-washy in its stands and its doctrines. But in order to accomplish that you really don’t have to harp on those things, you don’t. You can harp on God and then people will feel, “This church is mainly about Christ and his greatness, about the gospel and its greatness, about God and his greatness, about mission and its greatness, and I know exactly where they stand on biblical issues.”

Helopoulos: That’s really helpful. Let’s continue along that line of thought. You both have pastored the same church for decades and have, by all accounting as we can see this side of heaven, has remained effective for all those decades. No doubt there are ups and downs and so there are in any church. But it’s odd for a pastor in our day and age to remain in a church for 30 or 40 years. What else would be an encouragement to us? Should more men be aimed at having a long-term ministry in the same place? If so, what are some things that would help to maintain having an effective ministry in the same place for a long time?

Beeke: I actually have a 150-page paperback book right now that’s 95 percent done and it’s called Persevering in Ministry. Two chapters are on the subject of maintaining long-term ministry. There are so many things to say on this but one thing I want to get out to you men is this. There’s an old Dutch saying that the first year is a honeymoon year, in years two and three people actually start to hear what you’re saying, and years four through five or maybe six are the years where you have a lot of kickback and trials, which is exactly when many ministers jump ship and go to another church. But what you want to do is you want to stay the course. You don’t want to be a hireling that flees the sheep at that point. You want to stay the course beyond that. And you get to years seven, eight, and nine, the people that are really opposed to your ministry will leave at that point because they’ll say, “This guy is never going anywhere so we’re going.” Don’t get me wrong. I always hate to see my sheep leave, but sometimes when you’re in long-term ministry (year 10 and forward) you have a little skirmish now and then, but there’s stability in the church. You’ve been there and you’ve been feeding them and the vast bulk of the people, 95 percent or more now, are in full harmony with what you’re teaching and you’re not going anywhere.

These are the most fruitful years where you’re training their children and their grandchildren. There’s just a beauty about long-term ministry where you’re a father figure in the congregation. When we sing the Psalter before I start preaching, I often just kind of look around and say, “Oh, there’s that man I helped 22 years ago when his marriage was in trouble. And there’s that woman right now who has secret problems with her husband and I’ve been working with them. There’s that young person who I worked with in getting off of pornography.” I just let all these needs and all these experiences just flow over me as I begin to preach. And then it’s like I’m preaching to my own family. It’s so different from preaching at a conference or preaching in a church you’ve only been in two or three years.

So, I think there are huge advantages in long-term ministry, provided you stay fresh and you keep studying and you keep bringing new things and old from the pulpit. If you just lean on the old barrel of sermons, of course, it’s going to run dry and you’re going to flounder. But if you can stay fresh, long-term ministry — all things being equal — is God’s normal way, I think, of building up a flock.

Piper: God wrote a book. Do any of you believe that? If that’s true, if the creator of the universe, who upholds everything by the word of his power is taking this whole history to a conclusion where you’ll either be infinitely happy with him forever or you’ll suffer forever, and he tells us all about that in the Bible, then it is inexhaustible. So staying fresh is right here. Maybe I would just say those two things. Believing the Bible and opening it to your people week in, week out means that you have something glorious to say every week. I have never walked into the pulpit not excited about what I have to say, including tomorrow night. We have a Book.

Number two, feed yourself on this Book. It’s what you were talking about earlier. You must stay alive. The number one task is to get up and get happy in Jesus every morning, as George Müller said. Get up and get happy in Jesus every morning because your people need your happiness in Jesus. The last thing I would say is that once you’ve given 10 years to a church and you finally persuaded most of the leaders about Reformed theology — and you finally in a baptist church created something called elders — and you’ve built something amazing and somebody invites you to a church that’s 10,000 people bigger, you say, “I wouldn’t want to start this over again. Are you kidding me? This has been hard work for 10 years and we’re here. We’re here. Now we can finally do something together.”

Beeke: But it’s also true that when you have a built-up relationship for many years and you really love your people, when you get a call from another church, you pray about it, but you just say, “I can’t leave these people. There’s too much invested. There’s too much love here. I just can’t leave them. How can I leave all these different people I’ve helped pastorally and preached to for all these years? And I see them growing. I just can’t leave.” So, the old Dutch style was when you accept a call to another church, you have to know a loosening from your present church and a bonding to the other church. And when you’re in a church for a long time, loosening from that church is very difficult. I’m not saying it’s impossible. I’m not saying God won’t call you to another church. But then you have to know that loosening. You don’t just say, “Oh, well, I’ve been here a number of years and the weather is better over there. I’m going to be a little closer to my kids so I’m going to go there.” No, you have to have a divine sense of calling to leave a church that you’ve shepherded for so long.

Helopoulos: Incredibly helpful. A lot of wisdom has been shared this afternoon. We appreciate it and appreciate your ministries.