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Archive for the ‘Sermons’ Category

From the archives: Suffering Patiently

Posted in Quotes, Scripture, Sermons on July 6, 2011| 1 Comment »

Pastor John has clearly preached the sovereignty of God over all things for a long time.  In this sermon from 1990, Is the Kingdom Present or Future, Pastor John helps us see the present and future hope in the kingdom of God:

Is the kingdom of God a future reality to be hoped for or a present reality to experience now? That’s today’s question. The answer is that it is partly present and partly future. Many of its blessings are here to be enjoyed now; but many of them are not yet here. Some of its power is available now but not all of it. Some of the curse and misery of this old age can be overcome now by the presence of the kingdom. But some of it cannot be. The decisive battle against sin and Satan and sickness and death has been fought and won by the King in his death and resurrection, but the war is not over. Sin must be fought, Satan must be resisted, sickness must be prayed over and groaned under (Romans 8:23), and death must be endured until the second coming of the King and the consummation of the kingdom.

Now I want you to see this clearly in the New Testament because it is extremely important for your faith. It will inspire you with hope that there is a great and glorious future yet in store for all believers. It will deepen your confidence that the glory of your future in the kingdom is secured by precious past down payments of that very kingdom (Romans 8:32!). It will give you a handle on why so much amazing kingdom power is being unleashed in the world, and yet why so much of sin and Satan and sickness and suffering remains. If you get a handle on the presence and the future of the kingdom of God, you will find yourself on a pathway of spiritual power, which might include the power to perform signs, and will definitely include the equally remarkable power to suffer patiently the cross of grief and pain (Colossians 1:11).

John Piper, Is the Kingdom Present or Future, February 4, 1990.

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Tell of his salvation from day to day

Posted in commentary, Sermons on June 10, 2011| 1 Comment »

I’ve been very grateful in his sermons on John 9 that Pastor John has pointed out that it can be years before we see God’s purposeful hand in disability, even as Christians.  I have found that personally helpful and I have heard from others who agree.

Isn’t it amazing that each kind of story about God’s call on people’s lives has its own way of making much of God!

  • My heart sings when a brand-new dad is holding on to the promises of God and trusting that God is still for him.
  • I rejoice at stories similar to mine – a time of intense anger and bitterness toward God, and God turning hearts around.
  • I marvel at the perseverance of saints, sometimes praying for decades for family members or friends before God moves to make spiritually blind eyes to see and dead hearts to beat.

I love truly heroic stories of God-centered people who, from the beginning to the end of their lives, are faithful to God and persevere in the most difficult of circumstances.  God is glorified in those lives!

But that isn’t my story, obviously – and God is still glorified!

I’m glad God gets glory that way.  There is definitely no mistaking that God is the primary and decisive actor!  That he alone is good – and strong.  That he gives the gift of being clothed in the righteousness of Jesus Christ through absolutely no merit on the part of the recipient – in fact, the receiver is constantly pushing him away until God moves to make blind eyes see.

Please, tell your story to somebody today.

Oh sing to the Lord a new song;
sing to the Lord, all the earth!
Sing to the Lord, bless his name;
tell of his salvation from day to day.
Declare his glory among the nations,
his marvelous works among all the peoples!
Psalm 96:1-3

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Enjoy this Jesus with me!

Posted in Sermons on June 9, 2011| Leave a Comment »

I’ve been enjoying, again, how Pastor John helps me see Jesus more clearly through his sermon on John 9, The Works of God and the Worship of Jesus.

And I’ve been lingering over two verses from the past two sermons, along with two verses from John 5:

He saw a man blind from birth.  John 9:1b

Jesus heard that they had cast him out, and having found him. .  . John 9:35a

When Jesus saw him lying there (an ‘invalid’ for 38 years) . . . John 5:6a

Afterward Jesus found him (now healed!) in the temple. . . John 5:14a.

Jesus sees us.  Jesus finds us.

Jesus saves us!

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Courageous – and gifted

Posted in Sermons on June 7, 2011| 1 Comment »

Pastor John’s second sermon on John 9 has been posted, The Works of God and the Worship of Jesus.

It is rich!

I nearly laughed out loud with delight when he made the connection between Nicodemus and the man-born-blind’s parents – what a wonderful, surprising, helpful insight (yes, that is an intentional teaser to encourage you to listen to it!).

Pastor John also pointed out the newly-sighted man’s courage in the face of questions and suspicion.  It is remarkable how this man responded!

It is particularly remarkable because he would not have been educated to develop skills of argumentation and logic.  Yet it appears he not only understood where arguments were going but how to respond for greatest impact.  The man has gifts to go along with his boldness!

It is a reminder to me that access to church is not our end goal for our disability ministry.  Access is a good thing, of course!  But it also includes preparing people to use the gifts God has given them to proclaim his name throughout the world.  All people, those who live with blindness or mobility issues or behavioral disorders or severe cognitive impairment or whatever else God has purposed for his glory and for our good.

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Just a reminder about who first saw the man born blind.

Posted in Sermons on June 6, 2011| Leave a Comment »

A good reminder about Jesus from David Platt, author of Radical.

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“He is a miracle waiting to happen” – John MacArthur

Posted in commentary, Scripture, Sermons on June 4, 2011| Leave a Comment »

I like John MacArthur a great deal and have learned much from him.  But I was not really reading for insight and new understanding as I recently went over his first sermon on John 9:1-12.  I was getting rather grumpy about the whole thing as I found more things with which to disagree – poor word choice here, bad example there.

God kindly let a few paragraphs of Pastor MacArthur’s sermon just blow me away and show me what was going on in my own heart!  Emphases in bold are mine:

Sovereign grace dominates this whole miracle. It isn’t this man running to Jesus saying, “Oh! Oh! Oh! Heal me, heal me!” No, Jesus saw him, and see that’s the way sovereign grace is, isn’t it? It’s Christ seeking us. We could not see Him except He saw us. We are blind, we’re absolutely blind. We have no capacity to see God. We have no capacity to see Jesus Christ. We are incapacitated, we are stone blind, spiritually speaking. We can’t see. . .

He’s not blind because of sin, this man is a prepared vessel, he is a miracle waiting to happen. Kind of exciting, isn’t it? He was born blind for one reason, so God’s glory could be seen in this healing by Jesus Christ. That’s why He was born blind…for the glory of God…sometimes is why suffering comes. . .

Even affliction can be for the glory of God. All these things can happen for the glory of God and this was a prepared vessel, a miracle waiting to happen. This was a blind beggar sitting at a gate waiting for the time planned in eternity past that Jesus would pass by and manifest His glory by touching his eyes so he could see. Fantastic truth. . .

And you know what happens when Christ turns on the lights in your soul? All of a sudden truth becomes recognizable, doesn’t it? You know the truth. All of a sudden love is seen, peace is beheld, glory is fully expressed. God becomes visible in the sense of focus. Christ becomes real. The eye of faith sees and understands and the light dawns. And to this blind beggar He gave both, physical sight and spiritual sight.

Why did He do it? What was the purpose? The purpose of it was for the glory of God. 

John MacArthur, Jesus Opens Blind Eyes, December 13, 1970.

I still would have preferred he handled some things differently – but he certainly hit the central theme in a helpful way!  I’m grateful God didn’t let me go through this entire sermon with a grumbling spirit, but let truth shine very brightly to drive my self-righteous, darkness-enjoying, man-centered sin away.

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“But what should I say?”

Posted in commentary, Sermons on May 26, 2011| 2 Comments »

Pastor John got it right when he pleaded with the congregation to see people with disabilities in his sermon, Why Was This Child Born Blind:

This is our natural reflex—see and avoid. But we are not natural people. We are followers of Jesus. We have the Spirit of Jesus in our hearts. We have been seen and touched in all our brokenness by an attentive, merciful Savior.

If you want to be one of the most remarkable kinds of human beings on the planet—a Jesus kind—see people with disabilities.

But he didn’t end there!

See them. And move toward them. God will show you what to say.

I need to hear that!  I usually don’t know what to say or do when encountering a new person with a disability. What should I say, or not say.  I don’t want to offend; it really would be easier just to avoid!

In fact, I think I have more to fear than ‘normal’ people because I remember when I looked for reasons to be offended at the slightest, most subtle word or look from another person regarding my son or his disability.  Depending on my mood, I might decide to take that person apart rhetorically.  And this was after we had returned to church – I still harbored a lot of pain and distrust that I was ready to spill out on people in harmful ways.

Then one day a little old saint, using terms for disabilities she must have learned in the 1930’s and 40’s that we now consider offensive, communicated such tender affections for me and for my son that God quite literally wiped away the bitter heart and biting, sarcastic tongue I used in those situations.  I remember thinking, IN THAT MOMENT, this is strange; why am I not angry about her words?  God did that for both of us.

I have also lashed out at people in evil, vile ways, looking to make people hurt as much as I did.  I’m guessing those folks walked away not thinking they had made a positive difference, maybe even questioning why God had prompted them to talk with me in the first place.  And God used those moments as well, eventually breaking me of my pride and self-righteousness and giving me a heart that wanted to trust him and not do things like that anymore.

My point is simply this: God is not limited in any way by what we know or don’t know or even the words we use.  Nor does he say it will end in ‘success’ when we step out in faith to pursue the good of others.  Jesus did that and they killed him.

That old saint, in faith, pursued me with affection and God protected her and blessed me.  Others were rhetorically punched in the nose.  Both bring glory to God.

And Pastor John has also taught us what to do.  Simply ask, “Jesus, help me.”  Then move.

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“Why was this child born blind?” Countering an objection to the sovereignty of God

Posted in Quotes, Sermons on May 25, 2011| 1 Comment »

In his sermon, Why Was This Child Born Blind?, Pastor John anticipates an objection:

Let me address an objection at this point. There are some pastors and teachers who dislike intensely the idea that God might will that a child be born blind so that some purpose of God might be achieved. One of the ways they try to escape the teaching of this text is to say that Jesus is pointing to the result of the blindness, not the purpose of the blindness.

Pastor John is only scratching the surface of the objection some will make.  For those of us in God-centered, Bible-saturated churches, the idea that God isn’t purposeful about everything is astonishing.  We might not be ready for the not-so-subtle shift of the argument away from purpose.

Yet we should be ready.  There are scholars who take a run at finding new meanings by changing the punctuation.  The influence of these arguments then play out in other arenas, like youtube preachers who think ‘the works of God’ sounds more like the works of the devil.

Pastor John helps us read the Bible more carefully through his three responses:

1.  Pastor John points out the importance of actually reading what is happening, in this case, what are the disciples really asking Jesus to answer, and is his answer consistent with their question?

One is that the disciples are asking for an explanation of the blindness, and Jesus’ answer is given as an explanation of the blindness.

2.  Pastor John reminds us about who God is in terms of his foreknowledge and control:

God knows all things. He knows exactly what is happening in the moment of conception. . . If God foresees and permits a conception that he knows will produce blindness, he has reasons for this permission. And those reasons are his purposes. His designs. His plans. God never has met a child from whom he had no plan. There are no accidents in God’s mind or hands.

3.  Finally, Pastor John uses the Bible to interpret the Bible:

And third, any attempt to deny God’s sovereign, wise, purposeful control over conception and birth has a head-on collision with Exodus 4:11 and Psalm 139:13.  “The Lord said to Moses, ‘Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?’” “You formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.”

The only thing I would add to number 3 is that God is directly speaking to the issue of disability in Exodus 4:11, and does so again in John 9:3.

We should learn this lesson as best we can so that we can be prepared when objections are raised to God’s sovereignty over disability.  I’ve read various articles trying to reinterpret Exodus 4:11 and Psalm 139.  But the strongest objections typically come against John 9:3, Mark 2 (the healing of the paralytic) and John 5:14.

I’m grateful Pastor John continues to lead us in how to read the Bible carefully for ourselves as we seek to understand more about God and his incredible purposes in his creation.  And that, obviously, includes disability.

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The sermon has been posted: Why was this child born blind?

Posted in Sermons on May 24, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Pastor John’s sermon has been posted here:  Why Was This Child Born Blind?  

If you have the time, I would recommend reading it as well.  There are some really important things Pastor John included that I’ll highlight over the next couple of days, Lord willing.

Here’s how it begins, emphases mine:

One of the reasons I believe the Bible and love the Bible is because it deals with the hardest issues in life. It doesn’t sweep painful things under the rug—or complex things or confusing things or provoking things or shocking things or controversial things. In fact, Jesus sometimes went out of his way to create controversy with the Pharisees so that more truth about himself and about unbelief would come out, so that we could be warned by examples of hardness and wooed by images of his glory.

I am so grateful my pastors prepare me for hard things – not just to persevere, but to live with expectancy at what God is doing for his glory and for my good!

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Sermon: Why was this man born blind?

Posted in Sermons on May 23, 2011| 3 Comments »

Pastor John’s opening sermon on John 9 will be posted later today at Desiring God.  Yes, I recommend it!

Pastor John said those of us connected to disability would know what he was going to say, and on the whole he was right.

That doesn’t mean it was old and boring – oh, on the contrary!  What life, what hope!

After some opening remarks, Pastor John lingered over verse one:  As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth.

JESUS SAW A MAN!  That little phrase means so much to me.

Jesus sees us.  And because he sees us, we get to see him.

Does that feel like good news to you?

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