My Reaction to Hearing Piper's Together for the Gospel Talk

I have to admit that today, when I played the first of my T4G MP3 downloads, the tears started before Piper had even begun to speak. Even Mahaney’s introduction seemed soaked in the Holy Presence of the Spirit of God. I have shared others’ notes and reactions to Piper at T4G in another post, but here are some quotes that stood out to me in addition to some of the ones I have already reported.

First of all, right at the beginning Piper speaks of how, when George Whitfield saw the state of the church in his day, he “summoned by prayer preachers into existence” with these words, which Piper says he can’t improve upon:

“O that we shall see the great Head of the Church once more raise up unto Himself certain young men whom He may use in this glorious employ. And what manner of men will they be? Men mighty in the Scriptures, their lives dominated by a sense of the greatness, the majesty, and the holiness of God, and their minds and hearts aglow with the great truths of the doctrines of grace.

They will be men who have learned what it is to die to self, to human aims and personal ambitions; men who are willing to be fools for Christ’s sake, who will bear reproach and falsehood, who will labour and suffer, and whose supreme desire will be, not to gain earth’s accolades, but to win the Master’s approbation when they shall appear before His awesome judgment seat.

They will be men who will preach with broken hearts and tear-filled eyes and upon whose ministries God will grant an extraordinary effusion of the Holy Spirit, who will witness signs and wonders following and the transformation of multitudes of lives.

The emphasis is mine, and perhaps I shouldn’t be too surprised that others have missed the last paragraph that Piper read out of this fantastic quote – let’s not assume that omission was deliberate, of course, as writing down something when you are listening is very hard indeed!

But let’s make sure that we don’t miss the sentiment of what Piper is saying and what his heroes Lloyd-Jones and Whitfield also said! We need an “extraordinary effusion of the Holy Spirit“!

Interestingly for me in light of my promotion of Martyn Lloyd-Jones on this blog, Piper clearly said in his sermon when speaking of the kind of preacher Whitfield was looking for, “In the last century the man who embodied it best was Martyn Lloyd-Jones.”

Piper’s summary of what he is looking for is “broken-hearted, Bible-saturated preachers.” This explains why, when he says things like “Jesus Christ lays absolute claim on planet earth” and “bow or burn,” the atmosphere that comes across is one of love and concern, not arrogance and disdain. This kind of genuine passion can only be birthed in prayer.

Piper is clear that he is looking for something from God to come to change the preacher – as he puts it, there is a “mantle that turns talkers into preachers”.

For Piper that mantle is in part about experiencing and treasuring Christ himself; he bemoans the fact that “most lives look like we treasure the world,” and goes so far as to say that “every sin flows from a failure to treasure God’s glory above all things.”

I especially liked his explanations of those Bible words for what happens to us in salvation:

God is now only merciful to you and never wrathful that’s called propitiation.
You are now counted righteous in Christ that’s called justification.
You are now freed from the guilt and power of sin that’s called redemption.
You are now positionally and progressively holy we call that sanctification.

When we hear preaching like this, it is indeed important that as preachers we recognise that we are all alike in this age in being very far from hitting the mark of preaching as we ought to.

I do honestly believe that if we were able to get our preaching right we would have nothing short of a revival. As I have said before, there is a kind of preaching that is of such a kind that many will be saved. But what kind is that? Is it just intellectual preaching? Emotionally stimulating preaching? Engaging preaching? No, it is more than that- as we said at the beginning – it is preaching that is anointed by the Holy Spirit.

Thus, we should not merely think, “I must improve my technique” or “I must study more” or even “I must earn it by my prayers“. Instead we must learn, improve, study, and pray, but in all that, cast ourselves on the sovereign kindness of God. There must be a brokeness and an earnestness that says I cannot bear to continue to preach unless you, God, come and own it and lives are transformed and eternal destinies changed!

As Piper himself put it in the panel discussion afterwards “The difference between an authentic, feeling Christian and a preacher is that a preacher must have the gift of contagion. The main battle is not fought in the pulpit, it happens as you take hold on Christ and say, I’ve got to have You! I can’t do this without You! I can’t raise people from the dead!”