The Supremacy of God in Preaching

by John Piper

According to Warren Wiersbe, "The Supremacy of God in Preaching" "calls us back to a biblical standard for preaching, a standard exemplified by many of the pulpit giants of the past, especially Jonathan Edwards and Charles Spurgeon." This newly revised edition is an essential guide for preachers who want to stir the embers of revival. Piper focuses his study on the example of Jonathan Edwards as an illustration of a leader who submitted to God.

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Paperback, 121 pages

Published February 1st 2004 by Baker Books (first published 1990)

tags: theology, communication, christianity, language, church, religion, leadership, god, ecclesiology, nonfiction, christian

Book Quotes

“May the pulpits of the land ring with exposition of the Word of God and exultation in the God of the Word.”

― John Piper

“The cross witnesses to the infinite worth of God and the infinite outrage of sin.”

― John Piper

“Once, while visiting the continent, Spurgeon was asked about the secret of his ministry. After a moment s pause Mr. Spurgeon said, “My people pray for me.”

― John Piper

“Edwards was persuaded from Scripture that “gracious affections do not tend to make men bold, forward, noisy, and boisterous; but rather to speak trembling.”41 The eye of divine blessing is upon the meek and trembling: “This is the one to whom I will look [says the Lord]: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word” (Isa. 66:2).”

― John Piper

“The spirit we long to see in our people must be in ourselves first. But that will never happen until, as Edwards says, we know our own emptiness and helplessness and terrible sinfulness. Edwards lived in a kind of spiraling oscillation between humiliation for his sin and exultation in his Savior. He describes his experience like this: Often since I lived in this town, I have had very affecting views of my own sinfulness and vileness; very frequently to such a degree as to hold me in a kind of loud weeping, sometimes for a considerable time together; so that I have often been forced to shut myself up.43 It is not hard to imagine the depth of earnestness that this kind of experience brought to the preaching of God’s Word. But of course one is on the precipice of despair when one focuses only on sin. This was not Edwards’s aim nor his experience. For him there was a response to guilt that made it an intensely evangelical and liberating experience: I love to think of coming to Christ, to receive salvation of him, poor in spirit, and quite empty of self, humbly exalting him alone; cut off entirely from my own root, in order to grow into, and out of Christ; to have God in Christ be my all in all.44”

― John Piper

“The second clarification is that God’s great end—grand design—in creation is not only to glorify himself but to communicate himself. This has always been implicit in my understanding of how God is glorified by our being satisfied in him, but it has become clearer to me that God’s self-glorification is properly emphasized when we keep it connected to his self-communication. God’s end in the creation of the world consists in these two things, viz. to communicate himself and to glorify himself. God created the world to communicate himself, not to receive anything.6 These two things ought [not] to be separated when we speak of God’s end in the creation of the world. . . . Indeed, God’s communicating himself and glorifying [himself] ought not to be looked upon as though they were two distinct ends, but as what together makes one last end, as glorifying God and enjoying [God] make one chief end of man. For God glorifies himself in communicating himself, and he communicates himself in glorifying himself.7 The reason this clarification matters is that it protects God’s self-glorification from being disconnected with his self-giving. Almost no one finds fault with saying, “God gives himself to us.” Few people find fault with saying, “God gives himself to us for our enjoyment.” But many people find fault with saying, “God glorifies himself.” Nevertheless, it is clear from the whole scope of Scripture that he does.8”

― John Piper

“In all his self-glorifying acts in the world, God is revealing and giving himself to all who will receive him as their portion and their treasure. His self-glorifying is not only a “show,” but a gift of himself.”

― John Piper

“Commenting on John 17:20, Calvin wrote, Woe to the Papists, whose faith is so far removed from this rule, that they are not ashamed to vomit out this horrid blasphemy, that there is nothing in Scripture but what is ambiguous, and may be turned in a variety of ways. The tradition of the Church is therefore their only authoritative guide to what they shall believe. But let us remember that the Son of God, who alone is competent to judge, does not approve of any other faith than that which is drawn from the doctrine of the apostles, and sure information of that doctrine will be found no where else than in their writings.1”

― John Piper

“One of the main points of this book is that people are starving for the grandeur of God. Most of them don’t know that this is what their hearts are longing for. It is the great work of the preacher to show them the greatness of God, Christ, salvation, life, death, heaven, hell, and the ways of God in the world. It is our job to help them see that their addiction to entertainment is like addiction to sugar. It gives ever-shorter highs and then lets you fall lower and lower. But a steady diet of Bible-saturated truth and wonder enlarges the soul and strengthens the heart, and makes Jesus precious beyond words.”

― John Piper

“became clear to me, as never before, that as we think seriously about contextualizing the message of the Bible we must also labor to bring about, in the minds of our listeners, conceptual categories that may be missing from their mental framework. It may be that if we only use the thought structures our audience already has, some crucial biblical truths may remain unintelligible, no matter how much contextualizing we do. This work of concept creation is harder than contextualization, but just as important. We must pray and preach so that a new mental framework is created for seeing the world. Ultimately, this is not our doing. God must do it. The categories that make the biblical message look foolish are deeply rooted in sinful human nature.”

― John Piper

“On July 30, 1723, when he was nineteen years old, Edwards wrote in his diary, “I have concluded to endeavor to work myself into duties by searching and tracing back all the real reasons why I do them not, and narrowly searching out all the subtle subterfuges of my thoughts.” A week later he wrote, “Very much convinced of the extraordinary deceitfulness of the heart, and how exceedingly… appetite blinds the mind, and brings it into entire subjection.”

― John Piper

topics: Human Heart, Introspection, Sin

“If you endeavor to bring a holy hush upon your people in a worship service, you can be assured that someone will say that the atmosphere is unfriendly or cold. All that many people can imagine is that the absence of chatter would mean the presence of stiffness and awkwardness and unfriendliness. Since they have little or no experience of the deep gladness of momentous moments of gravity, they strive for gladness the only way they know how—by being lighthearted and chipper and talkative.”

― John Piper

“So in a phrase, preaching is expository exultation. In conclusion, then, the reason that preaching is so essential to the corporate worship of the church is that it is uniquely suited to feed both understanding and feeling. It is uniquely suited to waken seeing God and savoring God. God has ordained that the Word of God come in a form that teaches the mind and reaches the heart.”

― John Piper

“Younger people today don’t get fired up about denominations and agencies. They get fired up about the greatness of a global God and about the unstoppable purpose of a sovereign King. The first great missionary said, “We have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations” (Rom. 1:5). Missions is for the sake of the name of God. It flows from a love for God’s glory and for the honor of his reputation. It is an answer to the prayer, “Hallowed be thy name!”

― John Piper

“The good tidings of the preacher, the peace and salvation that he publishes, are boiled down into one sentence: “Your God reigns!” Cotton Mather applies this, with full justification, to the preacher: “The great design . . . of a Christian preacher [is] to restore the throne and dominion of God in the souls of men.”

― John Piper

“The keynote in the mouth of every prophet-preacher, whether in Isaiah’s day or Jesus’s day or our day, is “Your God reigns!” God is the king of the universe. He has absolute Creator rights over this world and everyone in it. But there is rebellion and mutiny on all sides, and his authority is scorned by millions. So the Lord sends preachers into the world to cry out that God reigns, that he will not suffer his glory to be scorned indefinitely, that he will vindicate his name in great and terrible wrath, but that for now a full and free amnesty is offered to all the rebel subjects who will turn from their rebellion, call on him for mercy, bow before his throne, and swear allegiance and fealty to him forever. The amnesty is signed in the blood of his Son.”

― John Piper

“So we can go deeper than Mather’s point. Behind God’s commitment to reign as king is the deeper foundational commitment that his glory will one day fill the earth (Num. 14:21; Ps. 57:5; 72:19; Isa. 11:9; Hab. 2:14).”

― John Piper

John Piper

John Piper (1946 - Present)

is a Calvinistic Baptist Christian preacher and author currently serving as Pastor for Preaching and Vision of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His books include ECPA Christian Book Award winners Spectacular Sins, What Jesus Demands from the World, Pierced by the Word, and God's Passion for His Glory, and bestsellers Don't Waste Your Life and The Passion of Jesus Christ. The evangelical organization Desiring God is named for his book Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist (1986).

In 1980, after what he described as an "irresistible call of the Lord to preach", Piper became Pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he has been ministering ever since. Piper hit the evangelical scene after the publication of his book Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist (1986) and has continued to publish dozens of other books further articulating this theological perspective. In 1994, he founded Desiring God Ministries, which provides all of Piper's sermons and articles from the past three decades, and most of his books online free of charge, as well as offering for sale books, CDs, and DVDs and regularly hosting conferences.

John Stephen Piper is a Reformed and Baptist theologian, preacher, and author, currently serving as Pastor for Preaching and Vision of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is the author of numerous books.

Piper's motto in ministry, preaching, and teaching is: "God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him." He calls those who live out this motto Christian Hedonists. Piper places a heavy emphasis on the objective and absolute nature of truth and is confident in the Christian's ability to grasp that truth through the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
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John Piper

John Piper (1946 - Present)

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