The Bible: Kindling for Christian Hedonism (part 1)
a sermon by John Piper given October 30, 1983

Psalm 19:7-11

The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul;
the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple;
the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart;
the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes;
the fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever;
the ordinances of the Lord are true, and righteous altogether.
More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold;
sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb.

Moreover by them is thy servant warned;
in keeping them there is great reward.

Christian Hedonism is very much aware that every day with Jesus is not "sweeter than the day before." Some days with Jesus our disposition is as sour as raw persimmons. Some days with Jesus we are so sad we feel our heart will break open. Some days with Jesus fear turns us into a knot of nerve ends. Some days with Jesus we are so depressed and discouraged that between the garage and the house we just want to sit down on the grass and cry. Every day with Jesus is not sweeter than the day before. We know it from experience and we know it from scripture. For the text says (Psalm 19:7), "The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul." If every day with Jesus is sweeter than the day before, we wouldn't need to be revived.

The reason David praised God with the words, "He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul," is because he had bad days. There were days when his soul needed to be restored. It's the same phrase used in Psalm 19:7 -- "the law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul." Normal Christian life is a repeated process of restoration and renewal. Our joy is not static. It fluctuates with real life. It is as vulnerable to Satan's attacks as a Lebanese marine compound to a suicide bomber. When Paul says in 2 Corinthians 1:24, "Not that we lord it over your faith but we are workers with you for your joy," we should emphasize it this way: "We are workers with you for your joy." The preservation of our joy in God takes work. It is a fight. Our adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, and he has an insatiable appetite to destroy one thing: the joy of faith. But the Holy Spirit has given us a shield called faith and a sword called the word of God and a power called prayer to defend and extend our joy. Or, to change the image, when Satan huffs and puffs and tries to blow out the flame of your joy, you have an endless supply of kindling in the word of God. And even though there are days when we feel that every cinder in our soul is cold, yet if we crawl to the word of God and cry out for ears to hear, the cold ashes will be lifted and the tiny spark of life will be fanned, because, "The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul." The Bible is the kindling of Christian Hedonism.

My aim this morning is to motivate you to wear the sword of the Spirit, the word of God, and to wield it for the preservation of your joy in God. There are three steps we need to climb together. First, we need to know why we accept the Bible as the word of God. Almost everybody in the world would agree that if the one and true God has spoken then there will be no lasting happiness for people who ignore his word. But very few people really believe that the Bible is the word of the living God. Nor should they believe it without sufficient reasons. Second, we need to see some encouraging examples of how the Bible kindles and preserves our joy. Finally, we need to hear a practical challenge to renew our daily meditation in the word of God, and to bind that sword so close around our waist that we are never without it.

1) In the limitations of time that we have, perhaps the best way to take the first step is for me to commend to you why I accept the Bible as the word of God. The foundation of my confidence is Jesus Christ. You don't need to believe first that the Bible is infallible in order to know that it presents you with a historical person of incomparable qualities. The possibility that the historical Jesus was a con artist or a lunatic is to me so remote that I am drawn to confess that he is true. His claims are not the propaganda of a deceiver or the presumption of a schizophrenic. He speaks with authority, forgives sin, heals the sick, casts out demons, penetrates the hearts of his opponents, loves his enemies, dies for sinners and leaves behind an empty grave, not because he pulled the wool over the eyes of the world but because he is the ever-living Son of God who came to save the world. He has won my trust through his words and deeds.

From Jesus I move backward to the Old Testament and forward to the New Testament. All four gospels present different evidence that Jesus considered the Old Testament to be the word of God. In Matthew 5:17 Jesus says he came not to abolish but to fulfill the law and the prophets and in Matthew 22:29 he says that the Sadducees err because they don't know the scriptures. In Mark 7:8-9 Jesus contrasts man-made traditions with the commandment of God in the Old Testament. In Luke 24:44 he tells the disciples that everything written about him in the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms must be fulfilled. And in John 10:35 he said simply, "Scripture cannot be broken." Therefore, I read the Old Testament as the word of God because Jesus did.

But Jesus did not stay on earth to endorse the New Testament. My confidence in the New Testament as God's word rests on a group of observations which taken together provide a reasonable ground of confidence. 1) Jesus chose twelve apostles to be his authoritative representatives in founding the church. He promised them at the end of his life, "The Holy Spirit … will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said" (John 14:26; 16:13). 2) Then the apostle Paul, whose stunning conversion from a life of murdering Christians to making Christians demands some special explanation, explains that he (and the other apostles) have been commissioned by the risen Christ to preach "in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit" (I Cor. 2:13). Christ's prediction is being fulfilled through this inspiration. 3) Peter confirms this in 2 Peter 3:16 by putting Paul's writings in the same category with the inspired (2 Peter 1:21) Old Testament writings. 4) All the New Testament writings come from those earliest days of promised special revelation and were written by the apostles and their close associates. 5) The message of these books has the ring of truth because it makes sense out of so much reality. The message of God's holiness and our guilt on the one hand and Christ's death and resurrection as our only hope on the other hand -- that message fits the reality we see and the hope we long for and don't see. 6) Finally, as the Baptist Catechism says, "The Bible evidences itself to be God's word by … its power to convert sinners and edify saints."

For these reasons, when I read the Old and New Testaments I read them as the word of God. God is not silent in my life. He is uncomfortably vocal and precise about all kinds of things. I count it as a singular act of grace on his part that he has appointed for me that my life work is to understand his word and teach his church. When the Bible speaks God speaks. Which means that the things said about the word of God in the Bible apply to the Bible. And I have been simply overwhelmed in preparing for this message by how much the Bible has to say about the value of the word of God. What a treasure we have in the very words of God! "More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold, sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb" (Psalm 19:10).

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