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It is possible to live in an evangelical, Bible-believing, Bible-loving world and never hear the criticism of the Bible that is commonplace in university religion departments around the country and in the classrooms of many mainline churches. I lived outside this evangelical world for three years in Germany and was struck at how bold the criticisms could be. I recall in one seminar, a group of scholars were discussing the Psalms, and someone quoted a particular Psalm to address the issue at hand, and a very emotional scholar across the table said, "Das ist doch ein Pharisäer Psalm!" "That's a Pharisee psalm," meaning, this psalm teaches the kind of legalism that characterized the Pharisees and can't be used as a basis for truth.
It seems wise to me, as one of your shepherds charged to guard you from false teaching, that I should make you aware that many critical scholars believe that not only did John create dialogues that Jesus never spoke, but in the process he distorted and indeed falsified what Jesus actually taught. The most burning issue for these scholars is what they would call John's heated anti-Semitism—that the author (usually not the apostle John) is writing from a later time when the hostilities between Christians and Jews were intense. And that John distorted the portrait and words of Jesus to demonize Jews in general.

Tensions Between Jews and Christians

And, of course, there was hostility. Recall, for example, that Jesus said in Mark 13:9, "They will deliver you over to councils, and you will be beaten in synagogues." And recall that Saul the Pharisee (who would become Paul the apostle), before his conversion, was "breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord . . . so that if he found any belonging to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem" (Acts 9:1–2). So the relationship between Jews and Christians (including Jewish Christians) after the days of Jesus on earth were very strained.
And no one can seriously deny that in the history of the church there have been horrible centuries of Christian hostilities toward the Jewish people. When I was preparing my message on Robert Murray McCheyne for the pastors' conference, for example, I read the journals of his trip to Israel in 1839. Several times he groaned at how hard evangelism was among the Jewish people because of these hostilities: "The Jews mistrusted the Christians, especially the Roman Catholics, because of the indignity and persecution they had suffered at their hands for centuries" (L. J. Van Valen, Constrained by His Love: a New Biography on Robert Murray M'Cheyne [Tain, Scotland: Christian Focus, 2002], p. 283).

Scholars Slandering the Word of God

We should be ashamed of this part of our history. But unlike so many critical scholars, we should not lay the fault of this history at the feet of the Gospel of John, which is what so many do. I mention this now in our series on John because chapter 8 is the climax of what the critical scholars see as the problem. For example, concerning our text today, Richard Hays, Professor of New Testament at Duke Divinity School, says:
Nowhere in John's Gospel does the superheated animosity toward the Jews come to more vigorous expression than in chapter 8. . . . The dialogue [of John 8:39–47] is the most deeply disturbing outburst of anti-Jewish sentiment in the New Testament. . . . John makes a fateful theological step: from the empirical fact of the unbelief of the Jews . . . . The Jews who do not believe must be children of the devil. . . . The conclusion of verse 47 articulates the chilling logic of this position: the reason they do not hear the word of God is that they are not from God. . . . One shudders to contemplate the ethical outworking of such a theological perspective on the Jews. . . . The Gospel of John really does adopt a stance toward Judaism that can only engender polemics and hostility.1
This is a great sadness that ordained Christian teachers in the church should slander the word of God in this way. Let me mention four problems with this way of dealing with Jesus' very hard words in John 8—for though they are hard, they are especially offensive to modern, soft, pluralistic ears. Four responses, and the fourth one will launch us into an exposition of the text itself to let Jesus and John speak for themselves.

Four Problems with the Critical Approach

First, if we try to eliminate from the Gospels language that is intensely indicting toward some Jewish people in Jesus's life, we will have to eliminate far more of the Gospels than John 8. Jesus' language toward the Pharisees is almost uniformly negative everywhere in all four Gospels, and often intensely so. He called them a "brood of vipers" in Matthew and Luke (3:7 and 3:7); "hypocrites" in all the Gospels; "blind men" (Matthew 23:19) and "white washed tombs" (Matthew 23:27) and "children of hell" (Matthew 23:15). This intense indictment of most of the Jewish leadership of Jesus's day is pervasive in the Gospels, not a quirk of the Gospel of John. If the Jesus of John has to go, so does the Jesus of all the Gospels.
Second, Jesus spoke of all unbelievers, Jews and Gentiles, not just Jews, as sons of the devil. For example, in the parable of the weeds, describing the growth of the church and the end of the age, he says, "The field is the world, and the good seed is the sons of the kingdom. The weeds are the sons of the evil one . . . The harvest is the close of the age" (Matthew 13:38–39). These weeds are all unbelievers in the church. Jewish people are not unique in their unbelief and their vulnerability to the blinding and distorting effects of the devil. The indictments of John 8 are not meant by Jesus to separate the Jews into a special category of sinner. We are all indicted for our unbelief in John 8.
Third, Paul teaches plainly that all unbelievers are in the sway of the devil: "The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers" (2 Corinthians 4:4). And all unbelievers—including all of us before we were rescued by pure grace—are "children of wrath" and "dead in our trespasses and sins" (Ephesians 2:3–4). The New Testament as a whole, not just John's Gospel, sees in the ongoing resistance to Jesus, whether in Jew or Gentile, the deadness and blindness of sin and the accompanying work of Satan. John 8 is not unique. We need to see that this criticism of John's Gospel is far more radical than it may seem. It is a deep opposition, not to one imbalanced writer, but to the pervasive diagnosis of the human problem in the New Testament. The Gospel of John is not an imbalanced distortion of Jesus. What is said of Jews in John 8 is true of me and you and all people apart from sovereign grace.

Not a Uniquely Jewish Problem, But a Human Problem


One last response that launches us into the text. The same author that wrote the Gospel of John wrote the First Epistle of John. The language and the ideas are very similar. And in the letter John makes clear that being "of the devil" is not a mark of Jewishness, but a mark of bondage to sin and unbelief. John says in 1 John 3:8, "Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil [Jew or Gentile], for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil."
So, yes, Jewish leaders are called sons of the devil in John 8. But woe to us Gentiles if we read this and do not see the tragedy of unbelief rather than the bitterness of anti-Semitism. Jesus is not addressing a Jewish problem, but a human problem. Woe to us if we do not see the Son of God at work like a doctor, diagnosing and exposing the horrific nature of our disease and our enemy—and offering himself as the one cure in the world, even to those whom he knows will kill him. Verse 36: "If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed."
I know I have taken up half this message before we have opened the text, but we don't need to rush. We will take several more weeks on John 8—and on this text in particular.

"Many Believed"

Recall where we ended last time in verse 30: "Many believed in him." He had said in verse 12, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life." This is the Son of God in the world to destroy the dark works of the devil. And he is offering himself to every Jew and every Pharisee or anyone else: If they follow him, believe on him, he delivers them from darkness—from the blinding power of Satan in their lives. And it says in verse 30, "many believed."
Now the question is: Did Jesus treat this belief as genuine? We've seen before that there is a kind of "belief" in this Gospel that is not real (for example, 2:23–25). It doesn't embrace Jesus as satisfying water for the soul, or satisfying bread for the soul, or light for the path. It just follows him because of hope for some earthly benefit from his miracles (6:26, 36). Does Jesus treat this faith in verse 30 as genuine?

Those Who Truly Believe Abide

He leaves it open and tells them how they can know if it is genuine. Verses 31–32: "So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, 'If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.'" Now those two verses call for a whole sermon. And I hope to give it. But keep moving for now to get the big picture.
Something is going to happen that makes Jesus say that some of these believers are not believing. Look at verse 45: "But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me." So he begins this section by saying: If you abide in my word, you are the real deal. You really believe. You are really born again. You have passed from darkness to light. You will not die in your sins (8:24). You are no longer children of the devil, but children of God. That's what would be true if they "abide" in his word. This is what he came to do. For you and for me.

The Human Tendency to Self-Justification

What happened that makes him say in verse 45, "You do not believe me"? What happened was a refusal to hear his words (let alone abide in them), and a desire to kill him (opposition to truth and desire to kill the truth-bearer), all the while claiming to be children of Abraham and children of God and free from slavery, when, in fact, murder and a refusal to receive the truth are the marks of slavery to sin and Satan. So what we have in verses 33–47 (leaving verses 31–32 for its own sermon) is a painful and precious warning how we human beings tend to justify ourselves before God on the basis of our ethnic or religious or moral pedigree. In other words, Jesus is digging into the real condition of the human heart behind self-justifications that we come up with when confronted with Jesus' absolute claims on our lives. And he is naming the condition we are in, and it is frightening. The realities here are not funny, they're not light, they're not easy. They are dreadful and weighty and overpowering apart from God's grace—which Jesus is full of (John 1:14).
The real reason that Jewishness is important here is because it represents the kind of religious, ethnic, moral self-justification that all religions, indeed all humans, use when confronted with Jesus as the only one who can set us free from slavery to self and sin and Satan. Notice verse 36: "So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed." And the freedom he is talking about is, first, freedom from sin and its terrible power to condemn us if we are not freed from it. Verse 34: Jesus answered them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin." Everyone! Not just Jews. We all sin, and we are all slaves of sin, until the power of sin and Satan is broken in our lives. And only the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who lays down his life for the sheep, can cancel and conquer our sin. "If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed."

Why Jewishness Matters in This Text

Jewishness is the issue here because Jesus was Jewish and came to Jews—to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matthew 15:24). But suppose Jesus were presented among Muslims or Hindus or Buddhists or Animists or secular materialists the way he presents himself here: "Only the Son can set you free from your bondage to sin. You must believe in the Son and abide in his word. Then you will truly be his disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. Only through the Son, Jesus Christ, who came to give his life for sin and rise again—only through the Son can you be set free." If Jesus were presented that way among any of those religious groups, the same response would happen as happened here—unless God intervened with sovereign grace. Religion, ethnicity, and morality would be called in for self-justification.
That's why Jewishness matters here. It's an illustration of the way all of us try to evade Jesus and his words of indictment that we are slaves of sin without him, and will perish if we don't believe (John 3:16). It isn't Jews only who don't want to hear that they are slaves; it's all humans who don't want to hear it. I'm offended if you tell me I am a slave. And the point of this text is that when we are offended like this, we will use any religious or ethnic or moral self-justification we can.
Look how it happens, and pray that you will be able to spot this sort of thing in your own life, if you are ever tempted to do it.

Our Attempt at Ethnic Justification

Verse 33: "They answered him, 'We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, "You will become free"'?" Jesus agrees with them at this point. Verse 37: "I know that you are offspring of Abraham; yet you seek to kill me because my word finds no place in you." So do they have a good defense here or not? "We're not in danger of your indictment or God's judgment! We are the offspring of Abraham. You say so yourself." So they defend themselves with an ethnic argument—religiously laden for sure, but at this point it's just ethnic. We're safe. We're Jews. Could be Muslims. Could be Hindus. Could be Buddhists. Could be moralistic materialists. The question for them all is: Are you safe without Jesus?
But then things get messier. In verse 39, they say it again. "They answered him, 'Abraham is our father.'" But this time Jesus says, no, he's not. "Jesus said to them, 'If you were Abraham's children, you would be doing the works Abraham did, but now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did" (John 8:39–40). This is incredible. You say you are Jews. You're not Jews. You say Abraham is your father. He's not. True Jewishness, Jesus says, is not a bloodline; it's a faith and obedience line.
If you ever wondered where Paul got his theology, wonder no more. Romans 9:6–8:
Not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, . . . It is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring.

Our Attempt at Religious Justification

So we are not surprised then when we read in John 8:41–42, "'We have one Father—even God.' Jesus said to them, 'If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here.'" First, it was their ethnic connection with Abraham that justified them. Now it is their religion, their God. We are children of God! And Jesus says (just like Paul in Romans 9:8), "No, you aren't."
Until the Son sets you free, you are not children in the house; you are slaves. Verses 34–35: "Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever." If you want to be a son—a son of Abraham, a son of God, you must be born again into the family. "A true Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not the letter" (Romans 2:29). But, as it is now, you are a slave, not a son.
And the fact that you want to kill me, Jesus says (verse 40), and won't receive the truth (verse 45), shows who your father is. The devil was a murderer and a liar from the beginning (8:44). And in your sin, he has you by the throat. And you do his will. Just like "Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. . . . Because his own deeds were evil and his brother's righteous" (1 John 3:12). And Cain was not a Jew.

Our Attempt at Moral Justification


And most of you are not Jews. So you may say, I don't do this. I don't claim any ethnic or religious superiority. I'm just a regular guy that keeps my nose clean, probably better than most. One closing word for you: Verse 41: "They said to him, 'We were not born of sexual immorality.'" Where did that come from? Nobody said they were. They probably weren't. Well, why bring it up? They brought it up because the scuttlebutt about Jesus is that he was born of sexual immorality. His mother was pregnant before she was married. So what does that get the people?
It gets them moral superiority. "Look Jesus, we're not bastards. If anybody is enslaved here, it's you, to your sordid past." Nobody escapes from this text. Everybody is here in these Jewish self-justifiers. We don't need you, Jesus. We have our ethnicity. We don't need you. We have our religion. We don't need you. We have our moral superiority.

Only the Son

But they won't work. They won't work for the Jews, and they won't work for you or me. One thing works. "If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed."
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Sign In | Cart (Empty) | Contact | Support DG Desiring God International Home Resource Library Blog Store Events About Us Home / Resource Library / Sermons / Praying in the Closet and in the Spirit Praying in the Closet and in the Spirit January 03, 2010 | by John Piper | Scripture: Matthew 6:1-15 | Topic: Prayer Subscribe to... Watch: Full Length Listen: Full Length Excerpt Download Click To Play This is the first Sunday of our annual, year-beginning, Prayer Week. The very fact that we have such a thing as a Prayer Week raises the question I want to deal with today. But the question is much bigger than Prayer Week. The question is the relationship between discipline and freedom and spontaneity in prayer. Discipline By “discipline,” I mean planning to do certain things in regard to prayer, like… have a Prayer Week, or pray for before meals, or pray before an elders meeting, or kneel and pray in your wedding right after your vows, or at the beginning of a sermon, or early in the morning before breakfast going down in the basement nook with the space heater running, or with your spouse, just before you go to bed at night, or over the lunch hour in your cubicle, or on Tuesday and Friday mornings at church, or three times a day on your knees like Daniel (Daniel 6:10), or seven times a day like the psalmist (Psalm 119:164), or in the watches of the night (Psalm 119:148), or during and after your read your Bible in the morning. I call these “disciplines” of prayer because they don’t just pop out of you. You think about them, and decide they are a good thing to do, and then you intentionally do them. There is a certain measure of intentionality. Some people are very intentional, and we call them “disciplined.” And others are somewhat intentional. And others are not very intentional at all. And there are hundreds of gradations in between. We are all different. Freedom Alongside this, we think of “spontaneity.” Sometimes we use the word “freedom” to distinguish the difference from discipline. But I don’t want to put freedom alongside discipline because that would imply that there can’t be freedom in discipline. Which is not true. You can plan to pray in your wedding, and work out all the details down to how you will help her with her wedding dress, and hold each others’ hands, and yet, in that moment, feel an overwhelming, joyful, unfettered freedom of spirit—which means, you are doing just what you want to be doing and you are loving doing it. That’s what I mean by “freedom”—doing a good thing and loving doing it as you do it. The same is true for everyone of those disciplined acts I mentioned. In those acts of discipline, there can be wonderful freedom and joy. But it is also true that, because something is planned and we do it with some intentionality, we might also wind up doing it whether we enjoy it or not. You might be so light-headed when you kneel to pray at your wedding that you would just like for his moment to be over, and the sooner the better. This is not what we usually call “freedom.” You are not enjoying this moment, and can hardly compute what the pastor is saying. Or you might plan to pray with your roommates each night, and then have the joy go right out of the act because of tensions in the room. Or you might continue the tradition of praying before meals, and drift so far from God that the prayers become empty words, and they are done more like a machine than lover. Which would not be freedom. So I don’t put freedom alongside discipline as distinct from it. It can be wonderfully and powerfully present in any act of discipline. That’s what we long for. Spontaneity But alongside disciplined praying, like the ones I mentioned, I do put spontaneity. This is different from discipline. “Spontaneous” means that you didn’t plan it, but it rises up in your heart, and you do it without any specific earlier plan or intentionality. Something in the situation, or from the Holy Spirit, awakens the desire to pray. There is intention, but it happens in the moment spontaneously. You might… whisper a thank-you to God after a close call on the highway, or ask God for help in the middle of an exam, or confess to God your sin after saying something hurtful to a friend, or pray out in church during one of our congregational prayer times, or praise God for a beautiful sunset, or silently ask him for wisdom in the middle of a difficult phone conversation, or ask for strength when you are ready to drop and have another task to do, or pray for a missionary when you open his email and realize he needs help right now, or stop several times during an elder meeting to thank God and seek his guidance on some difficult matter facing the church. None of this is specifically planned. It is spontaneous. We tend to feel most free in our spontaneous praying, and often not as free in our disciplined, planned praying. A Swing of the Pendulum? So my question is: What does the Bible say about discipline and spontaneity and freedom in prayer? I was drawn to this topic this year because my sense is that, at least in the part of the evangelical church that I watch most closely, I think there is a swing of the pendulum from discipline to spontaneity in the name of gospel freedom. In other words, there is a concern to be gospel-driven, not discipline-driven. And this is often put in terms of legalism versus freedom. Or law versus grace. Overall, I think this way of thinking is a very good sign. If we don’t live on the gospel—that is, on the work of Christ for us on the cross—all our praying will indeed become a bondage and a stench in God’s nose. A Legalism of Resisting Discipline? On the other hand, it is possible to be a half-biblical person, and get real excited about the freedom and spontaneity of the gospel, and lose touch with the place that God has assigned to discipline, or intentionality. Our experience with God may be so shallow that the only way we have of conceiving of discipline is in terms of legalism—as though any intentionality that drives you to do a thing when you don’t feel like it can only be a work of the law, or an act of merit, or a way of earning salvation, or a strategy to get God on your side. And indeed, any act of discipline, no matter how good, may be just that. But what some fail to realize is that steadfast opposition to discipline may reflect a heart of legalism also. It is possible to turn any act or any resistance to an act into a legal performance that fails the gospel test. Which means that whether you are a person who leans toward discipline or a person who leans toward spontaneity, you are just as liable to trust in your own righteousness—your righteousness of discipline, or your righteousness of spontaneity—rather than Christ’s righteousness. The Heart of the Gospel The heart of the gospel is that Christ died for our sins (1 Corinthians 15:3). That is shorthand for saying that the only way to be right with God is on the basis of who Christ is and what Christ has done, not who you are and what you have done. Or another way to say the gospel is this: God’s being 100% for you is based on Christ alone, which we receive and enjoy by faith alone. You can’t get God any more on your side than he is on the basis of Christ alone received by faith alone. The biblical basis is 2 Corinthians 5:21: “God made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” He takes our sin. We become his righteousness. And that happens not by our doing a few righteous works—like disciplined praying or like the anti-discipline of spontaneous prayer. It happens by faith in Christ alone. As Paul says in Philippians 3:9, I want to be “found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.” The Dangers of Discipline and Spontaneity So when it comes to prayer and our standing with God, discipline counts for nothing, and resistance to discipline counts for nothing, but only faith working through love (Galatians 5:6). And that faith may be expressed in love through acts of discipline, or through warning against legalistic discipline. And that faith may be compromised by turning disciplined prayer into performance to get God on your side, or by turning the warning against legalist discipline into a performance to get God on your side. The opposite of legalism is not spontaneity. And the opposite of faith is not discipline. Spontaneity may be legalistic. And discipline may be an act of faith. Praying Both in the Closet and in the Spirit So let’s let the Bible teach us about the discipline of prayer and the spontaneity and freedom of prayer. I titled this message “Praying in the Closet and in the Spirit.” And the point of the title is to say that both are good and needed. The text from Matthew 6 refers to prayer in our closet, or our inner room. The texts that refer to praying “in the Spirit” are Ephesians 6:18 and Jude 1:20. Ephesians 6:18: “Pray at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints.” Jude 1:20: “But you, beloved, build yourselves up in your most holy faith and pray in the Holy Spirit.” Spontaneity in the Spirit What does it mean to pray “in the Spirit”? There is a good clue in 1 Corinthians 12:3, where Paul says, “No one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says ‘Jesus is accursed!’ and no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except in the Holy Spirit.” It seems clear to me that speaking “in the Spirit” means speaking under the guidance of the Spirit, or energized and helped by the Spirit. That’s why no one can say “Jesus be accursed” when speaking “in the Spirit.” And no one can say, “Jesus is Lord” (and mean it) unless he is speaking “in the Spirit.” So I take it that praying “in the Spirit” means praying under the guidance and with the help and energy of the Spirit. The Spirit is shaping our prayers and helping us pray. This is the way we pray when we are living on the gospel. This is the prayer-counterpart to faith in the gospel. When we are trusting God to love us and accept us and help us for Christ’s sake alone, the Holy Spirit is at work. He moves in and through that faith. How the Gospel Leads to Spontaneous Prayer The key verse is Galatians 3:5: “Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith?” The answer is that God supplies the Spirit by hearing with faith. That is, the Spirit moves in our lives and helps us pray and do everything else God calls us to do, not by being coerced by works, but because we are trusting God on the basis of Christ alone for this help. We don’t work our way into the Spirit. We trust God that, because of Christ—because of the blood and righteousness of Christ—the Spirit comes to help us and guide us. This is how the gospel relates to our praying in the Spirit. We don’t deserve this help from the Spirit. How do we get it? By works or by faith? Galatians 3:5 says by faith. We look to God, not as our enemy or as a frustrated father who can never be pleased, but as our Father who is 100% for us because of Christ alone. Therefore, we trust him, that because of Christ (his death and righteousness), he will give us the Spirit—and everything else we need. That is how we pray “in the Spirit.” That is what it means to be gospel-sustained. That is gospel-praying. Discipline in the Closet Now, what about praying in your closet—in your inner room? Jesus says in Matthew 6:5–6, When you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 6 But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. Jesus says in verse 6: “Go to your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret.” Now, to go to your room and shut the door requires some movement. You have to be intentional about it. To leave people and find a private place, where you won’t be heard by others, takes some effort. Jesus says this is good. Do this. This simple command stands for a hundred ways you may plan to pray or be disciplined. This is just one: Be sure to make part of your praying the private prayer where it is just you and God. Take whatever steps necessary to secure this kind of praying in your life. And if this kind of intentionality can be a fruit of the gospel, so can the other kinds that the Bible talks about. How the Gospel Leads Us to Disciplined Prayer And my point is that this intentionality—this discipline of private prayer where no one else can hear you—is indeed a fruit of the gospel. It is a fruit of faith in God’s love for us on the basis of Christ alone. You can see this in three simple ways. 1) Obeying Our Savior Gospel-based faith trusts Christ, so that if he tells us that something is good for us, we believe him and do it. We have no reason to doubt his word. He died for us to prove that he and his Father are 100% for us. So if he says go to your room and pray to the Father, we trust him—not to make him be on our side, but because he is on our side. 2) Desiring to Receive More Gospel-based faith has tasted and seen that the Lord is good and is always eager to receive as much of Christ as we can. So when he bids us go to the closet to be rewarded by our Father, we go with great expectation that he has a gift for us—more of himself. In the gospel, we have seen that not only is Christ the basis of all we need, he is the sum of all we need. Because of what we have seen in the work of Christ, we have fallen out of love with the praise of men, and now crave the surpassing value of Christ. We come to the closet to have all that God is for us in Christ. He is our reward. That’s what faith does because of the gospel. It seeks more of Christ, more of God in private prayer. It’s not what man can give that satisfies us, but the reward of God himself. That’s blood-bought, gospel faith. 3) Knowing All Our Needs Are Met Finally, because of the gospel—because Christ died for us—we know that everything we need has been purchased for us. “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32). “All the promises of God find their Yes in him” (2 Corinthians 1:20). In other words, every answer to prayer that would be good for us, Christ purchased by his blood. We did not and cannot purchase them. So when we go to our closet, we are not going to make a purchase. We are not going to negotiate. We are going because God has ordained that what Christ obtained for us, we receive by asking. Intentionality Rooted in the Gospel If you were starving, and the food of life were in a locked container, and Christ died to open the container, you would not be a legalist if you walked five miles and stood all day stood in line to receive your food with tears of expectancy and gratitude. Knowing that he had absolutely secured your food at the cost of his life would make you confident and humble and grateful, but it would not make you say, “I don’t need to stand in line. I don’t believe in such discipline.” “I’ll just wait till it spontaneously falls into my mouth.” No. There is simple discipline. Simple intentionality rooted in the gospel. Ask and you will receive. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened (Matthew 7:7). “When you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Matthew 6:5–6). For More of Jesus For the sake of your own soul. For the sake of your family. For the sake of his church. For the sake of your vocation. For the sake of the nations. Plan this in 2010. Be intentional about this. Because Christ died for you, and through prayer God will give you what you need—mainly more of himself. © Desiring God Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way and do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. For web posting, a link to this document on our website is preferred. Any exceptions to the above must be approved by Desiring God. Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: By John Piper. © Desiring God. Website: desiringGod.org Related Resources Ambushing Satan with Song (Sermons) Cry of Distress and Voice of Thanks (Sermons) Draw Near to the Throne of Grace with Confidence (Sermons) In the Pits with a King (Sermons) Open My Eyes That I May See (Sermons) English Email Print Related Topics: The Bible Devotional Life Fasting See list of Related Resources Highlights Essential Resources Recently Added Most Popular Resource Categories Sermons By Date By Topic By Series By Scripture By Author By Occasion By Language Conference Messages Articles Online Books Poems Biographies Seminars Interviews Study Guides Browsing Tools Language Index Topic Index Scripture Index Author Index Date Index Help Us Make it Free $ RSS Blog New Sermons Facebook Desiring God John Piper Twitter @desiringgod @johnpiper Podcasts New Sermons (audio) New Sermons (video) Email Blog (1x daily) Blog (weekly digest) Ministry News & Updates New Sermons © 2011 Desiring God | Website Support

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