Episode 212: On Preaching (with John Piper)
What should you look for in a sermon? John Piper is a guest speaker on this episode of Pastors Talk with Mark Dever and Jonathan Leeman. They discuss Piper’s early years as a preacher and what advice he would give his younger self. Throughout this conversation, Leeman, Dever, and Piper flesh out how to prepare a sermon, the importance of sound scripture in preaching, and how to receive criticism gracefully.
- John Piper’s First Sermon
- What Should Be the Main Idea of a Sermon?
- Advice for a Young Pastor
- How to Prepare for a Sermon
- Receiving Feedback
Transcript
The following is a lightly edited transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.
Jonathan Leeman
Hi, I’m Jonathan Lehman.
Mark Dever
And I’m Mark Dever. Welcome to this episode of 9Marks Pastors Talk. 9Marks exist to help pastors build healthy churches.
Learn more at 9marks.org. And we have a special guest with us today, John Piper. John, I assume we don’t need to introduce you.
John Piper
Okay.
Jonathan Leeman
Maybe we need to introduce ourselves. Have you heard of 9Marks?
John Piper
I’ve heard of 9Marks. In fact, I was just watching a video today from Nepal, Christian Publication, translator of ministry in Nepal, they panned to the bookshelves and I saw 9Marks.
Jonathan Leeman
Hey, that’s encouraging.
John Piper
Yeah, it is.
Jonathan Leeman
Do you know what 9Marks does?
John Piper
They try to make healthy churches.
Jonathan Leeman
Yeah, that’s right. Have you heard of pastors talk?
Mark Dever
That’s what this podcast is called.
John Piper
I listened once.
Mark Dever
And he resolved never to do it again.
Jonathan Leeman
Well, it’s like, Ask Pastor John, but much less prepared.
Mark Dever
I think that’s fair.
Jonathan Leeman
To tell you the truth of it.
Mark Dever
So basically if you like what you’re hearing, but you want something that’s more careful and more thoughtful, more full of biblical exegesis. Try Ask Pastor John and desiringgod.org.
John Piper
Thank you.
John Piper’s First Sermon
Jonathan Leeman
Yeah, that’s right. We want to have two conversations with you, two different episodes. This is the first episode on the two different parts of a church service, two of the main parts, the preaching and then the music.
I mean, there’s other things we could talk about ordinances and so forth. We’re going to focus on preaching in this episode and a follow -up episode on music. So that’s the plan. What was your first sermon? Do you remember?
John Piper
Well, the one that stands out from seminary was the one I was asked to speak in chapel, which may have been my first, at least in front of a big group in a class.
Jonathan Leeman
Do you remember the text?
John Piper
Pretty sure it was Ephesians 1.
Jonathan Leeman
That seems appropriate.
John Piper
What was memorable about it is that it was a parable of the song Big Bad John. You remember that song?
Jonathan Leeman
I don’t.
John Piper
From the late 60s? Big Bad John. So John…
Mark Dever
How did it go? Big Bad John.
John Piper
Yeah. It was kind of a rap before there was rap.
Jonathan Leeman
So you structured your sermon around that text?
John Piper
Right. I used it for an extended illustration because Big Bad John was a miner and there was a cave -in and all the miners were going to die and Big Bad John held up the rafter until everybody was out and then he died.
Jonathan Leeman
That’s like Jesus.
John Piper
That’s like Jesus. There you go. That was the sermon.
Jonathan Leeman
What kind of grades did you get in preaching class in seminary?
John Piper
I don’t remember.
Mark Dever
Did you care about grades in seminary?
John Piper
Yes, I did. I was very vain in seminary. I knew it was better than a C because I got one C, but it was in preaching from James Dane. Do you remember that name?
Mark Dever
I do, but I’m not sure why.
John Piper
He smoked like a chimney and had yellow fingers and taught preaching.
Mark Dever
And you don’t think that’s good? I don’t think yellow fingers is good. In fact, smoking’s not good. But he and I never agreed on what the main point was.
That was the problem. So I got a C. But he didn’t run the practicums. And so that isn’t..I didn’t get a C for my preaching. I got a C for not being able to understand texts.
What Should Be the Main Idea of a Sermon?
Jonathan Leeman
Should a sermon have a main idea?
John Piper
Yes, at least one.
Jonathan Leeman
Okay. And what should the main idea of a sermon be?
John Piper
It should be something true in the text that’s important for these people.
Jonathan Leeman
Doesn’t have to be the main point of the text?
John Piper
Does not have to be the main point of the text. Absolutely not.
Mark Dever
Do you agree with that Mark? It depends on what we’re doing with that sermon.
John Piper
We need to define main point.
Mark Dever
John, how would you define the main point?
John Piper
The main point of a text is the truth, which everything else supports, logically, illustratively, which means it may not be the most important thing in the text.
Mark Dever
The most important thing for the congregation you’re speaking to at that moment to hear about?
Jonathan Leeman
No, he’s saying in the text.
John Piper
No, in the text. Paul said, the gospel is the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes, for in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith. The ground clause is not the main point. It may be the most important thing.
Or even more clear, he said, I’m eager to preach the gospel to you who are in Rome for the gospel is the power of God and the salvation. The main point is I’m eager to preach the gospel to you who are in Rome. That is not the most important thing in the text.
Jonathan Leeman
Got it. Got it. That makes sense.
John Piper
So a text, I mean, a sermon should have a point and the point should be true. It should be really there in the text and it should be worth hearing from the people.
Jonathan Leeman
Mark, do you have any response to that?
Mark Dever
Sounds good.
Jonathan Leeman
Anything you would differ with on that?
Mark Dever
Bottom line, no. Generally, when I’m talking about expositional preaching, I’m talking about going through a book sequentially, week by week, through passages. And there, I’m assuming if I follow the argument where the main point of the text is the main point of the sermon, I will reproduce what the author is about.
John Piper
Right. But you’re assuming that you preach one sermon on a text with five clauses.
Mark Dever
Yeah.
John Piper
I might take one clause per sermon.
Mark Dever
Well, it varies. I do it in different ways, different size text.
Jonathan Leeman
Have you heard Mark’s Bible overview sermons, like a whole sermon on the book of Ephesians?
John Piper
I knew he did it. I don’t think I’ve heard one.
Scripture Length in Preaching
Jonathan Leeman
Do you have reservations about preaching larger chunks?
John Piper
No, I don’t.
Jonathan Leeman
But you often did shorter chunks.
John Piper
Yeah, I found that easier, way easier.
Mark Dever
I think it is easier.
John Piper
Oh my goodness. I preached one season of the ministry, one sermon for every minor prophet. So that’s done. You can go and listen to them online. That was the hardest thing.
Jonathan Leeman
That was atypical for you though.
John Piper
Very atypical because it was hard. I don’t have much time. I don’t know how people do that. I had to take a vacation to prepare those sermons because you have to read what, 12 chapters of Zechariah and figure out what the point is.
I mean, that takes days. How can any pastor do that?
Jonathan Leeman
Aren’t you worried when you do a phrase, you said there’s a clause, you end up less preaching the text and more preaching your theology?
John Piper
Yeah, that’s a concern. But my counter concern that keeps me going is that people are in desperate need for theology. In fact, I’m very concerned that there’s not enough doctrinal preaching.
Doctrinal preaching that draws out of texts doctrines so that people get a framework of a worldview about God and sin and life. And there’s a lot of expository preaching that never helps them do that. That talks a lot about the text and people come away thinking, wow, a lot of interesting observations about that text.
And they can’t put pieces into the poll. I think you have a weak church in the long run, even if you treat the Bible, if you don’t draw out of texts, whether big or little, a doctrinal framework for them.
Jonathan Leeman
So your concern is less the size of the text and more whether or not it’s doctrinal, is what saying.
John Piper
Yeah, communicating relevant truth for their life and for doctrinal construction.
Jonathan Leeman
So if I could do a sermon on, say, Mark chapter 5. Well, there’s a whole lot in Mark chapter 5. But so long as I’m being doctrinal, that satisfies your concern.
John Piper
Well, that satisfies that one concern. That’s not the only concern.
Concerns in Preaching
Jonathan Leeman
What are some of your other concerns?
Mark Dever
Well, if I can just shoot in here for a moment on John’s doctrinal concern, I think that’s one of the reasons why it’s so useful for preachers to commit to preach the gospel in such a way that a non-Christian there can understand how to be forgiven for their sins that day, because that forces you to put the theology of the passage together, hopefully in an understandable and clearly graspable and hopefully compelling way. I think that that’s useful in that.
John Piper
I probably would get a bad grade in that class that he just described. I mean, if you go to the corpus of John Piper and assess it with that criteria, I would not make a good grade.
Jonathan Leeman
Well, there were certain years in which you would say that was true of you as well. You’d have gotten a bad grade and brothers around you.
Mark Dever
Well, my purpose here is not to evaluate your preaching, John. My purpose is speaking to the guys who are listening to this and saying, if you want to take your concern onboard about doctrine, one way to help make sure they begin to organize major doctrines and have doctrinal concern is by making sure the gospel is clearly enunciated and that they use the kind of structure they find in their text to help them do that.
John Piper
Maybe. I think there are a of people who would call themselves gospel center preachers who do not at all go in the direction you just described, namely constructing a doctrinal system that people have a handle on.
Mark Dever
Oh, I agree. I mean, you and I both grew up in revivalistic Baptist churches where that would certainly be the case.
John Piper
Yeah. I’m allergic to that.
Mark Dever
Yeah, yeah. But I don’t think that’s our main problem today, at least not in the circles I’m in.
John Piper
Yeah, that’s a good question.
Mark Dever
I think, I mean, MacArthur talks about preaching not just implications, or applications, but implications of the text, which I think is wise.
Overusing the word “gospel”
John Piper
I don’t know if it relates directly, but I probably have a bigger concern about the term gospel-centered. Gospel this, gospel that, making the word gospel an adjective almost in front of everything, because it seems to me that it has had a truncating effect on theology and on preaching.
Mark Dever
Same thing with the gospels.
John Piper
I must always want to put the word biblical in lots of places where I see the word gospel, biblical preaching. I’m gonna assess somebody’s sermon not by whether they wove in how to have your sins forgiven, but whether what they preach on here is really there and powerful and true and helpful.
Jonathan Leeman
Well, I recall your 2022 T4G sermon in which you labored on some of this point. So would you disagree with Spurgeon or that quote about make a beeline for the cross?
John Piper
I have a whole section in my book on it that I would talk in the reverse language. Start at the cross and make a beeline to practicality.
Jonathan Leeman
Yeah.
John Piper
I don’t think it’s a good idea to end every sermon on the cross. I think it creates something artificial
Jonathan Leeman
Forces the text.
John Piper
My understanding of how the whole Bible is Christ-centered, or the whole Bible is gospel-dense, is based on Romans 8:32- “He who did not spare his own son but gave him up first all, will he not with him freely give us all things?” So that all things there means that I can read any text where anything good is held out to undeserving people, which is virtually any text that has good news in it anywhere in the Bible, and tell you why you can receive that, he did not spare his own son.
That’s what the verse says. Everything good that comes to sinners is owing to “he did not spare his own son”, which means the cross bought every blessing and every promise in the Old Testament. That’s the way I would think about..
If I’m preaching the proverb, “go to the ant thou sluggard, consider her ways and be wise”, I think I could preach a sermon on that. And the way I would make it Christ-centered is not to think, oh, the ant is shaped a little bit like a cross. I mean, I’ve had people crazy things like that.
Jonathan Leeman
Give us a 30-second sermon on that text that appropriately preaches the cross. 30 seconds.
John Piper
God calls us to use our will to do good. He defines the good for us in His word, and He enables us to do good as sinners by sending his son to die for us.
Jonathan Leeman
Amen.
John Piper
Do a lot of good.
Jonathan Leeman
Yeah.
John Piper
And the point of the sermon, I would send them out, do a lot of good. I would leave the imperative ringing in their ears. I mean, I’ve sat under preaching… I’ve got to be careful here.
I’ve sat under preaching that is so nervous to help guilty people feel not guilty as they walk out that it really gets old. I mean, every sermon is lifting the burden of guilt off people’s back. And I want to say, let them feel guilty for a week for goodness sakes, they’re walking in sin.
Jonathan Leeman
Mark, go to the ant you sluggard, consider his ways and be wise. How would you preach that?
Mark Dever
I think I had preached it before, and I would exhort us to do what God created us to do in his image and talk about how that reflects the image of God. And I would certainly talk then about the work of God, ultimately, that he’s done for his own glory being to save a people for himself. And I think you can probably go online and check out sermons on Proverbs and see what I’ve done.
Preaching On the New and Old Testaments
Jonathan Leeman
What would you say John to a pastor who spends, I don’t know, three quarters to five sixths of his year in the New Testament? On average, doesn’t really get to the Old Testament.
John Piper
Like John MacArthur.
Jonathan Leeman
I wasn’t thinking of a specific name.
John Piper
John Piper. John Piper.
Jonathan Leeman
I don’t know if that was you.
John Piper
Five-sixths would probably be fair.
Jonathan Leeman
Is that something you would do the same again?
John Piper
Probably, yeah.
Jonathan Leeman
Mark?
Mark Dever
That’s what I do. This year I did two sermons in Zephaniah in January and the rest of the year I’ve been in Hebrews.
John Piper
And my thinking on it is partly that the Old Testament is especially rich for elucidating the truth that you most immediately see concerning Christ rather than always having to preach the Old Testament and run over the New Testament, get something and bring it back.
Mark Dever
Yeah. So I’ve been preaching through Hebrews. So we’ve gotten a lot of Old Testament.
We’ve looked at Psalm 40, we’ve looked at Psalm 110, we’ve looked at Jeremiah, we’ve looked at Ezekiel. So we’ve had a lot of the Old Testament in preaching through Hebrews.
Jonathan Leeman
Yeah, no doubt. Yeah.
John Piper
It isn’t because the Old Testament is less inspired and it isn’t because it’s not profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, training, and righteousness. It’s because it’s less immediately connected to the center, less immediately.
Mark Dever
So in our Wednesday night inductive Bible studies, I always do New Testament epistles. I don’t do Old Testament just because inductively it’s harder to you’re asking people to traverse further. You could do a psalm maybe, but sure.
Sermon Logistics
Jonathan Leeman
No, I think that’s true. Should a sermon have an outline?
John Piper
It should have a helpful structure. I’m not sure what you mean by outline. I don’t take an outline into the pulpit and I don’t have an outline in my head.
I have a manuscript in front of me and I hope it has a structure that’s helpful for making the truth plain.
Jonathan Leeman
How self conscious are you of hand gestures? Real question.
John Piper
I’m not self conscious ever of hand gestures, ever, except when people ask me that question.
Jonathan Leeman
I’m not the first to ask, I guess.
John Piper
Yeah.
Mark Dever
There are a lot of people out there who do John Piper hand gesture imitations. You know this.
John Piper
I’ve heard that.
Mark Dever
You’ve heard this? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jonathan Leeman
That would have been better on video for the listener.
John Piper
Yeah.
Mark Dever
Everybody can imagine it.
Jonathan Leeman
They can. Same question for you. Are you self-conscious?
Mark Dever
Not at all.
Jonathan Leeman
Okay.
John Piper
I think we are who we are. And that is not static. I think you’ve watched the early John Piper, say the first five years, it would not have looked like that. And I had older ladies in my church say, I like the early John Piper.
Advice for a Young Pastor
Jonathan Leeman
What advice would you give to the early John Piper in his preaching?
John Piper
Pray a lot, read your Bible a lot, and love the people a lot.
Jonathan Leeman
So you would say to the general young preacher, if you want to get better, pray a lot, read the Bible a lot, love the people a lot. Those are the main things you want to exhort guys to do to become better preachers, true or false.
John Piper
What was the second one? I just forgot it.
Jonathan Leeman
I was just trying to pray, read Bible, love your people.
Mark Dever
Well, but John, I don’t think you would assume that everybody else would have everything in place that you had when you were in your 30s.
John Piper
That’s true.
Mark Dever
You had some pretty powerful theological assumptions walking in to preaching that we can’t assume most preachers would have.
John Piper
No, no. When I say read the Bible, I really should probably expand it to read a lot to get to understand the Bible. Know your Bible.
Go deep with the Bible so that you have that theological framework that’s really there and really beautiful, really compelling, really controls your thinking, controls your life. And people can feel it. They can see it.
Jonathan Leeman
But I appreciate that third point about loving your people a lot and that makes me mindful of Mark, how you’ve often talked about you much would prefer preaching to those guys, those folk across the parking lot, your own congregation, than another church, than a conference.
John Piper
Yeah, absolutely.
Jonathan Leeman
Yeah, I was going ask you, you feel the same.
John Piper
I totally agree.
John Piper On Retirement
Mark Dever
I mean, John, you retired from Bethlehem pastoring how many years ago?
John Piper
Almost 10.
Mark Dever
And you must miss that.
John Piper
I do miss it.
Mark Dever
Yeah.
John Piper
I mean, I miss the preaching. I miss a lot of things about it. I don’t miss everything about it.
Mark Dever
Yeah, but that idea of preaching to your congregation is very different than just preaching as much as a privilege as it is to preach God’s word. And I don’t want to downplay that at all, whether I’m at a visiting a Presbyterian church or at a minister’s conference or preaching at a youth retreat, you know, a student convention, it’s a wonderful privilege to preach God’s word, but to do that in the congregation that you have that Hebrews 13 relationship with and accountability before the Lord, it’s on an entirely different planet of experience for me.
John Piper
Part of my call out of academia, to the pastorate on October 14, 1979, late at night, was I desperately want to see Romans 9 fleshed out in 8-year-olds and 80-year -olds. I want to see what this looks like. Because I just written a book on it, Romans 9, not the one you mentioned last night.
Mark Dever
The justification of God.
John Piper
Yes.
Mark Dever
Yeah. Do you know who Ricky Watts is? He’s a New Testament scholar at…
Jonathan Leeman
Got a book commentary on Mark.
Mark Dever
Yeah. He and I were at Gordon-Combell at the same time and he was Assemblies of God from Australia. Great guy. And I gave him Justification of God because I had just read it. Baker had just brought it out, early 80s, I think.
John Piper
It did come out in the early 80s, but the Baker edition was later. Okay. Well, whoever published it, I got it in the early 80s and gave him a copy and went with him through Romans 9 with that. And it just completely restructured his theology.
Jonathan Leeman
Praise the Lord.
Mark Dever
Yeah. Very, very.
Jonathan Leeman
I think I read at the beginning of seminary.
John Piper
Romans 9 does that to people.
Mark Dever
Yeah, amen. Yeah, yeah.
How to Prepare for a Sermon
Jonathan Leeman
I don’t want to spend a lot of time here, but just the basics real quickly. How long do you spend preparing a sermon on average?
John Piper
One day, as long as it takes. It might be eight, it might be 12 hours.
Jonathan Leeman
And has that been most of your career as a preacher? Young, old, child paper?
John Piper
I tried some unrealistic things in the beginning. I thought people said, you know, start your summer preparation on Tuesday, take Monday off, work in the mornings, visit in the afternoon. Well, that didn’t work at all. So I realized work expands to fill the time you have to do it in.
Mark Dever
That’s so true.
John Piper
And therefore you must bite the bullet and start on Friday.
Mark Dever
Mark reads the text in his devotional time, do you?
John Piper
No.
Jonathan Leeman
How come?
John Piper
It didn’t occur to me. I have another plan for devotions, the discipleship reading plan that reads through the Bible in a year.
Consulting Commentaries
Jonathan Leeman
When in the sermon prep process do you consult commentaries?
John Piper
If I consult a commentary, I consult it after I’m stumped.
Jonathan Leeman
So you’re wrestling with the text by yourself, Greek and English.
John Piper
Most of the time.
Jonathan Leeman
And then like, uh, then you.
John Piper
Right. When it says in first Timothy two that we’re to pray to God for kings that we might live a peaceful and quiet life. Eremos, whatever it is, that word doesn’t occur anywhere else in the Bible.
It doesn’t occur anywhere else in the first century. How in the world do you know what that means? And so what do they say? And it’s amazing how many don’t pose the question.
That’s one of the reasons I don’t bother with commentaries very much. They don’t get as far as I do often. I mean, with my logos and the power that I have to search Greek and Hebrew, I hardly need BDAG.
What do you need it for? You do the work yourself. And you just, I mean, I, my favorite commentaries are commentaries like Ellicott and Alford because those guys pose the questions I’m stumped by.
They pose serious, detailed grammatical questions. The others, they just say things everybody sees. They all write the same thing. So I’m not helped much.
Jonathan Leeman
Well, in a similar way, I appreciate… I know you do something similar, Mark. I also appreciate the way Tom Schreiner, I know you know him.
John Piper
Yeah.
Jonathan Leeman
He will write his commentaries before he looks at any other commentaries.
John Piper
Interesting. So he does all the work, does a first draft of the book, then looks at secondary sources.
John Piper
Yeah. He was a go-to backup when I did Romans. I had about four commentaries on my desk when I preached through Romans for eight years and Tom was one of them.
Can Preachers Get Better?
Jonathan Leeman
Can bad preachers get better?
John Piper
Yes.
Jonathan Leeman
How?
John Piper
Becoming less self-conscious, less arrogant, less silly in their gestures.
Mark Dever
How did you become less vain?
John Piper
Well, I don’t know that I have, but I…
Mark Dever
But because you characterized the early John…
Jonathan Leeman
Yeah, I heard that too.
John Piper
Yeah, that’s a legitimate question because I wouldn’t want to say today I’m as bad I was then in terms of the love of human praise, the desperate need for affirmation. Most young people desperately need to be told they’re good. I think my theology was revolutionary when I was 22 years old and turned me upside down because it became God-centered.
And when you’re God-centered, it’s hard to be self-exalting and self -centered. That’s one. Number two: to discover that you’re not good at a bunch of things you hoped you would be good at. I didn’t stay in academia because I’m not good. I can’t read fast enough. I can’t remember what I read. I’m just not good.
The way I try to help young guys, and that’s what we’re supposed to do on this podcast, I think, is if you discover that you’re not very good at what some guys are really good at, don’t spend your whole life trying to be really good at what you’re not natively able to do. So, I say you can improve, find the thing that you’re more or less natively equipped to do and give everything to make that as good as you can make it.
So I said, okay, I can’t read a lot of books. I can’t remember what I read. What can I do? I can read a paragraph and I can take it apart and I can put it back together and I see things a lot of people don’t see and I get excited about them and I can communicate what I see and how excited I am and that’s different. So that’s what I do.
Jonathan Leeman
Can a preacher be so ineffective that he should stop trying to get better and find something else to do?
John Piper
Yes. Yes, I think…
Jonathan Leeman
Assuming he’s preaching truth, he’s not preaching error, it’s just an effectiveness thing.
How to Receive Feedback
John Piper
We don’t have an infallible pathway into the pastorate. We don’t have criteria that are…. infallible for helping a man move from a first inclination at age 15 or 19 to go to this college and then do some interesting study in seminary and then find himself in the ministry.
And frankly, as a teacher of preaching in seminary, one of my biggest burdens is how can I help some of these guys not become pastors?
Jonathan Leeman
Yeah. So have you pulled a guy over and said, brother, this is not your path?
John Piper
No, not yet. But I have followed how he’s doing to see whether or not he’s going to go in that direction. And almost always, for whatever reason, there’s a self-selecting thing happening by which he goes towards counseling or whatever. But that may be I’m too squeamish.
Mark Dever
John, when you say not yet, that’s when you’re going to do maybe in a later part of your ministry?
John Piper
You mean tell somebody they shouldn’t?
Mark Dever
Yeah.
John Piper
Maybe.
Mark Dever
Yeah.
John Piper
Maybe if I’m less vain. I don’t know. I mean, is that something you want to do?
John Piper
No. I’d done it if I’d want to do it.
Mark Dever
OK.
John Piper
It’s not comfortable to tell a guy that he’s not cut out to be a pastor. And here’s another problem. I’m not infallible.
I might say to a guy, you know, I just don’t see you as a regular preacher. And he turns out to be most effective for reasons beyond my sight. I don’t want to make that mistake.
Jonathan Leeman
Mark was told that in coming here.
John Piper
That he should have been in academia?
Jonathan Leeman
One or two people as I recall said.
Mark Dever
Oh, you’re thinking of Don.
Jonathan Leeman
Yeah. You can name people.
Mark Dever
Yeah, well, what I gave is a first name. Yeah, that’s true.
John Piper
What did he say?
Mark Dever
When this church approached me, he said, Mark, you’re not a good enough preacher to hold that pulpit.
John Piper
Oh, he didn’t say, you’re an academic, you should be in a seminary. You’re not a good enough preacher. That’s pretty brave. He was wrong, you know. I say he’s wrong. He knows he’s wrong.
Mark Dever
I think he says he’s wrong about that.
Jonathan Leeman
Yeah. No, I can think of one time you have said to a brother, this isn’t your biggest bat.
Mark Dever
Oh brother, I’m sure I’ve said that more than once.
How to Give Feedback
Jonathan Leeman
Okay. Any tips on doing that for those of us who feel as you said, John, squeamish?
John Piper
Well, have his personality would help.
Jonathan Leeman
That’s true.
Mark Dever
Yeah. I just, you know, John says he’s not infallible. Nobody thinks I am infallible. I’m just not worried about that.
So that’s just not a big problem. So if I give Vince some advice, you know, Vince is going to take it. He’s going to appreciate it. He’s not going to think I’m..
John Piper
You should ask him the question how to be less vain because he’s clearly indifferent to a lot of things I’m sensitive to.
Jonathan Leeman
Okay. Well, speaking of feedback, something Mark does here, is a service review, which if you are a pastor who is interested in raising up more pastors, I think you should do.
If you don’t want to raise up other pastors, then don’t do this. But if you do, do a service review where you’re among other things, learning to give godly criticism and godly encouragement.
Mark Dever
And to receive godly criticism and to receive godly encouragement. All four of those quite distinct abilities.
John Piper Critiques Mark Dever’s Preaching
Jonathan Leeman
And so there is a bit of a culture of learning how to do that well here. And John, I’d love for you to model right now giving godly encouragement and godly criticism with Mark’s preaching. What would you say Mark does well in preaching? And any growth areas?
Mark Dever
Oh, this is putting the guy on the
Jonathan Leeman
No, I am. Well, I’m gonna do it the other way too. Do you want to start? I’m serious here. I’d be curious to what do you see the other brother doing well? What would you say, hey, I’d like to challenge you to?
John Piper
Well, the negative is easy for me and Mark, because he talks so fast that repeatedly he slurs his words. And I’m sitting about one half of the way back and I can’t understand what he just said. You do it all the time.
You do it in natural talk and everybody in here probably knows that you do it. You do it. And you can’t understand what he just said. So there’s a way to improve brother.
But content is where I’m going to go out of my way to hear Mark. I mean, I’m just going to cross town to sit under his preaching.
If he can draw out of Hebrews 10:1-18 the things he saw last Sunday and tell me about the beauties of the sacrifice of Christ and his once for allness and his eternality and remind me effectively of those glories I’m going to come. Even if I can’t understand some of it. Yeah, a tenth.
Mark Dever
There it is. A great example just as last Sunday that did happen. So I preach on Hebrews 10:1-18, which is, if you know it, you know, it’s the summit of Hebrews. It’s the peak. It’s the summary.
It’s the arrow. Bill Behrens, who, John, you heard me earlier mention the assumption that the gospel should be in every sermon. I did not learn that from any seminary. I learned that from Bill Behrens, a faithful member of this church, good friend of mine.
Bill, one day back in the 90s, after I preached the sermon, came up to me and told me what a good sermon it was and said, but I don’t think you preach the gospel in the sermon. And I said, oh, no, I’m sure I did. And so then I went back and looked through my notes and I went, I think he’s right.
And what I’ve got in the background on my mind there is Shirley Hinkson’s story. John Hinkson, a good friend whose crusade staff at Yale, his mom growing up in Los Angeles in the thirties convicted of her sins, not in a religious home, goes around church after church trying to find out how to be forgiven of her sins.
Just can’t, nobody’s, she gets no help from any of the sermons. Said it took weeks or months to find a church where somebody would tell her how she could be forgiven of her sins. And that’s just always haunted me.
And I got hundreds of people in the church and I know they’re non-Christians sitting there. I just want to make sure every Sunday I am just clear about how someone can be forgiven for their sins.
Anyway, so when Bill says that, that just like pierces my heart. So I then resolve, I’m going to make sure the gospel is clear in every sermon. Now that doesn’t mean I end in the revivalistic way that you and I would have grown up with and been familiar with and turn every text to that.
But it does mean that someplace during that sermon, I’m going to be talking to non -Christians directly and I’m going to try to encourage them to repent of their sin. I’m going to challenge them to repent of their sins and to trust in Christ. Well, this last Sunday, Bill Behrens once again comes up to me at the door and he says,
Jonathan Leeman
Love you Bill.
Mark Dever
Yeah. And he said, what a good sermon. Oh Mark, that was just such a good sermon. You know, I had a question for those of us who still sin, any encouragement in the text for us?
And he didn’t mean it as a gotcha question. Bill’s just trying to follow the Lord, loves the Lord and just said, any encouragement for us? You know, and I’m hearing it, I’m going like, oh, what a good question.
And so I’m like reviewing the sermon. Anyway, other things happen. I go on. Well, John and I have dinner afterwards.
We’re in the car and we’re driving. And he says, can I ask a question? I said, sure. He said, what about in verse 14, you know, where those he makes perfect shall be sanctified.
Mark Dever
And you didn’t quote that right. He has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. It’s a staggering verse.
Mark Dever
Yeah, it is. And so he pressed me on why I didn’t point that out.
Jonathan Leeman
Camp on it.
Mark Dever
Yeah, like it’s the best thing in the New Testament to talk about what we have positionally in Christ and yet the reality of the Christian life.
Jonathan Leeman
Progressive nature of it.
Mark Dever
Yeah. Which would be exactly the concern that Bill brought up. And I didn’t have a good answer. It’s like, Oh, that’s a really good point, John. Thank you.
I wish you were the pastor of this church. So I, uh, that would be an example of John listening carefully and giving that kind of feedback. And so I’m actually going to, going to plan to share that with the church on Sunday night.
Jonathan Leeman
That’s great.
John Piper
Just don’t call on me. Okay.
Mark Dever
I won’t. I’ll just do it myself.
John Piper
Thank you.
Jonathan Leeman
Now, I did say I was going to go both ways with that question.
Mark Dever Critiques John Piper
Mark Dever
Well, I’m not sitting in his church listening to him preach. I mean, that’s…
Jonathan Leeman
You’ve heard a few John Piper sermons over the years.
John Piper
Come on, I need your help. Receive encouragement.
Mark Dever
Yeah, brother. I’d have to sit down and be more of deliberate student.
John Piper
Receive criticism.
Mark Dever
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jonathan Leeman
You can say something positive.
Mark Dever
Well, I understand that. You know, John’s strength, you know, your strength in preaching is you’re looking at the text carefully like you did there in Hebrews 10 verse 14. Yeah, I can’t think of a criticism, but I’m sure I would have one if I listened to a particular sermon.
John Piper
I’m sure you would. My wife, for example, I would say to you pastors, ask, invite your wife to point out the little things that will bother people that other people won’t. And my wife regularly says, just stop using the word absolutely.
Just stop using the word incredible. Stop using the word. I get on word binges. And I fall into adjectival or adverbial repetition.
They become my favorite word for a season. And she says, you need to not use that word for about a year.
Jonathan Leeman
Literally it’s a big word in my house. I literally mean that. Last question, brothers, maybe back on this vanity theme that keeps coming up in this conversation. Okay.
You’re stepping down from the pulpit now. The sermon’s over, you’re walking away. There’s a world going on inside of your head. I hope that was some good thoughts, right?
Oh Lord, I really, I pray that was penetrating, but also some bad thoughts like, what do they think of me? Any coaching for us, the guy getting out of the pulpit, how to be Christ honoring, how to receive praise and not just quickly deflect, receive it, but at the same time do it humbly.
I don’t know, guys are overwhelmed, I think getting out of the pulpit. What advice do you have, both of you, for those next 30 minutes.
John Piper
I think what he should say if somebody praises him that was a good sermon or that was helpful or that’ll change my life or whatever, is he should say thank you. He should say thank you. And then I would add that’s really encouraging.
How you say it and what you say will communicate I’m the needy one at this moment. You’re telling me I’m the giver at this moment. I’m responding by making you the giver.
You have just encouraged me. You’ve ministered to me. So you can communicate that. If they say something negative, I think you say something to the effect of, if you recognize it immediately as correct, you say, thank you, I’ll really work on that.
If you’re not sure what they’re saying is true and they’re criticizing you, then you want to give yourself some distance and say, let me think about that. We can talk about it. And you go away.
You know, Edwards said, there’s always a grain of truth in every criticism, look for it before you defend yourself. And so that’s just a good habit. But the last thing would be for their encouragement is to say, even if the criticism is true, God does things with sermons, imperfect C- sermons that are life-changing.
And you can just accept that and not think it was a wasted sermon. You don’t know. You’ll never know whether that was wasted. And you ought to assume it wasn’t. The word will never come back void.
Jonathan Leeman
Yeah. Amen. Mark?
Mark Dever
Oh, the one thing I was going to say was the last thing John said. I wouldn’t think so much about the person speaking to me, but you know, when I’m, when I’m done with the sermon and I feel like, you know, and I’m dealing more with the Lord, I just need to look at God and just know that he is going to pick this up and use it as he is at work in his word by spirit in his church.
And I don’t need to, at once it’s worry about that, I can exalt in that and rejoice in that. And the less impressed of the sermon was even to myself, probably even the better it is anyway. So praise the Lord for how he’s going to be glorified.
Jonathan Leeman
Amen. Brothers both, thank you for your reflections. Thank you for the conversation.
Jonathan Leeman
Thank Jonathan.
For more articles, books, and podcasts, please visit 9marks.org.
Related Multimedia
1 Kings 12:1–24: On Rehoboam’s Crass, Childish, and Pharoah-like Folly (Bible Talk, Ep. 123)
By Alex Duke, Jim Hamilton, Sam Emadi
