Last Sunday John Piper's sermon was entitled The Supremacy of Christ in an Age of Terror. (You can listen to it here.)
After surveying some of the evil and tragedy in the world, he asked why the world is the way that it is. His first two answers were negative:
- The reason this terrorized and troubled world exists is not because God is not in total control.
- The reason this terrorized and troubled world exists is not because God is evil or unjust.
He then offered four positive reasons for why this world exists.
- The reason this terrorized and troubled world exists is because God planned the history of redemption and then permitted sin to enter the world through our first parents, Adam and Eve.
- The reason this terrorized and troubled world exists is because God subjected the natural world to futility. That is, God put the natural world under a curse so that the physical horrors we see around us in diseases and calamities would become a vivid picture of how horrible sin is. In other words, natural evil is a signpost pointing to the horrors of moral evil.
- The reason this terrorized and troubled world exists is so that followers of Christ can experience and display that no pleasure and no treasure compares to knowing Christ. That is, the loss of every good thing in this world is meant to reveal that Christ himself more than compensates for all losses.
- Finally, the reason this terrorized and troubled world exists is to make a place for Jesus Christ the Son of God to suffer and die for our sins. The reason there is terror is so that Christ would be terrorized. The reason there is trouble is so that Christ could be troubled. The reason there is pain is so that Christ could feel pain. This is the world God prepared for the suffering and death of his Son. This is the world where God made the best display of his love in the suffering of his Son.
