Talk

The Ultimate Essence of Evil

John Piper
January 3, 2017

John Piper eloquently explains the ultimate essence of evil and how it impacts our relationship with God.

Scripture References

10Cross over to the coasts of Cyprus and look,

send to Kedar and observe closely;

see if there has ever been anything like this:

11Has a nation ever changed its gods?

(Yet they are not gods at all.)

But my people have exchanged their glorious God

for worthless idols.

12Be appalled at this, you heavens,

and shudder with great horror,”

declares the

Lord
.

13“My people have committed two sins:

They have forsaken me,

the spring of living water,

and have dug their own cisterns,

broken cisterns that cannot hold water.

17To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’

“Cursed is the ground because of you;

through painful toil you will eat food from it

all the days of your life.

4Take delight in the
Lord
,

and he will give you the desires of your heart.

23for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
21For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.
22Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools
23and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.
18For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit.
23But whoever has doubts is condemned if they eat, because their eating is not from faith; and everything that does not come from faith is sin.
6And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.
14The Pharisees, who loved money, heard all this and were sneering at Jesus.
John Piper
John Piper
John Piper is the founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College and Seminary in Minneapolis. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church. He is the author of more than fifty books, and more than thirty years of his preaching and writing are available free of charge at desiringGod.org. John and his wife, Noël, have five children and 12 grandchildren.