Jan 4
John Piper eloquently explains the ultimate essence of evil and how it impacts our relationship with God.
Scripture References
10.Cross over to the coasts of Cyprus and look,
send to Kedar2:10 In the Syro-Arabian desert and observe closely;
see if there has ever been anything like this:11.Has a nation ever changed its gods?
(Yet they are not gods at all.)
But my people have exchanged their glorious God
for worthless idols.12.Be 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.
17.To 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.
4.Take delight in the Lord,
and he will give you the desires of your heart.
23.for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
21.For 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. 22.Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23.and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.
18.For 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.
23.But 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.14:23 Some manuscripts place 16:25-27 here; others after 15:33.
6.And 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.
14.The Pharisees, who loved money, heard all this and were sneering at Jesus.
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.