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  BOILING FOR CHRIST
  by John Piper
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Summary: The sermon emphasizes the importance of serving Christ with
intensity and focus, and warns against serving appetites, people's
approval, and the law.

Duration: 42:26 Topics: "Serving Christ", "Genuine Love"
Scripture References: Matthew 6:33, Romans 12:9-16

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DESCRIPTION
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In this sermon, Pastor John Piper emphasizes the importance of
wholeheartedly loving and serving the Lord. He encourages believers to
have intensity and focus in their devotion to God, not being slothful in
zeal. The sermon is based on Romans 12:9-13, which instructs believers
to let love be genuine, abhor evil, love one another, and serve the Lord
fervently. Pastor Piper also highlights the freedom and joy that comes
from serving Christ and not being bound by the law.

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CONTENT
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The following message is by Pastor John Piper. More information from
Desiring God Ministries is available at www.desiringgod.org. I invite
you to open up your Bibles with me to read our scripture text for this
evening's sermon. It's in the Book of Romans, chapter 12, verses 9
through 13.

And if you don't have your own copy of the scriptures with you, you can
find a pew Bible either underneath your pew or the pew in front of you.
And in those, it's in page 948. Reading in Romans 12, verses 9 through
13.

Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil. Hold fast to what is good.

Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing
honor. Do not be slothful in zeal.

Be fervent in spirit. Serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope.

Be patient in tribulation. Be constant in prayer. Contribute to the
needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.

Let's pray together. Father, some love to you is more than no love to
you. And so I pray for some love to you in hearts where there's no love
for you.

May this service be the instrument in your gracious hands to awaken love
to Christ where there's none. And for those who have some, and it's an
embattled love, like a little spark with wind blowing against it or a
wave breaking over it, protect that spark tonight. Protect that spark
this morning.

Father, I ask that your name would be magnified in the conflagration of
love that you produce in this people. Father, help me now to be faithful
to the Word of God and not to preach myself, but to preach Jesus Christ
as Lord and myself as the servant of this people and the servant of
Christ. Use your word to establish us, empower us, so that in this year
we are free from the love of money and are able to give lavishly to
calamities in the world and to the ongoing ministry of this church and
other good things.

Grant that we would be deeply satisfied in Jesus Christ so that our
delight in Him would not be compromised by any appetite. So come and
guard me from error and guard me from pride and guard me from the fear
of man and be alive and powerful and gracious in and through me. Now I
pray over your word in Jesus name.

Amen. So here we are now at verse 11. You remember we skipped it back in
December because I said I thought the Christmas text worked better from
verse 12.

And then after we did that for Christmas, we took two weeks, prayer week
before, prayer week after, to talk about, well, how is it that verse 12
happens, rejoicing in hope, enduring or being patient in tribulation,
being constant in prayer. And we said prayer is the way you rejoice in
hope and being in the word is the way you rejoice in hope. And now we're
back to the verse we skipped.

Do not be slothful in zeal. Be fervent in spirit. Serve the Lord.

Paul's already addressed the issue of zeal in verse eight. Remember that
part? Let the one who leads lead with zeal. Now he's saying, don't be
slothful in zeal.

Be fervent in spirit. Serve the Lord. The way I would describe the
relationship between verse 11 and the other verses around it, especially
12, is that verse 11 gives the intensity and the focus of our joy and
our hope and our endurance and our prayer and our service.

So I want to talk about those two things, intensity and focus. And the
intensity is in the first two phrases of verse 11, and the focus is in
the last phrase of verse 11. So first intensity.

Do not be slothful in zeal. Be fervent in spirit. I think those are a
negative and a positive way of saying the same thing.

Don't negatively. Don't be lazy in zeal. Positively be fervent in
spirit.

So if you collapse the two statements, negative and positive into one
statement, I think it would go something like. Do lots of work for
Christ passionately. Do lots of work.

For Christ passionately. Let's think about these two statements, the
negative and the positive. I think when Paul does that, one of the
effects it has is that each each statement protects the other from a
misuse.

Each sheds light on the other so that if you take this one a little bit
too far, this one grabs it and pulls it back. And if you take this one a
little bit too far, this one grabs it and pulls it back. So let's look
at them one at a time.

First, do not be slothful in zeal. So that's an address to those who
should be very pragmatic, not lazy. The word is lazy.

Slothful means lazy. This is a summons to work and not be lazy, to be
zealous and not lazy. Be eager and earnest and zealous to get things
done.

A great virtue in that phrase is efficiency. Get it done. Make it
happen.

Don't be lazy. Get up early. Go to bed late.

Work hard. Don't be slothful in your zeal for God, which could be very
lopsided, I think. You might say, yeah, right.

That's exactly the way I think it should be. Get things done. Be
efficient.

It's doing that matters. And then, of course, the next phrase comes in
to protect people against you. You efficiency types.

You type A, get everything done and feel nothing types. So this comes in
and says now be fervent in spirit. And the word fervent comes from the
Latin fervens, boil.

And that's exactly what the Greek word means. Boil in the spirit. This
is a statement.

OK, all of us efficiency, get it done. No nonsense business men type.
Feel something.

Boil, boil in your spirit for Christ. So we have a balance against the
pragmatic bent, which is in the Bible. It's not just a personality type.

It's a biblical bent. It's a good thing to want to get things done and
not be lazy. And then it works the other way around.

If you were to linger over the second verse, be fervent in spirit. You
were certain personality. You'd say, yes, that's what the Christian life
is.

It's all about passion. It's all about feeling. It's all about loving.

It's all about zeal. Yes, that's what Christianity is. It's a heart
religion, which is absolutely true.

And then the church needs to be protected from you. And so it brings in
the other side, namely the pragmatic side and says, no, it's not just
about feeling. It's about doing.

It's about not being lazy. It's about getting things done. It's not
being slothful.

First Corinthians 15 58 is a great paraphrase. Maybe Paul has just
finished a chapter on the resurrection of Christ and how it becomes the
foundation and hope of our resurrection. And he concludes, I mean, where
would you end after 57 verses, 57 verses on the resurrection of Jesus
and our resurrection hope with him? Where would you end? And here's his
here's his ending.

Here's his last verse. Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast,
immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the
Lord your labor is not in vain. We ought to be doing lots of work.

I don't know any other way to say abounding in the work of the Lord
means doing lots of it, lots and lots and lots of work. That's what
ought to be happening in the church and in the saints of God. But not to
the neglect of our hearts and not to the neglect of passion or feeling
or boiling or fervency.

We should be both. So if you're the pragmatic type, you should not say
I'm practical, not passionate. You should say, Lord, I'm practical.

Make me more passionate. And if you're the passionate type, you should
not say I'm passionate, not practical or pragmatic. You shouldn't say
that.

You should say I'm passionate. Lord, make me more practical so that I
get things done and don't just dink around with my emotions all day. So
let's just get the Bible together.

Let's pull the whole Bible together. And if we feel, yes, oh, this feels
so good, let's be bumped into by the other text and pray over it and
read the Bible and ask God to do the balancing work in our life. And I
know we'll always be one or the other mainly.

That's the way most people are. And that's OK as long as you're not
content to be only the one or the other, because the Bible says don't be
slothful in zeal and the Bible says boil in the spirit. So we should
make it our aim to be businessmen and poets, businesswomen and lovers.

That's your goal. Jonathan Edwards, when he was 20, wrote 70 resolutions
and they're very famous for those who love Edwards. I mean, that's a
very small fame.

Number six, I read these a long time ago and they had a profound effect
on me. I go back to them periodically and I love this one. So simple.

He wrote, resolved to live with all my might while I live. Do you aim to
live with all your might while you live? Whatever my hand finds to do, I
will do it with all my heart. Is that the way you live? Do you boil? Do
you boil in the spirit, in the service of Christ? Or are you just
phlegmatic? If you are, then ask God to make you live with all your
might while you live.

There's a warning, Revelation 315. I know your works, Jesus says. You
are neither cold nor hot.

You're not boiling or freezing. Would that you were either cold or hot.
So because you are lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will spit you
out of my mouth.

That's really scary. And so don't take this lightly. Don't say, oh,
we're just talking about personality types here.

We're not. We're talking about a longing, a praying, a yearning, a
questing for being passionately pragmatic. Poetically businesslike.

The great commandment is you shall love the Lord your God with some. No,
all your heart, all your soul, all your strength and all your mind. How
are you doing with the all of your life? C plus B minus D. Move forward
in 2005 with the all of the great commandment.

So that's my first focus. This verse is about intensity. About working
hard, not being slothful in zeal and about feeling deeply boiling in the
spirit, this verse pulls together the two sides and says, let's be
whole, healthy people for each other.

And now, secondly, and the only other part is focus, intensity and
focus, intensity and focus. And the focus is the last phrase. Serve the
Lord.

Don't be slothful and zeal. Be fervent in spirit. Serve the Lord.

It's the Lord, the Lord. We're not, we're not talking about general
personality traits here. Like if I quit the sermon here and just said,
oh, let's all be businesslike and pragmatic and let's balance that with
poetry and love and passion and zeal.

We'd all go out. That'd be a pagan sermon. It'd be a pagan sermon.

No. How to win friends and influence people and succeed in business and
make a good marriage and we'd all be Christless. And so the sermon is
not ending here.

This has got a focus. This has got a focus. This this boiling in this
pragmatism has a focus and the focus is serve the Lord.

Jesus is the focus here. The greatest thing in the world is to be saved.
I like that sentence.

I didn't make it up. I heard it on the deathbed of Dr. Wyden, the
statesman who was at this church as the main man when I came. He died, I
think, in 82.

And when I went to visit him, I think it was in United in St. Paul, I
don't know if it's called that then. He was on his bed when I walked in,
he looked at me and the first thing he said, hello, Pastor Piper, the
greatest thing in the world is to be saved. I made a profound impact, as
you can tell now, 23 years later, I'm quoting it to you.

It's true. Christ has given us eternal life. Christ cannot die.

We cannot die. Overwhelming joy is offered to us forever and ever and
ever. Everything works together for your good.

If you are in him, an eternal weight of glory is being wrought by all
the troubles right now. You're in trouble tonight. Awful things are
happening in your life.

I hope that God will awaken you to the truth. This slight momentary
affliction is working for me an eternal weight of glory. The greatest
thing in the world in this trouble is to be saved.

Therefore, we should not be slothful. But passionate and boiling and
serving this Christ, serving this Christ, the highest privilege in the
world is to serve Jesus Christ. So let's do this.

Let's take that biblical call, serve Christ, serve the Lord, and let's
compare it with three other things you can serve which are in the Bible
that ought not to be served. But they're mentioned as possible objects
of your service in the Bible. I think that's the best way that I can
think of to unpack what's the nature of this service different from all
these other services.

OK, so that's where we're going. Number one, serve Jesus, not your
belly. That's a literal translation of.

Roman 617, I'll read it to you. 1617 Roman 1617. I appeal to you,
brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create
obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught.

Avoid them, for such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own
appetites. There it is. Here's a group of people who have a service.

Everybody serves something, and this people do not serve the Lord
Christ. They're in the church. They're causing problems because they
serve their own appetites.

The literal translation is they serve their belly. Serving Christ is
contrasted with serving your appetites. So what does it mean to serve
your appetites? You serve your appetites when you treat them as the most
compelling offer of pleasure.

You serve your appetites when you treat them as the most compelling
offer of pleasure. If Christ calls you to self-control and chastity and
purity of mind, and your appetites call you to self-indulgence and
sexual license and impure thoughts, and you follow those appetites, then
you are saying they are more compelling in their offer of pleasure than
Christ and the service of Christ is. Serving Christ doesn't measure up
to what these appetites offer me.

He doesn't measure up to what they offer. Now, that's very dangerous to
say. It's called idolatry.

So the contrast here between serving the belly, the appetites, and
serving Christ draws our attention to the fact that Christ is superior.
Serving Christ is more valuable than serving the appetites. Serving
Christ is better than eating food.

Serving Christ is better than sex, sexual intercourse, pornography,
sexual fantasies, and masturbation. Christ is better than what those
appetites offer. Faith embraces that.

Christ is better than what your appetites... So one thing we can say
about serving Christ in is that it means experiencing His worth and
beauty and fellowship as more compelling than what our appetites offer
to us as desirable. Serving Christ means experiencing the risen Christ
who died for us, who lives, who reigns, experiencing Christ as more
compelling than our appetites are compelling when they lure us to what
He disapproves of. Second, not only serve Jesus not appetites, but
secondly, serve Jesus not people.

Well, yes, you're supposed to serve people in one way, but not another
way. The Bible says both. So let's clarify here so you can really know
what serving Jesus is.

Yes, we serve people in the sense that we put ourselves at the disposal
of people's needs and help them and lift them and meet their needs.
Galatians 5.13, do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh,
but through love, through love, serve one another. Serve one another.

So what do I mean when I say serve Jesus not people? I mean, Ephesians
6.6, Paul tells servants to do this, work not by the way of eye service
as men pleasers, but as servants of Christ, doing the will of God from
the heart, rendering service with all goodwill as to the Lord, not, not
to man. So there it is real clear, serve the Lord, not man. And the
meaning is also clear.

Don't serve their approval. Don't make yourself the slave of other
people's approval. Don't need other people's approval.

Don't always be looking over your shoulder when you consult with Jesus
as to what to do, to wonder what so and so will think about this. And
touching your words carefully, like the pastor I heard of last Sunday,
who said on Sunday morning, God has nothing to do with calamities. When
somebody asked him, really, what about Acts four? And he said, well,
that's for Wednesday night.

I lie on Sunday morning. I tell the truth on Wednesday night. That is
pure people pleasing.

That's pure slavery. That's a service you ought not to engage in. Serve
Jesus.

Care about one approval. Christ's. Let the chips fall where they will.

Don't serve man in that way. Oh, what a liberty in life comes from
playing to one audience alone. How freeing it is.

You don't have to be looking around all the time, wondering who heard
what. You're just always saying what he wants you to say and doing what
he wants you to do. And his approval matters and nobody else ultimately
matters.

And that ultimately is important. I could give a whole sermon here on
texts like seek to please your neighbor for his good. I know life is
complex and that you don't want to.

Run roughshod over everybody on your way to obey Jesus. You know, to
hell with you and your opinions, it's me and Jesus, right? That's not
the way you want to be. But mainly, mainly you want to say ultimately.

One audience matters. And that's Jesus. And if it costs me disapproval,
I won't serve.

I won't serve the ears of different audiences. Third and lastly, don't
serve the law. Serve Jesus.

So serve Jesus, not your appetites. And serve Jesus, not people and
their approval. Serve Jesus and not the law.

Now this is going to get right at the heart of the gospel. Listen
carefully for another few minutes. This is the best news that I've had
for you all night long.

To understand the difference between serving the law and serving Jesus
is the most wonderful thing about the Christian life. So listen very
carefully. It's the heart of the book of Romans.

So we're going back to some of the heart of the book of Romans. Here's
where I'm getting this idea. Chapter 7, verse 6 of Romans.

But now we are released from the law. That's a good news. Now we are
released from the law, having died.

So don't think you're released from the law if you haven't died. Having
died with Christ, having died to that which held us captive, made us
slaves. So that we serve.

That's what I'm looking for. How, Paul? So that we serve not under the
old written code, but in the new life of the Spirit. So Paul contrasts
serving the law, serving the do's and don'ts of the Mosaic covenant or
any other covenant, serving the do's and don'ts, focusing, focusing on
the demands of the Bible with a view to doing them to get right with God
and thus being enslaved in misery and guilt and hopelessness.

Deadly. It's deadly, deadly, deadly to try to serve the law. Rather, we
are to serve in the new life of the Spirit, which is a focus on Christ.

It's a focus on Christ. Not the law. Serving Christ is not mainly a new
law.

Let's get this real clear now. We don't replace Sinai and the Mosaic law
with the Sermon on the Mount. That's Jesus law.

That's Moses law. We got a new law here and you just basically deal with
it in the same way. That's not the point.

The new thing is not new law. The new thing is person in place of law.
I'm not focusing any longer on the list.

I shall not kill, not commit adultery. I'm focusing on the person of
Jesus Christ. Why does this make a massive difference? That divine
person that I'm focusing on is first and foremost a law fulfiller, not a
law demander.

He's not like Moses. He's radically different from Moses. Nobody looked
at Moses in his law as a law fulfiller first and then a law demander.

He was just a law demander. But when you stop focusing on the do's and
don'ts of the Mosaic law and start focusing on this glorious divine
person, the person you meet is first and foremost a law fulfiller and
curse bearer. And that changes everything.

If you're burdened down tonight trying to fulfill the law, I've got good
news for you. Christianity is not a new law. It's not replacing the old
law with a new law.

It's replacing law with person. And the first thing you encounter, and
you're encountering him right now, if you have ears to hear, the first
thing you encounter is you meet Jesus as one who says, Matthew 3, 15, it
is fitting that we should fulfill all righteousness. And he does.

It comes right into the human role and he's baptized. And at every
point, he does what we could not do perfectly, perfectly. Every place
the first Adam fell, he did not fall.

Every failure to trust, he trusted. Every disobedience, he obeyed. And
as the second Adam, I now, by faith alone, am united to him and all of
his righteousness is mine.

And that's not all that he did. But when he died, Galatians 3, 13, he
became a curse for us as it is written, cursed is everyone who hangs on
the tree. So now he's done two massive things for me, this Christ that I
meet first on my way to some do's and don'ts in the Bible.

The first thing he has done is fulfill all the demands of the law that I
cannot fulfill. And the second thing he's done is bear the curse for all
my failures so that a righteousness is provided and a substitute curse
is endured. And I am the freest of all people in the Holy Spirit now.

And I will care with all my heart about this Christ's being known in the
world for who he is. I can't steal anymore. That wouldn't tell the truth
about Jesus.

I can't commit adultery against Noel. I wouldn't tell the truth about
Jesus. Life becomes a focus on a person and we meet that person first
and foremost as a law fulfiller, not a law demander.

So let me sum up where we've been and illustrate. We've seen three
features of serving Christ by comparing it to what we ought not to
serve. Number one, serving Christ is seeing the Lord as worth more than
what our appetites offer.

Two, serving the Lord is seeing the Lord's approval as worth more than
the approval of people. We will not serve or be enslaved to the approval
of other people. And third, serving the Lord is believing, believing who
he is, divine son of God, and what he's done, become our righteousness,
died in our place, and then longing, striving, being pragmatically
passionate about becoming what we are in Christ perfectly.

Now, what's left to do? What's left to do is draw out this amazing
implication from that last point. This means, and I would love this to
be in the common vocabulary of this church and in the common mindset.
This means that all of our serving is receiving service from Christ,
which he bought for us when he died.

All of our serving others and him is a receiving of his service,
enabling us to do our service. Moment by moment by moment, as I put my
foot down in a pathway of service, I am being enabled to put my foot
down by the service of Christ. The son of man came not to be served, but
to serve and to give his life a ransom from any.

If you are not served moment by moment by Christ, you don't serve Christ
to his glory. You serve him to your glory. The giver gets the glory.

Now, let me read you the texts where that is made so clear. There are at
least four of them. I think I'll mention three.

I'll just read them and we'll be finished. Romans 15, 18, Paul says, I
will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has
accomplished through me to bring about obedience among the Gentiles by
word and deed. Anything that I can talk about that ought to be talked
about in my ministry, Christ has done through me.

So my serving of Christ is Christ's doing it through me. That means that
when you think about serving, you think first about this person who
loved you and gave himself for you and bought all the blessings of
eternity for you that you don't deserve, including the enabling of your
service. And so serving is a constant trusting, a constant leaning, a
constant depending and a constant receiving.

Second text on that point, Colossians 128 and 29, Colossians 128.
Christ, we proclaim warning everyone, teaching everyone with all wisdom
that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this, I toil.

I'm a businessman. I'm not lazy. I get things done.

I'm a type A. For this, I toil, struggling with. With what? With all the
energy that he powerfully works within me. You think I'm struggling? I'm
not struggling.

He's struggling in and through me. I'm leaning. I'm trusting.

I'm a little baby in the arms of Jesus, enabling me to get things done.
That's an amazing view of service. Run, John, run.

The law requires. The law demands. Remember that one? Run, John, run.

The law demands, but gives him neither feet nor hands. Far better news
the gospel brings. It bids him fly and gives him wings.

Yeah, you got to flap them, but he's in there working these things. One
more text. This is a whole worldview I'm giving you here on what it
means to be a Christian.

First Corinthians 1510. By the grace of God, I am what I am. So I'm
passionate or I'm pragmatic.

By the grace of God, I am what I am. And his grace toward me was not in
vain. But on the contrary, I worked harder than any of them.

Oh, he was not slothful in zeal. I worked harder than any of them.
Though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.

And the fourth text that I could recite is, and I will. First Peter 411.
Let him who serves serve in the strength that God supplies so that in
everything, God may get the glory through Jesus Christ to whom belongs
the dominion forever.

That's an amazing verse. The whole of Christianity is in that verse. You
want to serve Jesus? Oh, may you serve Jesus.

Serve him in the strength that he supplies. That is, he must serve you
in order for you to serve him. And therefore, serving Jesus is first and
foremost.

Trust in being served like a helpless cripple. Baby, unless you turn to
become like a little child, you can't even enter the kingdom of heaven.
Serving Jesus is not first mustering up a lot of self will and a lot of
energy and a lot of willpower.

Now I'm going to get it done for Jesus. It's not the way you serve
Jesus. You serve Jesus by hearing all those texts say he's mightily
working in me.

He's stirring me up. His grace is working with me in the power that he
supplies. Serving Jesus is first trusting Jesus.

That's what I would like to be a given in this church's mental life. Can
we all think together? Serving Jesus is first trusting Jesus to serve
me. The son of man came not to be served, but to serve.

Can we feel that first? I pray that we can. I said earlier, serving
Jesus is the greatest privilege in the world. I'll sum up in one
sentence now why I believe that's the case.

Serving Jesus Christ, the Lord, is the greatest privilege in the world
because the greatest person in the universe has not just called me into
his service, but has become our servant so that all of our serving is
trusting and depending and receiving. That's why it's the greatest thing
in the world to serve Jesus. The giver gets the glory.

The greatest life is life of serving Jesus. We get the help. He gets the
praise.

And that's the way it ought to be. We get the joy. He gets the honor.

So don't be slothful. Don't be slothful in zeal. Boil in the spirit as
you serve the Lord.

That is, as you trust the Lord's enabling and forgiveness and
righteousness and help. But please do not charge for those copies or
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Our mailing address is Desiring God, 2601 East Franklin Avenue,
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your treasure, because God is most glorified in us when we are most
satisfied in Him.

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Audio: https://sermonindex1.b-cdn.net/12/SID12392.mp3
Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/john-piper/boiling-for-christ/
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