John Piper - What Jesus Demands from the World (All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

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Gods Passion for His Glory

The Pleasures of God

Desiring God

The Dangerous Duty of Delight

Future Grace

A Hunger for God

Let the Nations Be Glad!

A Godward Life

Pierced by the Word

Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ

The Legacy of Sovereign Joy

The Hidden Smile of God The Roots of Endurance

The Misery of Job and the Mercy of God

The Innkeeper

The Prodigals Sister

Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood

Whats the Difference?

The Justification of God

Counted Righteous in Christ

Brothers, We Are Not Professionals

The Supremacy of God in Preaching

Beyond the Bounds

Dont Waste Your Life

The Passion of Jesus Christ

Life as a Vapor

A God-Entranced Vision of All Things

When I Dont Desire God

Sex and the Supremacy of Christ

Taste and See

Fifty Reasons Why Jesus Came to Die

God Is the Gospel

Contending for Our All

What Jesus Demands from the World

Copyright 2006 by Desiring God Foundation

Published by Crossway Books
a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers
1300 Crescent Street
Wheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided by USA copyright law. Crossway is a registered trademark in the United States of America.

Cover design: Josh Dennis

Cover photo: Getty Images

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.

Scripture quotations marked NASB are from The New American StandardBible. Copyright The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995. Used by permission.

Scripture references marked RSV are from The Revised Standard Version. Copyright 1946, 1952, 1971, 1973 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.

All emphases in Scripture quotations have been added by the author.

First printing, 2006

Printed in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Piper, John, 1946

What Jesus demands from the world / John Piper.

p. cm.

Includes index.

1. Jesus ChristTeachings. 2. Bible. N.T. GospelsCriticism, interpretation, etc. I. Title.

BS2415.P49 2006

241.5dc22

2006021810

CONTENTS

JESUS

This book was possible because generosity has flowed to me from more streams than I can mention here, indeed more streams than I know. But I gladly mention several. The elders and congregation of Bethlehem Baptist Church gave me a five-month leave from preaching. This was part of their kindness on the twenty-fifth anniversary of our ministry together at the church. Without this extended time away, this book would not have been written.

The happy combination of solitude and fellowship at Tyndale House in Cambridge, England, with its abundant resources, provided the ideal setting for this kind of research and writing. Bruce Winter, whose long and faithful tenure as Warden was coming to an end while I was there, was gracious and stimulating in his welcome and friendship. The staff and readers of Tyndale House made our stay a glad and fruitful season. God knows the anonymous hands that opened to make this stay possible.

David Mathis, Justin Taylor, and Ted Griffin read the manuscript with care and helped me make hundreds of improvements. Carol Steinbach again gathered her team and prepared the Scripture and Person Indexes, which will help readers find their way around more easily. Lane Dennis and his team at Crossway Books encouraged and supported this project from conception to reality. My wife Nol set up house in a new place, set me free to write, and read every word with the eyes that only a gifted wife can bring. Everything I do hangs on her support.

When someone asks, How long did it take you to write this book? I often answer, Sixty years. I know its not a satisfactory answer. But it does tell the truth that the streams of generosity that have come together to create this book have been flowing into my life from the start. I do not doubt that experiences I had from Summit Drive Grade School in Greenville, South Carolina, in the 1950s to the University of Munich in the early 1970s and the ministry of the Word for twenty-five years at Bethlehem shaped what is in this book. There is no separating life and the labor of writing.

For all the countless streams of generosityknown and unknownthat have flowed into my life, I thank Jesus, who created me and called me and governs all my days, as he does the governments of the world and the galaxies of the universe. I pray that he will use this book to make himself known and treasured and obeyed as the only Savior from our sin and the only Sovereign over the world.

Long books seem daunting because we think we should start at the front and read to the back and not skip anything. I dont expect most people to read this book that way. I hope some will. I did structure the book so that matters at the front may help the reader understand matters further on. And there is a kind of foundation, progression, and climax. But the chapters have enough independence that most of them can be read without the others. It will be obvious when one chapter depends on another.

Therefore, I invite you to step in anywhere. You dont have to read the Introduction first. I hope that the way Jesus commands are interwoven will draw you further in, from one issue to another.

I have tried to keep the chapters relatively short so that in general they can be read at one sitting for those who only have limited time from day to day. This is why some of the chapters deal with the same command from different angles. I thought it better to handle the matter in several chapters rather than in one long one.

Since the focus is on the commands of Jesus in this book, much about his life and death is not here. If you want to see how I have tried to portray these more fully, you can look at two other (shorter!) books where I deal with Jesus and his death: Seeing and SavoringJesus Christ (Crossway Books, 2004) and