The Supremacy of God in Preaching

by John Piper

Unknown Binding

Published February 3, 2015

About the author

John Piper is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as senior pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

He grew up in Greenville, South Carolina, and studied at Wheaton College, Fuller Theological Seminary (B.D.), and the University of Munich (D.theol.). For six years, he taught Biblical Studies at Bethel College in St. Paul, Minnesota, and in 1980 accepted the call to serve as pastor at Bethlehem.

John is the author of more than 50 books and more than 30 years of his preaching and teaching is available free at desiringGod.org. John and his wife, Noel, have four sons, one daughter, and twelve grandchildren.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Reviews

[Aardvark · Rating 3 out of 5]

No surprises here. This is classic Piper as he intermixes his big-God theology, Christian hedonism, and his love of Jonathan Edwards, all as it relates to the topic of preaching. If you're into all that (which I very much am), then you'll enjoy this read. A big takeaway for me was to cultivate and encourage a more serious atmosphere in Sunday worship. It is far too easy to drift into superficiality, but as Piper says, "Sometimes it seems that levity is the greatest enemy of any true spiritual work being done in the hearers." Jonathan Edwards had a resolution which was to never speak of anything that was sportive of a matter of laughter on the Lord's day. There is some wisdom to glean there. Piper argues that we are starving for the grandeur of God, and yet our experience of God's greatness can be hindered, to our own detriment, by our hard-heartedness. May God grant us a spirit of hushed humility as we encounter His presence and hear His Word.
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"Christian preachers, more than all others, should know this truth—that people are starving for God. If anyone in all the world should be able to say, 'I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory,' it is the herald of God.
And as we look out over the wasteland of our secular culture, must we preachers not ask: Who but us will say to this people, 'Behold your God!'? Who will tell the people that God is great and greatly to be praised? Who will paint for them the landscape of God's grandeur? Who will remind them with tales of wonder that God has triumphed over every foe? Who will cry out above every crisis, 'Your God reigns!'? Who will labor to find words that can carry the 'gospel of the glory of the blessed God'"?

[Jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is only the third book I have read by John Piper, but as a growing preacher, I found it to be very edifying. I enjoyed very much Piper's thoughts on Edwards and the way in which Edwards has shaped Piper's thinking on preaching. There is also a chapter on Calvin and being "tethered" to the text, which I really resonated with. It flies in the face of so much that has happened in the modern evangelical church, and the desire to be relatable or even to entertain. This is a great and refreshing look at what it means to be a preacher and pastor who points to God's greatness every time he speaks.

[Clayton · Rating 4 out of 5]

John Piper writes as he preached - excellently. I really enjoyed this book and what holds me back from giving it that fifth and final star is that a lot of the book was focused on how Jonathan Edwards preached the supremacy of God in all things. That's nice, but I feel like that belonged in another book. Truthfully with that section removed, this book would have been a very, very helpful insight but the information on Edwards, while helpful, really detracted from the rest of the book.

[Katie Tootle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simple and good read! Convicting yet inspiring. I absolutely LOVED the final section involving Johnathan Edwards.