Jesus has done everything necessary. He was loved and foreknown and chosen. He

appeared at the end of the times. He was crucified for sins. He was raised from

the dead. He was glorified at the Father's right hand and now he is sent by

His Spirit into this world and He is doing His purposes to gather His people and

through Him you have become believers in God. If Jesus did all of that for our

sake, how should we then live? That's the thought-provoking question that John

Piper answers in this episode of Light and Truth. This sermon was originally

preached at Bethlehem Baptist Church on December 19th, 1993. Our focus this morning

is on verses 20 and 21, the end of this paragraph that we've been on for several

weeks now, and there's a close connection between these two verses 20 and 21

and what went before. I want to point out one of those as we begin and then

closed by pointing out another one and try to draw the whole paragraph together.

Verses 20 and 21 are a continuation of the sentence that began in verse 17, 17,

18 and 19, and what we saw last week was that there's one central commandment

in those verses. It's the third in the series of commandments that we've seen

verse 13, the commandment to be hopeful, and then the commandment to be holy and

then the commandment in verse 17, conduct yourselves in fear throughout the

time of your sojourn on the earth. And then we saw that in verses 18 and 19, a

very strange reason was given for why you should conduct yourself in fear throughout

your time on the earth. And the reason was given something like because you've

been ransomed from a futile way of life by an infinitely valuable price, namely

the blood of Jesus. Now, verses 20 and 21, up the ante, because what they do,

...