The following message is by Pastor John Piper.

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Let's pray together.

Father as always, I stand in huge need of your help

to be faithful to your word.

And so I ask that you would protect me from error and guard our hearts

from sin and pride and grant that your Holy Spirit would reign mightily in this room and that our hearts would be made

docile to your truth.

I pray that Jesus would be exalted and that our defects and deficiencies of doubt and fear would be overcome and that the impulse to lead lives

of radical risk-taking love for the sake of the lost and the suffering would be

intensified. And I pray this now in Jesus' name. Amen.

Just to relieve you of any pressure to take notes,

we'll try to put this up online by tomorrow morning so you just have the whole thing and you can just relax and as they say on the airplane sit back and enjoy the flight.

For about 10 years now,

I have returned to the doctrine of justification more often than to any other doctrine.

And there are five reasons for why this has held so much of my time and attention in these 10 years.

And we give you five reasons, and the fifth one is the one that will provide the structure for the rest of the message.

First four, we'll go by pretty quick.

Number one, for eight of those 10 years, I was preaching through the book of Romans and

justification is central to the book of Romans and therefore it was inescapable.

Second, I am surrounded at Bethlehem by thoughtful, widely read apprentices who ask hard questions.

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