Is Christ worth more to us than the completion right now of all your dreams, and they might

be noble dreams, godly dreams, missionary dreams, influencing people for righteousness?

The stories of the martyrs put that question to us this morning. Do we love Christ more than we love life?

What might our lives look like if we value Christ above all else? That's the question John

Piper explores from Philippians 1, 19 to 21 in this episode of Light and Truth. This sermon was

originally preached at Bethlehem Baptist Church on May 23rd, 1993.

In just a few minutes the choir is going to sing the Tadeum. Those two words are the first two

Latin words of the song that's printed there. You can look at it. Tadeum Laudamos are the first three

words in Latin. We praise the O God. The text I think goes back farther than is written there at

the bottom of the text on the next page, a fifth century through Ambrose and Augustine. The

little research I did said that in all likelihood Ambrose who became the Bishop of Milan in

374 as the fourth century translated it and adapted it to a new kind of music in his day

from an earlier Greek text which may have gone back much earlier. So probably what we have here is

a growing text in the history of the church that came together to express the praises of the

people of God. In a time we will see that was not easy. It wasn't easy to be a Christian in the

third and the early part of the fourth century of these millennia. In the second stanza you'll

notice there that the choir is going to declare to God that there are three groups of people

long dead who are praising God today. In the present tense it says the glorious company of the

apostles praise thee, not praise thee. The goodly fellowship of the prophets praise thee.

The noble army of the martyrs praise thee. And so they're going to be declaring the biblical truth

that the apostles are not dead. They're alive. And the prophets are not dead. They're alive.

And the martyrs are not dead. They are alive today and they are praising God in heaven. And when

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