Is it not profoundly hope-filled and satisfying to have someone who knows you to the absolute core of your life,

who knows the worst things about you that nobody else knows, knows you to the bottom of all your

deceit and all your evil and all your duplicity and all your your

deceit and all your evil and all your duplicity and all your bad attitudes and all your half-heartedness and

tells you he knows that and then follows it with I love you and I can make this right.

When the diagnosis of our natural condition is as bad as ours is, it really is good news to have a

God who can make us right with him.

That's what John Piper lays out for us from Romans 3, 9 to 18

in this episode of Light and Truth.

This sermon was originally preached at Bethlehem Baptist Church on March 21st, 1999.

Father, I ask for your help now as we try to unfold this word faithfully.

I pray for hearts that are Lydia-like, opened to give heed to the gospel, and I pray for a special

anointing so that I don't speak any error and so that there's a biblical balance in proportion to what I say and a razor sharp edge that severs calluses that are hindering, hearing and understanding.

And I pray that it would be sharper than a two-edged sword and penetrate to the division of soul and spirit bone and marrow and leave none of us unchanged and some of us believing for the first time and saved.

Sustain your people by this word, I pray,

and gather in your people by this word,

and glorify your name by this word and mobilize witness with

this word. Heal marriages with this word. Bring children home with this word, give guidance with this word, remove

loneliness with this word, take depression and darkness off of hearts with this word

and 10,000 other blessings

that you have in mind with your extraordinary grace

over this word. I pray in Jesus' name, amen.

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