We have 15 or 20 minutes for questions, and this is how many I have, and some of them are huge. We’ll see. Let’s just go quick.

1. Does God Create People Just to Send Them to Hell?

Election. “Does God predetermine our sin to his glory? Does he predetermine some to hell for his glory? If so, how is he fair and good in doing this?”

I’ve written the book. I’ve seen many new questions for a long time called Spectacular Sins, in which my answer to the first question is yes, God governs everything, including sin, to his glory. And if that weren’t true, we would be, of all people, most to be pitied, because there’s a lot of sin in the world coming against us. And if God weren’t in control of it, he would have very little to help us.

So God does govern all things for his glory, including sin. And I began by giving you the illustration of Acts 4:27–28: “Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.” What is that? Kill Jesus. That’s sin. God planned the sin of the killing of the Son of God, and he didn’t sin in planning that.

You have to have a category to make sense out of the Bible that God can ordain that sin be without being sinful. That has to be a category in your head. God can ordain, plan, predestine — pick your word. He can ordain that sin come about without himself sinning. He can do that. The cross is, if he can’t, we have no salvation because the cross wasn’t his idea. So the answer to the first question is yes.

Does he predetermine some to hell for his glory? This needs very delicate, careful biblical expression. I could just say yes, but it would be, I think, misleading to simply say yes. Because yes would leave out the fact that when Ephesians goes about expressing what happened in eternity, it talks about us being elected in Christ Jesus, which means that God contemplated us as sinners who need to be saved by Jesus when he chose us.

Which means the people that he didn’t choose don’t deserve to be chosen, just like we didn’t deserve to be chosen. So that there’s real blameworthiness, real guilt, real fault, real worthiness of damnation in the people that are not chosen. And therefore, he does them no wrong, and he’s not unfair, which is what the question is. How is he fair in doing this? How is he good in doing this?

The ultimate answer — and it’s massive, we should do a whole seminar on it — is in Romans 9:22 and following, where I’ll just read it to you so I get the word exactly right. If there is an answer in the Bible and some people say there’s just not an answer in the Bible to this question of why God would pass over some, why he would create a world in which he knew that many would be lost and planned to do it that way.

Here’s the closest I think the Bible gives to an answer: “What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order” — and there’s the most important conjunction in the Bible on this issue — “to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory” (Romans 9:22–23).

The reason God has created a world in which there is much sin, much lostness, and much destruction is so that against the backdrop of that, we Christians who deserved none of the grace that we have would all the more be amazed at the fact that we are saved by grace. So you study for yourself Romans 9:6–23.

I wrote a whole book on that one too because that’s the biggest problem there is just about. And I wanted to try to come to terms with that’s my best effort, and if you find that it’s inscrutable and mysterious, it’s okay. Just live there. Live. I mean, Paul comes to the ends of Romans 9:11 or Romans 1–11, and he says,

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?” “Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?” For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. (Romans 11:33–36)

Paul ends on the note of how inscrutable the ways of God are.

2. Are All Children Saved?

“At what point can we be assured of our child’s salvation? Are all children saved, particularly miscarried or aborted?” Now, those are two or three very different questions.

My answer to the last one is yes, I believe all infants who die are saved, but that would take me 15 minutes to unpack. You can go to the Desiring God website and just type in “Are infants saved?” or something like that. You’ll find two or three things I’ve written on that. My answer is yes, and I don’t think that contradicts original sin. I don’t think it contradicts the necessity of faith and the cross. There are all kinds of reasons why I believe that, but that’s my answer to the last part.

The first part is not as easy. At least it’s not as comforting. As parents, at what point can we be assured of our child’s salvation? I would answer when you see them in heaven.

Now, I got to be careful here because Paul does write to churches and gives them the benefit of the doubt. He treats them as Christians. And if your children have made a profession of faith, you should treat them as Christians until they just look at you right in the eye and say, “I don’t believe that anymore.” And then you’re going to treat them as an unbeliever, which means you’re going to pray with tears every day.

So when it says, “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it,” (Proverbs 22:6) I do not think that is an absolute always true statement. That is like most proverbs, a generalization of how it usually goes. You bring up a child, you feed the child the word of God, you pray for the child earnestly. In general, children brought up that way go with God. And many don’t, including God’s kids.

I’m not sure I can put my finger on it, but let me try, because it’s so important for you beleaguered and sad and discouraged parents. Here’s God talking:

Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth;
     for the Lord has spoken:
“Children have I reared and brought up,
     but they have rebelled against me.
The ox knows its owner,
     and the donkey its master’s crib, but Israel does not know,
     my people do not understand.” (Isaiah 1:2–3)

God Almighty is the best Father that ever was. And he says, “My children I have reared and they have rebelled against me.”

So, there is no guarantee, I’m sorry, that a child brought up by the best parent will be saved, which is why we pray till the end. We will pray, and you better pray for all your believing children right now because they may not be believing and they may come out someday. And I’m not talking about homosexuality. I just mean, “It was all a hoax. I was just performing. I don’t believe it.” So keep praying no matter what.

The hope is precisely that God is sovereign and can save any kid. Any kid — 42, 52, 62, any child, whatever age or how much rebellion.

3. Can Salvation Be Lost?

“Can someone walk away from salvation (Hebrews 6:4–6)?” I assume they mean, can you be genuinely raised from the dead by the Holy Spirit by God (Ephesians 2:5), and then be lost? And the answer is no.

The teaching is really clear in numerous places: “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined . . . those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified” (Romans 8:29–30). Nobody drops out or walks away.

When somebody walks away, John described it like this: “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us” (1 John 2:19). That’s scary. They can be in the church a long time. They can be in your family for a long time and walk out. And John says, “The inference you should draw is not, ‘Oh, they lost their salvation. They were born again and now they’re not born again.’” He said, “No, no, no, don’t go there. They were not of us. It was a sham.”

And I think that’s what Hebrews means. They have tasted, we’ve tasted the powers of the age to come in Hebrew 6, and they trample on the grace of God and they’re lost. Well, what is that? Tasted the powers of the age to come. That’s Jesus saying to people, “I never knew you,” after they said, “Did we not cast out demons in your name? Did we not do many mighty works in your name?” And he’ll say, “Depart from me, you workers of evil. I never knew you” (Matthew 7:21–23). They really did that. They tasted the powers of the age to come. Judas did miracles and he’s in hell today. He tasted the powers of the age to come. He’s a son of perdition.

So it’s not a contradiction biblically that a person can be a pastor, a person can heal the sick, cast out demons, and be an unbeliever. Mere mysteries abound in this world, and that’s one of them.

4. How Does God’s Sovereignty Offer Hope When a Loved One Changes Beliefs?

Sovereignty. “How does the sovereignty of God give me hope in light of a loved one who once professed faith but has now come to believe something else?” The way the sovereignty of God gives you hope is that it is the only means by which they can be returned. If there were no sovereignty of God, you would be shut up to hoping that someday they might make a decision all on their own, even though they got the devil and all the world against them.

Whereas now you have the hope that God can break through the devil, break through the blindness, break through the death, raise them from the dead, and you should be praying that way. That’s our only hope. It’s not like that takes away hope. That creates the only hope that somebody who’s been long rejecting something that he once believed could be saved back.

5. Did God Orchestrate a World Where Our Choices Align with His Will?

Free will. “Could it be that God knew what we would choose and was able to set up a world where his will is accomplished through those choices?” So this is asking whether the foreknowledge of God, of free choices could be a way out of the problem of God controlling or determining all things, including sin and lostness.

No, for this reason. If you define free will of that person that God foresees, what is it? Definitions really matter, right? You are saying God foresees ahead of time, thousands of years ahead of time, what free choices you will make. And then he plans a world to take all that into account and thus runs the world not in contradiction to or instead of your free choices, but through them. And I’m saying, no, that won’t work. It won’t work biblically. I’m talking about logic here. I’m just biblically. And the reason it won’t is because if I force you to define that, I think what you’re going to say is, what I mean by those free choices is ultimate self-determination.

You hear that? That’s what free choice means when people are putting it over against sovereignty. A typical person who believes in free will doesn’t deny that God influences people. They just deny that God is the decisive influence when it comes to salvation. And I’m arguing he is the decisive influence. And if you deny that he’s the decisive influence, you’re saying you are the decisive influence and that’s what I mean by ultimate self-determination. The final decider in your destiny is you. Okay? Now, that’s what God foresees in this system.

Well, when you read Ephesians 2:5, nobody does that. That kind of autonomy doesn’t exist in the Bible. So God can’t foresee it because it doesn’t exist. There is no such thing as ultimate self-determination in human beings. Only God has ultimate self-determination. So Ephesians 5 says, you were dead in trespasses and sins. You did not make a free choice to bring yourself alive.

That’s the reason I reject that scheme. The whole description of what really happens in history that God foreknows is God’s activity to save sinners. God doesn’t watch and say, I’ll watch them save themselves and then I will manipulate the history to take all that into account. He doesn’t. The Bible describes what is happening in the salvation of sinners as God raising the dead. God giving sight to the blind. God taking the heart of stone out, putting the heart of flesh in. It’s a sovereign work of God.

6. How Can We Avoid Old Bible Notes from Impeding New Insights?

Practical Bible. “How long have you had that Bible? I don’t remember and there are hardly any marks in it, because the question is do you use your old notes? Do your old notes in your Bible keep you from learning new insights? How can we avoid that?”

That’s a very good question. So I do have a Bible with scads of notes. I went through, I bought an RSV, in 1966 when I was a sophomore in college. I used it for almost thirty years. I rebound it twice I think. And the reason is because I knew where everything was on the page. Upper right-hand corner is Romans 3:25. I just knew this book cover to cover. And then the RSV went out of print in the mid-nineties. “Oh, shoot.” So I shifted over to the NASB, had learned a whole new pagination, had my blue, I’ve still got these at home with all my notes in them. And then praise God, the ESV came along and the ESV is the RSV better. They just took the RSV, the 1952 edition, and they made a few hundred changes to it. And that’s what we got. Here, this is the RSV, don’t tell anybody.

So all my memory came back. All my memorizing came back to me. Some of you have the King James that way, or some of the NIV that way. That’s fine. Go with it. So yes, it can be a problem to have an old Bible that you have for thirty years and there’s marks everywhere that when you’re reading it again, you see everything through the lens of those old markings. Yes, that can be a problem. And if that’s keeping you from seeing more, save that as a nice library of notes and get yourself a new Bible and get some new insights. So yes, I admit that’s a very good question. I don’t think you have to throw that bible away. Never, never, never throw a Bible away that’s got all your notes in it. Oh, terrible. Terrible.

7. How Can We Keep Our Bible Reading Fresh?

I know we’re over time, but three more. We’ll do these real fast if I can. “How can we keep our Bible reading from going stale from familiarity?” And I think, when I earlier said know yourself, that was my basic answer. I’m always asking the Lord to show me how to shift gears in my personal devotions, lest that happen.

One of the marks of the fall of the human being is that we all get into ruts, and ruts — the definition of a rut is that you go through things mechanically. And if that’s starting to happen to you in your Bible reading, change something. Pray, for sure. Pray like crazy, and then change something. Change the version. Change the time of day, change whether you do audio. Change what kind of questions you ask. Just do something to say, I’m not going to let that happen. So know yourself and know what kind of changes you need to make and experiment. Talk to friends, see what people are doing. Never assume you’ve got this all figured out ahead of time.

8. Who Are the People to Whom John Piper Turns for Wise Counsel?

Two more. “Who are the people you turn to for wise counsel? If I named them, you wouldn’t know them, but I assume this is really asking not for names, but do you do that? Or how do you do it?” So let me just talk for two minutes.

1. I’m in an accountability group with David Livingston and Jon Bloom. Jon Bloom was the founder with me of Desiring God. He still is a writer there. Scott Anderson’s the new president, and Jon moved over, left Scott in there because Scott’s so gifted in that. And Jon’s now a writer, creator, two books, and you’ll see his name trump twice every week in Desiring God. So Jon is there, David is my age, I’m three days older than he is, and these two guys meet with me every two weeks, and they know everything about me. They know every marriage problem I’ve got, every temptation I ever experienced. They know me inside and out. There are zero secrets with these brothers, and I value not only their knowing me, but the counsel they give is extraordinarily precious.

2. I would mention my wife, Noël. I’d probably default to Noël first on almost any question I have about life. Just, you know me better than anybody. What do you think?

3. Tom Steller. I’ve worked with for 35 years. I just trust Tom to the heights, and often we’ll talk about numerous things.

4. I worked with Together for the Gospel. I’m a guest at those events Together for the Gospel, that’s Al Mohler, and Mark Dever, and C.J. Mahaney, and Ligon Duncan. Those four friends invite a bunch of others in, and we speak every two years. And those guys came to Minneapolis and spent a whole day with me when I was trying to decide whether to resign or not. And when to resign, how to resign, all day. They gave me at a hotel. Unbelievable, and that’s real kindness and friendships. So those guys are there and others.

5. And then there’s the Desiring God team, the whole team there, especially the content creation team. We’re just always iron sharpening iron all the time. So I could keep enlarging that circle. I email, I won’t mention any more names, but I hope I’m not so much of a loner that I cannot learn or be corrected.

9. How Should We See Alcohol in Relation to Finding Joy in God?

Last one: “The Bible says wine was given to gladden the heart of man. How should we view alcohol and the pursuit of happiness in light of this passage?” Now, where did that come from? We’re going to end this conference right now on wine. How anticlimactic is that?

Okay, talk for two minutes, then we’ll be done, and I’ll pray and you can go. Number one: I’m a teetotaler. That’s a fact. And number two: When I came to Bethlehem, the requirement of being a teetotaler was in the church covenant with the words we engage not to possess or drink or sell alcoholic beverages. Now, to join the church, you have to affirm the church covenant, which means you have to be a teetotaler. I read it.

I said to the deacons — we had deacons not elders in those days, took me ten years to convince them that was Baptist and not Presbyterian — I said I don’t think that’s a biblical requirement. And two years into it, I put my job on the line and I preached a sermon called “Flesh Tank and Peashooter Regulations,” or something like that. And I preached that it’s the Galatian heresy to require that. Like circumcision. And I survived. There were women who were in the Women’s Temperance Union who set up tables to argue that prohibition should still be in effect, and “John’s taking this church down liberal.”

So anyway, the point there is I’m a teetotaler and I staked my job on the fact that you cannot require teetotalism being a member of church. That is unbiblical. It’s another religion to require that. So give you a feel for how I think about this. Am I disobeying the Bible? I could be happier. So it says wine is given to gladden the heart, and John is not happy because he’s not drinking enough.

Three observations. Number one: there’s something fishy in the Bible that some wine should be avoided, right? Proverbs: “Do not look at wine when it is red” (Proverbs 23:31). Well, what’s that? Any wine can make you drunk, can’t you? Well, don’t touch that one. Must’ve been especially potent or something. I don’t know. So there’s a warning that certain kinds of drinking are going to put you over the edge in a way that they shouldn’t. So don’t do that. Don’t use that. Whatever that is. I don’t know what that was. So it could be the wine.

I mean Bob Stein, professor of New Testament of Southern, he wrote an article and said that the wine in the New Testament was so diluted you’d have a problem with your bladder before you’d have a problem with anything else. I don’t know if that’s true or not.

Clearly we’ll all agree on this. Drunkenness is a sin. All of the Bible, to be drunk is a sin. And there’s some of us who would say in response to this, this would be my position given my bent towards addictive behavior. Like I chew a whole pack of gum before it’s just gone. Given my addictive behavior and given the American culture we live in where 40 percent of the people are killed in car accidents or in alcohol and two billion dollars a week or something is caused by all kinds of things that are a result of alcohol.

I mean, on and on and on and on. The horrors of the misuse of alcohol in this country, not to mention other European countries where they think they don’t have a problem is massive. Some of us read that sentence and say wine was given to gladden the heart of man. We say, “Right, but not yet.” Not yet. I fully expect to be drinking it someday, like in heaven.

That okay? I mean, it doesn’t say you have to do it now. It’s given to gladden the heart of men. And if you can manage that now in a totally appropriate way, I’m not going to judge you for that. But I just make the choice that I’m going to drink when it’s safe — when I don’t have any sin anymore in my life.

Be free. For freedom Christ has set you free. Just be crazy for Jesus, all right? Just be crazy for Jesus. Don’t go around saying, I can drink. I’m cool. I’m a hipster and I can do this. I can smoke a pipe and I can drink. I’m impressed. Let’s go die for Jesus somewhere and you can take your pipe and your wine with you. But I don’t give a rip whether you do that. I give a rip whether you’re utterly sold out for Jesus and that you lay down your life for him and you believe people are lost. And you tell them about it and want the gospel to bring salvation to all your hipster friends.