This past week I drove down with five friends to Louisville, Kentucky, for the Together for the Gospel Conference, at which Mark Dever, Ligon Duncan, Al Mohler, R.C. Sproul, John Piper, C.J. Mahaney and John MacArthur—a who’s who of the conservative Reformed world—spoke. It was an awesome conference in so many ways—those who put together the conference served the 3,000 men who came with humility and joy, the messages delivered were all uniformly excellent and edifying, the worship solid and the fellowship tremendous. One message in my mind stood out, though, and that was John Piper’s word on Thursday night. It was one of those occasions when the Spirit of God powerfully moved throughout the congregation. There was a palpable sense of awe at the weightiness of God’s holy presence as God’s Word was pressed home with deep conviction.
I have heard Dr Piper speak on four other occasions—at Heritage Seminary in Cambridge in the mid 1990s and then at ETS in 2003 on Jonathan Edwards. The Lord has made him a remarkable preacher: serious and weighty, filled with joy and delight in the Triune God, deeply versed in the things of God and the words of Scripture. I looked forward to hearing him and God did not disappoint.
In his message, he mentioned his conviction that Martyn Lloyd-Jones was the outstanding preacher of the twentieth century. I would venture to say that history may well view Piper as one of the outstanding preachers of the twenty-first century.