JA N UA RY 1 3, 20 17

For the Name and Word of God

My Tribute to John Sailhamer (1946–2017)

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 Article by John Piper
Founder & Teacher, desiringGod.org

O Lord, you have exalted above all things your name and your word. (Psalm
138:1–2)

John Sailhamer’s life magnified the name and the word of God. It was, therefore, a
great life.

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 When Jesus said that he who would be great must be the servant of all (Mark 10:43),
he did not mean that a great life serves to make much of small things. He meant a
great life pays any price to help others make much of the name and the word of God.
John Sailhamer’s unrelenting labors to lead others into the riches of the name and the
word of God have borne fruit for eternity.

Our lives intersected briefly at Wheaton College, then for

several years at Bethel College where we both taught. Then
at professional society meetings. And finally in
correspondence. And, of course, John was ever present by
his books, looking over my shoulder as I prepared sermons.
At every step, his influence grew. And the effect was to
steadily increase my confidence in Scripture as the word of
God, and my love for the name of God as supreme above all
names.

John’s way with the Scriptures was, at times, for me, frustratingly unemotional. He
was steady, not mercurial. He was patient with details. And what he saw through this
steady, patient attention to the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures was explosive. John’s
exegetical toil put fire in my soul for the gospel. How could it not, when he showed,
like no one else, that the Pentateuch was thoroughly Pauline — that it preached the
obedience of faith through grace? But perhaps even more pervasive was the impact of
his method itself in the way he made most of us feel that we had scarcely begun to

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 read the Bible — that we were excited about finding a shard of copper, when
fathomless veins of gold ran beneath the surface of this book.

But he was not unemotional. On the first day of opening our

north campus at Bethlehem Baptist Church in 2005, John was in
“A great life pays any
the audience. To honor the occasion and signify our love for the
Scriptures, I recited Psalm 118 from memory in my welcome. I price to help others
saw tears in John’s eyes. He approached me afterward and
make much of the
thanked me for the psalm. This was what he lived for: the name
and the word of God alive in the hearts of God’s people. name and the word of

John’s devotion to the name and the word of God knit our
God.”
hearts together at a personal level of friendship — even
common dreaming. I wrote him personal letters asking for help
in sermon preparation because of recalcitrant Hebrew, imperfect jussives in the
psalms, and he generously answered and encouraged me. In 1998, after a particularly
trying, public debate I had with a spokesman for Open Theism, when I felt so
embattled, John wrote me with words of strong encouragement. And perhaps, most
memorable of all, in 1996 I threw out the wild idea that maybe someday I should start
a seminary. He responded with one of his longest emails containing reason piled on
reason that this should be done. It proved prophetic.

My admiration and affection for John Sailhamer grew with the years. His love for the
name and word of God made him a stunningly faithful and devoted husband and

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 father. His unpretentious plaid shirts disarmed those who saw him as a titan of Old
Testament knowledge. And he endeared himself to me repeatedly because he escaped
the academic trap of isolated, a-theological gamesmanship. Instead, his heart was
expansive: he loved all of Scripture, both Testaments — he wrote a 600-page
commentary on the whole Bible! He did not despise systematic doctrine for the church
— he wrote a book called Christian Theology! He was a large-hearted lover of the
whole word of God, the whole counsel of God, and the whole people of God.

I thank God that I came under his influence for almost forty years. All praise to Jesus
Christ, the name and the word of God.

John Piper (@JohnPiper) is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem
College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis,
Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books, including Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian
Hedonist and most recently Providence.

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Then Marriage Women
Follows How Christian men treat sex, whether married
or not, sheds light on Christ for all to see, or
obscures and slanders him.

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 The model for the first marriage was modeled
after Jesus and his Bride; not vice versa. This is
the meaning of marriage.

John Piper Marshall Segal

God is most glorified in us WAYS TO FO L LOW

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satisfied in him
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