Here is my response to my friend's comment:
Yes, the title is provocative. Maybe Piper titled the sermon this on purpose.
About the content, Piper says nothing contrary to the Reformers and Jonathan Edwards who speak of "closing with Christ." This is also very Biblical.
Piper says: Your act of believing and God’s act of begetting are simultaneous. You do the one and he does the other at the same instant. And—this is very important—his doing is the decisive cause of your doing. His begetting is the decisive cause of your believing.
In other words the Bible says that we must have faith to be saved and that Regeneration and Conversion normally occur at the same time, though God's action causes our action. Piper DOES, indeed, say that it is God's actions that are decisive - not man's.
However, man does the believing; it is not God that believes for man. We must never deny the duty of faith, and such denial is one of the chief tenets of hyper-calvinism.
Piper admits that it is hard for people to understand that we can have a simultanous event where one event causes the other, but it's true. Under normal cases (infants and the mentally handicapped would need to be talked about separately)...but in most cases regeneration and conversion happen at the same time. There is not a lapse of time between the two events, they normally occur simultanously, even though (and Piper says this too) regeneration is the cause of the new birth.
Piper titles one of his bold-faced subtitles in this way, "God's begetting causes our believing." This is perfectly correct. Piper is saying just the same thing we are, that we MUST believe and yet we believe out of/because of the new birth, even though these two things (new birth and conversion) are one package.
I have heard some calvinists in their zeal to be "more calvinisitic" minimize the duty of faith and they minimize our actions in salvation. Yet we are to PRESS into the kingdom and to seek salvation, even though the strength of our seeking is even of the Lord. I am afriad that some calvinists are very much in danger of falling part-way into hyper-calvinism due to their zeal in stressing God's sovereignty in salvation and minimize those things that man must do in order to be saved (even when these "doings" are gifts of God). But we must also stress man's responsibility in believing and we must inform our people of their duties before God and we must tell them to seek the Lord, to believe, to repent and to pray for salvation and hope that God grants these things to us as grace-gifts.
I think there may be a psychological reason also for this sermon by Piper's to get a rough hearing. Some of our Grace folks have a bone to pick with John Piper and all are not totally happy with what John Piper represents. There is a tendency to find fault with John Piper and find an ounce of difference rather than rejoice in the TON of agreement that we have with him. And so, when they read a sermon that is, perhaps needlessly, titled in an engaging and maybe provocative way about what WE do in our new birth, then these readers, already prejudiced against Piper, read the sermon with "Gotcha Glasses" looking for any hint of error in Piper. These people are not really reading John Piper to get a benefit, they are out hunting for heresy, and they will make sure that they find some.
Rather than this sermon being an example of heresy, proving that John Piper is a heretic, this sermon is a well-balanced safeguard against hyper-calvinism's denail of duty-faith. He states that we must believe, and states that God's begetting of us in the new birth is the cause of our belief, even if faith is an absolute must, since God will not have a man walking aroun with the New Birth that does not also possess saving faith, right?
Thanks for your comments. Please reread the sermon in light of my comments and let me know what you think.