Kennystix's podcast
Delighting in God for the Sake of His Supreme Glory
The following message is by Pastor John Piper. More information from Desiring God is available at www.desiringgod.org. Well, thank you so much for having me. It's good to be with you, and I pray that God will meet us in His power. Let me pray as we begin. Father in Heaven, thank you so much for these friends who have gathered to hear your word. Help me to faithfully speak it. Help me to stay close to the Bible. Fill me. I pray with your Holy Spirit so that what I speak magnifies Christ. And grant that these hearts would listen and understand. Grant that the language could get out of the way, and we could go mind to mind and heart to heart. I pray that you would protect us from the evil one who would distort what I say and lead us in paths that are unhelpful. So guard us from Satan. Make much of yourself I pray now. In Jesus' name, amen. My topic for this session is delighting in God for the sake of His supreme glory, and each of the sessions that we have together is delighting in God followed by some other words. There's an assumption behind that topic and this whole series, and the assumption is that we ought to live for the glory of God. That's real clear, 1 Corinthians 10, 31, whatever you do, whether you eat or drink, do all to the glory of God. So that's plain and straightforward and simple. But for years and years, I knew that in my head, and it did not have the life-changing impact that it should have had. I grew up in a home where my father quoted those words often. And what made the difference for me was going behind those words to the truth that doing everything for God's glory is not just my duty, it's what God does. God does everything for His own glory. And establishing that fact, biblically, and feeling the force of that, that God is very God-centered, that God has a passion for God, that shook me up, that changed the way I think. So that's where I want to begin. I want to try to establish from the Scriptures that God is radically God-centered, that God is on a crusade to magnify God. He's not just telling me to do it in everything He does, He does it. He magnifies Himself in all that He does. So the way I want to do that is by walking through redemptive history, walking through the history of salvation, and looking at the high points and why God did them, why did God predestined, why did God create, why did God come into the world incarnate as Jesus Christ. Why did the Son of God die on the cross for our sins. Why is He sanctifying us little by little? Why does He propagate the gospel in Quebec and in the United States and around the world among all the peoples? And why is Jesus coming back again? Those are the seven points. And my answer is, at every single point, God is doing those things for Himself, for the glory of God. But I want you to see it in the Bible. So let's take them one at a time and put some Bible underneath that claim. First of all, predestination, Ephesians 1, verses 5 and 6. He predestined us to adoption through Jesus Christ to Himself according to the good pleasure of His will unto the praise of the glory of His grace. Now that's a long sentence. Let's shorten it down. He predestined us unto the praise of the glory of His grace. So God, before the world was, chose us for Himself so that we would praise the glory of His grace. We were chosen unto His glory, chosen to make much of His glory, chosen to praise Him. So in choosing us, God is magnifying Himself. That's so clear in Ephesians 1, verses 4 through 6. So that's predestination for the glory of God. Second, creation, Isaiah 43, verses 6 and 7. During my sons from afar, my daughters from the ends of the earth, everyone who is called by my name, whom I have created for my glory, created for my glory. So when God decides to create the universe and create particular people, what's moving Him, driving Him, guiding Him is I will create a universe, I will create beings who will make me look good. That's why I'm making them. Genesis chapter 1, He created us in His image, male and female, He created them in His own image. What does that mean? In His own image, there's a lot of conversation about whether it means we are rational or moral or that we are upright. The easiest way to say it, I think, is to say that when God creates someone in His image, He means for them to image forth His reality. When you make a sculpture out of somebody, a sculpture of the president or a king, what you mean is for that sculpture to be a representation of and call attention to the person. And so when He says, "I'm making you in my image," He means, "I want people to look at you and think good thoughts about me. I want them to be impressed with me when they look at you." Here's the picture I have in my mind. My hand is a mirror. Here's God, here's the rest of the world, and here's you, a mirror at a 45-degree angle and the glory of God lands on you as a mirror and it gets reflected out here so that when people see you, they're supposed to see an image of God, that's the way a mirror works. So when we are in His image, people are seeing us, but really they should be seeing His glory. What happened when man and woman fell into sin is they listened to the devil and He said to them, "You know, being a mirror is like being a nobody. Why don't you take all of this light that is shining off of you and turn it over and shine like this? Shine on the world. Be your own light. You can be like God. You don't have to be dependent like a mirror. You can be a light, like God is a light, and what happens when a mirror turns over is that light shines on it and it's no longer reflecting, it's casting a shadow. And man looked at the shadow that He was casting on the ground and He saw the shape of it Himself and He fell in love with it. And that's the way we've been living ever since. We love ourselves. We love what we can do and we can do amazing things. We can put people on the moon. We can heal diseases. We can do incredible technological feats. And all the while, we've abandoned what we were created for. We were not created to be lights like that, we were created to reflect light like this. So when you are born again, when you are converted, you do a revolution and turn around and suddenly discover God is everything. And my destiny is to see that, enjoy that, reflect that, that's what you're made for. As long as you're trying to live like this and be your own light, you will not be what God made you to be and you will be a very frustrated person in one day perish. So secondly, first predestination for the glory of God and then secondly creation for the glory of God, for the glory of God. Lord, incarnation, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, comes into the world and is born as a human being. Why did He come? Why did He come? Behold, I bring you good news of great joy which shall be to all the peoples. For unto you this day is born in the city of David, a Savior who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you. You will find the baby wrapped in swaddling claws, wrapped in strips of cloth lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of heavenly hosts saying, tell me what they said in any language. Glory to God or whatever it is in French. Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace with those with whom He is pleased. In other words, when the angels explained what's going on here in this baby, the answer is glory to God in the highest. That's what's going on here. This is about a Son coming into the world for redemption unto the glory of God. Jesus Christ became a man to recover the glory of God that we have stolen from Him so that we could now return to our destiny of being reflectors of the glory of God, this new image of Christ shining off to the world so that people could see what God is really like. Jesus came to glorify His Father. Fourth, first predestination, second creation, third incarnation. Now I'm going to use the word propitiation from Romans chapter 3 verses 25 and 26. This is the central event of history. Let me read verses 25 and 26 from Romans. God put forward Jesus Christ as a propitiation in His blood through faith. Here come the key words. This was to demonstrate His righteousness because in former times He had passed over sins in His forbearance. This was to demonstrate I say His righteousness at the present time so that He would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. So right at the center of this most important paragraph in the Bible probably is the cross of Christ dying Christ in order to vindicate God's righteousness. That's what I want you to see. God is righteous but for some reason He feels I have to put my Son to death in order that my righteousness will be seen and will be established. Now why? Why is the righteousness of God in question? The answer is given back in verse 23 and you know verse 23 all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Now notice the connection between glory of God and sin and what has to happen in vindicating the righteousness of God on the cross. What's the connection? The connection is this. The righteousness of God is His unwavering commitment to uphold the value of His glory. If God does not uphold the value of His glory He's a sinner because the glory of God is the most valuable reality in the universe. And if God treats the glory of God as a low value He's wicked but God is not wicked. He is righteous which means He looks at the glory of God and He says this must be upheld. This must be valued. We must preserve this above all things in the universe, His own glory. But what is sin? Sin is a trampling of the glory of God. We put it under our feet. We count it as of no value. We would rather watch television. We would rather live from money. The glory of God is not anybody's chief value until they are born of God. Nevertheless He hasn't judged many people like that. He's passed over their sins which means He looks unrighteous. That's what verse 25 and 26 are saying. He had to vindicate His righteousness because He has passed over sins. I'll just give you one example. David the king sleeps with Bathsheba and gets her pregnant. And then he has her husband killed, double sin, adultery, murder. God is very displeased and he sins a prophet, Nathan, to David. Nathan tells a little story about a wealthy man who had lots of sheep and a poor man who had one sheep and the wealthy man has a guest and he has to kill a sheep in order to make dinner and he takes the sheep from the one man instead of using one of his own. And David is very angry at this man and Nathan says, "You're the man." That's what you did. And David repented. And the next thing that came out of Nathan's mouth was the Lord has taken away your sin. Now put yourself in the place of Bathsheba's father or Uriah's mother. How would you feel about that? Just, that's okay David. We just forgive you. And if I was the mother of Uriah or the father of Bathsheba, I would say, "No! You can't do it that simply. This is serious. You can't just say, "I forgive you." Kind of a judge, are you? I mean, in Montreal, surely, a judge who has a murderer and a rapist in front of him who says, "I'm sorry, I won't do it again." Would not say, "I forgive you, you may go." All of us would say, "He's a bad judge." And that's exactly what people should say about God, unless Romans 3, 25 and 26 work. If the son of God in dying for David's sin, if the son of God in dying for David's sin can vindicate God's commitment to his glory, then he won't look like an unrighteous judge. So do you see what's happening at the cross? That really grieves me that so many evangelicals, especially in America, perhaps in Canada as well, so many evangelicals make themselves the center of the death of Christ. It's all about me and my value. I'm a diamond in the rough and he has found me and would do anything to get me. That's the way a lot of people think about the cross. It's all about me. Well Romans 3, 25 and 26 says, "God put forward Jesus Christ as a propitiation in order to demonstrate His unwavering commitment to uphold His glory, which we trampled in the dirt." That's what the cross is about. It's about making much of God in the salvation of unworthy sinners, predestination, creation, incarnation, propitiation and now sanctification. Becoming more like Jesus, here's just one simple word from Philippians 1, 9 to 11, a prayer, "This I pray that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment, so that you may be filled with the fruit of righteousness which comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God." Paul is praying, "Father, please come grant me to bear fruits of righteousness unto the praise of your glory, for the glory of the praise of God." So the reason God is making us more and more into the image of Christ is so that God will get more and more praise and more and more glory. So sanctification is for the glory of God. Let's just go and do one more, consummation. Why is Jesus coming back a second time? Why is Jesus coming back a second time? Here's the answer from 2 Thessalonians 1, 9. These will pay the penalty of eternal destruction away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power. When He comes to be glorified in His saints on that day and to be marveled at among all who have believed for our testimony to you was believed. So if you shorten it, He is coming to be marveled at. He is coming to be marveled at. Jesus is coming back and He's coming with this purpose. Be marveled at me, marveled at me, glorify me. So let me just step back for a moment and summarize from beginning before the foundation of the world in predestination and to the end in consummation. And we could multiply these texts a hundredfold and show event after event after event done by God for the glory of God. All that God ever does, He does for His glory. Now, what I said was until that hit me, landed on me, my world wasn't turned upside down. I don't think I really came to terms with my self-centeredness until I had to deal with whether I liked God's God's centeredness. And almost everywhere I go and talk about God's God's centeredness, I can see it on people's faces. They don't like it. And there's a good reason why they don't like it. The Bible says we shouldn't like people like that. Love seeks not its own. And you've just spent 20 minutes telling us that God does only seek His own. So you've made God loveless, He's not a loving God. No wonder people don't like it. I have an article here from the London Financial Times that I photocopied by Michael Prouse. Michael Prouse does not like the concept of worship. He's not a believer. I don't know what he says. Michael Prouse gives words to what many of you are feeling right now. Worship is an aspect of religion that I always found difficult to understand. Suppose we postulate an omnipotent being who for reasons that we don't understand decided to create something other than himself. Why should he expect us to worship him? We didn't ask to be created. Our lives are often troubled. We know that human tyrants, puffed up with pride, craved to be made much of. They craved adulation and homage. But a morally perfect God would surely have no character defects. So why are all those people on their knees every Sunday? What he's saying is if God creates a world for His glory, He's the kind of God nobody likes. Who likes a braggart if I were to come into this room and say, "My reason for being here is so that you will applaud me." Hey, Piper, you should get rid of me very fast. So we've got a problem. God does absolutely everything for His glory and we don't like people like that. That's a problem, isn't it? What's the solution? Let's ask this question. What does it mean for God to love us? What does it mean for God to love us? This is what I've been spending most of my time thinking about for the last five years or so. Let's quote a Bible verse instead of giving our own answer. Let's let Paul answer. Here's what it says in Romans 5, 6 to 8. While we were still weak at the right time Christ died for the ungodly, for one will scarcely die for a righteous man, yet for a good man one might even dare to die. Now God shows His love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Now that's clear. God loves us in that He sent His only begotten Son to die for us. That's love. To give your Son to die for another, that's love. What's good about that for us? How is that love? What good comes to you when that happens? What benefit do you receive when Christ dies for you so that you feel loved? I assume love means something good comes to us. If only bad comes to us, forever we wouldn't call that love. So what good comes to you? Now at this point you could give me many answers. And the more I thought about this, the more burdened I am that the answers we give are not the most important answer. I'll give you the typical answers that I have given all of my life. And they are glorious answers, true answers, biblical answers to what is the good that comes to us when Christ dies for us, expressing the love of God for us. My sins are forgiven. My guilt is taken away. That righteousness is imputed to me and counted his mind. I escape the wrath of God and do not go to hell. I obtain eternal life. That's a partial list and I have not mentioned the most important thing. And that's what concerns me. Much of our gospel preaching ends there because they're so good. They're so good. All of you would like to have your sins forgiven. All of you would like to have no more guilt and no more guilt feelings. All of you would be very happy if your imperfection could be replaced in the mind of God with Christ's righteousness. All of you want not to go to hell. And all of you would rather be in heaven. That's good news. That's gospel. It is. But we haven't said the most important thing because we haven't asked what's good in each of those. Who cares about being forgiven? That's a provocative question. So I get up in the morning and I stumble over a pile of clothing that my wife left on the floor. And I turn to her, she's still in bed and I snap at her and say something very unkind. And now in the house there's ice in the air. And down in the kitchen where we're getting ready to have breakfast, her back is to me at the kitchen sink. I'm over here. Now what needs to happen? I need to ask for forgiveness. That's what needs to happen. I need to ask for forgiveness for an utterly uncalled for word. Why do I want forgiveness? Is it just that I really don't like guilt feelings? I want to go through the day not oppressed by my bad conscience. Is that it? Forgiveness is just about getting my conscience free so that I can feel better psychologically. Is that what forgiveness is for? And you know it's not. What I want is something beyond forgiveness that I can only have through forgiveness. I want my wife back. I don't like her back to me. I don't like the ice in the air between us. I want her to turn around. I want a smile on her face. I want her to embrace me. I want it back. I want to be there again whole with her as my treasure in that kitchen. So if you only preach the forgiveness of sins, you know what? You might simply be playing into the worldly desire not to have a bad conscience. Nobody wants a bad conscience. You don't have to be born again to want a clean conscience. It's an oppressive, horrible thing to walk through the day with guilt feelings. Every unregenerate person wants to get rid of guilt feelings. So if you only preach to the desires that people can have who are not born again, how have you helped them? We must press through forgiveness, press through justification, press through escape from hell, press through eternal life and ask why? Why do you want to go to heaven? I sometimes ask my people, what if you could go to heaven and you would be perfectly healthy? You would have all the toys that you ever dreamed of having. You would have reunion with all the people you care about most and you would have no bad conscience but Jesus would not be there. Would you want to go? That's a very indicting question. Because it tests whether people are embracing the gospel for God or for relief. Don't like hell. I don't like a guilty conscience. I like some of the earthly benefits of church family. So I'll be a Christian and they're not. They've never seen God as beautiful, they've never seen God as glorious. So here's where I'm going, when Romans 5, 6 to 8 say while we were yet sinners Christ died for us and that is the love of God, what it means is Christ did everything He had to do in order to make God our treasure. Christ came into the world to do everything He had to do so that I would enjoy making much of God rather than being made much of myself. So here's the really radical question, do you feel more loved by God when you are made much of, when He makes much of you or when He frees you to enjoy making much of Him forever? And I think most North Americans define love as what happens when somebody makes much of me. That's what love is. You want me to feel loved? Make much of me. As a little child in school or an employee or a church member, come on, I love to be loved. Make much of me. That's not what love is. Love is not God making much of us. Love is God laboring with all of His might to enthrall us with what is infinitely satisfying, only Himself. Love is the labor and the sacrifice that it takes to enable me to enjoy what will be infinitely and fully satisfying to me, namely God. But until God does that for me, I am not fully loved. Being loved is not His making much of me, it's enabling me to enjoy Him now. That's my answer to Michael Prowse and all of our objections. Of course we don't like people who attract attention to themselves. We don't like people like that. People who can only talk about themselves and only get applause for themselves. We don't like people like that. Here's the reason we shouldn't like people like that, because in attracting attention to themselves, they distract us from what will satisfy us eternally, namely God. I'll say that again. The reason we should not like people who attract attention mainly to themselves is because they distract us from the one thing that will satisfy us forever, fully, namely God. Now, if you take that same truth and apply it to God, do you see how it changes? If God does anything but attract attention to Himself, He's not loving. If God does anything but attract attention to Himself, He's not loving because He's the one thing that will satisfy my soul, He's the one thing for which I'm made. I see so many question marks on your faces. I hope it's not just the language, or maybe I should hope that it is just the language. It is God is the one being in the universe for whom self-exaltation is the highest virtue and the most loving act. We may not imitate Him in this. If Piper comes into this room, exalting himself, exalting me, I am the opposite of loving, the opposite of loving. My job here is to get attention for Him. If He comes into this room and He wants to love you, He better not call attention to John Piper because that will ruin your life. He better call attention to Himself because He's the one person in the universe for whom you're made and who is big enough, great enough, glorious enough to satisfy every longing you've ever had. God must be self-centered in order to be loving. God must be self-exalting in order to satisfy your soul. Now the implication of this is that if you want to glorify God, that is reflect His glory, you must be satisfied with God. Not escape from hell, mainly. Not forgiveness, mainly. Not good health, mainly. Not family of believers, mainly. Not being restored to a lost or dead loved one who's gone to heaven, mainly. Your satisfaction, your soul must terminate on God, must end with God, must reach out and be satisfied with God. So we have this all saying at our church, God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him. God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him. Now there's so much more to say on this, but I think I'm going to stop here because we have Q&A to come and I'm encroaching upon that time. But thank goodness we get about five more sessions together. And I've got so much more I want to say at this point to put more Bible, more Bible under this truth that God's law for you is His pursuit of His own glory in your heart. Let's pray together. Father in heaven, I pray that you would help all of us, perhaps some for whom this is very new to have hearts that are open to your supreme value in your own heart, that you see yourself for who you really are, namely infinitely valuable creator of the universe, infinitely valuable redeemer of mankind. So don't let us become angry or discouraged or depressed by your centrality in your own affections. May that rather become our joy, may it become our treasure. Thank you so much for loving us. We don't deserve anything that you've given us and you have sent your son to die so that our sins might be forgiven and our guilt might be taken away and righteousness might be imputed to us and hell might be escaped and heaven might be obtained, but all of that so that we might come into your presence and see you and know you and love you and enjoy you forever for who you are. So work this deep in our hearts, I pray, in Jesus name, amen. Thank you for listening to this message by John Piper, pastor for preaching at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Feel free to make copies of this message to give to others, but please do not charge for those copies or alter the content in any way without permission. We invite you to visit Desiring God Online at www.desiringgod.org. There you'll find hundreds of sermons, articles, radio broadcasts and much more, all available to you at no charge. Our online store carries all of Pastor John's books, audio and video resources. You can also stay up to date on what's new at Desiring God. Again, our website is www.desiringgod.org or call us toll free at 1-888-346-4700. Our mailing address is Desiring God, 2601 East Franklin Avenue, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55406. Desiring God exists to help you make God your treasure because God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him. [ Silence ]
God is the one being in the universe for whom self-exaltation is the greatest act of love, and if we would truly reflect him, we must be satisfied in him above anything else.