God is the Gospel - Part 2

Let me pray. Whom have we in heaven but you, O Lord, and on earth there is nothing that we desire besides you, then in everything that we desire we would be desiring you. He loves thee too little who loves anything together with thee, which he loves not for thy sake. That's a mystery, Lord, how you can be everything to us. In all the people we love, in all the recreation we love, in all the food we love, in all the art and music that we love, in all the Bible that we love, we don't have to be idolaters. We dare not be idolaters. So would you work this miracle, Lord, of so permeating all of our loves with a delight in you, an affection for you, and a thanks to you, and a treasuring of you so that you have no competitors in our life. That's the mystery and the miracle that we are after in these days. So I ask for it now. Make me an instrument to perform that miracle in people's hearts, I pray in Jesus' name. Amen. What I mean by God is the gospel is that the highest, best, final, decisive good that comes to us in the good news, and which all the other elements of the good news are intended to lead to, and without which all the other elements of the good news would not be good news, is the revelation of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ for your everlasting enjoyment. Everything is means except God. And so we're going to review and then move forward in our bullet points. I've got it down to 23, started with 30. So in the two hours that we have remaining, I'm hopeful that we can do all 23. I think I'll tell you when we're moving from one to the other, but I might slip up. So I hope it doesn't confuse you too bad. We got to number 10, and we started into number 11. We moved from our wedding, 38 almost, years ago. We moved through Oskar Kuhlman and a class in Germany. We moved through signs and wonders, struggles and wrestlings in the 80s. We moved through Stanford University and an illuminating moment there in the early 80s. We moved through wrestlings with the meaning of prayer and how not to use it to make a cuckold out of God, rather to make prayer a means of praying, saying, Hallowed be Thy name in every prayer that we pray, that being the goal of it. We moved through how do you use stuff and creation and all the good things that God has made in the world so as not to compete with Him and so on. And now we've come to this place where a few years ago, and I can't remember how many, I began to use this little rhyming couplet. God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him. And that sums up most of what Desiring God Ministries and my life in Bethlehem Baptist Church are about. God is most glorified in us when we're most satisfied in Him. Where does that come from? I mean, it's an inference from a lot of things. Is there a text you can put underneath it? And I would invite you to open your Bibles to Philippians chapter 1. We won't take long on this because I've done this in so many places at so many times that I don't want to be too repetitive in case you have seen it done so many times. But there are enough of you who are newer here to make it worth doing one more time here. Philippians chapter 1, I want to show you a text that you can put under that little rhyming couplet. Philippians 1, 20, It is my eager expectation and hope that I will not at all be ashamed, but that with full courage, now, as always, Christ will be honored. Or you could use a word there, magnified, made much of, glorified, praised. That Greek word, megaluno, you can even hear it in English, what it means, mega, megaluno, made big. Christ will be made to seem as He really is, big in my body, whether by life or by death. So just stop there. Paul's passion is that his bodily life and death would make Jesus look good. Now ask yourself the question, how would you die in a way that would make Jesus look good? Because he says death. How do you die in a way that makes Jesus look magnificent? And he answers in the next verse. You just split off, there is a life and death pair in verse 20, and a life and death pair in verse 21, and they parallel each other. So verse 20 ends, in my body, whether by life or by death, and then he gives the explanation and ground in verse 21 for to me to live, and that corresponds with life in verse 20, is Christ. We could talk about that. We could talk a half an hour about that by going over to chapter 3, verses 7 and 8 and 9, where he counts everything as loss for the surpassing worth of knowing Christ now. To live as Christ makes much of Christ, but let's just leave that aside and just talk about the death pair, and to die is gain. So now let's go back and just do the death pair. It's my desire that Christ would be honored, made much of, magnified in my body, in dying, for to die is gain. How is Christ made magnificent as you breathe your last breath, to breathe it with the confidence and the manifestation of joy that this moment, that's amazing. Because at that moment, you're losing everything on earth. Health is gone, family's disappearing, the hope for retirement, not going to happen, the grandchildren you will never see, gain, how can that be? Verse 23 gives the answer, I'm hard pressed between the two, my desire is to depart and be with Christ, why? For that is far better. The reason it's gain to die is because I get Jesus in complete, no more through a glass darkly, face to face, intimate, full, and that's gain. Though I lose everything I thought was pleasurable, no more sex, no more physical eating in this in-between time in heaven, no body, body's lying in the grave, just amazing intimacy and closeness and clarity with the greatest person in the universe, that's all. And he counts it gain. So, Paul must think that when you are satisfied in Jesus, it magnifies Jesus. Isn't that the assumption here? Because he's arguing, I want to magnify Jesus in dying, and the way I magnify Jesus in dying is to be satisfied in Jesus as I die. I don't need anything on earth anymore, it's all gone. Everything I live my life for is gone on earth, and I get one thing in replace of everything, I get Jesus, and when I weigh it, everything on earth versus Jesus, I say, gain. And at that moment, Jesus is magnified. And I just put that into a rhyming couplet, Jesus is most magnified in me when I am most satisfied in Him, especially at the moment of death or at any other moment of loss in your life. So, that's bullet point number 11, the discovery that the best way to sum up God is the gospel or Christian hedonism or my life or the meaning of the universe is God is most glorified in His human creatures when they are most satisfied in Him at the moments when every other satisfaction is being stripped away. Some of you will not live out the year, and I hope when the moment comes, you will remember this. And the Holy Spirit will come, and He will illumine your heart in such a way that Christ will be gained in the moment with tubes everywhere. Number 12 is simply a drawing out of how we talk about the greatness of the love of God and the greatness of the salvation of God. And consider two Psalm verses, Psalm 70 verse 4, it goes like this. "'May all those who love your salvation say evermore,' now, what would you expect them to say? "'Let all those who love your salvation say evermore,' you might expect them to say, "'Great is your salvation,' and that's not what it says. It says, "'Let those who love your salvation say evermore, Great is God.'" So learn to talk like this. Either that means a saving God saves in order that we might see the greatness of Him in His saving. So saving is a display of His greatness. Or it means He is saving us from the inability of seeing Him as great. Either way, He's the gospel. Salvation is not mainly about getting well from a disease. It's not mainly about prospering in your business. It's not mainly about a fixed up marriage. It's not mainly about escaping hell. It's not mainly about reunion with mom in heaven. It's mainly about seeing, savoring, and saying, God is great. That's what it says in Psalm 70, verse 4. Here's another one, Psalm 63, verse 3, "'Because your steadfast love is better than life.'" Now, that's a lot like Philippians 121, "'Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise blank.'" And you might think that it would say, "'Your steadfast love.'" Because it says, "'Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise your steadfast love.'" That's not what it says. Nothing wrong with that. Totally nothing wrong with that. It's just not what it says. It's teaching us something else. It's teaching us what this little conference is about. "'Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you.'" And either that means that in your steadfast love, I see a kind of person whom I love. And it isn't what he does. It's what he does is pointing to his character, and his character thrills me. I praise him. Or it means that his steadfast love is the means by which he liberates me from my inability to see how worthy he is. Either way, he's the gospel, and his steadfast love is taking us there. So that's bullet point number 12, teaching us how to take this truth and see it in the Psalms, and see it in the Bible where we maybe didn't know it was found. Now this brought me to bullet point number 13, to ask the question, I've been doing this now for what, about five years? I've been doing it this way. I want to understand the nature of the love of God for me. Because here I am, going around the country and writing stuff, arguing that God, in all that he does, exalts himself for your enjoyment. And there are folks who don't like that picture of God. It feels like he's a megalomaniac. So I have asked myself, what is it to be loved? What does it mean, biblically, to be loved? And I think right at this point, we hit our culture about as broadside as we can hit it. Because what the culture means by being loved, at least at the surface level, is the opposite of what the Bible means by being loved. So let me tell you what I think those two are, and then take you to John chapter 11, so you can be turning there. Gospel of John, chapter 11. This is the place where I have found, in recent years, the most illuminating support for what I'm about to say. John chapter 11. The world, I think, by and large, feels love. Now when I say the world, I mean unregenerate human beings. They have not been born again. They are natural. They think without God at the center. Their affections have not been awakened. They are dead spiritually, according to Ephesians 2, 5. And being dead spiritually, the spiritual things of God are foolishness to them, and they have no categories for handling much biblical truth, especially this one. So, for the unregenerate American, or any other human being, to be loved is to be made much of. I feel really loved by you if you make much of me. Praise me. Thank me. Applaud me. Compliment me. Build up my ego. Give me some… Help me with my self-esteem. That would be the language of our last 40 years or so. I'm frankly quite sick of it. And I think a lot of secular people are sick of it also. I don't hear quite as much of it now as I did 15, 20 years ago. But it's still there. If you go to the bottom of school curricula, if you go to the bottom of how to manage an office, if you look at what the world has for wisdom for how to make things work in corporate situations, it's work on people's self-esteem. Stroke them. Everybody likes it, and so it works. It works. That's what it means to be loved. Love people means to make them feel significant. Now, when you try to add that or use that as the means by which God loves us, it won't work. Biblical love from God to us keeps God at the center, not us. So here's my definition of the way God loves us. God loves us by doing everything he has to do at great cost to himself to remove every obstacle from inside of us and inside of him to bring us to the place where we enjoy him, which makes much of him. Just like we saw in Philippians 1, 20 and 21. When you enjoy him, you magnify him. And God's way of loving you is to strip you, if he must, of every substitute satisfaction so that you can have the best one, himself. And if you remember Voyage of the Dawn Treader, I can't remember which of the books it was in where Eustace had to be stripped of his skin. Remember that one? You don't know what I'm talking about. It's okay. Being stripped of every vain satisfaction so that, like a snake, you have your skin ripped off is painful. But when it's done and you see God as the magnificent soul-satisfier that he is, you know, I have been loved. If God were to come to you and play the world game of stoking your ego, stroking you, making you feel loved like you already know how to feel loved, he would be so cruel. He would be preserving the very obstacles that keep you from everlasting and full satisfaction, namely, in him. You have to have your eyes open. Things have to be gotten out of the way. God is the one being in the universe for whom self-exaltation is the essential way to love. If you try to love like that, if I were to walk in here and say, okay, I came to love you folks. Now the way I love you is by displaying to you my greatness, my glory, my beauty, my all-satisfying perfections. And so, what I would really like is for you to see me who I am and be so caught up in me that you praise me everlastingly. You would say, I'm sick, I'm evil, and you would be absolutely right. But if God showed up here, or Jesus, the son of God showed up here, that's exactly what love would do. He has no other way that he can love you fully but to say, I'm here and I am infinitely glorious. You were made to see me, savor me, speak of me, be with me forever. John chapter 11 goes like this. Now a certain man, verse 1, was ill Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. It was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was ill, which means this relationship is precious between Mary and Martha and Jesus and Lazarus. Verse 3, so the sister sent to him saying, Lord, he whom you love, now mark that word love because that's what I'm after here. What does love mean? He whom you love is ill. And her thought of course is, you're going to come fix this, quick. But when Jesus heard it, he said, this illness does not lead to death, it is for the glory of God. Now mark that word because I want to know how love and glory relate to each other. That's what I'm after. It is for the glory of God so that the Son of God may be glorified through it. Verse 5, now Jesus loved, so there it is again. You cannot get away, that's what the text is about. It's about love, it's about glory, how do they relate? Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. Then I hope the version of the Bible that you have in your lap begins verse 6 with something like the word therefore or so. If it says but, you need a new version because the word is un in Greek and everybody knows what un means. First year Greek students, it means therefore. Translated in my version, so, that's fine. So means therefore in English. So, because he loves them, see that? Let's get the connection. Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Mary. Therefore, since he loved them, when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer where he was. We saw a text from John last night that blew us away. John 7, where the brothers wanted him to go do his works because they didn't believe in him. John's always doing things to break our brain. And here, he says, I love them. I love Martha, I love Mary, I love Lazarus. Lazarus is very sick and on the point of death, so I'm not going to go. So, I'm not going to go. So, I'm not going to go. Therefore, I'm not going to go. Now, how do you make sense of the therefore in verse 6? And the answer is verse 4. If this were a seminar, I'd have you take a test and say, explain from verse 4 the therefore of verse 6. Because verse 4 says, this illness that I'm going to let kill him, I'm staying here two days longer to make sure he's dead when I get there. That's what he's saying. This illness is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God, that's me, the Son of God may be glorified through it. Now, how would you paraphrase this? I would paraphrase it like this. To love is to do whatever you have to do, even at the cost of your brother's life, to reveal to you the glory. That's just what it says. What else can you do with it? I'm not going to go heal him. I'm going to let him die, so that you will see the glory of God, because I love you. I will not spare you. One of the most horrible things in life. This poor guy has got to die twice, and you're going to be grieving for three or four days, weeping your eyes out. And I know all that. I'm causing all of that by not going now. Why? Verse 5 says, because I love you. Because I love you. And a spared brother is not what love is about here. Love is about your seeing by. That's bullet point number 13. A textual foundation for this definition of being loved. Being loved is not being spared from dying. Being loved is not mainly being healed, mainly the marriage being fixed. Those can be acts of love. God does those things. Being loved is mainly God doing whatever he has to do, whether it's Lazarus' death or his death, so that I will see, savor, and be satisfied by the glory of Jesus. That's love. Any other act that leaves me short of that may feel like love to a million unregenerate people, and it isn't. Love is when God gets you to God. Bullet point number 14. I want to go back a couple hundred years, 250 or so, to my mentor. My main mentors are all dead. There are a few living ones. My dad is still alive. Dan Fuller is still alive. Colleagues around me refine and sharpen my thinking, but most of my most influential mentors are dead. Most of them wrote this book. This is the Bible. A few of them, after the Bible, wrote things that were so profoundly shaping in my life, I will thank God through eternity for them, and the main one is Jonathan Edwards. Edwards had an effect on me, especially in his book The End For Which God Created the World and Religious Affections and Freedom of the Will. Those three books were the main powerhouses in my life about 30 years ago. I want to quote what we've just seen from Edwards, some of it. I'll close probably this afternoon with Edwards just to pay tribute to his influence in me. So Edwards, here's the situation. Jonathan Edwards was a pastor in New England, born 1703, died 1758, and was the main human spark plug of the first great awakening. And so he saw phenomenal conversions and signs and wonders and terrible abuses of all of that. And therefore he struggled with sorting his way through the chaff and the wheat of what was real and what was not real in the great awakening. Anytime God does a great work, Satan really messes it up. And Edwards was so wise, unlike Charles Chauncey in Boston, in not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The Boston clergy, who had their button-up positions just right, could not take the wild enthusiasm that was spreading through the churches. They just said, This cannot be of God. This is enthusiasm, which was a very bad word in those days. And Edwards applied one of the greatest minds in history to sort it out and not throw it away. And his analysis in religious affections of the human heart are devastating. There were no evening services in Munich from 1971 to 1974 when Noel and I and our little baby Karsten were in Munich, Germany, studying. There were no evening services on Sunday. So what I did on Sunday evenings was sit in a rocking chair, when my wife wasn't using it with baby Karsten, and read the religious affections. It took me a year because I could only handle a page or two at a time. It was an absolutely devastating experience to read Jonathan Edwards' analysis of my heart. So here's just a couple of paragraphs. This is God is the Gospel, and this is page 137. I'll tell you when I'm getting to his words. Let me read just a sentence or two of my words. It's amazing that this same idolatry is sometimes even true when people thank God for sending Christ to die for them. There is a kind of thanks that is idolatrous. You can thank God in an unregenerate, idolatrous way, Edwards said. Perhaps you have heard people say how thankful we should be for the death of Christ because it shows how much value God puts upon us. In other words, they are thankful for the cross as an echo of our worth. What is the foundation of this gratitude? Jonathan Edwards calls it the gratitude of hypocrites. Why? Here's the quote. Because, quote, they first rejoice and are elevated with the fact that they are made much of by God. Then, on that ground, God seems in a sort lovely to them. They are pleased in the highest degree in hearing how much God and Christ make of them so that their joy is really a joy in themselves and not in that, I fear, is in many churches today. That sounds so up-to-date, I cannot believe it. That's page 137. Here's page 150. Jonathan Edwards, this is me again, learned this to his own heartache as he studied the permutations of hypocrisy in the fallout of the Great Awakening. Here's what he says. This is the difference between the joy of the hypocrite and the joy of the true saint. The hypocrite rejoices in himself. Self is the first foundation of his joy. The true saint rejoices in God. True saints have their minds in the first place inexpressibly pleased and delighted with the sweet ideas of the glorious and amiable nature of the things of God. This is the spring of all of their delights and the cream of all their pleasures. But the dependence of the affections of hypocrites is in a contrary order. They first rejoice that they are made so much of by God and then on that ground he seems in a sort lovely to them. There are many evangelistic church growth strategies today that are playing right into that hypocrisy. They simply take fallen people where they are who love to be made much of and they find ways of making God and the cross the means of affirming what they already are. So they don't have to be born again. For spiritual delights we're telling them that the delights they already have with themselves at the bottom and themselves at the center is what God came to affirm. The cross is an affirmation of that. That's deadly and I would urge you to kill it in your own heart. Put it to death. Rather, what we offer to people is not a satisfaction of their own unregenerate desires to be at the bottom of their joy but rather a call to recognize that's idolatry and that's suicidal and by the way, we have something so much better. You can't even imagine it. It's so much better. And I will get this afternoon to some practical ways you can help people see that even when they're not yet born again. We need to help people catch a glimpse of that. So bullet point number 14 was Jonathan Edwards. Number 15. Now this came out at the question and answer time last night in such a helpful way to me. Set my mind just whirring with effort to re-understand and re-explain so I stayed up late rethinking and writing this little bullet point number 15 and the brother who brought it up last night I thank you because what helps me most in the kinds of questions that come is when somebody has thought as far as I have. They're with me. They've read what I've written and they've thought what I've thought and they've got a new question that I haven't asked and I'm pushed which is the only way to grow, right? If you only get asked questions you already know the answer to then you don't grow. So every now and then you go out and you do one of these Q&As and somebody stands up and pushes you which is good. So here's the issue. You keep saying, Piper, that to be loved by God is not to be made much of by Him at bottom but His making us able to enjoy making much of Him. That's what you keep saying and that's exactly what I keep saying and I still believe it after last night. However, clearly there are texts in the Bible where God makes much of us. So if you've been sitting here thinking doesn't he know what's in the Bible? He keeps saying not that but this and isn't it both? How do they fit together? So let me read you some of those texts. Where are they? There they are. Zephaniah 317 The Lord your God is in your midst a mighty one who will save. He will rejoice over you with gladness. God rejoicing over us. Psalm 147 verse 11 The Lord takes pleasure in those who fear Him in those who hope in His steadfast love God takes pleasure in us. Take your breath away and wonder how that fits with our being created to take pleasure in Him. 1 Peter 1, 6 and 7 In this salvation you rejoice though now for a little while if necessary you have been grieved by various trials so that the tested genuineness of your faith more precious than gold which though perishable is tested by fire may redound get this now that your faith may redound unto praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. I do think that means praise toward us glory toward us honor toward us because of our faith. It's breathless that there will be praise not just towards God but towards sinners. 1 Corinthians chapter 4 verse 5 Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time before the Lord comes who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart then each one will receive his commendation from God. Now the word commendation there Epinon is translated almost everywhere else praise each one will receive his praise from God. Well done. One more Romans 2 29 But a Jew is one inwardly and circumcision is a matter of the heart by the spirit not of the letter his that is the true Jew whose heart is circumcised his praise is not from man but from God. So there's a sampling a sampling of texts in which the Bible uses the most lavish language of God rejoicing over us praising us commending us thus making much of us. So the question then becomes what does that mean? How does he do that? And how does it fit together with everything I've said so far? Now I can think of two possible meanings and the first is so obviously wrong but I'll mention it anyway just so we get it out of the way it might mean that he takes pleasure in our physical body. That is part of who you are you have a body and so God looks at the intricacy of the eyeball and he says that's great that's awesome he looks at the circulatory system and he says magnificent of course he's talking about his handiwork he made the eyeball he made it all work and he could mean that but I don't think he means that because those texts talked about persons doing certain things and having certain character he means me as a person not my body he's not impressed with my body I mean he may be the heavens are telling the glory of God the human eyeball is telling the glory of God and anything that tells the glory of God pleases God but that's not what he's talking about in these texts he's talking about persons with personalities so the question becomes how does he think praise those personalities and they're not in the abstract like I'm a person without any reference to what I feel or think or do no personality is always a given with some kind of feelings coming from it some kind of deeds coming from it some kind of thinking coming from it when he sees us as a personality uniquely you he sees you as a thinking, feeling, doing, being and therefore he has to decide whether he likes it or not or loves it or not so when you ask does he love me me that personality that's what was being asked sort of last night does he love me my personality to answer that question you have to ask what you mean by love and there are two possible meanings aren't there one is agape kind of unconditional pursuing your good kind of love and the answer to that is yes because he elected you unconditionally he regenerated you unconditionally you didn't have to do anything for those he put Christ forward to die for you before you were born so you didn't meet any conditions for that and he exercises his sovereign keeping power on the basis rooted in that unconditional election unconditionally he's gonna keep you he will overcome every backsliding that you ever do and keep you for himself so yes the personality that you are God pursues for his glory and for your good but that's not what most people mean when they say does he love me mostly ok, ok, ok they say I've talked to a lot of people like this they say ok I understand what you're saying I was elected unconditionally he's pursuing my good I wanna know does he like me I just wanna know does he like me now that's the second kind of love love is used this way in the bible and in your language the first kind of love is I'm sticking up for this kid whether he's good or bad I'm moving on this kid you have a kid you're going after him you might think he's an absolute jerk at this stage in his life your own kid and he's not doing anything to win your love you're just doing it it's free I'm going after you that's the first kind the second kind of love is Edwards called it the love of complacence the love of liking approving delighting and that's what these texts are saying God does that and the question is on what basis what does he like about us because the bible is very clear sometimes he likes us more and sometimes he likes us less otherwise Paul wouldn't be able to talk about I do everything I do in order to please him I wanna please him please, please that means sometimes you're not pleasing him and sometimes you are pleasing him and my question is simply what's he pleased by and my answer is he's pleased by our being pleased by him he delights in our delighting in him he takes joy in us because of our taking joy in him that's the bottom line because if I try to find any other answer to the question why he likes me it resolves into that I have to push it to that you might say he likes me because I'm good or he likes me because I do right things well what does good mean and what does right mean and my answer is ultimately being a good person means doing everything you do out of delight in God out of satisfaction in God keeping God central in your life so I have no problem affirming all of these texts that God rejoices over me God commends me God praises me provided I ask the question why and I answer it biblically namely when he looks upon this servant he sees one who has despaired of his own sinfulness who has forfeited all of his merit with me and he has cast himself on my mercy and he is treasuring my love and myself and I look at that and I say I like that I like that a lot and the question last night that pushed a little farther was is there anything else about us that he likes and my answer was and is everything you do with your mind in thinking with your heart in feeling and with your hands in doing and making God may delight in provided it's flowing from and expressing a satisfaction in him so the answer is yes yes if you're a writer and you write a poem for your daughter on her birthday if you're a carpenter and you get the angle exactly right or you lay tile like I'm a real stickler on grout between tiles in bathrooms like public bathrooms and motel bathrooms and I'm looking at the tile over the tub and you can just tell what kind of hotel you're in by whether the guy went like that or whether you've got this bead that is unbelievably uniform that's skill that's amazing whereas some hotels it's like they went you know stuffed in the corner like this and I say you don't have any skill to do that I can do that that's why I do grout God can look at a beautiful seamstress hem or a beautiful grout for a tile worker and love it if it is coming from a heart that rests in him delights in him wants to display him it's all about him that he made the world with tile he made the world with cloth and thread and needle for the display of his glory as we enjoy him and all of his reflections in his world so I'm not going to back away from the centrality of God in God's love for me he loves me in that he does everything he does to remove obstacles to my enjoyment of him and he delights in me praises me commends me says well done to me if and when my heart has broken free from the idolatry of needing to be at the bottom of my own joy and is willing to get out of the way let God become the bottom of my joy and then out of that fountain of delight in God do all the things that I do in my life then God will say well done well done that will be a reflection of his own worth so that's bullet point number fifteen maybe before I leave it I should ask the question why does God tell us that tell us what I just said why does he tell us that he delights what are we supposed to think now the only reason I mention this as we transition is because I have the fear that when some people read these texts that God delights in us, rejoices over us commends us, praises us that feels so good to them finally I find a text that I like that their joy in God shifts onto joy in God's joy in them there's a very subtle difference here because the reason the joy is coming from God to them the reason God is rejoicing in them is because they're enjoying God if now they see this joy coming to them which is supposed to affirm that and they replace that with this in other words, I'm now no longer rejoicing in God as God I'm rejoicing in how good I feel when he tells me he likes me they're no longer doing what God likes they've lost it by making it an idol it goes away the reason God tells us in the Bible that he rejoices over us is to affirm us in what we are and are being that he likes not to allure us away from that into liking his liking us the reason you like being liked biblically is because the liking affirms your liking you see how Edwards blew me away you read enough of that day after day and you feel like your heart is just being peeled back like an onion, is there any core to this thing is there any place where there's no hypocrisy in John Piper is there any place where there's no sin is there any place where there's no self-exaltation peel away, peel away, peel away and the answer is no, I am completely selfish and a sinner until I'm bored again and God puts his own seed in me out of which he becomes my joy and it really is my joy what a deliverance new birth is bullet point number 16 is to observe this what we've just said in defining love as God's doing whatever he has to do to maximize our satisfaction in him answers the objection raised by this author named Michael Prowse in the London Financial Times several years ago, this is a photocopy the reason it's so dark is because as you know perhaps the Financial Times is on yellow paper faded newspaper, ever seen it? it's faded, I don't know why they print it that way here's what Michael Prowse says and he speaks for millions worship he's not a believer, I don't even think he believes in God, worship is an aspect, I wrote to him by the way I got his email address I wrote a long letter in response to this pleading with him, there's another way to see this I never heard back so you can still pray for Michael Prowse worship is an aspect of religion that I always found difficult to understand suppose we postulate an omnipotent being who for reasons inscrutable to us 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 and we know that human tyrants puffed up with pride crave adulation and homage, but a morally perfect God would surely have no character defects, so why are all these people on their knees every Sunday his only way to understand what he's heard about God seeking worship which is what John 4 23 says, seeking worshipers is that he's a megalomaniac he's got character defects he has no way to understand a God who is self-exalting in any other category than we don't like people like that and that's true, we don't so my point is everything we have seen up till now in this conference is I think a magnificent answer to that objection because what it says is Michael Prowse the problem is, you don't have an understanding of love that will work with God, the understanding of love is that God wants us all to be maximally happy we cannot be maximally happy if we are at the bottom of our happiness but only if God is at the bottom of our happiness if that is what will make us happy, to see and savor and display God, then God in order to love us must offer himself to us as the most beautiful attractive, all satisfying being in the universe, he must do that for us, which means God is the one being in the universe for whom self-exaltation is the most loving thing and the highest virtue Michael, you gotta get this, you gotta open your eyes to see that you can't put God in a human box and say, we gotta relate to God the way we relate to everybody else and since everybody else would be a megalomaniac if they offered themselves to us for our satisfaction that God can't be that way God must be that way or he can't be loving I don't know whether, that's what I wrote to him, I just pleaded I said, you're so close I feel the force of your argument, it would work it would work if God were not really God and the all satisfying treasure of the universe offered to us at the expense of his own son for our everlasting enjoyment can you see this? can you see this? Father, we got one more hour together after this and so much more, so much more about Christ crucified the main thing we haven't even talked about yet, at the center of how you did this for us don't let our hearts go away from engagement with you but rather, keep us feeling, thinking ready to understand draw near, now I pray bless these moments of interaction and then come back and help us one more time, I pray in Jesus name