The reason we do these regional conferences once or twice a year and the reason that the elders gathered around me at 7:30 a.m. on Thursday morning and laid their hands on me and sent me off to do this from our church is because we have seen some things in the Bible about God and about the way he relates to people.

They are spectacularly wonderful and weighty, and they have become for us ballasts in the bottom of the little boats of our lives. We have found that these truths are heavy enough that our boats don’t tip over as easily when tornadoes go through Alabama or tsunamis hit Japan or wars strike the Middle East or cancer hits spouse or self or children go away and break your heart. The boat is just always being rocked.

What we have found — what I have found — is that there are truths that are so magnificent that if you put them in your boat, they have just a wonderful amount of weight to keep the boat from tipping. When the wind is really blowing hard, the keel goes down deep, and the ballast holds. That’s what I would like for you.

Joyful Gratitude

Having been given so much joy in seeing so much in the Bible, it completes my joy to bring it and tell it to you, and you can hear a quote from the Bible there, can’t you? That’s 1 John 1:4: “[I write” these things so that our joy may be complete.” So that’s why I’m here. I want to be happy, and my happiness goes up if I can be an instrument in God’s hands to get some of my treasuring of God and the ballast that it is for me into you.

Now, if it’s true that I find my joy increased by being here, I owe some people some thanks because you’re here, and if this place were empty, I wouldn’t get the same joy out of speaking this message to empty chairs as I do in having it land on you and, by God’s grace, perhaps awaken some affections in you for God that might’ve been dormant or dead. So I thank you for coming. Thank you. I do not take it for granted, and I thank Rick Warren, if you’re watching back there.

Rick, thank you for having us and your whole team for helping us. I know that it’s an inconvenience to have a conference on Saturday, when this place has to be ready to go Sunday morning. So it’s really kind of you to have us here. So thank you to the whole Saddleback crowd and to you in particular for being here.

The Moral Problem of Motivation

Now, I’ve already created a moral problem by what I’ve said. Maybe you’ve picked it up, and in large measure, the moral problem, the ethical issue that has come up already in my words is the origin of the book Desiring God, which is what this conference is supposed to be about.

The book has been in existence now for 25 years, and it came into existence much earlier than that in my head. The book was born out of wrestling with the moral issue that I’ve already created by saying I came here to be happy, and I covered my backside with that quote by quoting the Bible. It’s safe to quote the Bible. If you say something-off-the-wall controversial, like, “These things I have written to you that my joy may be full” or “This trip I make to California that my joy may be full,” “What a self-gratifying jerk. What’s with you? Do you care about these people? What about the glory of God, for goodness’ sakes?”

So 1968, just up the road in Pasadena, I was madly in love with Noël and engaged to be married December of that year in my first semester at Fuller and tormented week in and week out by the problem of motivation. “I want to marry this woman. I want, I want, I want to marry this woman. I want that.”

Well, Paul said some important things in 1 Corinthians 7 about the value of singleness, devotion to Jesus unencumbered. “But I want her.” He talks about the glory of God, and he talks about living for others, like her, maybe. “Should I? I want to minister. I want to be useful. I want, I want, I want.” My heart in 1968 and every year is a desire factory. I can’t stop wanting. It seems like I’m just made, human beings are made to want, long, desire, ache, yearn.

Motive was continually an issue, like, “Am I doing this for right reasons? I want to marry this woman. Wouldn’t it be nice if were older? We wouldn’t have to wait so long. The Beach Boys, you know the Beach Boys, right? “Wouldn’t it’d be nice to live together?” Yes.

So we did get married. That was 42 years ago. But to this day, there’s hardly a day goes by in the ministry where you have so much freedom to do what you feel like you should do, and nobody’s telling you what to do. I’m not struggling with motivation, questions, and wrestlings. I have come to some pretty deep convictions from the Bible about the nature of motivation and the apparent tension in our hearts between living for the glory of God and living for my want. “I want. I want my desires.”

That as I was growing up always felt in such tension. So that’s where the book came from. It came from the struggles of trying to figure out, “What do my desires for happiness have to do with God’s passion for his glory?”

So let me tell you where we’re going in the two one-hour or so sessions that we have together. I’ve got five steps, and I don’t know how they’re going to shake out. I don’t know where we’re going to stop tonight. I’ve just got five things I want to say. We may do three or four tonight. We’ll see. So here’s the five. Here’s where we’re going. This is the roadmap.

1. We’re going to start with God and what motivates him. The most fundamental question for my motivation is God, how my wants relate to his wants. God is God. I’m not God. I don’t tell God anything about what he should do to run the world. He tells me what I should do to fit into his running of the world. he’s absolute. I’m contingent. He’s totally self-sufficient. I’m dependent, and so I’ve got to totally check in with God and fit in with God or perish. There’s no negotiation here.

So we start with God. “What are you up to in your absolute being, in creating the universe and me in particular and these folks here?” That’s the first thing. What is God’s motivation? We’re going to find that God is massively into being God. He exists to be God. There’s nobody he gives an account to. He’s not for anybody but himself ultimately, and he means to do everything he does to uphold and display the infinite value of his glory. That’s what we’re going to find in point number one.

2. He bids you, all of you, to join him in that goal, that he be glorified. All these are going to have Bible put under them because what I say doesn’t matter at all. What God says matters infinitely.

3. The most important discovery in this whole process for me, and I made it in 1968, ‘69, and ‘70 as I wrestled with these things just up the road, is that God is most glorified in me when I’m most satisfied in him. That’s the banner that flies over my life, flies over the church, flies over my marriage, flies over my parenting, flies over Desiring God Ministries. I hope it’ll fly over my grave. God is most glorified in me when I am most satisfied in him, and therein lay massive solutions to huge problems in my life and set a course for me that has never altered.

I am so thankful at age 65 that at age 25, some things got absolutely settled. It is amazing to me that 30 years of sermons are on the web, and I hardly want to change anything in them. That’s amazing. I would change some things. Not many and nothing fundamental. God was so good to me. He just shook me up so deeply and took me so. He just tore me apart and put me back together in those three years in such a way that I’ve never had to be broken up and put back together again. Just a lot of refining, a lot of growth, a lot of additions, a lot of discoveries.

But the core was there and that statement, “God is most glorified in me when I’m most satisfied,” that’s right at the core because of what it solves in the course that it put me on. So that’s number three, and we’ve got to show where that comes from in the Bible.

4. The astonishing implication of those three steps, namely, if that’s right, if that’s right, then you and I should devote our lives 24/7 with all of our might for the rest of our lives to being happy in God because he’s most glorified in us when we’re most satisfied. So, it becomes a mandate, and the whole of sanctification, the whole of world evangelization becomes, “Maximize your joy if it gets your throat slit.”

It is the most costly way to live. We don’t send out missionaries from Bethlehem for any other ultimate reason than to maximize their joy in seeing people maximize their joy in God, and all of them know that it could cost them their lives. We’ve got people in Syria right now. It’s just a horrible place to be right now, and they’re not coming home. They’re ready if they have to, but they want to be there.

Why? Because love is like a high-pressure zone of joy that just wants to expand to fill all these gaps of joylessness in lost people’s lives. They’re going to go into eternal joylessness, and if you’ve got a high-pressure zone of joy in you, when a high-pressure zone meets a low-pressure zone, what weather system is caused? Wind. What’s it called morally? Love. Missions. So this is huge. This fourth step, devote yourself to maximizing your joy in God by expanding it into the lives of other people. That’s number four.

5. The last one is this vertical satisfaction in God is the only path to radical sacrificial love for other people. Okay. That’s where we’re heading. Let’s take them one at a time and put as much Bible under them as we have time for and see how far we can get tonight.

1. Understanding God’s Motivation

What is the aim of God in all that he does? Because I’ve just got to get in line with that because if I decide, “This is what I’m going to do. This is what my motives are going to be,” without reference to him, I could just crash and burn in this life, and I’ll definitely crash and burn in the next if I don’t get in sync with the maker of the universe.

If you have a Bible, I invite you to turn to Romans 3:23–26. I have four steps under point one to try to show you from the Bible that God does absolutely everything he does to uphold and display the infinite worth of his glory. That’s the thesis. Now, we need to argue for it from the Bible. Don’t believe it because I said it or anybody says it. Believe it if you see it. If you don’t see it, don’t believe it. Okay? The Bible is the only authority that matters when it comes to these things that you can’t learn any other way.

1.1. God’s Righteousness Demonstrated Through the Cross

So here we are, Romans 3:23. Very, very familiar passage, but let’s unpack it for this question. What’s driving God in the cross here, not everywhere, here? “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Now, notice the link, first of all, between sin and glory. It’s so crucial to get this. We’ll come back to it in a minute.

The Cross as Propitiation

“All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward” (Romans 3:23–25). So he comes, and he’s coming from heaven. He’s being put forward toward the cross, put forward as a propitiation. I’m reading from the ESV. I like that word. Keep that word: propitiation.

It means appeasing the wrath of God by getting it onto him and getting it away from me so that God is no longer angry at me, just like we sang a minute ago. “The Father’s wrath completely satisfied.” No injustice in the universe at all because his wrath is really poured out on my sin, but not on me. This is the wonder of the cross. So here we’re watching it take place.

“Put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.” Here it comes. “This was to show God’s righteousness” (Romans 3:25). Oh, so Christ took on God’s wrath by dying in his blood to show God’s righteousness. Well, why did God’s righteousness need to be shown?

The next phrase begins with “because,” so now we know why. Here it comes. “Because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins” (Romans 3:25). Okay, the rest of it’s repetition. It was to show his righteousness at the present time. So he says it again, says it two times. In the cross, Christ is put forward to die for sins and appease the wrath of God because he wanted to show God’s righteousness so that he might be just, righteous, and the one who is declared righteous or justified through faith in Jesus.

The Exchange of Glory and the Nature of Sin

Now, just think it through. Sin, according to Romans 3:23, is a lacking or falling short of the glory of God. What does that mean? I take my cue from Romans 1:23 as the best exposition of Romans 3:23. It’s easy to remember it that way. Romans 1:23 says they became fools in their own thinking, exchanging “the glory of the immortal God for images.”

Now, when you exchange something, you lose it, like, “I’m giving you God’s glory. You give me an image.” They exchanged the glory of God. They were given the glory of God to enjoy, to satisfy their souls. That’s why we were made in his image. That’s why God declares his glory in the world and demonstrates his glory all over the place. “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1).

Human beings in their fallenness exchange it. They look at it and say, “Not interested. No, thank you. I like this computer,” or “I like this food,” or “I like this wife,” or “I like this job,” or “I like this success. I like this fame. I like preaching.” They exchange God for that, and then it becomes an idol. That’s what sin is.

Sin is any feeling or thought or deed that flows from a loss of God as your supreme treasure — anything. Building a hospital for the poor would be sin if it’s not done with God as your supreme treasure. If the poor have become your supreme treasure, you’re an idolater. I don’t care how much good you do. So, sin can be good things and bad things.

Anything is sin that is flowing from a heart that is not valuing God supremely. So when it says, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” it means they’ve exchanged it. They sold it. They prefer other things. That’s what sin is. Anything you do flowing from a heart that doesn’t treasure Christ above all is sin.

Now, why does he demonstrate his consciousness in giving Christ to die? Answer: because in his divine forbearance, he passed over this kind of junk that we just described. What does it look like if God is constantly in the Old Testament passing over glory-trampling behavior? If sin is a belittling of the glory of God by preferring anything in the world to the glory of God, what does it mean to God when he just passes over it? We’re going to pass over it.

Here’s David. He commits adultery with Bathsheba. He kills. He lies, and then he kills her husband. Nathan comes to him and says, “You’re the man,” and he breaks. The next thing out of Nathan’s mouth is, “The Lord has put away your sin” (2 Samuel 12:13).

Now, if I were Bathsheba’s dad, I’d go ballistic. “What? You can’t just do that. This guy’s a murderer and a rapist, and you’re just going to say, ‘The Lord has taken away your iniquity. Hop back on the throne’? Kill him! He’s wicked!” God just doesn’t kill him. He calls him a man after his own heart. Something’s got to give.

The Necessity of the Cross

Something’s got to give, and what gave is Jesus. So Romans 3:25–26 is God’s vindication of that outrageous divine behavior.

Most of the people in the world don’t lose sleep over how unrighteous God is in forgiving their sins. Most people get in God’s face if anything bad happens to them. They don’t wake up every morning thinking, “How can you be a just God and treat me so well, as to cause me to live in Southern California where it doesn’t rain or snow in April at the first Twins ball game? How can you be so good to me? What kind of a crazy, unrighteous, wicked God are you to just let all my wickedness go?” Who loses sleep over that?

Paul did, that’s who. Which is why he had to write this. What God did, because the biggest problem in the universe for God is how to save sinners without being unrighteous. Which means the righteousness of God is what? Are you with me? If you’re tracking with me, you might be able to finish that sentence. I’ll give you a final exam here. Just what is the righteousness of God? If the righteousness of God had to be demonstrated by vindicating the value of the glory of God which had been trampled through the killing of the Son of God for the glory of God, what does righteousness mean now?

Here’s my definition. I hope I’m not bringing this definition to this from some theological dictionary that I looked up. I’m just going to pull in it. Come on. I want the meaning right here in this text. Come on. I want to know what you are, righteousness. Here’s my answer to that. The righteousness of God is his unwavering commitment to uphold the value of his glory. his unwavering commitment to uphold the value of his glory.

Now, let me come at it another way. Suppose you’re God, which means there is no book except what you wrote to tell you what’s right. How do you decide what’s right if you’re God? We decide what’s right by asking somebody else, like, “Tell me what’s right.” I can’t create right. I have to be told right. Well, who does God ask? Nobody. Well, then what’s right for God? That’s a huge question, and here’s, I think, the answer.

What is right for God is whatever accords with his value. God has nothing else to consult except himself, and he’s infinitely valuable, infinitely glorious, infinitely holy. So, righteous activity would be activity that conforms with, accords with that value.

Passing over God-belittling sins does not conform to that value. It makes him look what? Unrighteous, which is why the cross had to happen to vindicate the righteousness of God, because if you were just standing back with no cross in this universe and all the mercy that was shown to the likes of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, these unbelievable rascals, and all the prophets and David, he’s just mercy, mercy, mercy, and you said, “Where’s the justice in the universe?” there wouldn’t be any.

Now the cross shows how he can pass over all that stuff. He passed over because it was all going to be dumped on Jesus. That’s how. He didn’t sweep sin under the rug of the universe. He swept it up and then dumped it on his Son for you. Every morning, when the sun rises on your sinful head, you should say, “I’m not in hell. It’s a good day.” If you believe what I believe, though you laugh, that would be true. It’s a good day. I’m not in hell, where I belong. I tweeted the other day. I tweeted, “If you believe you only deserve punishment, you should never get in God’s face about anything.” Goodness gracious, the comments. I don’t usually read comments, but this was a long list, and people didn’t like that. Well, that’s pretty much near the heart of what I believe.

So that’s 1.1. Okay? That’s first of four supports for number one. Number one is what’s God’s motive? God’s motive is to do everything to uphold and display the infinite value of his glory, and I’m basing it first and foremost on the cross. Okay? So nobody go away saying, “The cross was not central in this seminar.” Front and center. Okay? Massively central. The universe exists for the display of the glory of the grace of God supremely manifest in the death of his Son in so many ways, and this is one of them.

1.2. God’s Glory in Redemption Through History

Now, here’s the second support, and I think I’ll pass over this quickly. This has taken longer than I thought because I’m enjoying it so much. There are a whole series of texts that simply say God through history has done every step of redemption for his glory. It just says it. So I’ll just read you a few of them.

God Predestined Us for His Glory

Predestination is one. He predestined us. This is Ephesians 1:5. “He predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace” (Ephesians 1:5–6). Why did he predestine people to be saved? So that they would praise the glory of his grace. That’s why.

God Created Us for His Glory

Number two: why did he create people? Isaiah 43:6, “Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth, everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory” (Isaiah 43:6–7). He created you for his glory. That’s why you’re made. You’re not left to wonder, “Why am I on the planet?” You’re on the planet to make God look good, really, to make Christ look magnificent.

I just scheduled a tweet this afternoon. I’m going to tweet something. I try to pack a megaton of theology into these little things, and I said, “The great challenge of life is to use every treasured thing to show that God is treasured more.” Well, if you get that, if you get that, that means you’ll eat pizza or not such that it will look to the world like you value God more.

How do you do that? Eat less or just halfway through the last piece, stop. Try it sometime and call it a little fast or something. The principle is clear. If we live like the rest of the world, really, come on. If we have the same cars, the same houses, the same everything, and enjoy them in the same way, you can call that prosperity gospel, but it’s not going to make anybody value Jesus for Jesus. They’ll value Jesus as a dispenser. I hate the prosperity gospel because it turns Jesus into a broker. We’re going to attract people to Jesus because Jesus gets stuff. Love stuff. Come to Jesus.

So the huge challenge of life is, what does it mean to be created for his glory, to so live 24/7, minute by minute in such a way that people would see that Jesus is more valuable in your life than anything? There are so many. I could talk about the atonement, sanctification.

God Consummates for His Glory

Let’s just jump to consummation. The last thing that’s going to happen in this normal history. Second Thessalonians 1:9: “They [unbelievers] will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might, when he comes” (2 Thessalonians 1:9–10).

Now, listen. “When he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed, because our testimony to you was believed” (2 Thessalonians 1:10). Why is he coming? To be glorified in his saints and to be marveled at. He does everything to be glorified. He does everything to be marveled at.

So my conclusion of my first point is from the Bible, especially the cross, I conclude that the very righteousness of God consists in his unwavering commitment to do everything to uphold and display the infinite worth or value of his glory. That’s point one in the seminar, and it’s simply massively important, just massively. Starting with God is so crucial.

2. Joining God in the Goal of Glorifying God

Now we’ll go to number two. Therefore, He bids you and me to join Him in this goal of glorifying Himself.

2.1. God’s Intent to Uphold and Display His Glory

You know the text that I would use for this. This is a short one because it’s so obvious. My dad when I was growing up probably in letters to me and in devotions gave me 1 Corinthians 10:31 more than he gave any other verse, probably. “Therefore, Johnny, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”

2.2. God Calls You and Me to Join Him

So now, that’s a command. That’s like God saying, “That’s the way I live. I want you to live that way, too. Join me in my passion for my glory. I live for my glory. You should live for my glory. I live to display and uphold my glory. You live to display and uphold my glory. I live to make my perfection shine in the universe. You live to make my perfection shine in the universe.”

Or the text that we quote in our church most often in our little prayer room back there, that room back there, before we walk out here, we would bow in prayer, and the text that gets quoted most often by me and others just before we walk up to engage the devil and sin and the world in spiritual warfare and worship is 1 Peter 4:11, which goes like this.

Whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies — in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.

So, serve in the strength that God supplies so that in everything, God is glorified. God gets the glory. The giver gets the glory. So don’t you be the giver. You be the receiver. You’re bankrupt. God is rich. You’re thirsty. He’s water. You’re hungry. He’s bread. You’re helpless. He’s helper. You’re moving into this ministry, saying, “Help, help, help.” God’s coming. He’s arriving, and when he arrives and empowers and does the work, he gets the glory, and that’s his purpose. “Join me in this. Do ministry in such a dependent way that I’m constantly getting the glory,”

Or Matthew 5:16, “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father.” So, “Join me in this.” Find a way, and I’m going to come back to this tomorrow, find a way to do good deeds so that God gets praised, not your philanthropy. “How do I do that? If people admire me for my good deeds, then what? They’re supposed to admire you. What’s the key?”

There is a key in the context. You can study that tonight in Matthew 5:11–16 and see what you think the answer to that is. But clearly, he says, “Join me in this. I want to get glory for me by your good works. You do the good works. I get the glory.”

So that’s number two. Now we’ve done two of the five. God intends to be God by upholding and displaying the value of his glory in all that he does, and number two, he calls you and me to join him in that. That’s why we live. You’re on the planet to make God look good. That’s what glorify means. Glorify doesn’t mean increase his glory. It means show his glory and make it look glorious to people.

3. God Is Most Glorified in Us When We Are Most Satisfied in Him

Now, number three: the great discovery. God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.

So you can see where it’s all flowing. God is devoted to upholding and displaying his glory. He calls me to do that with him, and now I discover the amazing breakthrough that the tension I’m feeling between, “I want this woman, this ministry, this happiness, and I want you to be honored and glorified.” Why did it take me 22 years? Why wasn’t I listening? I don’t know. But now you can see what’s happening. God is most glorified in me when I am most satisfied in him, and they’re one. What happened to the tension?

I’ve been spending the last forty years trying to live this and figure this out. I’m just a rotten liver of this. Rotten. I was just pacing in my hotel room over at the Hampton Inn, just pacing back and forth, saying, “I’m going to stand in front of 1,500 people tonight, and I’m just such a rotten demonstrator of what I’m saying.”

I want to say that here so that you don’t get the notion that any of your teachers is Jesus, that any of your teachers measures up to his teaching. Nobody. Rick Warren, John Piper, pick your favorite guy, none of us measures up to what we preach. We’re always preaching ahead of ourselves. We’re always preaching above ourselves, and if we’re honest, we should just be confessing that crazy so our wives don’t have to say it. Maybe someday I’ll be able to join you in laughter.

It’s just so painful to be such a failure. People look at me. I’m the joy guy. You should read a letter I got from one of my elders the other day, David back there. John’s read it. He’s over there, just saying, “John, you’ve helped thousands of people get a breakthrough, and you haven’t found it.” That’s one of my elders talking. I said, “Okay. That’s right.”

There’s no surprise to me. The book is called Desiring God, not Having Arrived at Joy in God. You got that? Then the second book is called When I Don’t Desire God: How to Fight for Joy. How often is that? Daily? Just please know that what I’m teaching is war. It’s war.

It’s not finished sanctification. “Here, have some sanctification.” I’m calling you into the right kind of war. If I could reorient where you put your energies, what are you going to fight for when you get up in the world? I’ll tell you what to fight for. Joy. Fight like heaven for it because Paul said in 2 Corinthians 1:24, “Not that we lord it over your faith, but we work with you for your joy.” Workers, workers, workers. What are pastors? Workers for joy, first theirs and then the people.

This is labor. We’re constantly fighting the devil and the flesh that are trying to say, “Be happy in me. Be happy in me.” It’s just war all day long. “I’m not going to be happy, and I’ll be happy in God,” constantly reorienting our affections on our treasure. The devil is just constantly clawing at us, and our sins are clawing at us to say, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Just forget that God stuff. Here’s where real happiness is to be found.” It’s relentless war.

Why did Paul come to the end of his life and say, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (2 Timothy 4:7)? That’s the last thing out of his mouth because it’s war to the end. That’s why. It’s running to the end. It’s fighting to the end. It’s keeping and holding on to the end. So a lot of young people in this room. Sorry. Sorry, marriage is war against the devil, not her, though the devil would have you believe the opposite.

Where am I? Oh, number three, the great discovery. God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him, and it solves huge problems, which we’ll get to in a minute, that people have all over the place with God’s God-centeredness. It sets a course for life. God’s self-exaltation is going to become the highest act of love, and the duty to pursue his glory is going to become a quest for joy.

So where do I get this truth? I’ve got three or four supports for it, so let’s go at it. This is subpoint one under number three, defending God is most glorified in you when you’re most satisfied in him from the Bible.

3.1. The Glory of the Triune God Through Knowledge and Soul’s Satisfaction

I’m going to start with an abstruse one. Sorry, but there are a few weirdos here who enjoy this kind of stuff and really, really like complex, deep theological rumination. So you get four or five minutes here. I don’t think it’s been that complex so far, but this is, the Trinity.

The nature of the Trinity is a reason for why God has designed us such that he is most glorified in us when we’re most satisfied in him. Here is the most important paragraph I have ever read on the nature of the Trinity, and it comes from Jonathan Edwards. I’m going to read it to you.

This I suppose to be that blessed Trinity that we read of in holy Scriptures. The Father is the deity subsisting in the prime, unoriginated and most absolute manner, or the deity in its direct existence. The Son is the deity [eternally] generated by God’s understanding, or having an idea of Himself and subsisting in that idea. The Holy Ghost is the deity subsisting in act, or the divine essence flowing out and breathed forth in God’s infinite love to and delight in Himself. And I believe that the whole Divine essence does truly and distinctly subsist both in the Divine idea and Divine love, and that each of them are properly distinct persons. (Treatise on Grace and Other Posthumously Published Writings, 118).

Let me put that in my own words. They are three persons, one divine essence. We are monotheists. It’s so hard for Muslims to grasp, and you’ve got to appreciate the difficulty. One divine essence. The Father has an image of himself, and he’s always had it. So when we talk about the Son being begotten or generated, we don’t mean at a point in time. He’s always been knowing. The Father has always known himself, and this knowledge of himself is so full of all that he is that this self-known stands forth as a fully distinct person with one essence. I’m talking over my head here. I’m getting help by it. You’ll see why in a minute.

The energy and the love that flows back and forth between the Father and the Son, each having all the divine perfections in them, flowing back and forth, the infinite energy and love, the intensity of that divine love that flows back and forth carries in him all that God is and stands for as a third person, the Spirit.

So that means at the heart of God’s being is God knowing and God enjoying, God having an idea of himself that is so full, it is himself, and God so fully delighting in and loving himself that that delight is himself.

Now, when he created human beings in his own image, he created our souls with two main capacities, the capacity to know and the capacity to feel. You may say, “What about will?” In Edward’s understanding and mine, the capacity to will and feel are the same because the affections are the lively actings of the will. They’re on a continuum. So I don’t have a three-faculty psychology. I have a two-faculty psychology, which means that when it comes to God being glorified, that is the whole fullness of God being reflected for who he is, what would that involve?

Now, I’ll read you the most important paragraph I ever read in helping me come to the conviction God is most glorified in me when I’m most satisfied in him. Here it is. This is Edwards again.

God glorifies Himself toward the creatures also in two ways: 1. By appearing to . . . their understanding. 2. In communicating Himself to their hearts, and in their rejoicing and delighting in, and enjoying, the manifestations which He makes of Himself. [Here’s the keystone:] “God is glorified not only by His glory’s being seen, but by its being rejoiced in. (Works of Jonathan Edwards, 13:495)

All I did was make that rhyme. That’s exactly what I’m saying. God is most glorified in me when I’m most satisfied in him. I’ll read you his sentence now: God is glorified not only by his glory being seen with the eyes of the mind and rightly known, but by its being rejoiced in. He’s glorified by being rejoiced in.

When those that see it delight in it, God is more glorified than if they only see it, which means why God gets more glory from engaged, passionate Christians than from doctrinally correct dead Christians because right doctrine glorifies one aspect of God, and right affections glorify other aspects of God. He’s constantly summoning us. “Come on. Get this together, Piper, Saddleback, Bethlehem, Christians. Don’t become emotionalistic or intellectualistic. Get it together. Be a thinker and a feeler, because God gave you a soul like his own being. He means to be passionately loved and precisely known. His truth gets glorified this way, and his value gets glorified this way.”

So he is most glorified when all that knowledge that we grew up with and our learning feeds a soul’s satisfaction in him. So there’s reflections on the Trinity. That’s argument number one.

3.2. Magnifying Christ in Life and Death

Here’s argument number two. Turn with me to Philippians 1:20–23. This is way more obvious, and I would not blame you for spending judgment on that last little peroration there, whatever that word means. I read it somewhere. Philippians 1:20, this is the text I preached on my first Sunday at Bethlehem, or was it my candidating sermon? Can’t remember. Way back at the beginning. “It is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body.”

So Paul is saying, “My eager expectation is for Christ to be magnified in my body, whether by life or by death.” Now pause right there. That’s what we’re after. We are after, “How can I most magnify Jesus?” Put a magnifying glass to him or a telescope. Better? One of you spoke to me today about that microscope, telescope analogy that I used. We should be telescopes, not microscopes. Microscopes make little things look bigger than they are. You can’t do that for God.

Telescopes put their eye to a thing that looks teeny-weeny. It’s not teeny-weeny. That’s a star. It’s 10 million times bigger than you and this planet and this solar system. It’s huge. It looks little. Put your telescope to it so the world can see. That’s God. Analogy. That’s God. This is an analogy. So we should figure out how we can do what Paul says he is passionate to do, namely, “I want Christ to be magnified in my body by life. I want it to work that way when I’m alive, and as I’m dying, whether in a Coliseum or in a jail cell or wherever, I want my death to make him look really good.” That’s what he’s saying.

Now he explains in the next verse, and this is so crucial. This was just massively important for me exegetically. I don’t want this Trinitarian reflection stuff that could be way out in left field if it’s wrong. I don’t think it’s wrong, but it’s just tough. I want clarity. I want textual. Give me some words to hold onto now. Here it is. Philippians 1:21: “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” That’s Paul’s explanation of how he can die to make Jesus look magnificent. “If death is for me gain, Christ will be magnified in my dying.”

Oh. Oh, wait a minute. Why would it be gain, Paul? Philippians 1:23: “I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart [that’s die] and be with Christ [that’s why it’s gain], for that is far better.”

Okay. All right. So you’re saying your passion and desire is for Christ to be magnified through your death? Yes. Life, too, but let’s just deal with death, through your death, and then you’re saying, “For to me, to die is gain because I get more of Jesus that way.” Yes.

So what you’re really saying is that at the point of your death, when you are about to lose everything that this world offers you now, everything, for me, it’d be wife, twelve grandchildren, ministry, speaking to you, everything. You’re lying there, you’ve got an hour left to live, and you’re thinking, “I’m losing everything on the planet, and all I get is Jesus.”

If you can say that, if you can say and mean it from your heart, all the nurses around you will say, “For this man, Jesus is magnificent.” They might even by the grace of the Holy Spirit say, “Jesus is magnificent to me because I’ve just watched it. I’ve watched Jesus become more thrilling, more satisfying than anything this man’s going to leave behind,” which I translate Christ is most glorified in me when I am most satisfied in him at the moment of my death, when I’m losing everything but him.

That’s just crystal clear to me now that that’s what this text is saying, and that’s the clearest biblical warrant for saying you want to magnify Jesus, treasure him above everything on the planet so that when it’s totally taken away from you, you call it gain. What an amazing way to die. What an amazing way to die.

So that’s argument number two for point number three. Are we lost? God is most glorified in me when I’m most satisfied in him is point number three. The first argument was from the Trinity, and the second argument was from Philippians 1:20.

3.3. Completing Joy Through Praise

The third, and we’ll probably have to end with this one and pick it up tomorrow, is the precious discovery of C.S. Lewis that helped me so much. This’ll take me maybe five or six minutes to finish off with, so sit tight.

He is especially important here for this reason. He at age 29 was still a skeptic, not a believer. One of the huge stumbling blocks for he was when he read the Bible, especially the Psalms, he said that God’s constant command to us to praise him, which I spent the first half hour defending, sounded to him like an old woman needing compliments. That’s what he said. “This God of yours who says, ‘Praise Me. Praise Me. Praise Me. Praise Me. Praise Me. Praise Me’ all over the Psalms sound like an old woman who needs compliments.” He couldn’t go there. He said, “I don’t feel like worshiping a god like that at all.”

I have four things from newspapers and magazines to show that’s a very common stumbling block.

Is Divine Self-Exaltation Glorious?

So here is an article from the London Financial Times by Michael Prowse, who says:

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. 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 those people on their knees every Sunday?

This guy’s stumbling big-time over God’s God-centeredness, God demanding worship. Sounds like a tyrant who needs adulation, a weakling who’s got to be praised or he can’t sleep at night. There’s one.

Erik Reece wrote a book called The American Gospel. He was interviewed on NPR by Terry Gross a couple of years ago, 2009, and she was really surprised that he said in his book that, “Who is this egomaniac Jesus who speaking these words?” He was referring to Matthew 10:34–39, where it says, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me” (Matthew 10:37). So Erik Reece, not a believer, reads these words of Jesus, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.” This is what he said. She says, “You want to expand on that?”

“Well,” he said, “it just struck me. Who is this person speaking 2,000 years ago, a complete historical stranger, saying that we should love him, who really can’t even emotionally love, more than we should love our own fathers and sons? It just seemed like an incredibly egomaniacal kind of claim to make.” So there it is again. Now he’s stumbling over Jesus’ self-exaltation. So Prowse is stumbling over God’s self-exaltation. Reece is stumbling over Jesus’s self-exaltation.

Now here’s Brad Pitt, actor, producer, being interviewed in Parade, in the magazine, the Sunday paper magazine, and said grew up in a conservative Christian home, going away. He said, “I didn’t understand this idea of a God who says, ‘You have to acknowledge me. You have to say that I’m the best, and then I’ll give you eternal happiness. If you won’t, then you don’t get it.’ It seemed to me ego. I can’t see God operating from ego, so it made no sense to me.”

I’ve asked myself, “Does it not make sense to anybody except Christians?” One of the things that Rick Warren is known for, and self-consciously so, is that he intends to know his theology well and then put the cookie on the lowest shelf. He explicitly and methodologically is always translating. He says this over and over again. He wants to preach theology without theological terms. So he cares about this more than anybody. Namely, can you really get a common ground with the world when you’re trying to convince the world that God is God-centered?

Now, this is an advertisement from Nature Valley granola bars, and this is a cartoon from Arlo and Janis. I take these two to be symptomatic of our culture, and I simply bring them out to say if you care like he does and I do about communicating truths that seem so counter-cultural and counterintuitive to people so that they might somehow get it, this helps. Listen to this. This is a picture of Yellowstone Park, and there’s a big mountain, very thin mountain, and there’s two little people standing at the top. One of them has got his arm stretched out like this with ropes. He’s just climbed this peak, and clearly he’s looking over a vast terrain from a place where my knees would just melt, and at the top, selling granola bars.

You’ve got to ask, “What’s going on in this room, this advertising consultation?” It says, “You never felt more alive. You never felt more insignificant.” What are they marketing to? They know what they’re doing. They do. Do people love to feel insignificant? They do in the right settings, like on the edge of the Grand Canyon. Why do people go to the Grand Canyon? To feel big? You feel vulnerable. You feel small. Your knees wobble. Your tummy feels funny if you walk out on that crazy glass thing.

Why do people do that? It’s because they’re made in the image of God, with this massive longing for Him to be big and for them to be little. Our biggest joys don’t come from being big. They come from knowing big. We are made to know big, love big, and God’s biggest. We’re made for God. The world knows it. Deep, deep down, they know they’re not made for what they’re getting, and there are ways to help them. You can do this on an airplane. You get that?

Here’s Arlo and Janis, the old couple, and I love them because I’m old and like to do this with my wife. So here they are, walking in the snow. Could be Minnesota, and Arlo says to Janis, “It’s so quiet.” She says, “Yes.” They’re standing out in the snow, and he says, “Hey. Hey.” Then they’re just standing there in the dark, and now they’re walking away together. He says, “Ever notice the best moments make you feel insignificant?”

C.S. Lewis made the discovery that when God calls us constantly to praise His majesty, he’s not acting like an egomaniac or megalomaniac. He’s beckoning us to complete our joy. I’ll read you the key quote, and we’ll be finished for the evening. Oh, this quote was a rescue for me. It was such a rescue. I hope it is for you:

But the most obvious fact about praise — whether of God or anything — strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or the giving of honour. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise unless . . . shyness or the fear of boring others is deliberately brought in to check it.

The world rings with praise — lovers praising their mistresses [Romeo praising Juliet and vice versa], readers their favourite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favourite game — praise of weather, wines, dishes, actors, motors, horses, colleges, countries, historical personages, children, flowers, mountains, rare stamps, rare beetles, even sometimes politicians or scholars. . . . Except where intolerably adverse circumstances interfere, praise almost seems to be inner health made audible. . . . I had not noticed either that just as men spontaneously praise whatever they value, so they spontaneously urge us to join them in praising it: “Isn’t she lovely? Wasn’t it glorious? Don’t you think that magnificent?” The Psalmists in telling everyone to praise God are doing what all men do when they speak of what they care about.

My whole, more general, difficulty about the praise of God depended on my absurdly denying to us, as regards the supremely Valuable, what we delight to do, what indeed we can’t help doing, about everything else we value. I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment. (Reflections on the Psalms, 90–98)

It was over. That was 1970. It was just over. My battle was over between figuring out, “How can I pursue the praise of God, and how can I be happy?” It was just over because now I heard all the commands of the Bible. “Praise me. Honor me. Glorify me. Esteem me,” as, “Finish your joy. Complete your joy. Bring it to consummation. I’m for you. I want you to be happy in me, and your happiness in me reaches its consummation when you praise me and praise me forever.”

So C.S. Lewis’ third argument for the main discovery, God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him, which leaves us now two things to do tomorrow. One, this will be step four, does that really biblically, not just logically, but expositionally, does that really lead to the mandate to live for your joy 24/7, no exceptions? Does it really? Secondly, could a life devoted to pursuing your joy all the time be a loving life? When the Bible says, “Love seeks not its own,” that’s tomorrow.