Tonight’s message is God Glorified in Providence and tomorrow morning will be Man Satisfied in the Providence of God. So the glorification of God and the satisfaction of man are brought together in my two talks. And when I showed that to the people at my church, they said, “They must read your books. They must know what makes you tick to give you an assignment like that.” And I was thrilled by it. I wondered, “How do these things work when somebody gets invited in to talk beside R.C. Sproul? Do they just tell them what to say, or what do they do?” And I don’t know how they came up with those two titles, but my heart leaped when I saw them. I’m thrilled to be here, and I thank God that in his providence R.C. Sproul exists and has been sustained and governed for these many years for the good of our churches and the glory of God’s name.

A Sweet and Bitter Providence

In July 1984, I preached a series of messages at my home church in Minneapolis on the Book of Ruth. I just went back and pulled it out of the file a few days ago to confirm this. It was entitled from the first chapter, A Sweet and Bitter Providence.

Now, you remember the story of Ruth. A famine comes upon Judah, and Naomi and her husband, Elimelech, are forced into exile. They go to Moab. And after the bitter providence of famine, Elimelech drops dead, leaving Naomi with her two boys, Mahlon and Chilion, there in Moab. The boys marry foreign wives, Ruth and Orpah. And then the boys drop dead. And after a season, she decides to go home and Orpah says farewell. Ruth says, “Your people will be my people and your God will be my God” (Ruth 1:16–17). And the two of them, bereft of land, bereft of husbands, bereft of sons, head for Bethlehem, which is home. And when they get there, a crowd of women come out to meet them. And they say, “Is this Naomi?” (which means ‘pleasant’). And she says, “Do not call me, Naomi. Call me Mara (which means ‘bitter’), for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me” (Ruth 1:20).

Naomi had no hesitation to call him Almighty, and therefore, she had no hesitation to ascribe the famine to God, to ascribe the death of her husband to God, to ascribe the death of her sons to God, and to ascribe the loss of one daughter-in-law to God. It had all been of the Almighty. She goes on to say, “I went out full, but the Lord has brought me back empty. The Almighty has afflicted me. The Lord has dealt bitterly with me” (Ruth 1:21). But at the end of the first chapter, you get this magnificent, pregnant, auspicious, hope-filled sentence, which simply says, “And they came to Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest” (Ruth 1:22).

The famine is over. And there’s a man in this field and his name is Boaz. And he’s going to fall in love with this young widow named Ruth, and he’s going to sacrifice his name in order to raise up to her husband and Naomi a seed. And at the end of the book, this is what it says:

The Lord gave Ruth conception (Ruth 4:13).

I believe every word that R.C. Sproul just said. It wasn’t just two zygotes. It wasn’t an egg and a sperm merely. It was God who gave her conception, and she bore a son. And this is what the women sing, who had just been told the Lord had dealt very bitterly with Noami:

Blessed be the Lord, who has not left you this day without a redeemer, and may his name be renowned in Israel! He shall be to you a restorer of life and a nourisher of your old age . . . (Ruth 4:14–15).

And his name was Obed, which means “servant”. And he became the father of Jesse, the father of David, the father of Jesus. The book of Ruth, the book of Esther, the book of Job, the story of Joseph, the story of Jesus, the book called the Bible, and all of redemptive history is a sweet and bitter providence.

He Hides a Smiling Face

I love the Bible. During that series, there was a young family who passed through the deep waters. I won’t go into details. The wife at the end of the series brought me a cross-stitched design that now hangs over the mantle of my fireplace 11 years later as a kind of banner over my wife, Noël, and my four sons and me every day. Cross stitched on that fabric is William Cowper’s hymn, which became a theme song for us during every one of those Sundays:

God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform He plants His footsteps on the sea, And rides upon the storm.

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take; The clouds you so much dread Are big with mercy, and shall break In blessings on your head.

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, But trust him for his grace; Behind a frowning providence He hides a smiling face.

Deep in unfathomable mines Of never-failing skill, He treasures up his bright designs, And works his sovereign will.

Blind unbelief is sure to err, And scan his work in vain; God is his own interpreter, And he will make it plain.

I love William Cowper. He tried to commit suicide three times and was a sick man all his life. I love him for that one hymn. He came into the world. That was 11 years ago.

Preparing People for Calamity

I’ve tried to devote my life at Bethlehem, my church, to teach, to preach, and to minister so as to work into the lives of those people a knowledge of, an appreciation for, a love to, and a delight in the God of Naomi and the God of the Bible. And in these last months at my church, we have been put to the test. One family in the spring had a child born with one ventricle, not two, in their heart, and has now undergone major surgery and will undergo more if it can live.

Another young couple just had a baby last month born with 10 percent of his brain. Another young couple is pregnant right now with a daughter whose liver is on the outside of her body and whose diaphragm is pushing her other organs up against her shoulders such that the doctor gives her little chance to live. And last August, while I was on vacation, the Knights had a boy born with no eyes.

What I want to do as a pastor is to so minister, so preach, so love, so hug, and so shut my mouth — like Sarah Edwards when Jonathan was taken, who said, “Let us put our hands upon our mouths and kiss the rod and thank God that we had him so long” — that my people and all of those parents can say, “The steadfast love of the Lord is better than life” (Psalm 63:3). His love is better than life. I want them to really embrace these words, “God governs such that all herbs and grass, rain and drought, fruitful and barren years, meat, drink, health, and sickness, riches and poverty. Yea, all things” — stop and take a breathe, dear John and Diane — “come not by chance, but by his fatherly hand.” And do you know, they believe it? They introduced this little baby to me. They pulled up its eyelids and there’s just skin.

When I was in Georgia and got the email that this had happened, my beloved partner of 15 years, Tom Stellar, told me what he said to them when he went to the hospital immediately. He said, “John” — he didn’t give me all the details but he said — “I went in and the Lord brought to mind, I believe, John 9.” And you know the story there, don’t you? They ask, “Who sinned that this man was born blind? Was it him or his parents?” (John 9:2). And Jesus answers, “It was neither that this man sin nor his parents, it was in order that the works of God, the glory of God, might be displayed in him” (John 9:3). This bitter providence of having been born blind and growing up never seeing anything or anybody, Jesus says, was designed by God so that the works of God might be made manifest in him.

Now, do you cringe at that pastoral use of this text? It’s a dangerous text to use. Was not Tom holding out, by implication, an unrealistic hope that maybe the reason Paul was born blind is so that God would demonstrate his gracious and sovereign healing power and create eyes in those sockets? Well, maybe, but Tom is a great theologian and he’s not ignorant of such pastorally sensitive moments and what false hopes and implications can be created in aching hearts. And the reason, theologically or exegetically, that Tom’s use of that text and the proper sensitive application of it was not wrong, is because of what Jesus himself says in John 21 on another occasion about the bitter providence of God. Let me read it for you.

God Glorified in Healing and in Death

The resurrection is passed. It’s the final days before Jesus leaves. And then John 21:18–19, he says:

“Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go.” (This he said to show by what kind of death he was to glorify God.)

Now here’s a bitter providence. God, according to the word of Jesus, has ordained that Peter die by torture on a cross. That’s what “stretch forth” your hands means. He says, “They will stretch forth your hands,” and then John writes, “By this, he signified by what death he would glorify God.” So in John’s theology, God can get glory by putting eyes into sockets, and he can also do it by a lifelong Helen Keller or by death or anything else. The common denominator is that God has ordained a purpose by which he will get glory. And Peter drank the cup. Tradition says he asked to be crucified upside down so as to not be too much like his Lord.

The Purpose of God in Every Providence

Here’s the point of tonight’s message: the purpose of God in every providence is the revelation of his glory. In every sweet and bitter providence, God means to reveal something of his perfections, some aspect of his perfections, so that we, with greater intensity and greater fervency and greater understanding, will embrace his perfection, honor it, delight in it, and worship it forever, especially as we come to see it fitting together with the whole range of redemptive history. That non-maverick molecule is a piece of the mosaic that will one day move us to bow down and say — and this is the sixth Point of Calvinism — “This is the best of all possible worlds.” That makes you a six-pointer. There is a seventh point, but I’ll leave that for the question and answer time tomorrow.

We make a turn here. It is a great mystery that God, who is infinitely, beautifully, magnificently happy in the fellowship of the Trinity for all eternity, should create being outside himself and sustain it by the word of his power (Heb 1:3). It is a mystery. What was it that moved God, who delights infinitely in the Son and beholds all of his perfections reflected back to him in the panorama of the character of his fully, equally glorious Son, and enjoys that with a personal power and energy in the Holy Spirit flowing and coursing between the Father and the Son for all eternity — happy, satisfied, fulfilled, self-sufficient, needing nothing? He has no deficiency, no emptiness. Why would he create and sustain you and me and all that is?

That’s a hard question. Here’s the answer of Jonathan Edwards, and I believe the Bible: there is in fullness a propensity to overflow. There is, in perfect fullness, an impulse — Edwards calls it a communicative impulse — to create that which can reflect back all the fullness and enjoy it. Jonathan Edward says, “It is no mark of deficiency in a fountain that it is prone to overflow.” And what overflows from God is a revelation of his glory in creation and in providence.

Whether You Eat or Drink

I grew up in a home in Greenville, South Carolina. My dad is an evangelist, and he’s still preaching and ministering. My mother is with the Lord. I grew up in a home where 1 Corinthians 10:31 was the meat and potatoes of our lives.

Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.

I knew that. I knew it as a little boy, that you were to act in ways that show how great God is. You’re to do things in a way that makes God look good. I knew that. But the impact of that did not hit me until the late 60s and early 70s when I was in my 20s. I discovered that 1 Corinthians 10:31 applies not only to me, but to God. Whatever he does, whether he eats or drinks or whatever he does, he does all to the glory of God.

Now speaking from a perspective of about 25 years of reflection on that discovery, it seems so obvious. But to me in 1968 through 1972, a Copernican Revolution in my life was underway — namely, the discovery that I am not merely called to be God-centered, I am called to join God in his God-centeredness.

It seems to me now so obvious, and it seemed so shocking in those days. It seemed so big, so different. I used to say that you know when theology is gripping you and changing you when your prayer life is being revolutionized. I had been able to think of myself as God-centered, as long as I thought God was man-centered. I think maybe the most profound thing R.C. Sproul said here was that the almost inarticulable distinctiveness of Reformed theology — may I use my language? — is the God-centeredness of God. If you can, find better ways to get this across — that God is supreme in his own affections; that God loves God with all of his heart and all of his mind and all of his soul and with all of his strength; that God is not an idolater. He worships God and nobody else. Those thoughts blew me away.

All Things for His Glory

I was sitting in a pantry that had been turned into a study in Germany. It was 1971–1972, and I was reading for my devotions, of all things, Jonathan Edwards’s The End for Which God Created the World. I want to just give you a smattering of what was happening to me exegetically and textually as Edwards piled text upon text to show that every work of providence, from the molecule to the galaxies, has this one goal: to reveal, to display, the glory of God for the praises of his people. Here’s the smattering.

Creation, Election, and Salvation

He creates for his glory. Isaiah 43:6–7 says:

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,
     whom I formed and made.

He elects Israel for his glory. Jeremiah 13:11 says:

I made the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah cling to me, declares the Lord, that they might be for me a people, a name, a praise, and a glory . . .

He saves from Egypt for his glory. Psalm 106:7 says:

Our fathers, when they were in Egypt,
     did not consider your wondrous works;
they did not remember the abundance of your steadfast love,
     but rebelled by the sea, at the Red Sea.
Yet he saved them for his name’s sake,
     that he might make known his mighty power.

He restrains his anger for his glory, as he brings Israel back from exile. Isaiah 48:9–11 says:

For my name’s sake I defer my anger;
     for the sake of my praise I restrain it for you . . .
For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it,
     for how should my name be profaned?
     My glory I will not give to another.

That verse probably is the best verse for communicating the spirit of Reformed theology. Non nobis domine. I remember that scene in Henry V and I cried. I can’t sing very well, but I remember as it built and built and built as they walked across that field. R.C. didn’t take this as far as he could have. He took it far, but do you remember the scene? I mean, it was like a thousand to one the French and the British, and the way the British did it was that they took their bows and they said, “Cock,” and 500 Bowmen set their arrows on a arch with no aim.

Nobody decides where those are going to land, but one person, God. And then 25,000 Frenchmen were dead. Or if you want to be biblical, 185,000 Assyrians. No wonder they sang, “The horse is made ready for the day of battle, but the victory belongs to the Lord” (Proverbs 21:31).

Forgiveness and Guidance

He forgives us for his glory. Psalm 25:11 says:

For your name’s sake, O Lord,
     pardon my guilt, for it is great.

He works in us and strengthens us and leads us for his glory. Isaiah 60:21 says:

The branch of my planting, the work of my hands,
     that I might be glorified.

Or listen to the Psalm we all love. Psalm 23:3 says:

He leads me in paths of righteousness
     for his name’s sake.

Have you ever heard that? Why does he lead you? That his name might be magnified in your life. He leads us for his name’s sake.

The Second Coming

And he will send Jesus a second time for this reason. Second Thessalonians 1:9–10 says:

[Those who do not obey the gospel] will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might, when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed . . .

Why is he coming? He’s coming to be marveled at. He’s coming to be glorified. Everything God does from the molecule to the galaxy, he does to display his glory. Those texts, and hundreds of others in the Bible, show that God is overflowing-ly, unabashedly, unashamedly enthusiastic about his glory. He is radically God-centered. All of redemptive history, every work of providence from the smallest to the greatest, are impelled out of his heart by this passion to see his glory exalted in the world. The heavens are telling the glory of God, and so is the molecule. Had they known molecules, that’s what they would’ve written. They knew the heavens and so they wrote of what they knew.

When God commands you, “Let your light so shine that men may see your good deeds and give glory to your Father” (Matthew 5:16), what he’s saying is, “Act like me. I do everything I do that men might see my good deeds and give glory to me. Be like me in that regard.”

The Self-Exalting Love of God

Now there’s a question I want to ask here. There are so many questions we could ask and I’m sure we’ll hear some tomorrow, but here’s the question that I have asked over the years that has been most fruitful and most balancing and most biblically luscious in my experience. It’s a question regarding this God-exalting God: how can it be loving for God to be so self-centered? I mean, if it sounds unloving, wait until we put exegetical weight behind its un-lovingness — namely, 1 Corinthians 13:5, which says:

Love seeks not its own . . .

Do you hear a problem? What makes a theologian is seeing problems and being troubled by them enough to work on them. Here’s my answer to this problem, and it has unfolded for me a theology that I have tried to live by and teach for these 20 years or so. The answer comes in two steps.

Number one: the greatest love gives to the beloved what is best. So if I come to you and I offer to you my vaunted value, my greatness, and my worth, and I commend myself to you for your enjoyment, I do the opposite of love because in that very act of drawing your attention to me, I conceal from you what is the most precious, most glorious, most valuable, most satisfying reality in all the universe, namely God. And therefore, when I am instructed about how to be a loving person, I must be told that love does not parade itself and love does not seek its own. But now God comes into this room. And if he is to be loving to you, if he is to love you with all the love that he can love you, what must he offer to you? Me? Health, wealth, success in ministry? Spare me. I want nothing less than the best from him, namely himself, God.

He’s stuck with being God. He is infinitely glorious. He can’t help it. The absoluteness of the being of God is the most mind-numbing thought. My little 12 year old and I were sitting at the table. He sat there the other day at breakfast as we were talking about some of these things, and he just shook his head and he said, “Daddy. The hardest thing is that he didn’t begin.” I said, “It is the hardest thing. It is the hardest, most easy thing in the world.” Philosophically, there is no greater probability that there was God forever and ever or gas forever and ever. Both are incredible.

When God comes into this room and loves you, he offers you himself and is thus self-centered. We cannot make self-denigration a virtue for God without committing blasphemy. God is the one being in the universe for whom self-exaltation is the highest virtue and most supreme act of love. These were the discoveries that were changing my universe in 1971 and 1972, as I asked, “How can it be love for God to be God centered?” And now I see that the most loving thing he could do for me is give me himself. And if he gives me himself, he’s self-centered and self-exalting, and therefore for him to be loving he must exalt himself because if he were to put himself down or say, “I must humble myself and I’ll give you some alternative value,” he would be blasphemous. He would be an idolater. And I would have no benefit because he would be denying me what is most precious and offering me a substitute.

Do you see? Oh, that there would be a Copernican Revolution for many of you who might embrace the sovereignty of God, but have never seen, never tasted, the radical God-centeredness of God. That’s step one in the answer. And we haven’t gotten to the best yet for me.

Enabled to Enjoy God

Here’s step two in the answer of how God can be loving and be utterly devoted to upholding and displaying his own glow in everything that he does. If God is to love me as much as love can love me, he must not merely offer me what is best, namely himself, and then leave me as to whether I will have taste buds and capacities to embrace and enjoy and delight in him; he must also work and strive and labor to make me happy in him.

Because if he offered me the best and I did not have the wherewithal to enjoy him, love would not be all it can be for me. Therefore, relentlessly in the Bible, God appeals to us, urges us, commands us, and models for us to enjoy him.

Delight yourself in the Lord (Psalm 37:4).

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice (Philippians 4:4).

Enter his gates with thanksgiving,
     and his courts with praise! (Psalm 100:2).

Delight yourself in this God. Drink from the river of his delights. Feed on his abundance. Taste and see that the Lord is good (Psalm 34:8). God’s purpose is not merely to offer himself as an infinitely, all-satisfying, all-glorious God, but also to demand from us and work in us a full enjoyment of himself.

You make known to me the path of life;
     in your presence there is fullness of joy;
     at your right hand are pleasures forevermore (Psalm 16:11).

Many evangelicals and philosophers and all other kinds of Christians say that it is a matter of indifference in the Christian life whether you have a passion for God, delight in him, love him, enjoy him, treasure him, and revel in him. If that is the caboose at the end of the train, if that’s icing on the cake of Christianity, I don’t know the Bible.

Has God then become man-centered in making my joy such a powerful aim in his experience? Has God forgotten himself, as he says, “I’m going to make John Piper happy. I’m going to fill him with joy. I’m going to make his joy and his satisfaction and his fulfillment my aim.” Has he then ceased to be God-centered? Has he forgotten his self-glorification? And the answer to that question has become for me the gospel, and the answer is no. God’s pursuit of my joy in God is not God’s abandonment of his supreme value, but an expression of it for this reason. And this is the sentence I would write over every book I’ve written:

God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.

Our Joy and God’s Glory

Here’s an Illustration. You all know this to be true from your experience that delight in or value of a person is a higher tribute than mere dutiful allegiance. I’ll be married to Noël for 27 years on December 21st.

Let’s say I go home and I have a dozen red roses behind my back and I ring the doorbell and she comes to the door looking funny like, “Why did you ring the doorbell?” And I pull the roses out and I say, “Happy anniversary, Noël.” And she says, “Oh, they’re beautiful, Johnny. Why did you?” And I say, “It’s my duty.”

They laughed again. I’ve told that story 50 times. Why did you laugh? Why do you hold duty in such low regard? It’s because it didn’t honor her. It didn’t honor my wife. What’s the right answer when she says, “Johnny, why did you?” Here’s the right answer: “I couldn’t help myself. Nothing makes me happier than buying roses for you. And by the way, change your clothes because I have a plan for tonight. And there’s nobody I’d rather spend my evening with than you.” Never in a million years would she say, “Oh all you ever think about is you and what would make you happy tonight.”

Why not? I’m just a Christian Hedonist when I say, “There’s nothing I’d rather do tonight,” and, “Nothing would make me happier than to be with you.” Why doesn’t she call me selfish? I am. Here’s the reason: my happiness in that moment, in that confined circumstance, is her. She is the object of my longing and thus, she is most glorified in me when I am most satisfied in her. And so is God. I wish I could create this. I’m glad I’m not the Holy Spirit, but I wish the evangelical church would get this, that to pursue your joy in God is a high act of worship. And what happens in this worship center on Sunday morning is a feast. God has not abandoned his self-centeredness when he pursues my joy in him.

I said it was the gospel. Let me close by tying it to the cross of our Lord Jesus. Do you see how precious this is to me? And I hope it is to most of you. God’s infinite, eternal passion to be glorified, and my, I believe, God-given, not-infinite-but-tremendous passion to be happy, to be satisfied, to be fulfilled go together in the universe are not at odds. Does that feel freeing to you? Does that feel like gospel to you? God has found a way to both uphold and vindicate the glory of his holiness and his righteousness and to justify and adopt and satisfy sinners. And where did he do that? You know. He did it on the cross and it’s explained in Romans 3:25–26. Do you see how central this is that God’s pursuit of my joy and satisfaction in him is not at odds with his passionate pursuit of the exaltation of his own name? Because in the cross, he has both vindicated his righteousness and satisfied sinners through faith in Christ.

Tomorrow, I ask this question, if this is so, how then shall we live? Shall we join God in his purpose in all his works of providence, not only to glory in his name but to seek our satisfaction in his name? Shall we join him in that and make our satisfaction the passionate driving force of our lives? Or is that an unwarranted step?