Main Session 6 - Monday Afternoon

I wasn't able to take notes at Main Session 5. Eric delivered his Graymatters message.

This afternoon John Piper gave us a short but powerful message about God. Here are some notes.

God’s Delight In Himself

It takes more discernment than it first seems to know what kind of obedience / worship pleases God. Not all worship pleases God. “People worship me with their lips and their heart is far from me, in vain they worship me.” Such a thing as vain worship..
For 30 years, the rock-solid foundation for almost everything I’ve thought and done is that the ultimate joy of God are pleasures in God.

Discernment Test “What Pleases God, Namely, Himself”

1. Who is the most God-centered person in the universe?
Answer: God
2. Who is uppermost in God’s affections?
Answer: God
3. Is God an idolater?
No – God has no other gods before Himself.
4. What is God’s chief jealousy?
To be known and admired and trusted and enjoyed and obeyed above all others.
5. What is the chief end of God?
To glorify God and enjoy Himself forever.
6. Do you feel most loved by God because he makes much of you, or because he frees you to enjoy making much of Him forever?
7. Are you God-centered because God is supremely valuable to you, or are you God-centered because you believe you are supremely vaulable to Him?

Everybody agrees that the first commandment is to love the lord your god with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. Agree that whatever you do whether you eat or drink all to the glory of God. That Christ is to be valued above all things. Count everything as loss for the surpassing value, etc. We also agree that we should have no other gods before US.

We are out there standing for the truth, not because we are right, but because we are rescued. (Humble Orthodoxy)

The root of pride is not severed without seeing that GOD keeps the first commandment by loving Himself above all else. That he does all to the glory of God. that he sees Christ as supremely valuable. And that GOD has no other gods before him, and he alone is God in His own eyes.

God is supremely valuable than God! There is no more God-centered person in the world than God. God is not an idolater! God has no other gods before Him!

Trying to turn the lens just a little bit so that in every page of the Bible you’ll see that God is BIGTIME into making much of God!

This isn’t exactly what we’re always taught as kids. David and Goliath – “that you may KNOW that there is a God in Israel!” God used a little shrimpy kid to kill Goliath in order to glorify GOD!

What does God say about why he does what he does in History: Anwer- I do what I do uptimately for My glory. Not just “you do what you do for my glory,” “I do what I do for my glory!”

God makes much of God! This makes people squirm because deep down they really think they’re square at the center of His affections, instead of Himself.

Predestination

God predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to… his will, unto the praise of the glory of His grace. God predestined us…. unto the praise of the glory of His grace.

God’s DESIGN is His glory! Our experience of grace is penultimate. The echo of God’s glory IN It is ultimate!

Creation

“… everyone whom I created for my glory.”

All people are made to make God look good! Col 1:16 “all things were created through Him and for Him.” Him being Christ. FOR him – that’s an ambiguous statement. All things were created for Him,

Not “for Him” like the sandwich is for your strengthening. God didn’t make stuff so that the stuff would make him stronger, wiser, loving, more glorious. You can’t MAKE God more glorious than He is. Then what does for Him mean? Means for the display of His glory.

God made the world, and He made you to magnify him like a telescope, not like a microscope.

A microscope magnifies by making small things look bigger than they are. A telescope magnifies by making unspeakably huge things look MORE like they really are!

God looks SMALL in the world! He is hardly a dot in the night sky for most people. What are you for? Why did He make you? SO that you’d be like a glass put to the eye of an unbeliever. Make them go Look!

Don’t waste your life trying to look good! Spend your life making God look good! That’s why you were made! The weakest among you, the most homely, have perhaps the greatest chance to do that. The rest of you are too good-lookin. It’s distracting. The less handsome ones might just be a candidate to get you to look at somebody else.

Incarnation

Romans 15

I used to argue with seminary students who werer assigned to write a paper about the “integrating motif of the Bible” and what that is. Often they’de choose the love of God. But that’s not the ultimate integrating motif, although good. You can write about the penultimate motif if you want, but I’d encourage you to write about the ultimate motif! (They say, “But love is the ultimate motif! GOD IS LOVE!”)

Look at Romans 15. How are they related? You get the mercy, God gets the glory. The ultimate goal is that you magnify His all-sufficient overflowing mercygiving SELF! The ultimate motif of the Bible is the GLORY OF GOD! Not the love of God – that’s one of the ways the glory is explained.

Propitiation

Romans 3:25-26

At the center of this passage is the intention through propitiation to demonstrate God’s righteousness.
Why? Because he had passed over former sins! Why is passing over sins a compromise to the righteousness of God that requires the vindictive death of His Son?

“If God passes over sins, the Son of God’s gotta die.” Why? In order to demonstrate His righteousness. How is the righteousness of God called into question by the passing over of sins?

SIN is an attitude or an action that belittles the glory of God. It makes a choice that can only explain that you value something more than the glory of God. You prize something else more and therefore you do stuff that belittles God, in your simple preference for something else –

Verse 25: “God passed over” – he looked upon the trampling of His glory, and He acted as though it didn’t matter. Unrighteousness is when you do something profoundly wrong. The right thing when God’s glory is trampled, that must be vindicated, and the wrong thing is for it to be passed over.

So God is doing the wrong thing in passing over former sins – UNLESS – there’s a way to take care of it that brings Him MORE glory! Yes, you could go to hell. That would glorify God by vindicating the sin you committed. But you could be saved by Jesus Christ, who vindicated God’s justice for you, and that glorifies God too!

Sanctification

Philippians 1 – This I pray, that your love may abound still more and more, in real knowledge and discernment, so that you may be filled with the fruit or righteousness, which comes throuhg Jesus Christ, to the praise and glory of God.

God, pursue your glory! Do include us – but the beginning and end, it’s God pursuing His own glory. “Sanctify us to the praise of Yourself.”

Comsummation

2 Thess 1:9 – These will pay the penalty of eternal destriction away form the presence of the Lord and the glory of His power, when he comes to be glorified in His saints on that day and to be marveled at among all who have believed…

Why is Jesus coming back?

1. When He comes to be glorified in His saints.
2. And to be marveled at among all who have believed.

He’s coming to e glorified and He’s coming to be magnified. That’s why he’s coming! Ultimately. He’ll do a lot of other things, but this is the ultimate.

Conclusion

God is totally devoted to exalting God in everything he does. He does not do anything for any other ultimate reason. In everything he does, God is exalting God.


There are some Biblical reasons on the face of it why a person might squirm.

Most obvious: Doesn’t sound loving. “Love seeks not its own.” You just spent 20 minutes saying God seeks His own! But don’t be so quick to write off all these texts. There are other undsrstandings of “Love seeksnot its own,” rather than saying “love see,s not its own joy in the veloved.”

“If I don’t have love, it profits me nothing.” Why the talk of profit if we’re not seeking your own? Paul is talking in terms of seeking your own.

It’s not wrong for God to seek His own!

Reporter: “God would be morally defective to demand worship.” What’s the answer to the ultimate ofjection to God’s God-centeredness, saying it’s morally defective? What’s the answer?

Answer is that we define love the wrong way. We define love, morality, to mean being made much of. You make much of me, I’ll feel really good about that, and I will like the way you love me. That’s not love from the Bible.

Love labors, plans, suffers, to enthrall the beloved with what is totally and eternally satisfying.

God is the one being in the universe, who, in order to do that, must be self-exalting.

This is not a morally defective God! God is the one being in the universe for whom the highest virtue, the most loving act, is self-exaltation!

We exist to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things, for the joy of all peoples, through Jesus Christ.

And someone asked: “Where’s love for people in there?”

“That mission statement is my definition of love for people.” This means I exist in love! What would I do except enthrall people through God’s supremacy and for their joy in Christ, forever?

God’s love is not characterized first by His love for us, but by His working and planning and suffering in order to enthrall us with HIM.


Do not begrudge God’s God-centeredness. This is a North Star to live our lives by.