GOD’S WORD FOR JUNE 30 ~ ~ Psalm 8:3-4 ~ ~ “When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have set in place;
What is man that You think of him, and a son of man that You are concerned about him?”
Continuing with John Piper’s book, “The Pleasures of God”
(remembering the subject of yesterday’s discussion)
This marks a turning point in the book, because up til now we have not focused on what kind of human attitudes and actions God delights in. We have focused first on God’s pleasure in his own glory. I believe this order is very important. We need to see first and foremost that God is God—that he is so perfect and complete in himself, that he is overflowingly happy in the eternal fellowship of the Trinity, that he does NOT NEED US to complete his fullness and is not deficient without us. Rather, we are deficient without HIM. The all-sufficient glory of God, freely given in fellowship through his sacrificed Son, is the stream of living water that we have thirsted for all our lives.
Unless we begin with God in this way, when the gospel comes to us, we will inevitably put ourselves at the corner of it. We will feel that OUR value rather than GOD’S value is the driving force in the gospel. We will trace the gospel back to God’s need for US (which doesn’t exist) instead of tracing it back to the grace that rescues sinners who need HIM.
But the gospel is the good news that God is the all-satisfying end of all our longings, and that, even though he does not need us, and is in fact estranged from us because of our God-belittling sins, he has, in the great love with which he loved us, made a way for sinners to drink at the river of his delights through Jesus Christ.
We will not be enthralled by this good news unless we feel that he was not obliged to do this. He was not coerced or constrained by our value. He is the center of the gospel. The exaltation of HIS glory is the driving force of the gospel The gospel is a gospel of GRACE!!! Grace is the pleasure of God to magnify the worth of God by giving sinners the right and power to delight in God without obscuring the glory of God.