The God-Centeredness of God Unlocks the Gospel
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:04.000 | Welcome back to the podcast on this Wednesday. Thanks for listening.
00:00:07.000 | While I love finding sermons where Pastor John proclaims the God-centeredness of God,
00:00:15.000 | there are a lot of those sermons, and rightly so.
00:00:19.000 | This is the cornerstone of what we call Christian hedonism.
00:00:23.000 | God is thrilled with himself.
00:00:25.000 | And without this point, Christian hedonism wouldn't make any sense.
00:00:28.000 | And without this point, the gospel wouldn't make any sense either.
00:00:32.000 | To make this gospel connection, I recently came across the following sermon clip.
00:00:37.000 | It's from a conference message that Pastor John delivered in Massachusetts back in the fall of 1992,
00:00:42.000 | over 30 years ago now.
00:00:44.000 | In this clip, Pastor John is setting the table for the doctrine of justification,
00:00:49.000 | and he's setting the table with the doctrine of God.
00:00:53.000 | Here's how he did it.
00:00:55.000 | One of the reasons that it's hard to get a whole range of biblical doctrines across to Americans today
00:01:05.000 | is because there is a secular mindset that is radically different from a biblical mindset.
00:01:13.000 | Let me try to unpack what I mean by a secular mindset.
00:01:16.000 | The secular mindset is not necessarily a mindset that denies the existence of God,
00:01:22.000 | nor necessarily a mindset that denies even the truth of the Bible.
00:01:27.000 | Rather, it's a mindset that rules man into the center and rules God onto the periphery.
00:01:37.000 | It's a way of thinking that starts with man at the center
00:01:41.000 | and a cluster of needs and rights and expectations that man has,
00:01:47.000 | and then it begins all of its thinking and moves out from that center.
00:01:51.000 | And it judges to be problems, things in the world and in the universe
00:01:57.000 | that don't fit with this beginning, with this mindset, with this starting point,
00:02:02.000 | with man at the center, our rights, our needs, our expectations.
00:02:06.000 | And so what are understood as problems are things that don't fit with that,
00:02:11.000 | or what are understood as successes are things that endorse that,
00:02:16.000 | that fulfill those needs, enable and establish those rights,
00:02:21.000 | and jive with those expectations.
00:02:23.000 | And so you interpret the whole universe with this beginning point
00:02:27.000 | of man at the center with his needs and expectations.
00:02:32.000 | We're born with this mindset.
00:02:35.000 | It is not a modern mindset, though modernity puts certain twists on it
00:02:41.000 | and intensifies it through the media.
00:02:44.000 | Nevertheless, it's not new.
00:02:46.000 | We were born with it.
00:02:48.000 | Paul calls it the mind of the flesh in Romans 8:6.
00:02:53.000 | He calls us, apart from grace, the natural man.
00:02:59.000 | That's the way we think.
00:03:01.000 | We come into the world with this mindset.
00:03:03.000 | You don't get it.
00:03:04.000 | It gets reinforced every hour of the day in America
00:03:07.000 | through every form of journalism and television and radio
00:03:13.000 | and all kinds of media, books, newspapers.
00:03:17.000 | But you didn't get it from the newspapers.
00:03:20.000 | It was part of your nature.
00:03:23.000 | And you don't even know you have it.
00:03:25.000 | The world does not know they have this mindset
00:03:28.000 | until it collides with another one, namely the one in the Bible.
00:03:34.000 | The biblical mindset, on the other hand, is not simply one that includes God
00:03:40.000 | somewhere in the universe or simply says that the Bible is true.
00:03:45.000 | That's not the biblical mindset, pure and simple.
00:03:49.000 | The biblical mindset begins with a radically different starting point,
00:03:55.000 | namely God and God's rights,
00:04:00.000 | an absolutely foreign concept in this nation,
00:04:04.000 | that God has rights and God has goals.
00:04:10.000 | And when you start with that at the center and then move out,
00:04:14.000 | you define problems in the universe very differently
00:04:18.000 | than if you start with yourself at the center.
00:04:21.000 | Problems emerge as what doesn't fit with God's intentions and God's goals
00:04:27.000 | and God's rights and his will to manifest God.
00:04:32.000 | And so you just see the universe totally differently
00:04:35.000 | when you begin with God at the center, his rights and his goals
00:04:39.000 | as the assumption of the universe.
00:04:44.000 | Is the basic riddle of the universe to preserve man's rights
00:04:51.000 | and solve man's problems,
00:04:54.000 | say the right of self-determination or the problem of suffering?
00:05:01.000 | Or is the basic riddle of the universe how an infinitely worthy God
00:05:08.000 | in complete freedom can display the whole range of his perfections
00:05:15.000 | adequately for all to see and if they will, to worship and enjoy?
00:05:22.000 | Is his holiness and power and wisdom and justice and wrath
00:05:26.000 | and goodness and truth and grace the agenda of the universe?
00:05:31.000 | Is the meaning and purpose of everything to manifest God,
00:05:38.000 | to display God, to exalt God?
00:05:42.000 | Or are we the center? Are we the measure?
00:05:47.000 | Are our rights the thing to be guarded?
00:05:50.000 | Do we create and define the problems in the world?
00:05:54.000 | Now how you answer that question will determine whether or not
00:05:58.000 | you can understand the biblical teaching about justification.
00:06:01.000 | If you start with man at the center,
00:06:04.000 | with all of our natural tendencies of the human heart
00:06:07.000 | to assert our rights and our wants and our expectations,
00:06:11.000 | you will assess the doctrine of justification radically differently
00:06:15.000 | than if you begin with the biblical mindset that has God at the center
00:06:20.000 | and his goals and his rights uppermost.
00:06:25.000 | Understanding the doctrine of justification, especially the ground of it,
00:06:30.000 | requires grasping the God-centeredness of God.
00:06:37.000 | Until you feel that God is uppermost in the heart of God,
00:06:46.000 | that the most passionate heart for God in the universe is God's heart,
00:06:52.000 | until you feel that, you won't have an adequately biblical grasp
00:06:58.000 | on the doctrine of justification.
00:07:02.000 | God does not disobey the first and great commandment.
00:07:09.000 | God, with all of his heart and soul and mind and strength, loves God.
00:07:18.000 | He delights in his glory. He rejoices in his magnificence.
00:07:25.000 | God is not an idolater.
00:07:30.000 | And until you grasp that, until that takes hold of you,
00:07:33.000 | that God never commits idolatry.
00:07:37.000 | God always has himself at the center of his infinitely worshiping heart.
00:07:44.000 | You will not be able to make sense out of the doctrine of justification
00:07:48.000 | the way the Bible makes sense out of it,
00:07:51.000 | and especially its ground in Romans 3.
00:07:56.000 | Now, I've been trying to say these kinds of things for about 20 years or so,
00:08:03.000 | and if people are listening and they haven't thought about the God-centeredness of God
00:08:11.000 | and that he is uppermost in his own affections, it sort of hits them like a truck.
00:08:19.000 | But I want to tell you, this truck is laden with fruit.
00:08:25.000 | And if you survive the impact, you will eat well for a long time to come.
00:08:35.000 | If it's strange to you, if what I've just said is strange to you,
00:08:38.000 | that God is uppermost in his own affections, that God never commits idolatry,
00:08:43.000 | that God loves God with infinite passion,
00:08:47.000 | that the Sunday school papers my boys bring home are defective
00:08:51.000 | because they never have the words, "God loves himself more than he loves you."
00:08:57.000 | If you can survive the impact of that,
00:09:05.000 | then I think parts of the Bible will open to you that have been a closed book,
00:09:12.000 | and you may never even have known it.
00:09:14.000 | I really want to encourage you to let God be God.
00:09:19.000 | What I'm claiming tonight now, so far,
00:09:22.000 | is that the answer to the first question of the Westminster Catechism
00:09:26.000 | is the same for God as it is for man.
00:09:30.000 | What is the chief end of man?
00:09:32.000 | The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.
00:09:36.000 | What is the chief end of God?
00:09:38.000 | The chief end of God is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.
00:09:41.000 | That's all I'm saying.
00:09:43.000 | Don't write a different catechism.
00:09:46.000 | Don't make yourself the center of God's affections
00:09:49.000 | if he has required him to be the center of yours.
00:09:53.000 | There's a demonic way to imitate God.
00:09:56.000 | Satan used it on Eve.
00:09:58.000 | Don't make that mistake.
00:10:00.000 | When God lives for his own glory,
00:10:03.000 | don't you interpret that to mean, "Well, we should imitate God.
00:10:05.000 | We live for our glory."
00:10:07.000 | The way you imitate a God who lives for his glory is to live for his glory.
00:10:11.000 | Another way to say this is that God is righteous.
00:10:14.000 | What is righteousness to you?
00:10:16.000 | I'll tell you what righteousness is as I understand it biblically.
00:10:20.000 | The opposite of righteousness is to value and enjoy
00:10:24.000 | what is not valuable or rewarding, ultimately.
00:10:28.000 | The opposite of righteousness is when your valuing capacity,
00:10:33.000 | that heart in you that goes out and cherishes things and loves things
00:10:37.000 | and delights in things and craves things and wants things,
00:10:41.000 | goes after things that aren't valuable, namely anything but God.
00:10:46.000 | Righteousness is doing what's right, namely,
00:10:51.000 | craving, delighting in, wanting, cherishing what is valuable
00:10:59.000 | and infinitely valuable, God.
00:11:03.000 | Therefore, when I say that God is righteous,
00:11:08.000 | I mean that God never sets his infinite affections
00:11:13.000 | on anything less than what is infinitely valuable,
00:11:18.000 | himself.
00:11:20.000 | Solid gold.
00:11:21.000 | This is a clip worth listening to a few times.
00:11:23.000 | It's a profound and brilliant setup for understanding the doctrine of justification,
00:11:27.000 | why we must get right with God, why we must be justified.
00:11:33.000 | We'll never find out if we don't understand who God is in this way.
00:11:37.000 | It's a great clip.
00:11:38.000 | I pulled it from John Piper's conference message titled,
00:11:41.000 | "The Joy of God and His Fame," preached on October 9, 1992.
00:11:45.000 | The entire message is online at DesiringGod.org.
00:11:50.000 | Well, gold like this is all over the Piper Sermon Archive.
00:11:53.000 | And if you find some gold to share, email me.
00:11:55.000 | Give me your name, hometown, the sermon title,
00:11:57.000 | and the timestamp of where the clip happens in the audio.
00:12:00.000 | And make a note of what stands out to you.
00:12:02.000 | Put the word "clip" in the subject line of an email and send it to me
00:12:04.000 | at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org.
00:12:07.000 | That's an email address, AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org.
00:12:12.000 | Speaking of the God-centeredness of God, on the flip side of this doctrine,
00:12:17.000 | we also find one reason why many people walk away from the gospel
00:12:23.000 | and reject Christ outright.
00:12:26.000 | In fact, that is the story of Oprah Winfrey
00:12:30.000 | and why she rejects the God of the Bible.
00:12:34.000 | We'll hear her tragic story next time when we are rejoined in studio
00:12:38.000 | with Pastor John on Friday.
00:12:40.000 | We'll see you then.
00:12:42.000 | [ Silence ]