Is God Glorified in Those Who Reject Him?
00:00:00.000 | Well, we know that God is most glorified in those who most love him.
00:00:08.280 | And that is why God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.
00:00:13.280 | But is God at all glorified in those who reject him?
00:00:17.560 | It's the question from an international listener today named Jen Red.
00:00:22.160 | Jen Red asks this, "Pastor John, if God is most glorified when we are most
00:00:26.080 | satisfied in him, why does he use that nearly constant refrain so that they may
00:00:31.160 | know that I am the Lord in reference to things that would not bring about the
00:00:35.760 | satisfaction of anyone?
00:00:37.640 | And we're certainly not done for that specific purpose.
00:00:40.520 | There are many times when God seems to me perfectly content with people seeing his
00:00:45.720 | glory and realizing that he is God, even though that realization is in terror and
00:00:51.600 | in judgment.
00:00:52.280 | How do you make sense of this?"
00:00:54.840 | This is a really important question, especially for someone like me, who's a
00:00:58.560 | Christian hedonist.
00:00:59.560 | But really, it's an important question for everyone because it's about God's
00:01:06.120 | ultimate purposes, both in painful things as well as pleasant things, and how they
00:01:12.560 | relate to the glory of God and his commitment to glorify himself in everything
00:01:19.080 | he does.
00:01:20.400 | So let me restate the question so that we all have it clear and can see the
00:01:26.760 | relevance of it.
00:01:28.080 | He's responding to the central claim of Christian hedonism, namely, "God is most
00:01:34.120 | glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him."
00:01:37.880 | And his question assumes, rightly, that God is zealous for his glory.
00:01:47.200 | He is always committed to uphold and magnify and communicate his glory.
00:01:54.040 | And he alludes to the first question of the Westminster Catechism, which asks,
00:02:00.640 | "What's the chief end of man?"
00:02:02.440 | And answers, "The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever."
00:02:06.360 | So his question begins by putting in place things that we agree on.
00:02:12.880 | Namely, first, God is always upholding and magnifying and communicating his glory in
00:02:17.960 | everything that he does in history.
00:02:20.440 | And second, God is most glorified in us when we're most satisfied in him.
00:02:25.120 | And those two premises, which I believe are biblical, and Jen Redd agrees, it
00:02:32.200 | seems, he believes are biblical, they create for him a problem.
00:02:40.000 | For texts in Ezekiel, like, "They will know that I am the Lord when I have made the
00:02:52.440 | land a desolation because of all their abominations."
00:02:57.760 | Seventy-two times in the book of Ezekiel, the prophet says that God will do things
00:03:03.840 | so that you may know that I am the Lord.
00:03:07.320 | It's astonishing, over and over again.
00:03:10.600 | And Jen Redd assumes, rightly, that this is an expression of God's zeal for his
00:03:17.120 | glory, and then he spots a problem because some of these things that God does in
00:03:23.560 | order that we may know that he is the Lord, that he may get glory, is painful
00:03:30.240 | things toward us that don't quicken in people satisfaction in God.
00:03:39.680 | And so he wonders, "Well, if God is most glorified by our being satisfied in him,
00:03:46.920 | how can he get glory, like Ezekiel says he does, by doing things that don't
00:03:50.720 | satisfy us but damn us, send people to hell because it's judgment?"
00:03:55.040 | Now, there are at least two answers.
00:03:58.240 | First, when I say God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him,
00:04:04.480 | I am referring to how God is most glorified or magnified in us, that is, in
00:04:11.360 | us who believe.
00:04:12.360 | I'm not talking about a general cosmic statement about how God maximizes his
00:04:19.880 | glory in the universe.
00:04:21.880 | I'm talking about whether God is more glorified this afternoon in John Piper's
00:04:30.000 | heart and life by my being satisfied in him or whether he is more glorified this
00:04:38.840 | afternoon by my being less satisfied in him.
00:04:42.400 | That's the issue, because what I'm trying to argue for is that all believers should
00:04:51.120 | pursue—and I mean pursue with all their might—maximum satisfaction in God over
00:04:58.360 | against money and sex and leisure and family and even ministry.
00:05:03.120 | In my argument for that pursuit, my argument for that pursuit is that God is
00:05:10.320 | less glorified on any given day in my heart and life if I am begrudgingly
00:05:19.160 | obedient rather than being joyfully obedient, because he satisfied my soul.
00:05:26.760 | So that's the first answer.
00:05:28.400 | The statement that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him
00:05:32.480 | is not a statement about the way God maximizes his glory in the universe and
00:05:39.000 | all his creatures.
00:05:40.080 | It's a statement about how God commands people to glorify him in this world, in
00:05:47.320 | their hearts.
00:05:49.240 | Here's my second answer, that when people refuse to be satisfied in God and live
00:05:57.680 | lives of preferring other things to God and finding more satisfaction in other
00:06:04.640 | things than God, the glory of his wrath is magnified when they are justly punished.
00:06:14.280 | In other words, God is not only glorified when his people are satisfied in him, he
00:06:21.120 | is also glorified when he is defied by people and then pours out on them a just
00:06:32.320 | and holy wrath.
00:06:34.800 | And the glory and rightness and indeed moral beauty of that wrath is made
00:06:43.520 | visible.
00:06:44.200 | This is the point of Romans 9, 22 and 23.
00:06:47.720 | It goes like this.
00:06:49.600 | "What if God, desiring to show his wrath and make known his power, has endured
00:06:57.880 | with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction in order to make
00:07:02.840 | known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he prepared beforehand
00:07:08.120 | for glory?"
00:07:09.080 | That's what's going on in Ezekiel when repeatedly God says, "So that you may
00:07:16.120 | know that I am the Lord," even when he's performing acts of judgment.
00:07:21.320 | God means for the world to see him as glorious both in his mercy and his wrath.
00:07:33.280 | It's not as though God is glorious when he shows mercy and inglorious when he
00:07:41.240 | shows wrath and judgment.
00:07:43.080 | Both his wrath and his mercy are glorious.
00:07:47.360 | They are perfectly just, perfectly proportioned, perfectly expressed.
00:07:52.920 | And I would say in view of the logic of Romans 9, 22 and 23 that part of the
00:07:58.240 | glory in the display of wrath and mercy is that the wrath is intended by God to
00:08:05.760 | make the mercy look all the more astonishing and precious and beautiful and
00:08:11.080 | glorious.
00:08:12.320 | So let me end the way the Bible does in the book of Revelation as the glory of
00:08:20.440 | God, the praises of God rise both in response to judgment and in response to
00:08:28.360 | salvation.
00:08:28.960 | Here's Revelation 19 and some excerpts from verses 1 to 7.
00:08:35.000 | It goes like this, "I heard a great multitude in heaven crying out, 'Hallelujah!
00:08:43.240 | Salvation and glory and power belong to our God, for his judgments are true and
00:08:51.360 | just, for he has judged the great prostitute who corrupted the earth with
00:08:58.920 | her immorality and has avenged on her the blood of his servants.' Once more they
00:09:04.640 | cried, 'Hallelujah!
00:09:06.640 | The smoke from her goes up forever and ever.'
00:09:11.200 | Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of
00:09:18.000 | many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying, 'Hallelujah!
00:09:24.800 | For the Lord God the Almighty reigns.
00:09:27.640 | Let us rejoice and exult and give him glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has
00:09:34.040 | come and his bride has made herself ready.'"
00:09:37.840 | So, the hallelujah to God's glory will rise forever and ever, both for the mercy
00:09:47.280 | experienced at the Supper of the Lamb and for the judgment that falls upon those
00:09:56.080 | who have rejected that mercy and dishonored God in unbelief.
00:10:03.160 | So nothing I say or mean by the sentence, "God is most glorified in us when we are
00:10:11.360 | most satisfied in him," is intended to contradict any of that, but only affirm
00:10:17.200 | it.
00:10:17.400 | Yeah.
00:10:18.280 | Yeah, really profound text in Revelation.
00:10:20.960 | Hard truths, but vital to know if we are to understand God's will and works, and
00:10:26.320 | both his mercy and his wrath as displays of his glory.
00:10:30.320 | Thank you, Pastor John.
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00:10:50.240 | Ask Pastor John podcast on your favorite podcast app.
00:10:54.040 | Well, John Piper is a big advocate for seeing glimpses of the peculiar glory of
00:10:59.280 | Jesus in scripture, and those moments of discovery in his Bible are more than
00:11:04.600 | mere intellectual revelations.
00:11:06.560 | Those discoveries are affectional, feeding his delight in God.
00:11:11.120 | So the question then becomes, well, what does it feel like to see the beauty of
00:11:17.240 | Christ?
00:11:17.840 | I don't think this question has ever come up in the podcast in the past, and I don't
00:11:22.240 | recall Pastor John ever addressing it either.
00:11:24.400 | He will on Wednesday.
00:11:26.120 | I'm your host, Tony Ranke.
00:11:27.040 | We'll see you back here then.
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