Does God Command Our Praise for His Sake or Ours?
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | On Wednesday, we were in Holland.
00:00:06.680 | Today in Brazil.
00:00:07.700 | We're blessed with many friends in Brazil
00:00:09.600 | and today's email comes from one of them,
00:00:11.200 | a man named Kawa, spelled C-A-U-A
00:00:14.040 | with a tilde on the last day.
00:00:16.080 | Kawa, Kawa lives in Rio de Janeiro.
00:00:19.060 | Hello, Pastor John, I have been debating
00:00:20.720 | the following question in my head for a long while.
00:00:23.180 | Does God command our praise because it glorifies him
00:00:26.800 | or does he command our praise
00:00:28.160 | because he wants us to be happy?
00:00:30.760 | Does he command our worship for himself
00:00:33.080 | or for our good or for both?
00:00:35.200 | Can you help me understand this please?
00:00:37.660 | Well, I will do my best because this is what
00:00:39.800 | I've been trying to do for more or less 50 years.
00:00:43.260 | I think the answer to this question
00:00:48.120 | is just about the best news in all the world.
00:00:53.120 | At least in my own experience to see the relationship
00:00:56.920 | between God's command for praise
00:00:59.840 | and my experience of happiness
00:01:02.600 | was one of the most important discoveries
00:01:05.240 | that I ever made in my life.
00:01:09.100 | So I hope I can bring some clarity to it.
00:01:13.160 | I don't think there was any biblical text
00:01:16.640 | that my parents spoke to me or wrote to me
00:01:20.500 | after I left home more frequently
00:01:22.920 | than 1 Corinthians 10 31.
00:01:25.840 | So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do,
00:01:29.400 | do all to the glory of God.
00:01:32.520 | That command, that duty was imprinted on my soul
00:01:37.520 | from as early as I can remember
00:01:40.260 | and I am so thankful that it was.
00:01:43.480 | It was a wonderful thing.
00:01:45.520 | Whether you're young, whether you're old,
00:01:48.000 | to have a short pithy summary
00:01:51.200 | of the purpose of human existence.
00:01:53.480 | What a gift to know why you exist,
00:01:57.240 | to know why you are on this planet.
00:02:00.080 | Indeed, to know why there is anything at all in existence.
00:02:04.240 | What a gift, what a privilege.
00:02:06.060 | And it became obvious over time
00:02:09.560 | that this wasn't simply my duty
00:02:12.340 | to glorify God in everything I do,
00:02:14.600 | but this was God's design for his own action, all of it.
00:02:19.600 | He does everything.
00:02:22.360 | He does everything he does to the glory of God.
00:02:26.960 | He predestines to the glory of God.
00:02:29.080 | He creates to the glory of God.
00:02:30.800 | He guides history to the glory of God.
00:02:32.880 | He sends Jesus to live and die for the glory of God.
00:02:37.320 | He sanctifies his church to the glory of God.
00:02:41.220 | Jesus is coming back to be marveled at
00:02:43.480 | and glorified among his people.
00:02:46.240 | Everywhere in the Bible, God is glorifying God.
00:02:49.920 | He does what he does to make God himself look as beautiful
00:02:54.920 | and glorious and great and wise and just and good
00:02:58.960 | and loving and gracious as he really is.
00:03:01.520 | So the duty that I grew up with expanded
00:03:06.520 | into a full-blown view of the universe.
00:03:09.620 | I think that's really there in 1 Corinthians 10, 31,
00:03:14.120 | because text after text pointed
00:03:18.280 | to the ultimate purpose of all things,
00:03:20.240 | namely God is committed to glorifying God.
00:03:23.720 | And I remember seeing, this was in I think 1976 or so,
00:03:28.720 | I remember seeing for the first time
00:03:31.800 | those three verses in Ephesians 1,
00:03:34.120 | verse 6, verse 12, verse 14,
00:03:36.680 | all three of them saying unto the praise of his glory,
00:03:41.680 | unto the praise of his glory,
00:03:43.600 | unto the praise of his glory,
00:03:45.120 | as if Paul were to say, hey, to get it the third time,
00:03:47.960 | if not the second, if not the first time,
00:03:50.200 | God does everything and he saves especially,
00:03:53.880 | unto the praise of his glory.
00:03:57.720 | So there's absolutely no question
00:04:00.600 | how to answer the first part of Cowan's question.
00:04:04.160 | Does God command our praise because it glorifies him?
00:04:09.160 | Yes, you are chosen, destined, adopted, redeemed
00:04:16.240 | unto the praise of the glory of God's grace, Ephesians 1, 6.
00:04:21.240 | God plans for our praise, creates for our praise,
00:04:26.200 | rules the world for our praise,
00:04:28.680 | saves us through the death of Jesus for his praise,
00:04:33.440 | and that praise is specifically praise ultimately
00:04:38.440 | for the glory of God's grace.
00:04:40.680 | Now that vision of God's God-centeredness
00:04:45.160 | in creation and redemption, salvation, all of history,
00:04:50.160 | that God-centeredness of God himself
00:04:53.840 | left me for a long time perplexed
00:04:58.740 | about the place of my happiness,
00:05:00.840 | my happiness in this overarching divine purpose.
00:05:05.840 | My perplexity was compounded when I heard preachers,
00:05:10.540 | for example, during a call to missions,
00:05:12.840 | say things like, "Seek God's will, not your own.
00:05:17.400 | Seek to please God, not yourself."
00:05:21.440 | And I knew there were texts in the Bible
00:05:23.640 | that said things like that, but it left me wondering,
00:05:28.360 | well, will it always be the case
00:05:32.000 | that when I'm acting in obedience,
00:05:34.840 | I'm acting against my will and against my pleasure?
00:05:39.840 | That seemed hopeless to me.
00:05:42.720 | As if you were to grow in your obedience
00:05:46.200 | and be condemned to unhappiness the rest of your days
00:05:50.220 | or eternity even.
00:05:51.840 | Then came the great discovery.
00:05:56.000 | It came from several sides,
00:05:57.480 | but the most shocking and compelling statement
00:06:00.280 | of the discovery was in C.S. Lewis's book,
00:06:04.840 | "Reflection on the Psalms."
00:06:07.280 | He not only nailed my confusion, my perplexity,
00:06:12.480 | but in doing so, he gave the answer to it.
00:06:16.560 | So I want you to hear what I heard.
00:06:19.620 | So I'm gonna read the whole section, a couple of paragraphs.
00:06:23.860 | And remember, what he's dealing with here
00:06:27.240 | is that parts of the Bible, especially the Psalms,
00:06:30.280 | sounded to him when God commanded his own praise.
00:06:35.280 | He said it sounded like an old woman seeking compliments,
00:06:39.040 | and that really bothered him.
00:06:40.940 | So here's what he wrote.
00:06:42.520 | And this was life-changing for me.
00:06:45.360 | "But the most obvious fact about praise,
00:06:48.840 | whether of God or anything, strangely escaped me.
00:06:53.200 | I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval,
00:06:56.760 | or the giving of honor.
00:06:58.440 | I had never noticed that all enjoyment
00:07:02.640 | spontaneously overflows into praise,
00:07:06.560 | unless, sometimes even if, shyness
00:07:10.120 | or the fear of boring others
00:07:12.100 | is deliberately brought in to check it.
00:07:14.460 | The world rings with praise,
00:07:16.880 | lovers praising their mistresses,
00:07:19.720 | readers their favorite poet,
00:07:21.960 | walkers praising the countryside,
00:07:25.040 | players praising their favorite game,
00:07:28.320 | praise of weather, wines, dishes, actors,
00:07:32.000 | motors, horses, colleges, countries,
00:07:35.320 | historical personages, children, flowers, mountains,
00:07:38.880 | rare stamps, rare beetles,
00:07:40.960 | even sometimes politicians as scholars."
00:07:43.720 | I think he's laughing.
00:07:44.760 | (chuckles)
00:07:45.600 | "I had not noticed how the humblest,
00:07:49.480 | and at the same time, the most balanced
00:07:51.800 | and capacious minds praised most,
00:07:56.580 | while the cranks and misfits and malcontents praised least.
00:08:01.580 | I had not noticed either that just as men
00:08:05.120 | spontaneously praise whatever they value,
00:08:07.700 | they spontaneously urge others to join them in praising it.
00:08:12.280 | Isn't she lovely?
00:08:13.780 | Wasn't it glorious?
00:08:15.540 | Don't you think that magnificent?
00:08:17.480 | The psalmists, in telling everyone to praise God,
00:08:22.480 | are doing what all men do
00:08:25.040 | when they speak of what they care about.
00:08:28.660 | My whole more general," I'm still quoting,
00:08:31.640 | "My whole more general difficulty
00:08:34.620 | about the praise of God depended on my absurdly denying to us
00:08:39.620 | as regards the supremely valuable,
00:08:42.680 | what we delight to do,
00:08:44.680 | what indeed we can't help doing
00:08:46.360 | about everything else we value.
00:08:48.580 | I think we," and here's the nub of the matter,
00:08:51.600 | "I think we delight to praise what we enjoy
00:08:56.600 | because the praise not only expresses,
00:09:03.440 | but completes the enjoyment."
00:09:06.840 | Whoa.
00:09:07.900 | It is, it's appointed consummation.
00:09:11.940 | It's not out of compliment
00:09:13.520 | that lovers go on telling one another
00:09:15.200 | how beautiful they are.
00:09:16.520 | The delight is incomplete till it is expressed.
00:09:21.520 | That's Reflections on the Psalms, 1958, pages 93 to 95.
00:09:27.360 | Do you see where that led me?
00:09:30.740 | Every time God commanded me to praise him for his glory,
00:09:35.740 | he was commanding me to bring my pleasure in him
00:09:41.200 | to its fullest delight.
00:09:43.940 | That's what he was commanding.
00:09:45.800 | My pleasure in God is not complete
00:09:50.120 | unless it overflows in praise,
00:09:53.080 | and my praise of God is not glorifying to God
00:09:57.600 | unless it is the overflow of pleasure in God.
00:10:01.460 | God is not an egomaniac when he commands me to praise him.
00:10:05.060 | He's acting in love because my praising him
00:10:09.900 | is the apex of my pleasure in him.
00:10:13.820 | What a discovery.
00:10:15.100 | So the answer to the question is,
00:10:17.860 | we should not, we dare not choose
00:10:21.720 | between praising God as an expression of the glory of God
00:10:26.900 | and praising God as an overflow of our pleasure in God.
00:10:30.640 | We dare not choose between those or separate those.
00:10:34.420 | And after 50 years of pondering this,
00:10:36.880 | I don't know any better way to say it
00:10:39.840 | than God is most glorified in us
00:10:43.480 | when we are most satisfied in him.
00:10:46.560 | If we try to choose between glorifying God
00:10:51.560 | and being glad in God, we will fail at both.
00:10:56.980 | The great discovery is that God has bound them together
00:11:01.980 | in his children forever.
00:11:06.100 | - Amen.
00:11:06.940 | An essential discovery with ramifications into all of life.
00:11:10.840 | Thank you, Pastor John, for giving your life
00:11:12.220 | to sharing this discovery with the world.
00:11:14.780 | And thank you for joining us today.
00:11:16.220 | You can ask a question of your own,
00:11:17.520 | search our growing archive, or subscribe to the podcast.
00:11:19.700 | You can do all that at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.
00:11:24.580 | I am your host, Tony Reiki.
00:11:25.540 | We'll see you back here on Monday.
00:11:26.860 | Have a great weekend.
00:11:28.100 | (upbeat music)
00:11:30.680 | (upbeat music)
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