What Do You Love Most About God?
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | - Happy Monday, everybody.
00:00:05.960 | Welcome back and thank you for listening
00:00:08.160 | to the Ask Pastor John podcast.
00:00:09.880 | Pastor John joins us today remotely over Skype.
00:00:13.760 | Our question today comes from a listener named Sam
00:00:16.760 | who lives in Los Angeles.
00:00:18.780 | He sent in a really short question to us,
00:00:20.920 | but it's an important one.
00:00:22.920 | Dear Pastor John, what do you love most about God?
00:00:27.880 | That's it.
00:00:28.720 | Pastor John, what do you love most about God?
00:00:31.840 | - In a sense, to answer this question authentically,
00:00:36.080 | I probably ought not to spend any great time
00:00:40.600 | theologizing, right?
00:00:41.880 | Or studying or doing exegesis or assessing God's attributes.
00:00:46.880 | I ought to simply blurt out,
00:00:49.840 | blurt out what I feel about God,
00:00:53.360 | what I really treasure about Him and value and admire.
00:00:57.840 | Wouldn't that be the most authentic answer to the question,
00:01:01.480 | what do I love about God,
00:01:03.800 | rather than some long studied,
00:01:06.080 | complicated Philip and APJ theological answer?
00:01:10.040 | And I think the answer to that question is yes, that's right.
00:01:12.920 | So that's where I'll start.
00:01:15.520 | My first, most visceral, immediate, heartfelt answer
00:01:20.520 | to the question is I love the grace of God.
00:01:25.080 | I love the mercy of God.
00:01:26.760 | I love being loved by God.
00:01:28.880 | I love being treated graciously and kindly
00:01:32.080 | and patiently by God.
00:01:33.960 | I love being accepted and forgiven by God.
00:01:37.600 | I love God's grace towards me.
00:01:41.680 | I think all of those statements
00:01:45.640 | that just tumbled out there are ways of saying
00:01:49.720 | the grace of God is very, very, very precious to me.
00:01:55.840 | I would be undone without a God of grace.
00:02:00.840 | Late at night, early in the morning,
00:02:05.800 | facing conflict, facing guilt feelings,
00:02:10.280 | facing judgment from Him ultimately, possibly,
00:02:14.280 | or from critical people facing the world.
00:02:18.000 | I would be undone without the grace of God.
00:02:24.720 | It is on the front burner of my affections for God
00:02:29.400 | all of the time.
00:02:31.240 | And I mean that even when I'm thinking about
00:02:33.800 | all kinds of other attributes of God or ways of God,
00:02:38.800 | they're all flavored with the grace of God.
00:02:42.000 | So that's my most visceral, heartfelt, unreflective,
00:02:46.840 | immediate, desperate response to the question
00:02:50.480 | of what I love most about God.
00:02:53.520 | But the reason I said that answering this way
00:02:57.840 | is in a sense the right way to answer this question
00:03:02.840 | is that there's another sense in which the Bible
00:03:08.120 | encourages us not just to speak from our inmost
00:03:13.120 | or most immediate perception of things,
00:03:17.880 | but to ponder in the light of God's word
00:03:22.080 | and in the light of God's action, what we mean,
00:03:26.440 | what we mean by what we most immediately say
00:03:30.600 | and whether there might be contained
00:03:33.400 | in this immediate response aspects of God's grace
00:03:38.400 | and mercy and kindness, which need to be made explicit
00:03:45.120 | for the sake of our own souls,
00:03:48.720 | as well as for the sake of others.
00:03:52.160 | Lest we fail to honor God as we ought
00:03:56.280 | and lest we subconsciously find ourselves loving not God,
00:04:02.120 | supremely, but our own selves.
00:04:06.700 | There are numerous instances in the Bible
00:04:09.760 | where people showed some measure
00:04:13.120 | of spontaneous devotion to God.
00:04:16.740 | And then when he said something or did something
00:04:21.740 | that they didn't like, their devotion evaporated,
00:04:25.800 | which means that what they said was love for God
00:04:30.800 | wasn't really love for the true God,
00:04:34.000 | but only a love for their imagined God,
00:04:36.240 | their picture of God.
00:04:38.880 | And then the real God does something out of step
00:04:43.760 | with their expectations and their love is gone.
00:04:47.860 | Now that love was not really love for God.
00:04:52.460 | So even though it's right, and I'm gonna say it again,
00:04:55.660 | it's right for me to give a spontaneous, heartfelt,
00:05:00.660 | visceral gut reaction to the question,
00:05:04.460 | what I love most about God,
00:05:06.740 | every person who lives under the authority of the Bible,
00:05:11.500 | including me, will want to discern
00:05:15.280 | from the true real God revealed in the Bible,
00:05:20.080 | whether what I'm saying corresponds to reality.
00:05:24.960 | Is God really like what I say I love about him?
00:05:29.960 | And is my heart so much attuned to the true God
00:05:35.720 | that no matter what he reveals about himself,
00:05:40.040 | I will still be totally committed to him
00:05:43.220 | and in love with him and valuing him and treasuring him
00:05:46.900 | and cherishing him and being satisfied in him.
00:05:51.120 | Then with the Bible's help,
00:05:53.340 | I'll know that I love the true God
00:05:56.580 | and not just a figment of my own religious imagination.
00:06:01.580 | So what John Piper needs to do,
00:06:05.420 | having given his immediate heartfelt answer,
00:06:08.860 | I love the grace of God toward me in Jesus.
00:06:13.380 | What he needs to do, what I need to do is ask,
00:06:18.380 | Piper, what do you mean by the grace of God?
00:06:23.900 | If you love that most,
00:06:27.680 | you should have some sense of what you're talking about.
00:06:30.200 | You know, those are just empty words.
00:06:32.680 | And my answer would be this.
00:06:34.660 | So now I'm doing the reflective thing,
00:06:36.400 | testing my guts, right, and my spontaneity.
00:06:41.000 | God's grace is his disposition and action
00:06:46.000 | to give the greatest possible blessing
00:06:51.140 | to the least deserving creatures at the greatest cost.
00:06:55.700 | That's my definition of God's grace.
00:06:58.480 | The cost is the suffering and death
00:07:01.280 | of his one and only son, Jesus Christ.
00:07:04.060 | Romans 8, 32, he did not spare his own son,
00:07:09.060 | but gave him up for us all.
00:07:11.480 | The least deserving creatures are human beings, me,
00:07:16.440 | who have desecrated God's glory by committing treason
00:07:21.240 | in preferring other things above God.
00:07:24.280 | Like Romans 5, 6, and 8 says,
00:07:27.400 | "Christ died for the ungodly."
00:07:30.880 | God shows his love for us
00:07:32.360 | and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
00:07:37.160 | And then thirdly, the greatest possible blessing
00:07:41.880 | purchased at the greatest cost
00:07:43.960 | for the least deserving is pause.
00:07:48.120 | Think, hmm, now what's that?
00:07:52.080 | And at this point, we are at the most critical juncture.
00:07:57.800 | How shall we state the greatest possible blessing
00:08:02.440 | that grace gives to the least deserving recipients like me?
00:08:07.440 | And it won't work to say,
00:08:12.200 | "Well, the greatest possible gift of God's grace
00:08:14.840 | is the grace."
00:08:17.080 | That's just talking in circles.
00:08:18.760 | That's not gonna answer the question.
00:08:20.560 | So you can see why it's an inadequate answer
00:08:25.720 | when John Piper says that the greatest thing I love
00:08:28.760 | about God is his grace,
00:08:30.280 | until I've answered the question,
00:08:34.320 | what's the greatest blessing that God's grace
00:08:37.520 | has given to me in treating me so much better
00:08:42.120 | than I deserve at the cost of his son's life?
00:08:46.160 | To love the grace of God in a way that honors God
00:08:51.520 | is to love grace because of the specific content
00:08:56.280 | of the blessing given by the grace of God, namely God.
00:09:01.280 | The greatest gift grace gives is God
00:09:07.000 | for our eternal friendship and enjoyment.
00:09:10.200 | 1 Peter 3:18, "Christ also suffered once for sins,
00:09:15.200 | the righteous for the unrighteous,
00:09:17.560 | that he might bring us to God."
00:09:20.240 | Romans 5:10, "While we were enemies,
00:09:22.800 | we were reconciled to God by the death of his son."
00:09:27.560 | The grace John Piper says he loves about God
00:09:32.560 | is not the grace of God,
00:09:35.960 | unless the capstone of that grace
00:09:39.880 | is the gift of God himself.
00:09:42.760 | And the love that I say I have for that grace
00:09:46.560 | is not a love for God,
00:09:50.080 | unless what I love most about the grace
00:09:53.160 | is that it brings me to God.
00:09:55.480 | And I think this is why in Ephesians 1,
00:09:59.480 | Paul says that the eternal election of God
00:10:03.840 | and his predestination and his planned adoption
00:10:08.840 | of redeemed people through Christ,
00:10:11.600 | all according to the good pleasure of his will,
00:10:15.120 | has as its ultimate goal, quote,
00:10:18.360 | "The praise of the glory of the grace of God."
00:10:23.360 | And that glory, the glory of grace,
00:10:28.720 | is the beauty of how all the attributes
00:10:33.680 | of the eternal God, his goodness, his righteousness,
00:10:38.680 | his unimpeachable justice, his unfathomable wisdom,
00:10:43.080 | his omnipotent power,
00:10:45.360 | how all that he is in his godness and his holiness,
00:10:50.360 | how all of that unites,
00:10:54.240 | fits together beautifully to plan and perform
00:10:58.600 | creation and redemption in a way
00:11:01.000 | that magnifies the capstone of his deity,
00:11:04.240 | namely the glory of his grace.
00:11:06.680 | In other words, the eternal excellencies of God
00:11:11.240 | give rise to the wise ways of God
00:11:15.880 | for the praise of the glory of the grace of God.
00:11:20.000 | So that when we say we love the grace of God,
00:11:25.000 | we ought to mean that we have some sense
00:11:29.840 | of those eternal excellencies and those wise ways of God.
00:11:37.320 | All of which brings me back to where I began.
00:11:41.280 | I love the grace of God,
00:11:42.880 | which now means I love that he is the kind of God
00:11:49.240 | who didn't spare his own son.
00:11:51.240 | I love that he's the kind of God who justifies the ungodly.
00:11:56.760 | I love that he's the kind of God that gives
00:12:00.400 | to the least deserving, the greatest blessing,
00:12:03.360 | namely himself, and I hope to be spending
00:12:08.360 | the rest of eternity knowing and loving
00:12:13.520 | all of his excellencies better and better.
00:12:17.880 | - Amen.
00:12:18.720 | Yes, a proper hope and prayer for all of us.
00:12:21.840 | This whole episode is reminding me of your book,
00:12:24.040 | Pastor John, "God is the Gospel."
00:12:26.680 | So good.
00:12:27.520 | If you want more information, you can find that book,
00:12:30.120 | "God is the Gospel," at desiringgod.org
00:12:33.240 | forward slash books.
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00:12:47.680 | And to find other episodes in our archive
00:12:49.360 | or to submit a question to us,
00:12:50.920 | do that online at desiringgod.org
00:12:53.080 | forward slash Ask Pastor John.
00:12:55.600 | Well, one of the most common questions we get
00:12:58.800 | in the inbox is about lukewarmness.
00:13:01.840 | Am I lukewarm?
00:13:04.320 | And what is lukewarmness to begin with?
00:13:06.880 | We will work toward a definition
00:13:08.800 | when we return next time on Wednesday.
00:13:10.960 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:13:12.000 | We'll see you then.
00:13:12.960 | (upbeat music)
00:13:15.560 | (upbeat music)
00:13:18.160 | [BLANK_AUDIO]