Today we have a preaching question for you, Pastor John. As you have worked through entire books of the Bible as an expositor, how did you think about the prominence of Christian hedonism in your sermons? Did you think of every sermon as an opportunity to make a beeline to joy at some point, as Spurgeon said of the cross?

Did you try to make connections to joy thematically, like perhaps in texts that dealt with the nature of personal faith or that spoke of God's glory, even where joy was not explicitly mentioned in your primary text? Or did you just wait until texts explicitly used the joy language to let those sermons become your opportunity to talk Christian hedonism?

How did you approach this? That's complicated. Yes, it is. There are two ways to answer this question. One is to do a statistical analysis of what I really said in 35 years of messages, and that would be the most reliable way to answer it. And of course, it's all there, available for anybody who wants to do that, though I can think of more profitable things to do with your time.

The other way is to ask me what my intentions were, what were my homiletical strategies or hermeneutical convictions that governed the way I handled texts, and that's what's being asked, I think. And it's not a very reliable way to know, because my memory of how I approached thousands of texts is not very good.

But I will do my best to say what I think today, and others can judge whether 30 years ago you actually practiced this. When a preacher comes to a text, he never deals with it in isolation from what he knows from that author in other texts or other biblical authors on that same theme.

Texts have deeper and wider meaning and significance the more clearly you see how what it teaches relates to the rest of what Scripture teaches. For example, Jesus says in Mark 10 that he did not come to be served, but to serve. Now, knowing Acts 17.25 at this very point may have a profound impact on how a preacher deals with Mark 10.45 and vice versa.

Acts 17.25 says God is not served by human hands as though he needed anything, but he gives to all life and breath and everything. In other words, Christ coming not to be served is an expression of a wider, larger, deeper, divine trait that God is of such a nature he cannot be served by man.

And taken together, these two texts unleash a river of thoughts about the nature of God and Christ and salvation and discipleship. And my point is that to know those things is going to affect the way you preach on either of those texts. So the point is that the more connections you know from the Bible, the richer and deeper you will go with each text.

The trick is to let each text make its real contribution to the whole rather than letting the whole squash the text into what you already know from other texts. That's the trick. That's the catch. One must be utterly honest with every text, and over time the spiritually discerning people in our churches will see whether we are honest with every text or whether we're squashing them all into our little systematic desire, whether it's Christian hedonism or whatever you happen to love.

So here's how it works with me and Christian hedonism, namely, God is most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in him. And I'll put it in three or four principles. I know that the greatest commandment in the Bible is that we love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

And I know that because Jesus said it's the greatest and because numerous texts on loving God teach it. And I also have learned from the Bible that that means, loving God means, treasuring God above all things, finding him to be our all-satisfying treasure. Now, that's a piece of Christian hedonism.

In other words, I don't just use the word, "The main commandment in the Bible is to love God." I want to know, what do you mean, love God? What does it mean to love God? Does it mean work for him because he's a needy God, or does it mean find him all-satisfying supreme treasure?

And I conclude the latter, which means that this goal, bringing people to obey the greatest commandment every Sunday, because it's the greatest commandment, you want people to do it and you want them to be pointed toward that greatest commandment in everything you say, that will inevitably cause me to lean toward displaying God as all-satisfying, displaying God as the greatest treasure in the world, under, in, behind every text.

If it's explicit, I hope I can make that plain. If it's not explicit, I hope the sermon will have that flavor, and the people will have to judge whether I'm succeeding in imposing or inferring. Here's the second one. "I know from 1 Corinthians 10:31 that God aims for us to glorify him in everything, everything, from the moment this sermon is over till people show up again, everything they do is to be done for the glory of God.

And I know from years of reading the Bible and study that this is God's supreme passion, not just mine or Paul's. I have also learned that God is not so much glorified in people and their attitudes if they are not satisfied in him, if they don't find pleasure in him, if he's not their supreme treasure.

So very close, beneath or behind every sermon is the aim to help people delight in God all the time, including horrible times, because glorifying God is supremely important in the Bible, and that's the way we do it." Here's third. "I have learned that the gospel of Christ's death and resurrection is both the supreme demonstration of the gift of God's glory"—it's the gospel of the glory of God in the face of Christ—"and the death of Christ is the price paid so that we could have that glory, see that glory, receive that gift.

And therefore, I have tried in recent decades especially to keep the cross close, beneath, behind all preaching because the cross is the price that was paid for God's glory and the ultimate presentation of God's glory for our everlasting enjoyment." And here's the fourth and last thing. "I am deathly afraid of imposing alien meanings on texts." I think imposing alien meanings from outside of text, even other texts, you know, God's word, imposing alien meanings on text is the death knell of authority in preaching.

I think it's the death knell of trustworthiness as a preacher. I think it's the death knell of being interesting as a preacher year in and year out. And I think it's the death knell of growing in our understanding of the Bible. So my aim in preaching has always been, "Show the people what's in the text, what is really there.

I want them to see what's really there. And if there's more than meets the eye regarding the glory of God, loving God, cross of Christ, Christian hedonism, if there's more than meets the eye, then it better be really visible to people when you're done." It needs to grow out of the text organically rather than being imposed on it.

If the people don't see the bigger points organically growing out of the text, they will start to feel, "This guy can't really be trusted with the Bible." And they'll start to be bored because they can expect what's coming every week. So that's my goal and whether I succeeded, others will have to judge.

Very good. Thank you, Pastor John. And it reminds me of a question I asked a while back, "How do you prepare your sermons?" That was episode number 229 in the podcast archive for those leaders out there who are interested in learning about how you write sermons, Pastor John. And speaking of the archive, you can search all of our over 500 episodes to date.

We have free apps for Apple and Android devices for this, of course. And now we have a landing page on our website as well. Go to DesiringGod.org at the top of the page and click "More" and then click on "Ask Pastor John." And you can search there by the title and episode number.

Tomorrow we return and John Piper will explain how you can make a difference in this world or how not to waste your life. I'm your host Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast.