So the subordinate goal of this message, the one down from the ultimate, is that I would be able to make plain and defend the claim that truth triumphs through pleasure. The ultimate goal of the message is that you and your people through you would feel that pleasure in God more intensely than you feel it in anything else.

Now to say that the goal of a message is that a people or a preacher would experience enjoyment, experience pleasure in God, is not a contradiction to saying what the Bible says everywhere, that the ultimate goal of all things, including this message, is the fullest possible exhibition of the glory of God in the age to come.

And the reason it's not a contradiction is because in the age to come that fullest exhibition of the glory of God is simply not going to happen if his people do not find their greatest pleasure in him. It's not. Huge things are at stake in the pleasure of your people in God.

I'm an Edwardsian lover of the glory of God down to my toes, and I want to read you a paragraph for why that's so. This is Edwards at his best. It appears that everything spoken of in the scriptures as an ultimate end of God's works is included in that one phrase, the glory of God.

In the creature's knowing, esteeming, loving, rejoicing in and praising God. The glory of God is both exhibited and acknowledged. His fullness is received and returned. Here is both emanation and remanation. The refulgence shines upon and into the creature and is reflected back to the luminary. The beams of glory come from God and are something of God and are refunded back again to their original so that the whole is of God and in God and to God.

And God is the beginning and the middle and the end in this affair. I love Edwards and his God. Now, I can't imagine a more God-centered, God-exalting, God-entranced paragraph than what I just read. And tucked away in the middle of it is a statement worth a life. It has shaped everything I do since I discovered it about 50 years ago.

Here's the sentence. In the creature's rejoicing in God, the glory of God is exhibited. That's life-changing. That's ministry-changing. It alters the way you preach, alters the way you parent, alters the way you live. In your rejoicing, in finding pleasure in God, God's excellencies are exhibited. And if you don't have it, He isn't.

This is huge. It's huge for how we preach and how we live, what we seek to create by God's grace in our people. So here's what I'm going to do to try to make the case that truth triumphs through pleasure. I'm going to make the connection with four things.

One, the connection between truth and ultimate reality. Second, the connection between ultimate reality and God. That's easy. Third, the connection between God and preciousness. And fourth, the connection between preciousness and pleasure. That's where we're going. Number one, the connection between truth and ultimate reality. So the biblical words for truth, emet and almunah in Hebrew, aletheia in Greek, are used so many different ways, all kinds of nuances.

So you know, I'm sure you've all been well taught that you don't take a definition from Piper or MacArthur or anybody else and take it home and then lay it on a text and say, "This is what that word means." No, no, you don't do that. Because the word is used in so many different ways, you let the text have its say about what angle on truth is being meant here.

So I'm going to draw out two of those, two angles or two aspects, two ways the Bible talks about truth. The first one is patently obvious, and we've heard all of them so far in this conference. Number one, the Bible often speaks of truth as a characteristic of the things we say.

We say things that are true or false. I think Mike even quoted this text, Proverbs 12:17, "Whoever speaks the truth gives honest evidence, but a false witness utters deceit." So when we think of truth this way, it's a characteristic of our statements about reality. When we talk of truth this way, truth is a true statement and corresponds to reality.

But here's the second way, the one that I'm most interested in. Not only does the Bible speak of truth as characteristic of statements about reality, but it talks about that reality as the truth. So statements can be true and the reality is the truth. There's two different ways of using the word truth.

For example, Acts 12, Peter is getting out of prison by the miracle of the angel, and it says, "Peter went out and followed the angel. He did not know that what was being done by the angel was alethes." True, meaning I'm not dreaming. It's real. It's really happening. Or 2 Corinthians 6:8, "We are treated as impostors and yet are alethes." We're true.

We're not impostors. We're real. So that's the meaning I want to take hold of in this particular connection here and press into it. The truth not only states the truth, that reality is the truth. So those two things are the statements can be true and the things about which they speak as true are the truth.

I am the truth. You serve a true God. So that's connection number one. The connection between truth and reality is that reality is called often in the Bible truth. And that points to ultimate truth, because Jesus says, "I'm the truth. This is the true God." So we've got to now deal with the question, secondly, what's the connection between ultimate truth and God?

I said that was the easy one. What is ultimate truth/ultimate reality? And I think the most fundamental response to that question in the Bible is probably Exodus 3, 13 and 14. I'll read it for you. Moses said to God, "If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is his name?' You shall say to them, 'God said to Moses,'" I didn't read that right, "They asked me, 'What is his name?

What shall I say to them?' God said to Moses, 'I am who I am.' And he said, 'Say this to the people of Israel, 'I am sent me to you.'" Now the very least you can say about what that means is first, "I am I." I'm a person. I'm talking to you right now, I.

Not it, not a wind, not thunder, I, a person, am talking to you. I am who I am. Second most obvious thing, I think, is I exist. I am. I'm real, not a myth, not imagined, not a Freudian projection, not a wish fulfillment. I am more real than the ground you stand on, more real than the skin on your bones, more real than the galaxies at the end of the universe.

And the reason I'm more real is because all of those realities depend on my reality. I am ultimate reality. Only I, God, can say, "I am who I am." Everything else must say, "I am because He is." So this is the way ultimate truth talks. I am who I am.

Nobody made me this way. I simply am. Never had a beginning, never had an ending. I never became. I simply was from all eternity. I will never end. I depend on nothing, no cause, no support, no counsel. Everything depends absolutely on me. Everything is secondary to me. The universe is infinitesimally small to me.

I carry it around like a peanut in my pocket. I never develop. I cannot be improved. I'm absolute fullness and perfection. I conform to nothing outside myself. I am the standard of all perfection, all beauty and truth and goodness. There are no constraints on me from outside. My good pleasure always holds sway.

My actions are absolutely free. I'm never dictated to by anybody from outside myself. I am who I am. And for many years, I have circled back to this text every chance I get like a lightning bug looking at the sun. I find it absolutely electrifying that God is. You just need to lie down some night outside and look up and think he is, he was, he never began.

This all began. He never began. Just absolute reality. That's my answer to the second question, which is easy to give. The connection between, so question number one, the connection between truth and reality is that the Bible often uses the word truth to refer to reality and now ultimate reality and that ultimate reality second is God.

Now we turn to step three, the connection between God and preciousness, preciousness. These next two, preciousness and pleasure, are the heart of the matter and I hope they sink in. Is ultimate reality valuable? Is ultimate reality of infinite worth? Is ultimate reality precious? Now those three questions I'm going to restate because I want to get at something and I can force it if I restate those questions slightly differently like this.

Is ultimate reality ultimate value? You hear the difference, not ultimately valuable but is ultimate reality ultimate value? Is ultimate reality infinite worth? Is ultimate reality infinite ultimate preciousness? So I'm going beyond saying God has value, has worth, has preciousness and I'm pushing it in to say, "No, no, it is Him, it is part of who He is," even though the word part is a heresy, the word part is a heresy, but we grope, right?

I'm pushing it in to say God is value, God is worth, God is preciousness. Now why would I do that? Why am I pushing on that? Here's the reason. Most people in the world are not born again. Our calling is to, like Jesus said to Paul, "I'm sending you to open their eyes that they may turn from darkness to light and the power of Satan to God that they may have forgiveness of sins." But you, you pastors are going to go out and through your ministry the miracle is going to happen and people are going to be born again.

That's what we're called to do. We want people to be saved. We don't want to be the agent of people's destruction, we want them saved. So they're out there, your people are talking to them, they come to your church, they're not yet born again, and if you were to ask any of those unregenerate people, "Is ultimate reality valuable?

Is God valuable?" They might say, "Well, because they don't have any mental categories for being God-centered. The mind of the flesh is hostile to God, does not submit to God, it cannot submit to God." You're asking them a question they cannot answer truly, so what are they going to say?

They're going to say something like, "Well, I would hope that he or she or it, whatever ultimate reality is, would help me with my marriage and my job and my health and my children and my finances, that would be valuable." In other words, they would measure God's value by whether he's useful in helping them experience the pleasures that this world offers, that they can conceive of.

Now, some of those people come to your church and your people are hobnobbing with those people all the time, and here's what I'm suggesting. I'm suggesting that a new set of questions just might shock them awake, might shock your people awake. Is God ultimate value? Is God infinite worth?

Is God ultimate preciousness? Not just, does God have value or become useful to me in accomplishing the purposes that I have before I'm regenerate? I think if we don't answer that question correctly, namely, is God infinite preciousness? Our theology, our worship, our obedience is going to go off the rails.

Certain things are at stake here in the way we live, in the way we do ministry. So let me go to the scriptures now and try to answer this question. In other words, are there scriptures that warrant this way of talking about preciousness? Is God infinite preciousness? Matthew 13, 44, very familiar, one word, one verse, parable.

The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up and then in his joy, he goes and he sells everything he has and buys that field. So if the kingdom of heaven is a precious treasure, it's because the king is the treasure.

Heaven will be heaven because God is there. There is an ultimate promise. Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them. They will be his people and God himself will be with them and be their God. That's Revelation 21, 3. So that's the consummation of the kingdom, God with us.

So the kingdom is a treasure and it's a treasure because the king is in the kingdom and he is the treasure, 2 Corinthians 4, 6 and 7. God has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

We have this treasure. I think that refers back to what he just said. So God has spoken. Our eyes have been opened. We see the cross now and the gospel as a magnificent treasure. The glory of God in the face of Christ. We have this treasure in jars of clay so that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.

So the glory of God in the face of Christ, tasted, experienced in our hearts is the treasure in the jar of clay. The presence of God is the presence of treasure, infinite preciousness. First Peter 1, 3 and 4. God has granted to us his precious and very great promises.

Why are they precious? They are precious because they ultimately hold out to us the presence of God. I don't know if you have a verse you go to bed with every night, but I'm old now, not as old as MacArthur. I hope I can live as long as you have, which is only a few more years.

But when we get old, we think about death a lot, I do anyway, and what it will be like and how to get ready for it, and I think about going to bed at night and not waking up, I think about that almost every night, and so I have a verse.

And it goes like this, "God," and I picture God saying it to me very personally, lay my head down on the pillow, I usually start on my left side, no right side like this, I can get my wife that way, and it says, "John Piper, God has not appointed you for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for you, so that whether you wake or sleep, you will live with him." That's the salvation.

You live with him! You're going to live with him! That's the treasure. That's the preciousness. That's the hope. You go to bed, you don't wake up, great! With him, with him. First Peter 1.18, "You were ransomed from the feudal ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things like silver and gold, but with a precious blood of Jesus Christ like that of a lamb without blemish or spot." The blood of Jesus is not precious because it saves us.

It saves us because it's precious. In itself, the blood of the Son of God is precious. He is preciousness. First Peter 2.4, "You come to him, a living stone rejected by men, but in God's sight chosen, precious. It stands in Scripture, 'Behold, I'm laying in Zion a cornerstone chosen, precious.'" God's evaluation of the Son of God is that he's precious, which means preciousness is in the Trinity.

That's why I say it's in God, it's in God. It's not because of what he does. He is precious. He regards his Son as precious, the Son regards the Father as precious. The Holy Spirit communicates the preciousness. This is where preciousness gets started, only that's heretical, too, because nothing starts in God.

It's just always there. That's where it comes from. The whole reality of preciousness is God, it's in God. Revelation 21.1, "He showed me the holy city coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God, its radiance like a most precious stone." The glory of God filling the New Jerusalem is the city's preciousness.

Maybe that's enough on that point. So from those texts, and many more, I conclude that infinite worth, infinite value, infinite preciousness are in God, intrinsically in God, forever in God. God the Father enjoys God, the Son, and therefore the preciousness of the Son is in the Trinity and the preciousness of the Father, and together in all their perfect harmony, they are preciousness.

It belongs to the nature of God. That's point number three. So point number one, the biblical facet of truth as reality. Point number two, that reality ultimately is God. And point number three is that God is infinite preciousness, which leaves one last connection or question. How does pleasure relate to preciousness in the Bible, not just in your head, but in texts?

And I think we see the answer pretty clearly if we ask the question, what is the fitting human soul response to preciousness as the Bible presents it? So here's some, I've got three clusters of texts. I think by clusters I just mean two in each group. Number one, Matthew 13, 44, let's go back there.

We passed over a word too quickly because it wasn't time for it yet. The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure, hidden in a field, a very precious discovery, which man found and covered up, and in his joy he sells everything and buys that field. That's why so many missionaries have said, "I never made a sacrifice." In his joy, he's left it all to have the treasure.

So what's the answer to the question that corresponds to preciousness? Joy, pleasure, okay? That's number one. That's fleshed out now in Hebrews 10, 34. You had compassion on those in prison and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one, more precious, more lasting.

The human response that corresponds to a better, lasting, more precious reward is you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property. You can see almost immediately how radically transformative this will be for your people if they experience what this sermon is designed to help happen. Do you make the pleasure of your people in God a goal?

You know, gentlemen, you said last night, "What are we after in our people's lives?" And everybody said, "Obedience." So did I. Amen. But you had already quoted, "If you love me, you will obey me." So I'm thinking, "I'm after love, folks." And you are too. And because that love, that love is not equal to obedience and that love is not equal to agape.

That love is erotic to the core. That's an overstatement. Eros means, "I find pleasure in you, Jesus. I find pleasure in you, Jesus. You are my preciousness." And there comes obedience, which is why I loved every word in that sermon. And it is so needed because John is so right.

He's fighting that battle with the gospel according to Jesus. Back when I loved that book when it first came out, and we're still fighting it today because there's less interest in holiness today than there ever was, as far as I can remember. So, amen. Let's do it. And let's go to the root of the matter.

Second cluster of texts. So that's Hebrews and Matthew for the first cluster, and now here comes Philippians and Habakkuk. Twice in Philippians, Paul says, "Rejoice in the Lord." 3.1, "Rejoice in the Lord." 4.4, "Rejoice in the Lord." And again I say, "Rejoice in the Lord." Why is that a fitting way of responding to the Lord?

And he told us in chapter 3, verse 8, "I count everything as loss because of the surpassing preciousness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord." I look at everything and count it as rubbish. I look at Jesus and say, "Joy, precious, beyond words, I'll lose everything for that." That's why joy is fitting, pleasure is fitting in Jesus.

Here's Habakkuk. Now Habakkuk, I said I go to sleep on a text. I got married on this text. I'll bet not a single person in this room, unless they copied me because they're young, used this text at your wedding. If you come up to me or send me a note or something, I'd love to know if you did.

This is Habakkuk 3, 17, "Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail, and fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold, and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will take joy in the God of my salvation, and starvation is just over the horizon." There's nothing there.

There is no food. You have any idea why we would build our marriage on that? We have been through really hard times, and we could see them coming. My Sunday school teacher told me, "John, you and Noel will never make it. You'll never make it. You're analytical to the core.

She's carefree as a bird. It won't work." Well, it has, 55 years worth. Because of that text, we'll go through hell to stay married. We will stay with Jesus who says, "Divorce is not an option, and he will be sufficient for you no matter what." That is a great verse to build a marriage on, or anything else, for that matter.

Just think of it. How could he possibly talk like that? "I don't have anything to eat. There's no animals. There's no vines. There's nothing coming in. I've got no income. I will rejoice in the Lord," because he's infinite preciousness. He's 10,000 times better than anything. The steadfast love of the Lord is better than life.

Come on, if you don't know that verse, you're in trouble. That's Psalm 63, 3. Let's try it again. The steadfast love of the Lord is better than life. Thank you. Third cluster of texts. That one was, what did I say, Habakkuk and Philippians with a little Psalm 63 thrown in.

Finally, Hebrews and Psalms, third cluster. Hebrews 11, "Moses chose rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures," fleeting pleasures, like they only last 80 years, "the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth," preciousness, "than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward." Moses is saying, "I've got pleasures.

I've got the whole court of Egypt at my disposal. I'm his adopted son or grandson, and I've got all the pleasures I want." And he reasons, "Well, they'll only last a lifetime, and I've got a better wealth following the Lord and leading this cantankerous people through the wilderness, and I think I'll go with infinite preciousness rather than what Egypt has to offer." Now, Psalm 1611, it's the last one we'll look at.

Psalm 1611, kind of a life verse along with a few others, is a Psalm that does not hesitate to use the word pleasure. Now, some of you might be kind of wobbly about, "Joy is fine. Don't talk about pleasure though. Joy is good. Joy is Bible. Pleasures is not Bible.

That's world." No, it's not true. If you do a word study on trying to figure out which words for joy or pleasure or delight fit the Christian heart, they're all over the place. Every one of them do. Just do your study. Just look them all up, and the Bible is utterly discriminant for words that apply to sinful pleasure and words that apply to godly pleasure.

They're the same words. You just got to decide that it's okay to delight in God. I mean, a lot of Reformed people are scared to death that Piper talks this way. I can't even get into some places, they're so scared. This is risky for MacArthur to have me here, like probably the only person in the room raising his hand, you know?

I didn't want to turn around. And I know that MacArthur standing beside me with both his hands beside his body has as much pleasure in Jesus as I do. My heart is glad and my whole being rejoices, for you make known to me the path of life. In your presence is fullness of joy.

At your right hand are pleasures forevermore. So the gladness of the heart that we know now, which is so weak and so partial and so inadequate, is a foretaste of that, and it will be fulfilled someday. So which brings us now to one last text, I think I said that was the last one, it's not the last one, this is the last one.

So 2 Thessalonians chapter 2, this is a most provocative text in so many ways. It's talking about the man of lawlessness, right? And here's what Paul says about that last time about the man of lawlessness, "The coming of the lawless one," this is verse 9, "The coming of the lawless one is with all wicked deception for those who are perishing because they," and then here the translations are all over the place, "They did not welcome a love for the truth." They didn't welcome a love for the truth.

Now that love, that doesn't mean self-sacrificing love, that means cherishing love, delighting love, embracing love. I love the truth. And so be saved, verse 11, "Therefore God sends them a strong delusion so that they may believe what is false," he's done, he's handed them over, "in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth," that's why I wrote a whole book on what is saving faith because of that verse, "believe the truth," that's another issue, leave that over there, "did not believe the truth, but," what's the alternative, "had pleasure in unrighteousness." So you've got, "They didn't love the truth, they had pleasure in unrighteousness," which is just what John was getting at with John chapter 3, the light is coming to the world.

People loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil, they loved righteousness, unrighteousness, and they did not love the truth, which I take to mean they didn't have pleasure in the truth because that's the word used for the opposite, they had pleasure in unrighteousness. They didn't delight in the truth, they didn't find pleasure in the truth as precious and so they did not believe the truth but instead had pleasure in unrighteousness.

The truth here is the word of God, the gospel especially, and it's the gospel of the glory of Christ and therefore not to find pleasure in the word of truth, the gospel is not to find pleasure in Christ and his glory. Now conclusion, see if you can put the pieces together with me.

When in the final glorification of the bride of Christ, when in that final glorification of the saints, the bride of Christ experiences, now these are your people I'm talking about and the day is coming very soon when they'll be in this condition and then finally all of us in the kingdom, when in that final glorification of the saints, the bride of Christ experiences her supreme pleasure in the infinite preciousness that is God, then infinite preciousness in God will be exhibited.

The goal of the universe, as Edward said, as so many texts say, the goal of history, the goal of redemption, the goal of creation is the fullest exhibition of the glory of God in the new heavens and the new earth. And I'm saying that absolutely will not happen if the bride does not find her fullest pleasure in the bridegroom.

It won't happen. And if you believe that, that the fullness of the bride's pleasure in the bridegroom is an absolutely essential component of the fulfillment of the purposes of the universe, it's going to affect your ministry. It's going to affect what you're after. And when that happens, truth, ultimate reality, God, ultimate preciousness will be vindicated and truth will triumph through pleasure.

Let's pray. Father in heaven, this is a miracle I'm asking for, for myself, for our churches, for these pastors. We long to taste as fully as fallen, justified, sanctified people can do, to taste as fully as we can taste the pleasures at your right hand manifest in the word through Jesus Christ.

So God worked that miracle in these brothers. Some of them are so emotionally broken, so lame, so limited, so constrained that this sounds like a foreign language. And that's true of all our people. And like John said this morning or last night, compassion is that first prerequisite. If we're going to call our people to do the impossible, namely experience Christ as so satisfying they're willing to let everything else go and still rejoice, a miracle has to happen and we need to be patient while you do it.

So help us, I pray in Jesus' great name. Amen. (gentle music)