(upbeat music) - Today's question on the Ask Pastor John podcast is really a question for you. Yes, you. Are you wasting your life? Right now as I speak and as you listen, are you wasting away your life? Questions don't get more serious or sober than that and the stakes could not be higher.

To put this more specifically, are you living to make much of God or are you living to make much of yourself? The answer to this question divides the course of humanity like the continental divide splits the course of the rivers. It's a question Pastor John asks frequently and it's one he raised in his conference message, The Essence of the Unwasted Life in March of 2008.

Here's what he said. - There's this plant in some jungle somewhere and it flowers and there's a little pool of poisonous water down there and little bugs come up over the edge and at the top here it's slippery and they lose their footing and fall in and die and they feed the plant.

Now that's interesting but that's not the interesting thing ultimately. The interesting thing ultimately is that there's a spider who only lives by dropping by his little silver cord down into this and plucking those little dead animals and eating them. Let us all bow down. And worship mindless matter. And natural selection.

I mean you just need to know where I'm coming from. When we get to the judgment seat and Mr. Dawkins and Hitchens and they all, they say, and God says, "Now what was that? "You said about the way that spider came into being "and the way humans came into being." And he said, "Well, we thought it was just nothing.

"I mean just forces that just kind of, "it just, you know, happened." And I think God's gonna look at me, he's gonna say, "Gah!" He's just gonna laugh and the universe is gonna shake. I mean I really, I cannot, I cannot take it seriously. The universe exists to display the glory of God and therefore those who try to give an account for the universe that exists in a non-God way are not only laughable but they are blasphemous.

This is God's story. The heavens are telling the glory of God. "Open your ears," he's saying. "It is all over the place "and we will give an account of whether we heard that word "or saw that glory." This is not fun and games here. This is God speaking to us.

Now here I am, I'm down at a little hotel about 15 minutes that way, I'm a little, I don't know what they call it, cottage inn or something like that. And there's a swimming pool by the ocean. I thought that is ridiculous. Look at that. It's about, you know, it's about the size of this stage, not quite, and I looked at the pool and then I looked up.

I thought, this is a man pool and that's a God pool. It's everywhere. There are voices everywhere. Just open your eyes and open your ears and pray for the Holy Spirit to give you a sensitivity of what the wasted life would be, namely a life that doesn't see it, a life that doesn't hear it, and a life that isn't shaped by the meaning of the universe to display the glory of God.

We are being called to join Him in His own self-glorification. Now that last statement is controversial and I need to support it for just a few minutes. This idea that Paul has that the unwasted life is a life in which he will, by life and death, make Christ look great because the universe exists to display God through His Son, that is not Paul's idea.

That's God's idea for Paul, which means it's God's idea for the universe, which means God is very self-exalting. If God comes to you and you say to Him, why do I exist? And He says, to make much of me. You're hearing absolute truth and people really stumble over this truth.

You exist to magnify me. Go about it and I will hold you accountable for whether you've done it or not. Text after text after text. Isaiah 43, six, bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth, everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory.

God created you for His glory, that is to make Him look glorious. He elected Israel for His glory. Jeremiah 13, 11, I made the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah. Cling to me that they might be for me a people, a name, a praise, and a glory.

He saved them from Egypt for this same reason. Psalm 106, our fathers rebelled against the most high at the Red Sea, but He saved them for His namesake that He might make known His power. He rescued them from bondage in Babylon with these words, for my namesake, I defer my anger.

For the sake of my praise, I restrain it for you. For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it. How should my name be profane? My glory I will not give to another. And He sends Jesus Christ into the world for the same reason, Romans 15, 7.

Christ became a servant to the circumcision to show God's truthfulness, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for His mercy. Christ came to earth that the Gentiles might glorify God for His mercy. Father, the hour has come. Glorify Thy Son that the Son may glorify Thee. And He's coming back at the end for the same reason, 2 Thessalonians 1.

He comes on that day to be glorified in His saints and to be marveled at by all who have believed. He's coming to be glorified. He's coming to be marveled at. This truth that God is constantly, unwaveringly, in all that He does, exalting His Son, magnifying His glory, is vastly more loving than if He devoted Himself to help you like what you see in the mirror.

If God were to make Himself a means to your self-exaltation, He would be a global distraction from what would make you happy. You know what love is? It's not what the world says it is. The world says, "Somebody loves me if they make much of me." And that feels so good, it's hard not to believe.

Somebody loves me if they make much of me. But in that relationship, you are the end. And He's the means. He makes much of me. That's not what love is in the Bible. In the Bible, love labors, sacrifices, and even dies to liberate you from your bondage to the mirror so that you can delight in God forever.

You're selling your soul for a bowl of oatmeal when you want God to just meet your earthly needs and call that love. That's not love. Love is when God does that or not in ways that bring you free from your love affair with yourself and free you to enjoy making much of Him forever.

You were made to know and love God. You know this is true. You stand by the seacoast. You stand by the edge of the Grand Canyon. You stand with your eye to a telescope, the Hubble telescope pictures or whatever. You stand there and you find your soul drawn out of yourself and for a brief moment, you are free from self-consciousness and self-absorption and it is the most full, satisfying, deep, wonderful moment and it will be forever if God is the universe and God is the Grand Canyon and God is the ocean.

That's why you were made. God would be unloving if He did not magnify Himself in your presence over and over and over. If He did not command you to praise me, praise me, praise me, He would not love you. If He said, I praise you, I praise you, I praise you, He would satisfy that little teeny ego of yours and you would perish and your soul would shrink up like a peach at the back of the refrigerator.

You know that's not what you're made for. You're made to know something vastly greater. - Amen, that clip came from a conference message titled The Essence of the Unwasted Life which was preached on March 28th, 2008. You can find the full message at desiringgod.org. You can download the book as well, Don't Waste Your Life from the website.

Click on the book tabs and look for the title, Don't Waste Your Life. So this is a strong point. Love is God freeing us from our love affair with ourselves, freeing us to enjoy making much of Him forever and God would be unloving if He did not manifest His glory to us and take our breath away like the sight of the Grand Canyon over and over and over again.

But this point raises a question that has popped up over the years. Yes, but doesn't God in seeking to glorify Himself also make much of us? It's a good follow-up question Pastor John has sought to address over the recent years and tomorrow we'll hear from him when I ask, does God delight in me?

I'm your host Tony Reinke, we'll see you tomorrow. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)