Well, the Lord loves to stop human boasting, as John Piper explained in a sermon on Romans chapter 11, verses 17 to 22. The sermon was titled, "Continue in the Kindness of God," and preached in February of 2004. Here's a short clip of what John Piper said about how we escape the trap of human boasting.

We have to believe that in the kindness of God, and in eternal life, and in justification, and in his working everything together for good, the ultimate essential good of the gospel is God himself. And the ultimate thing for which we believe him is that he will be for us an all-satisfying treasure.

It amazes me. It amazes me about my own life, and it amazes me about churches, that we can preach the gospel and not think about what makes it good news ultimately. We use words like forgiveness of sins, or justification, or salvation, or reconciliation, or propitiation, or atonement, or ransom.

None of those is the end point that makes salvation good news. Why do you want to be forgiven? Because it feels good not to be guilty or to escape hell? Those are both true and desirable. But that's not what makes it good news. What makes forgiveness good news is that it gets out of the way everything that keeps you from enjoying God.

Because the only ultimate joy that fully satisfies is God. Everything Jesus did on the cross, everything he did in rising from the dead, everything he did by way of illustrating his character in doing miracles, in loving people, in getting his arms around kids and lepers, was to show us that in the end our satisfaction is going to come from being near him, knowing him, loving him, delighting in him.

He is the end of the gospel. If we don't penetrate through eternal life and penetrate through kindness and penetrate through justification and penetrate through Romans 8.28, to him, how is he honored? So my fifth point about what we trust Jesus for is we trust him to be a treasure to us that is infinite and all satisfying.

Father, please, there's only one ultimate escape from boasting, and that is the brokenhearted enjoyment of the God of grace. So break our hearts for our sin and grant everyone in this room to taste grace, to taste Christ, the God of grace. Amen. And this short clip was sent to us by Eric Dewar.

Eric said this, "This is one of my favorite answers to the question, 'What makes the gospel good news ultimately?'" Amen. It's a gem, Eric. Thank you. You can find the whole sermon at DesiringGod.org. It's titled, "Continue in the Kindness of God." Well for everything related to this podcast, including a list of our most popular and most played episodes of all time, a list that is live and constantly updated in real time, go to our landing page at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.

And there you can toggle between recent episodes and popular episodes. Tomorrow we hear from a software developer who wants to know what responsibility he has if his technology is later used for evil purposes. It's a doozy of a question for Pastor John. I'm your host Tony Renke. We'll see you tomorrow.