Is God a Megalomaniac?

00:00:00.000 | [Music]

00:00:04.000 | We have an email here from a mom named Colleen, who is writing on behalf of her son.

00:00:09.280 | And for the sake of anonymity of him as a minor, I'm not going to use his name here.

00:00:13.760 | Colleen, his mother, writes him to ask this.

00:00:16.640 | "Dear Pastor John, I am hoping you can help us with regards to the topic of God

00:00:21.600 | being a megalomaniac, which is what our 15-year-old son currently believes.

00:00:27.440 | We've talked about this, and he has said that you may be the only person who can change his

00:00:31.760 | thinking on this. Because of the Westminster Catechism's answer to the chief end of man,

00:00:37.040 | he now believes that God is somehow weak and has an enormous ego, that he created human beings so

00:00:43.360 | that they will worship him, that God is too needy. My son wants to enjoy other things more than God,

00:00:49.680 | and thinks that programming people to find their greatest happiness in worshiping him

00:00:54.160 | is coercive, mean, manipulative, and wrong. Pastor John, what would you say to this mom and to her son?"

00:01:01.040 | I don't know Colleen's son's name, but for convenience sake, I'm going to call him

00:01:08.160 | Joe and speak directly to him. According to his mom, Joe believes six things.

00:01:18.400 | What she doesn't say, and if I were having a conversation with Joe, the first thing I would

00:01:25.120 | ask is probably, "Now, what are you basing your view of God on? Are you making it up? Are you

00:01:36.000 | trusting some human teacher? Are you deducing it from nature and the logical use of nature?

00:01:46.160 | Or are you basing it on God's Word in Scripture?" And how he answers that question would probably

00:01:52.880 | affect how I answer. But since I don't know, I'm just going to rest my case with God's Word,

00:02:02.000 | since I regard all those other sources as very unlikely sources of reliable information about

00:02:12.480 | infinite reality, especially my own head. I think if we are going to know anything about God for

00:02:21.600 | sure, God has to tell us. There's no other way to know and show us, both from the Word and the

00:02:31.120 | Spirit's opening our hearts to see what's really there. So let me say a word about the six things

00:02:38.000 | that I see Joe apparently believes about God. Number one, God is somehow weak. According to

00:02:47.840 | Scripture, "Great is our God and abundant in power," Joe. He is abundant in power. His understanding

00:02:56.240 | is beyond measure, Psalm 147.5. "The Almighty, we cannot find Him. He is great in power," Job 37.23.

00:03:08.080 | In fact, Job comes to the end of his book with this overriding conviction. "I know that you,

00:03:13.520 | O God, can do all things, and no purpose of yours can be thwarted," Job 42.2. Isaiah 46,

00:03:24.480 | God himself puts it like this, "I am God, and there is no other. I am God, and there is none

00:03:29.440 | like me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things not yet done, saying,

00:03:35.360 | 'My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose.'" So no, Joe, God is not weak. He is

00:03:46.640 | infinitely powerful. He upholds the universe by the Word of His power. He holds you in being

00:03:55.520 | moment by moment. If He stopped thinking about you, you would vanish out of existence.

00:04:02.560 | Number two, Joe says God has an enormous ego. The problem with that statement is that the

00:04:11.600 | connotation of the word "ego" is that his head is swollen beyond what it should be,

00:04:18.720 | or he's too big for his britches, or he's posturing and posing to get people to think

00:04:26.960 | he's greater than he is, or that there's a void inside his big, boasting head that desperately

00:04:35.360 | needs filling from others who can give him what he lacks, and so he's always trying to make up

00:04:43.280 | for some deficiency from the contributions of others. That's the way we talk about big ego.

00:04:52.240 | But all of those connotations are sinful. They're ugly. The Bible never portrays God in any of those

00:05:02.000 | sinful ways. None of those connotations about God's self-exaltation are in the Bible. None of them.

00:05:11.280 | None of those connotations is true of Him. The Lord is good and upright in all His ways, Psalm

00:05:18.160 | 25.8. The Lord is good. His steadfast love endures forever in His faithfulness to all generations,

00:05:25.360 | Psalm 100, verse 5. Joe, you seem to have decided to use this derogatory language

00:05:35.520 | about God because of this next thing you believe, and this is true. So the third thing

00:05:47.120 | is God created humans so that they will worship Him. That's true. That's absolutely true.

00:05:55.520 | "Bring my sons from afar, my daughters from the ends of the earth, everyone whom I called by

00:06:02.000 | my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made." And Jesus in John 4.23 says,

00:06:11.200 | "God is seeking worshippers in spirit and in truth." In Ephesians 1.5, "He predestined us for

00:06:20.080 | adoption for Himself as sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of His will." Why? "To

00:06:28.960 | the praise of the glory of His grace." So, Joe, it sounds like you're asking,

00:06:38.400 | "If it is ugly and sinful for me to act like that, how can I admire a God who acts that way?"

00:06:49.040 | That's a very good question, and here's the reason that you dare not seek people's worship,

00:06:57.520 | and God should and must. If I say to a crowd, "Puny, puny John Piper, sinful John Piper,"

00:07:07.120 | if I say to a crowd, "I came tonight so that you would all see my beauty and find your greatest

00:07:14.480 | happiness in me," if I believed that and said that, I would not be loving, because, one, I'd be wrong.

00:07:29.280 | I am not where your greatest happiness can be found. I am emphatically not where your greatest

00:07:37.360 | happiness can be found. And number two, I would be unloving because I would be distracting you

00:07:44.960 | from the one whose beauty can make you supremely happy and satisfied, namely God and all that He is

00:07:54.000 | for us in Christ. But if God were to come into the room tonight and say to the crowd, "I came tonight

00:08:03.360 | so that you would see and know my divine beauty and find your greatest happiness in me,"

00:08:15.840 | He would not be unloving because, one, it is true. He is the only source of deep and longest

00:08:25.760 | happiness. Psalm 1611, "In your presence is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures

00:08:31.760 | forevermore." And two, He would not be distracting us from what would make us deeply and permanently

00:08:41.760 | happy. He would be giving us the surest way to joy, namely offering us Himself. Now, Joe, add this.

00:08:50.480 | This is crucial. Hear this. God did not just come into the room or the world and say, "Here I am

00:08:59.520 | for your enjoyment." He came to people who hated Him. He came to people who rejected Him, who

00:09:08.480 | belittled Him, who called Him an egomaniac. And He died for us. He died for us. That is not weak.

00:09:21.440 | It's not needy. It's not what egomaniacs do. They don't die for their enemies out of love.

00:09:31.760 | Strength to suffer for His enemies and bring them to eternal happiness in worshiping Him,

00:09:38.400 | that's a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful strength. It is the most beautiful strength in the universe

00:09:48.320 | that was shown at Calvary for sinners like you, Joe, and me. And the fourth thing you say is that

00:09:56.800 | He's too needy. No, He's not needy. He's not needy at all. That's not coming out of the Bible. It's

00:10:06.240 | not coming out of reason. It's coming out of unreason. Acts 17, 25, "God is not served by

00:10:14.240 | human hands as though He needed anything, because He Himself gives to all men life and breath and

00:10:20.320 | everything. God does not need us. If He were hungry, He would not tell us." Psalm 50 says,

00:10:26.400 | "God is seeking our worship not because He needs it, not because it meets a need, but because it

00:10:36.400 | meets our need." We were made—we've got this big God-shaped vacuum in our hearts. We were made to

00:10:46.960 | enjoy God, know God, love God, serve God, worship God. That is, to enjoy to the max and to overflow

00:10:57.440 | with admiration what is most admirable. And, Joe, I hope you take it right. God is stuck

00:11:06.240 | with being God. He didn't choose to be beautiful. He is. He is absolutely who He is. I am who I am.

00:11:17.440 | He said. And the only question God has is not whether to be beautiful and all-satisfying.

00:11:23.120 | The question is whether He's going to share it and then die for it. And then, Joe, says it seems

00:11:33.600 | God's programming people to find their greatest happiness in worshiping Him is coercive, mean,

00:11:43.520 | manipulative, and wrong. There are two problems with this, Joe. One is that God's way of bringing

00:11:49.600 | people to worship Him is not programming. It's not programmed, because that implies computerized

00:11:57.280 | robots with no moral will and no soul, which we have, and it's a mystery of great proportion. So,

00:12:04.720 | God is not manipulative, not manipulative. He's not coercive. And the other problem is that it

00:12:12.880 | cannot be mean, it cannot be mean to bring a person to their greatest happiness.

00:12:19.520 | If it really is our greatest happiness, then you and I, Joe, would never want to leave it,

00:12:29.840 | not in a million years for anything. Which leaves us, Joe, with this question.

00:12:37.840 | Is your indictment of God not based mainly on good evidence from His Word,

00:12:44.640 | but on the fact that you don't like it, and you want very much to be free to enjoy other things

00:12:52.720 | more than God? If that's true, I pray and I hope I ask you, reconsider. Every pleasure that isn't

00:13:03.120 | rooted in God will fail you. Your heart was made to find greatest and longest happiness in God.

00:13:12.160 | If sin keeps you from supreme joy in God, sin needs to go, not God.

00:13:21.120 | 21 Absolutely critical and central to everything that we do. Thank you, Pastor John.

00:13:25.600 | I'm going to be meditating on that line for a long time. God seeks our worship not because it

00:13:30.880 | meets His need, but because it meets our need. That is profound. Thank you, Pastor John. Thanks

00:13:37.520 | for the question, Colleen. I hope this episode serves your son in a profound way. Thank you for

00:13:44.000 | listening and making the podcast part of your day and commute. It's an honor to tag along with you

00:13:48.320 | as part of your day. We are humbled to be brought into some of the deepest struggles that you face

00:13:53.840 | in your families. Three times a week, we publish and you can subscribe to our audio feeds,

00:13:58.880 | even search our past episodes in our archive and reach us by email with a question you may be facing

00:14:03.520 | in inside of your own home. You can do all that through our online home at

00:14:06.880 | DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn. Well, when we return, I believe we're going to hear from a

00:14:14.800 | woman who finds herself jaded by the constant turnover in her local church and she's tired

00:14:21.360 | of making new friends as people come in and leave the church that she attends.

00:14:26.080 | I may be wrong. It may be another topic, but I think that's coming up. If not, it's coming up

00:14:29.520 | in the near future. In any case, we will be back on Friday. I'm your host, Tony Reinke.

00:14:34.240 | Thanks for listening.

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Is God a Megalomaniac?

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