http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15136033/is-christ-selfish-to-die-for-his-own-joy
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The God-Centeredness of God Unlocks the Gospel
Audio Transcript
Welcome back to the podcast on this Wednesday. Thanks for listening. Well, I love finding sermons where Pastor John proclaims the God-centeredness of God. There are a lot of those sermons — and rightly so. This is the cornerstone of what we call Christian Hedonism. God is thrilled with himself. Without this point, Christian Hedonism wouldn’t make sense. And without this point, the gospel wouldn’t make any sense either.
To make this gospel connection, I recently came across the following sermon clip. It’s from a conference message Pastor John delivered in Massachusetts back in the fall of 1992, over thirty years ago now. In this clip, Pastor John is setting the table for the doctrine of justification. And he’s setting the table with the doctrine of God. Here’s how he did it.
One of the reasons that it’s hard to get a whole range of biblical doctrines across to Americans today is because there is a secular mindset that is radically different from a biblical mindset. Let me try to unpack what I mean by a secular mindset.
Man-Centered Mind
The secular mindset is not necessarily a mindset that denies the existence of God, nor necessarily a mindset that denies even the truth of the Bible; rather, it’s a mindset that rules man into the center and rules God onto the periphery. It’s a way of thinking that starts with man at the center, and a cluster of needs and rights and expectations that man has, and then it begins all of its thinking and moves out from that center.
And it judges to be problems things in the world and in the universe that don’t fit with this beginning, with this mindset, with this starting point with man at the center — our rights, our needs, our expectations. And so, what are understood as problems are things that don’t fit with that, and what are understood as successes are things that endorse that, that fulfill those needs, enable and establish those rights, and jive with those expectations. And so, you interpret the whole universe with this beginning point of man at the center, with his needs and expectations.
We’re born with this mindset. It is not a modern mindset, though modernity puts certain twists on it and intensifies it through the media. Nevertheless, it’s not new. We were born with it. Paul calls it the “mind of the flesh” in Romans 8:6. He calls us, apart from grace, the “natural man.” That’s the way we think. We come into the world with this mindset. It gets reinforced every hour of the day in America through every form of journalism and television and radio and all kinds of media, books, and newspapers. But you didn’t get it from the newspapers. It was part of your nature, and you don’t even know you have it. The world does not know they have this mindset until it collides with another one — namely, the one in the Bible.
God-Centered Mind
The biblical mindset, on the other hand, is not simply one that includes God somewhere in the universe or simply says that the Bible is true. That’s not the biblical mindset, pure and simple. The biblical mindset begins with a radically different starting point — namely, God and God’s rights. It’s an absolutely foreign concept in this nation that God has rights and God has goals. And when you start with that at the center and then move out, you define problems in the universe very differently than if you start with yourself at the center. Problems emerge as what doesn’t fit with God’s intentions and God’s goals and God’s rights and his will to manifest God.
You see the universe totally differently when you begin with God at the center — his rights and his goals as the assumption of the universe. Is the basic riddle of the universe to preserve man’s rights and solve man’s problems — say, the right of self-determination or the problem of suffering? Or is the basic riddle of the universe how an infinitely worthy God, in complete freedom, can display the whole range of his perfections adequately for all to see — and if they will, to worship and enjoy? Is his holiness and power and wisdom and justice and wrath and goodness and truth and grace the agenda of the universe?
Is the meaning and purpose of everything to manifest God, to display God, to exalt God? Or are we the center? Are we the measure? Are our rights the thing to be guarded? Do we create and define the problems in the world? How you answer that question will determine whether or not you can understand the biblical teaching on justification.
God-Centered God
If you start with man at the center, with all of the natural tendencies of the human heart to assert our rights and our wants and our expectations, you will assess the doctrine of justification radically differently than if you begin with a biblical mindset that has God at the center, with his goals and his rights uppermost. Understanding the doctrine of justification, especially the ground of it, requires grasping the God-centeredness of God.
“God, with all of his heart and soul and mind and strength, loves God.”
Until you feel that God is uppermost in the heart of God, that the most passionate heart for God in the universe is God’s heart, until you feel that, you won’t have an adequately biblical grasp on the doctrine of justification. God does not disobey the first and great commandment. God, with all of his heart and soul and mind and strength, loves God (Matthew 22:37–38). He delights in his glory. He rejoices in his magnificence. God is not an idolater. And until you grasp that, until that takes hold of you — that God never commits idolatry, that God always has himself at the center of his infinitely worshiping heart — you will not be able to make sense out of the doctrine of justification the way the Bible makes sense out of it, and especially its ground in Romans 3.
Now, I’ve been trying to say these kinds of things for about twenty years or so, and if people are listening, and they haven’t thought about the God-centeredness of God, and that he is uppermost in his own affections, it sort of hits them like a truck. But I want to tell you, this truck is laden with fruit, and if you survive the impact, you will eat well for a long time to come.
If it’s strange to you, if what I’ve just said is strange to you, that God is uppermost in his own affections, that God never commits idolatry, that God loves God with infinite passion, that the Sunday school papers my boys bring home are defective because they never have the words “God loves himself more than he loves you” — if you can survive the impact of that, then I think parts of the Bible will open to you that have been a closed book, and you may never even have known him. I really want to encourage you to let God be God.
Chief End of God
What I’m claiming tonight, so far, is that the answer to the first question of the Westminster Catechism is the same for God as it is for man.
Q: What is the chief end of man?
A: The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.Q: What is the chief end of God?
A: The chief end of God is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.“The way you imitate a God who lives for his glory is to live for his glory.”
That’s all I’m saying. Don’t write a different catechism. Don’t make yourself the center of God’s affections if he has required him to be the center of yours. There’s a demonic way to imitate God. Satan used it on Eve. Don’t make that mistake. When God lives for his own glory, don’t you interpret that to mean, “Well, we should imitate God — we live for our glory.” The way you imitate a God who lives for his glory is to live for his glory.
Another way to say this is that God is righteous. What is righteousness to you? I’ll tell you what righteousness is, as I understand it biblically. The opposite of righteousness is to value and enjoy what is not valuable or rewarding, ultimately. The opposite of righteousness is when your valuing capacity, that heart in you that goes out and cherishes things and loves things and delights in things and craves things and wants things, goes after things that aren’t valuable — namely, anything but God.
Righteousness is doing what’s right — namely, craving, delighting in, wanting, cherishing what is valuable, and what is infinitely valuable: God. Therefore, when I say that God is righteous, I mean that God never sets his infinite affections on anything less than what is infinitely valuable — namely, himself.
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Doctrinal Prayer, Prayerful Doctrine: Colossians 1:9–12, Part 1
Death Can Only Make Me Better: Remembering Tim Keller (1950–2023)
Today Tim Keller entered the reward of his Master. In this special episode of Ask Pastor John, Tony Reinke shares a sermon clip from Dr. Keller on the joy of God in the face of cancer. -
How Not to Pray: Learning from Pharisees and Pagans
Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name . . . (Matthew 6:9)
How many lips have formed these words since the Lord Jesus first taught them? How many languages have uttered them? How many different people, in how many different circumstances, have bowed their heads and hearts to pray as Jesus famously instructs?
The dying have prayed it. The uneducated have prayed it. The unbelieving and villainous have even prayed it. Children have prayed it. The great and wise have found room for it. Every continent on earth has heard it whispered. Tribes in remote villages and kings in tall palaces have bowed and repeated after the Jewish prophet from Nazareth. Has there been a prayer more prayed; have there been words more often spoken?
“For some of our wandering prayer lives, the best thing for us to learn is how not to pray.”
And yet, for as many as have repeated our Master’s teaching on how to pray, how many can repeat what words come directly before them — namely, the ones teaching us how not to pray? How many realize that our Lord’s instruction on prayer is both positive and negative — that it doesn’t simply stand alone but is given in contrast? For some of our wandering prayer lives, the best thing for us to learn is how not to pray like a Pharisee or a pagan.
Prayers of Pharisees
Do you love to be noticed and admired by others when you pray?
Jesus’s first how-not-to aims at the hypocrite, embodied in the Pharisee. When the Pharisee prayed, he wanted not so much to pray as to be seen praying. As a bird in mating season, he sang forth loud, preening look-at-me prayers.
“And when you pray,” Jesus begins, “you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others” (Matthew 6:5).
Such a man pours his best zeal and focus and interest into public prayers. He positions himself on street corners or within small groups. What may seem stirring and deeply spiritual to many does not impress the one above who knows their anxious thoughts: Are others looking? Are they impressed?
Jesus shows us an example of such a look-at-me pray-er, who cannot help exalting himself even without an audience.
Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: “God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.” (Luke 18:10–12)
In other words, “God, thank you that when you look at me — and when I look at me — we both behold such a pleasing sight! Unlike this man, loathsome to both Gentile and Jew alike, you have made me quite the spectacle. Twice per week my belly aches from fasting. My spice racks withhold not your due!” “Be merciful to me a sinner” lives miles from his mind in the distant town called Justified.
Do you pray to impress others? To build up a spiritual résumé? How is your life of secret prayer? Do you ever stand so tall or shine with such saintly luster as when you know others are watching? You must not be like them, Jesus teaches, for “they have received their reward.” Instead, “go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Matthew 6:5–6).
Prayers of Pagans
Have you come to the end of your prayers and realized you can’t remember anything you just prayed? You spoke Christian-speak — observed the phrases of prayer, drew near to God with your mouth, and honored him with your lips while your heart was far from him. Prayer on autopilot.
“And when you pray,” Jesus teaches next, “do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words” (Matthew 6:7).
The pagans prayed empty mantras, stale platitudes, barren banalities. Prayer for pagans often proved little more than a formula — say these words so many times, and the gods will hear and reply. Just babble invocations in order to awaken your deity from his slumber, and he will eventually bless you. The priests of Baal modeled this in their showdown with Elijah, praying, “O Baal, answer us!” from morning until noon (1 Kings 18:26).
So too with us.
Although we do not pray to stones or wood or the sun, Jesus does not want his disciples praying true words to the true God falsely. Emptily. I don’t know about you, but mealtime prayers can be the first ones vampired of their lifeblood (what does it even mean to “bless this food to our bodies”?). Too many times, my mouth has moved, prayers were spoken — but not really from me. A pious ventriloquism.
Our Lord exposes a hidden insecurity underneath empty-phrased pagan prayers: “They think that they will be heard for their many words.” The pagans are uncertain about the divine heart toward them — so they appease or impress or update the unknowing and unconcerned gods. They try to get their attention, throwing dust at the heavens, desperately wishing for someone to answer.
Such an insecurity resonates with my say-more prayers. Am I really being heard? Prayer can seem less reliable than, say, a text message, which tells me it was delivered. Not so with prayer. I feel as though I pray carrier pigeons — as each flaps away, I hope some will arrive at the destination.
Praying empty phrases with many words, then, can turn into a probability proposition. The more pigeons, the greater the odds God receives the message. Third-times-a-charm mentality. But Jesus allays our rambling fears: “Do not be like them,” he instructs, “for your Father knows what you need before you ask him” (Matthew 6:8). Before you approach your Father’s throne, he knows. He knows your needs — his eye has not turned from you. The pagans pray to the unknown god. We pray to a Father.
Prayer for Christians
Jesus introduces “Our Father who art in heaven” with “Pray then like this” (Matthew 6:9). Then connects the instruction on how not to pray with the how-to Lord’s Prayer.
I believe Jesus gives us this prayer, in part, to contrast with the how-not-to errors of the hypocrites and pagans. In his short prayer, Jesus gives us an alternative to the look-at-me prayer of the Pharisee and the say-more prayer of the pagan.
Against hypocrite prayers, he teaches us to pray,
Our Father in heaven,hallowed be your name.Your kingdom come,your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. (Matthew 6:9–10)
Jesus teaches his disciples to pray that God in all his glory be seen, not us. Instead of our names being hallowed, our kingdoms coming, our righteousness being seen and praised and admired — or the various ways we ask for these — we want God’s to be imposed and cherished. This prayer, spoken from the heart and not just the mouth, transforms hypocrites to worshipers, deorbiting the heart from revolving around self to God. And when God’s fame is truly our heart’s desire, we will come to love secret prayer.
Against pagan prayers, Jesus adds,
Give us this day our daily bread,and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. (Matthew 6:11–13)
“When God’s fame is truly our heart’s desire, we will come to love secret prayer.”
Instead of waking a snoring deity, anxious to appease the god we do not truly know, we pray to a heavenly Father. And therefore, instead of seeking to impress or play probability games with the divine ear, we can pray simple, childlike, and even concise prayers to our Father (this prayer totals 57 words in Greek, 38 in Luke’s account), knowing that we have his ear through Jesus Christ. We ask him for the needs we already know he knows about. He is a Father, bidding his sons and daughters come close to tell him all the requests of their hearts.
One of the best ways to pray is to know how not to pray. Instead of praying self-exalting prayers that cry, Look at me! we pray in secret, and we pray for God’s glory to be loved and admired. Instead of praying empty-talk, babbling, insecure prayers, we pray about daily bread and forgiveness, knowing that he knows our needs and has forgiven us in Christ before we ask him.