Audio Transcript

God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him. It’s our slogan. We love it. Many of you love it. Its nice balance makes it easy to memorize. Its nice rhythm paces itself off the tongue. And most importantly, it’s freighted with meaning. In that motto, we summarize God’s plan for his creation, his purpose for our lives, and the aim of Desiring God’s daily ministry labors around the globe. God’s glory and our joy in God are not two things, but one beautiful goal. And so we say it on repeat: God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.

And our motto turns 36 years old today.

On this anniversary, I want to break into the APJ feed with a special bonus episode, a short one, with the recent discovery.

To do it, let me set the stage. Exactly 36 years ago, Pastor John was the 42-year-old senior pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis. And he was in Chicago in September of 1988 for a four-part seminar at Trinity Baptist Church in Wheaton, Illinois. The seminar was on Christian Hedonism. And he delivered the sessions in four consecutive evenings at seven o’clock, Sunday to Wednesday. Added to his itinerary in the area, Pastor John also agreed to preach the Monday morning chapel message at Wheaton College, his alma mater. And that’s where history was made.

Pastor John titled his Wheaton chapel message “God’s Memorial: Our Joy,” a celebration of Isaiah 55:12–13. The joy of God’s people is a memorial to God. His people’s happiness is a monument to his own honor. And it was here, at the conclusion of his chapel message, that the motto made its first public appearance. Here it is:

Do you see what this implies about the character of God? It implies that his desire for his people to be satisfied and his desire for his name to be glorified come together as one. The renown or the memorial that God makes for himself is your happiness. God is the kind of God who is pursuing his own glory in your joy. The implication of that is that when you are most satisfied in God, he is most glorified in you.1

Beautiful. “When you are most satisfied in God, he is most glorified in you.” Now, it’s still a little rough (and backward). But it’s public. Delivered for the first time in this chapel message at Wheaton College on September 19, 1988 — 36 years ago today.

Okay, but how do we know this was the first mention of the motto? That’s what I asked, too. So let’s investigate this for a moment.

First, just a month earlier, Piper had finished preaching a five-part sermon series through Isaiah 55 to his congregation in Minneapolis2 — a precious chapter that invites all thirsty souls to come to the satisfying fountain of the living God. He promised his church, “If you memorize Isaiah 55, it will change your life.” And so, he had his church staff and family memorizing the chapter all summer. He concluded the summer series with this same text, Isaiah 55:12–13, which would be the text he draws his Wheaton chapel message from a month later. But in his Bethlehem Baptist Church version of the sermon earlier in the summer, Piper never said anything resembling the motto.3

“If you try to abandon the quest for satisfaction and joy and happiness in God, you strive against the glory of God.”

Second, his monumental book on Christian Hedonism, the book Desiring God, had already been written and published and was on bookstore shelves 19 months prior to the Wheaton College chapel in September 1988. In fact, by the time he arrived in Chicago, his four-part evening series was already billed, according to the promotional flier, as featuring “Dr. John Piper, author of the best-selling book Desiring God.” But as well as his new book had been spreading, two things are missing from the first edition: Isaiah 55 and the motto.

Fresh thoughts on Christian Hedonism continued to build for him as he labored to say things better and more clearly and in ways easier to remember. So, back to Chicago. Recall he’s teaching at Trinity Baptist Church in the evenings. Monday evening, the same evening of the Wheaton chapel message, here’s Pastor John:

I think I said in the chapel this morning over at Wheaton that, uh, when we are most satisfied in God, he is most glorified in us. That’s — that’s one of the most crisp statements I can think of to capture Christian Hedonism.4

There it is again — a mention back to his Wheaton chapel that morning, but still not proof that the motto was coined there. Let’s move to the next evening.

Now it’s Tuesday evening, September 20, 1988. He mentions the line again. But note his struggle in drawing it from memory.

And that led us to last night’s message, which was then — the implication would be if we would glorify God most, we must delight in him most. And if I can remember, the sentence that we used both in the Wheaton Chapel and last night was, um, uh . . . I won’t get it just right. Uh, if you . . . when you, when you, when you are most satisfied in God, he is most glorified in you. Yes, that’s the sentence. When you are most satisfied in God, he is most glorified in you. Therefore, if you try to abandon the quest for satisfaction and joy and happiness in God, you strive against the glory of God. You put yourself in opposition to his eternal purposes to exalt his own name.5

The motto isn’t easily recalled — not yet. It’s fresh. It’s not something he’s gotten used to — further evidence that it’s new to him.

Then comes a radio interview. Chris Fabry invited Pastor John to his Chicago-based show, OpenLine. This interview is conducted on September 28, 1988, nine days after the Wheaton chapel. And it’s a radio conversation about Christian Hedonism. In it, Fabry is trying to put all the pieces together — God’s glory and our joy. About fifteen minutes into the conversation, Fabry attempts to restate Christian Hedonism in his own words. The concept seems radical, he says.

Because what you’re saying is really transforming our view of what God is out to do. In salvation, God then is not in the business of saving us because we need to be saved or because he wants us to be saved, but he’s doing it for his own glory. Then, as we respond to him, we are responding to that salvation message, not necessarily solely because we want to get away from hell or want to spend eternity with God. We do it for his glory.

That’s muddled, and understandably so. The glories of Christian Hedonism are hard to grasp at first, and people struggle to understand this key point. It’s not simply about God being glorified, but about him being glorified by our joy in him. Here is Pastor John’s immediate reply, an attempt to make Christian Hedonism clearer, using one new sentence that he crafted exactly for a moment like this one.

The genius of Christian Hedonism, and at least what made it a revolutionizing thing for me, was to discover that I am never faced with that alternative. That is, I don’t think . . . the Bible never poses me with the dilemma: God’s glory versus my happiness. Here’s the way I put it now — and I just hit upon this last week as I was thinking. The sentence I like to use to sum it up now is this: “God is most glorified in me when I am most satisfied in God.” Now, if that’s true, if God’s glory rises in proportion to my delight in him, I can never play off his glory against my delight. The more I delight in him, the more glory he gets from me.6

“I just hit upon this last week.” There it is — confirmation of this recent discovery of one pithy statement to capture the heart of Christian Hedonism, forged to help people get the point of Christian Hedonism. And a clear callback to the Wheaton chapel message nine days earlier. “When you are most satisfied in God, he is most glorified in you.”

In those nine days, Pastor John has reversed the order. Up to this point, it was “When you are most satisfied in God, he is most glorified in you.” Now, “God is most glorified in me when I am most satisfied in God.” It gets two more tweaks in due time. The double mention of God becomes one, and the motto is made collective, from “God is most glorified in me when I am most satisfied in God” to its final form today: “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.”

And there it is: John Piper’s favorite motto, first delivered in his Wheaton College chapel message on September 19, 1988 — 36 years ago today.

Interview Transcript

Mike Andrews, hello and thank you for the invitation to appear on The Narrative Podcast, from the Center for Christian Virtue, by recording. My name is Tony Reinke, a nonprofit journalist and teacher based in Phoenix. I have sought to serve the church by writing on tech and media for a decade now. I serve as a senior teacher at desiringGod.org, and have the honor to be the producer and host of John Piper’s podcast, Ask Pastor John.

You sent three really good questions. I’ll work through them one by one.

Digital Journeys

Question 1: What are some biblical principles — boundaries, disciplines, etc. — that can be applied to smartphone use that Christian parents should model and discuss with their children before giving them their own device?

Exactly right. Modeling is key. This is not a teenager problem. Grandma’s on Facebook too much. Mom’s on Instagram too much. So back in 2015, I set aside a full year to get my own heart right with my smartphone habits. I was spending too much time in social media. I was being stupid with my time. Foolish with my heart and my attention. I subtly began to think social media networks would fulfill me.

Of course, they never could. Instead, they distracted me from what was most important. I used social media all the time for ministry. It was my job. But I also used these platforms idolatrously — as idols of security and self-affirmation. Maybe you’ve been there.

So I took several digital detoxes in 2015, time offline and away from social media. Deleted apps, turned my phone off — those sorts of things. And I used the season to confess to the Lord what he was showing me about what was inside of me. I invested more time into prayer and Bible reading and meditation on God’s truth. More time reading great books. More time with the family — intentional time with them, on trips that I had planned out. Things like that. I reprioritized the local church. I spent more time dreaming about ministry possibilities in the future.

It was a painful season of self-scrutiny, but necessary. And it was fruitful, one fruit of it being my 2017 book, 12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You. That book each of my teens had to read before getting an iPhone.

Attention Overload

That process of honest discovery with myself about social media led me to further consider life inside the attention economy, inside the Hollywood media age. How can we thrive as Christians in this age of these massive, compelling digital spectacles that are all around us, every image and video clamoring for our eyes? How do we live by faith in such an eye-dominant culture? And where do we turn so that our lives are not inundated with viral, digital, ephemeral pointless things that don’t matter?

And that question led me to a second book, a meditation I published in 2019, called Competing Spectacles: Treasuring Christ in the Media Age. And these two books, the book on smartphones and the book on spectacles, work in tandem as warnings to show biases at work in the world, and how our media pushes us toward digital spectacles and hollows out our lives from what is eternally important.

There’s a social dilemma at play. Our attention is monetized, and we need limits and restrictions and legislations, yes. But there’s also a spiritual dilemma at play. And it’s this: our smartphones simply give us what we most want. This is what our kids need to know — what we all need to know: I am not a victim of my phone.

My phone, my social media platforms, are simply delivering to me what I most want. We have affections and desires, and those are misdirected, and then those misdirected desires get solidified into social media algorithms that feed those desires more and more. Algorithms don’t tell you what to desire. Algorithms feed you what you most want. The tailored algorithm is basically a digital decipher of what we most want.

Pixilated Desires

Another way to say it is the smartphone screen is a black mirror to reflect back to our eyes what your heart most desires in pixilated form. If our true heart is narcissistic, that’s what you’ll find online — you’ll search for things that bolster your self-image. If in your heart you harbor disdain for certain people, what you see on social media will stoke that disdain even further. If your heart is driven by unquenchable desire for sexual lust, porn will be the thing you see on your screen. The phone discloses what your heart most wants.

You can tell yourself that you’re a nice person, morally good, don’t hurt others. But there’s a Kafka-like nightmare awakening ahead of us all when we look into our phone screen, and we stare directly into our own heart’s desire. It’s right there on our screen. And if the Spirit is at work in your life, at some point, deep down, this exposé will drive you to your knees. And you’re not going to hear this in the cultural criticism. We’re not simply victims of Silicon Valley tricksters; we are sinners led by desires and impulses inside us that must be crucified.

So we continue to proclaim that rhetorical interrogation of Isaiah 55:2 and apply it to our hearts and our screens: “Why do you spend your attention on that which is not bread, and gaze at a screen for something that will never satisfy you?” That’s the spiritual dilemma we all face — mom, dad, teen. We can model this in our homes.

Wisdom Meets Gratitude

What I realized after these painful pruning seasons was that my whole take on technology changed. It matured. It deepened. For a long time I had been an early adopter of gadgets, a lot of it naively so. At the end of this process, I found myself less naive about tech, more aware of its biases. But also — at the same time — I became a lot more aware of God’s generosity in the technologies that adorn my daily life.

That resulted in my meditations on the generosity of God in all of the science and medicine and computers and smartphones and cars and homes that we enjoy, technologies that adorn my life every day. I’m cautious of the tools we have, and I’m also totally amazed that I get to live in this age, and not one hundred years ago or two hundred years ago.

My gratitude for all my tech culminated in a third book: God, Technology, and the Christian Life. It’s the capstone now of a decade-long process from seeing my sin exposed by smartphone misuse, to now seeing God’s glory and his generosity in my smartphone.

Tech Dangers and Opportunities

Question 2: Smartphones have been around for almost two decades. What are some dangers, especially spiritual, regarding phone and technology use that Christians still are either not aware of, or perhaps not fighting against as actively as we should?

In 12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You, I think all twelve ways are still underappreciated. Much is on the line. I think we are still learning how to balance our digital tools and integrate them into our flourishing and not our self-destruction. That’s life as technology-makers and -users. We make tools, we adopt tools, and then we spend years and decades trying to adapt those tools to our flourishing. That’s the process we are in now.

Four Stages to Flourishing

Here’s what I discovered over that decade of writing about tech and media. The tech conversation needs to progress up in four stages, and those stages get harder (and rarer) as you climb the ladder. Here’s how I put it.

Stage 1

We identify tech problems externally. This is a view of tech in which we conclude, “The app made me do it.” This is The Social Dilemma documentary on Netflix. “The algorithm made me do it. Big tech is ruining our lives.” We externalize sin, leaving it to regulations and legislation.

That’s not wrong entirely, because big tech does code biases into their algorithms and apps and gadgets. They do. No question. But our concern is incomplete if that’s the extent of it. And I think it is the extent that most Christians ever reach. And so if you think holiness is about not having a smartphone, you’re in for a shocker. So we need to go further.

Stage 2

We identify tech problems internally. Aware of biases in tech (real biases in how our apps and platforms are made, absolutely — ones we must be aware of), I must next become aware of the sinful inclinations living inside of me. Because tech biases (on the outside of me) are pushing and pulling on native, sinful inclinations within my own heart that must be dealt with.

Again, that’s why I wrote 12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You and Competing Spectacles. Social media, smartphones, the attention economy — at their worst, they all appeal to something lurid inside of me. So what is that? That sin in me has got to be addressed. That’s stage 2 — identifying tech problems internally, not simply externally.

Stage 3

We voice gratitude to God for our tech. Biases acknowledged (in stage 1), sin patterns identified and confessed and dealt with (in stage 2), now I have eyes beginning to open to see the generosity and brilliance of the Creator in the tens of thousands of innovations I use every single day. I see God’s generosity in all of it. I see his generosity in all the things I’m using right now for me to record my voice for you in my studio and for you to hear me later. All of it, a divine gift.

“Christ crucified is the hinge of history, where all human spectacles meet one unsurpassed, cosmic, divine Spectacle.”

I aspire to help my kids to see this, by the power of the Spirit. Silicon Valley is not just humans doing human things. These tools are gifts from God to be stewarded for his glory. If you miss this stage, you have no foundation for stewardship. The whole tech conversation operates in the realm of godlessness. He’s a nonfactor.

This is huge, and required a whole book of its own, one I wrote titled God, Technology, and the Christian Life. As God prepared his people to enter the promised land with its milk and honey flowing, he was also preparing them to enter a land of iron and copper.

And God warns them: When you make a technological society that is wealthy and comfortable and if you fail to glorify God for all his generosity in everything you make, you are an idolater. For whatever reason, God’s people are shortsighted and blind to his generosity when they hold shiny metal things that they made. That’s the story of Deuteronomy 8:9–20.

So when we pull lithium from the ground, and aluminum, iron, silicon, cobalt, nickel — and we refine those elements into a new iPhone, that iPhone is a gift from the Creator, one he coded into his creation, for which we can now praise him. Most Christians are not here. When most Christians think of the iPhone, God is irrelevant. And our kids pick up on that real quick. But why is stage three important? That’s because, finally . . .

Stage 4

We are called to live out our tech-stewardship. Aware of the biases in tech (step 1), aware of the sin inclinations inside of me (step 2), and now beholding God’s generosity in his material gifts in his creation (step 3), technology in my life can now conform to my calling and inform how I use tech and how I parent tech-stewardship in the home.

This is the hardest part of the tech conversation. We are called to love God with all that we are and to love our neighbors as ourselves. Our tech gifts can help us to do that. I’ve dedicated my life to online ministry for this reason. I want to employ my tech gifts to love others. I believe electricity and data coding and the digital age and computer chips and smartphones and laptops and the internet were all God’s idea, inherent within the creation that he gave us to cultivate and develop.

Hung Up on ‘No’

But again, we tend to get stuck at stage 1. And it’s the spiritual danger almost no Christian appreciates — “the algorithm made me do it.” And so our parenting, for example, sounds a lot like, “No, you can’t have that gadget!” “No, you cannot use that app!” “No, you should never do that thing, look at that thing, online!” No, no, no. It never gets into the yes and amens of stewardship, of a vision of life for how to glorify God and to serve others. This fourth stage has huge implications for pastors and parents, and for anyone trying to figure out tech-ethics.

But, again, it’s just really hard to get there, because our tech-ethics are really lagging behind. We settle on being tech-dismissive and just remain there. It’s just easier to settle into stage-1 or maybe into stage-2 ethics and never move into stage-3 gratitude or stage-4 stewardship. In fact, I’d be willing to say that most Christians stagnate at stage 1 (“the app made me do it”) and never even get into stage 2 (doing the hard work of heart-work).

So when it comes to stages 3 and 4, I’m hoping Christians will learn this over the years and decades ahead. It’s not something you can add fast. It takes years to learn and appropriate these things into our lives. But without that basis for stewardship, we are lost and have no way forward but to dismiss the tech-age as Babel-like and godless. We can only diss on tech, as we hold our iPhone in hand. Our kids pick up on that dishonesty pretty quickly.

Our Phones, Our Hearts, Our Gospel

Question 3: What are some diagnostic questions or practices Christian parents or teens should regularly ask in order to keep smartphone usage within healthy and appropriate margins? And if you don’t mind me cheating a bit and asking the other side of this question, too — how can we apply the gospel to our own lives, or preach it to our kids, when our smartphone usage drifts outside of those healthy and appropriate margins?

There’s a lot we can do as far as practices. An iPhone contract is useful to set out expectations for a teen. All devices charged at night in Mom and Dad’s room, or some neutral place, never left in a teen’s room. Sundays offline. Things like those are helpful, but none of them distinctly Christian. We get Christian when we ask the right diagnostic questions. That’s exactly the right approach. Here are eight you can use with yourself, and then your teens:

How much of my media is for escape? And what am I escaping?
Does my screen time leave me more recharged or more depleted?
Is my media diet enriching my time with Christ or eroding it?
How consistent is my personal devotional life?
What does my prayer life look like?
Is my communion with God drab and boring? Or is it alive?
How do Christ-centered sermons and songs affect me? And what does this say about how I protect my heart for Sunday worship?
Are my digital desires serving my God-given duties, or are they distracting me from them?

Insatiable Eyes

Those eight questions cut to the heart of the matter in “the age of the spectacle,” as it has been called. The Bible says, “Sheol and Abaddon are never satisfied, and never satisfied are the eyes of man” (Proverbs 27:20). The graveyard is never full of coffins because Sheol is an open mouth, always consuming — day and night. So too are our eyes. Vivid. Like a cemetery, our eyes are insatiable — always roving, never satisfied by anything in this world. Fallen eyes endlessly consume death.

So I love the resolve in Psalm 101:3: “I will not set before my eyes anything that is worthless.” On whatever will not profit my soul, I will not focus my eyes. That’s incredible. Later the psalmist echoes this same challenge, but in the form of a desperate prayer, in Psalm 119:37. There he prays, “[God,] turn my eyes from looking at worthless things; and give me life in your ways.” And that’s how resolves work. It doesn’t take long before we’re desperately crying out to God to make the resolve happen!

Which means our great enemy is not the external seducers nor the spectacle-makers. Our great enemy is our own insatiable eye-appetite that is death. Again, that’s absolutely frightening. And so in Numbers 15:39, God tells Moses to say to the people of Israel to follow the will of God in his word and to not “follow after your own heart and your own eyes.” If you fill your eyes with the spectacles of this world, you will grow deaf to the voice of God (Numbers 15:39).

And so when the psalmist cries out to God in Psalm 119:37, “Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things; and give me life in your ways,” he’s saying the fullness of life is not fullness of eyes. And that is the competition we feel, because we can fill our eyes with endless spectacles in every direction, and in the end it’s a feeding on death, a feeding on what cannot give you life.

One Great, All-Satisfying Spectacle

So how does the gospel come in here? This is absolutely huge. I’m so glad you asked. Because into the spectacle-loving world, with all of its spectacle-makers and spectacle-making industries, came the grandest Spectacle ever devised in the mind of God and brought about in world history — the cross of Christ.

Christ crucified is the hinge of history, the point of contact between BC and AD, where all time collides, where all human spectacles meet one unsurpassed, cosmic, divine Spectacle. From this moment on, God intends for all human gaze to center on this climactic moment. In the cross God says to us, “This is my beloved Son, crucified for you, a Spectacle to capture your heart forever!”

In his account of the cross, Luke tells us in Luke 23:48 that the crucifixion was a physical spectacle for crowds to see. But the cross is not merely a physical spectacle for the eye. Its greater glory is in serving as a spectacle for the ear of faith. So in Colossians 2:15, Paul tells us that what you could not see with your eyes was the spiritual spectacle of victory it represents — victory over all sin and evil, over that evil inside of us, even.

The cross is huge, so huge, that in Galatians 3:1 Paul says the preaching of the cross is the re-celebration of the spectacle of the cross, as if it were portrayed on a prominent city billboard. That’s what “preaching Christ” means. In pulpits across the world, every week, God says to us again and again, “This is my beloved Son, crucified for you, a Spectacle to capture your hearts forever!” Preaching re-proclaims that over and over.

Faith-Driven Tech-Users

So by divine design, Christians are pro-spectacle, and we give our entire lives to this great Spectacle, now historically past and presently invisible. The driving spectacle at the center of the Christian life is an invisible spectacle. Only by faith can we see it. I have now been crucified to the world, and the world has been crucified to me, as the apostle Paul says (Galatians 6:14). Our response to the ultimate spectacle of the cross of Christ defines us.

Christ died for my sins of escapism, for my disdain for people, for my lust, for my vanity, for filling my eyes with worthless things. Christ died for the lurid desires and sins of my heart manifested on my screen. He came and died as a spectacle to the universe in order to forgive my guilt and then to free me from the power of my sins.

That doesn’t mean we parents are perfect users of the iPhone and tech. We aren’t. And when we fail here, when digital media takes too much of our attention, when we are distracted by worthlessness, our families will know it. And we can openly confess our need for Christ to forgive me — Dad — as I demonstrate in confession the beauty of the cross before my spouse and teens once again.

Now, it took me about a decade to put all four stages together. It’s complex. But I hope it helps other Christians and pastors and parents and teens to see a way forward in this age of technology. I am grateful for this opportunity to share what I have learned, Mike. Thank you for asking.

This past summer, a giant deposit of phosphate rock was discovered in southwest Norway. Why does that matter? Well, this one area in Norway now “contains enough minerals to meet the global demand for batteries and solar panels for the next 100 years.” A mining company discovered the jackpot of “up to 70 billion tons of the non-renewable resource [phosphate], . . . a key component for building green technologies” that “currently faces significant supply issues.” Supply issues no more. And just two months later was announced the discovery of 40 billion tons of lithium found inside the McDermitt Caldera, a supervolcano on the Nevada-Oregon border here in the States. That discovery sparked headlines like this one: “Lithium discovery in US volcano could be biggest deposit ever found.”

These are jackpots for the future of solar and battery power. And they should feed our worship. But they typically don’t. Instead, we are conditioned to see headlines and go man-centered (“This is all corporate greed!”). Or we go Luddite (“This is all of the devil — I’m ignoring it!”). Or we go political (“Electric vehicles are a liberal fad!”). Or we go greedy (“How do I get stock in this!?”). Our minds don’t naturally move from mining discoveries to the Creator. And they will not, without a reshaping of the heart first.

And so now most of us find it easier to celebrate God’s glory in unseen, spiritual realities. By faith, we see his glory in the gospel and in our Intercessor, Christ, our ascended and enthroned Savior in heaven, interceding for us right now. Glorious! And we easily celebrate God’s glory in untouched creation, too. Mountains, oceans, beaches, the northern lights, and the Milky Way galaxy on a dark night. But when it comes to the elements buried deep inside the earth that we excavate and make into shiny new things, God’s glory diminishes. Deposits of phosphate rock and lithium are ho-hum. And by the time we take those materials and make batteries and solar panels out of them, for many believers, God is rendered irrelevant.

A Nation-Sized Gift

The Bible gives us new eyes to see the material world around us in places like Deuteronomy chapter 8. Deuteronomy 8:1–10 is where I want to go this morning. Here Moses shapes the hearts of God’s people, getting them ready to live fruitfully in the promised land. They are a people redeemed from a 430-year bondage in Egypt straight into a 40-year desert wandering. A hard life. But now God’s people are being readied to enter the promised land. A new land. A good land, furnished with everything they could possibly need, even for their future innovations. But their hearts are not yet ready.

So, we’re simply going to walk through the text, beginning in verse 1, where Moses says,

The whole commandment that I command you today you shall be careful to do, that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land that the Lord swore to give to your fathers. (8:1)

Lasting life for true obedience. That’s the deal. A verse that beautifully sets up the gospel and the obedience of Christ. But for now, if Israel upholds their end of the covenant, God promises that his covenant people will flourish in this new land. They will live and multiply. They will become a strong nation.

The small-cap Lord frames everything else we will study. The great “I am.” The great all-sufficient, self-sufficient “I am who I am.” This self-sufficient Lord promises to give his people the promised land, a promise repeated 23 times in Deuteronomy alone. This sworn land is fundamental to their national identity. This land is their national identity.

And while they will flourish if they obey, the land itself is pure gift. The Lord made the world from nothing. He laid the foundations of the world. Before any creature existed, God prepared this ground for his people. Pure gift. Not a payment for holiness. In chapter 9, this point will be made very clear. Israel is not earning this new land by its self-righteousness. It comes as a gift.

“See beyond man. Marvel at the Maker of our makers.”

This promised land belongs to the Lord. He designed it. He owns it. He’s giving it as a gift of love. Israel will take possession of it by faith and flourish in it by obedience. So Israel is warned. Don’t think that you’re morally superior to all the people who lived on the land previously to you. This land is a perpetual reminder of God’s abundant kindness to undeserving sinners, the lesson they should have learned in the desert.

Testing Hearts Through Stomachs

And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. (8:2)

For forty years, God has been humbling his people. Bringing them low. Testing them. Because when you are brought low, your true self comes out. Pressure squeezes out what is inside the heart. So, God sends adversity to prove the faith of his people. Like a furnace that burns away whatever is trivial and false and fake, God “tests hearts” (Proverbs 17:3). Testing proves our trust in God. Do we really trust God or not? This whole text is about the heart. So, God works in the hearts of his people, humbling them, even down to their daily food.

And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know . . . (8:3a)

Food’s hard to find in the desert. Manna was a miracle food. It looked like coriander seed and appeared in the desert, on the ground, every morning for forty years. God’s people woke up, gathered it daily, ground it up, and boiled manna cakes — cakes that tasted oily. And a little like honey. Not bad actually.

So, where’d this daily manna come from? No one knew. It was a miracle food from God. “The grain of heaven” made into “the bread of the angels” and eaten “in abundance” (Psalm 78:24–25). A gracious, sustaining gift from God that was sweet and pleasant. A daily gift to prove a bigger point:

. . . that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. (8:3b)

A glaring contrast. Our hungry mouths are needy. God’s mouth sustains all things. Farmers don’t keep us alive. Safeway or Costco or Walmart doesn’t keep us alive. We are kept alive by divine miracle. Manna was a miracle food to remind Israel, and to remind all of us, that life is a sovereign miracle. If you are breathing right now, it’s because God says, “Live!” And so we live! Groceries are just a means he uses. Manna is just a means. He cares about the means, but the means point to him.

The first cause of our life is not what goes into our mouths, but what comes out of his mouth. God says, “Live!” And by it, he upholds our lives “by the word of his power” (Hebrews 1:3). By miracle. One of many tangible miracles.

Providence and Preparation

Your clothing did not wear out on you and your foot did not swell these forty years. (8:4)

Forty years in the desert, wearing the same old clothes, same sandals. They never wore out. God involved himself down to the level of how fast their clothes wore out! Amazing providence on display down to the most mundane material provision of Israel’s life. Footwear. God’s generosity in the most basic provisions.

Know then in your heart that, as a man disciplines his son, the Lord your God disciplines you. (8:5)

God has brought discipline — training human behavior. For forty years in the desert, God was disciplining his people, resetting their behaviors, and preparing their hearts for a new home. Preparing them to trust and obey him in a materially prosperous land. Why?

So you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God by walking in his ways and by fearing him. (8:6)

The basic point of verses 2–6 is this: arrogance is unfitting for people about to inherit the gift of God’s land. For forty years, God was humbling his people, testing their hearts, and training their gratitude for a good land. And all this prep builds up now to the promised land itself, and that’s where I want to focus. So, what’s so special about this land?

The Good Land

For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land . . . (8:7a)

The Lord is bringing them. God’s people are being led by the hand toward a gift. Have you ever bought someone a gift so big you couldn’t wrap it up? What do you do? You blindfold them and lead them to the gift by the hand. That’s God here. He’s leading his people by the hand to the gift of his land. Again, his kindness frames this entire story.

Not just any land. “A good land.” That’s its name. We typically call it the promised land. You could literally call it “the good land.” It has everything they will need to flourish. The land is useful and productive. The land is abundant and beautiful. And that means, of course, for any desert people, water:

. . . a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, flowing out in the valleys and hills . . . (8:7b)

The good land is rich with water flowing deep under the ground. Water breaks out from deep springs into fountains and flowing rivers, and God made it this way. Long ago he cut deep fountains into his creation. Descriptions of flowing water recall God’s original work. Into the promised land, God pre-cut channels into the rock for fresh water to flow. Long ago, this land was readied for God’s thirsty people, before God’s people even existed. And where water flows, grains and fruit abound.

. . . a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates . . . (8:8a)

Remember when the spies took their first peek into the promised land? The evidence they took back was grapes, pomegranates, and figs. What more do you need, right? A land of amazing and delicious fruits. Fruits to make jams and wines flow like rivers.

. . . a land of olive trees . . . (8:8b)

Not just olives — literally, “oil-rich” olives. The best olives. This land flows with olive oil. Oil for worship sacrifices. Oil to anoint. Oil for cooking and baking. Oil for skin care and hygiene. Oil for medicine to treat wounds. Oil to fuel lamps and give light. Olive oil was abundantly useful for all of life, and it was already there for God’s people.

. . . and honey . . . (8:8c)

A land of honey. The land flows with milk and honey. And you cannot have honey without bread.

. . . a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing . . . (8:9a)

That’s the punch line. It’s the chief characteristic of the promised land itself: here, all scarcity and all shortage is completely negated. There’s no lack here. Why? Because the land is loaded with everything you could materially imagine. God is comprehensively aware of the entire scope of our material lives and made a creation to meet it. And so the land abounds.

Loaded with Ore

And that means — and here’s where I want to camp — it is

a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills you can dig copper. (8:9b)

This land lacks nothing because its rocks and hills are loaded with bronze and iron. Mentioned together, bronze and iron symbolize power and military might. Power and might already in the land. Iron could be taken from stones. Iron meant wealth. It could be traded. And iron was immediately useful in all areas of life. Iron-made tools for soldiers, tools for stonecutters, tools for carpenters, tools for farmers. Iron was used for axles, reinforced wheels, and chariots.

Even more diversely useful was copper. Copper could be excavated from the hills. It would be the most common material used for jewelry. It would be polished into mirrors. Copper mixed with tin made bronze, a hard and durable metal. Farmers would use bronze for plowpoints, threshing sledges, axes, pruning shears, yokes, and sickles. Soldiers would use bronze for chains, chain mail, armor, helmets, shields, javelins, bows, and arrows, as well as to fortify city walls and gates. Stonemasons would use bronze tools to cut and shape rock. God’s worshipers would use copper and bronze musically to make symbols.

“If we hold our iPhone up and cannot see God’s generosity in it — that’s inexcusable.”

Most importantly, David would prepare for the temple by acquiring iron and “bronze in quantities beyond weighing” (1 Chronicles 22:3). Then his son Solomon would take that iron and “bronze beyond weighing” and build the temple (1 Chronicles 22:14–16) — one to dazzle the world with shiny copper things: pots, shovels, basins, furniture, altars, entire doors. Bronze hardware would be everywhere — all by God’s design.

God’s nation has been handed all the iron and bronze needed to build a temple that gleams in the sunshine to attract all the nations to God. It is within God’s redemptive history that iron and bronze and human inventiveness find their home.

Israel’s unweighable abundance of iron and copper and bronze is as much a gift from God as the manna flakes they ate daily in the desert. All these weapons, all these tools, all these decorations to beautify God’s house — all of it God coded into the promised land at creation — by design. One reason the good land lacked nothing is because it was designed with all of Israel’s future “tool and technologies” needs in mind. All of Israel’s future tool needs were met and pre-coded into the good land by God, from the beginning of time — a gracious gift of the Creator’s design given in order to shape Israel’s material future.

There are staggering realities here, linking God’s sovereign plan for a nation’s future to its available natural resources. So, who’s getting the praise for these shiny metal things in Israel’s technological future?

And you shall eat and be full, and you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land he has given you. (8:10)

There again is its name: “the good land.” A land without lack. So, praise the Creator of this good land. When you have all this prosperity, thank God for it! You have it by his design.

How Faith Receives Technology

The full implications of these few verses deserve a book. But here are four statements only people of faith can make.

1. Follow human inventions back to the Creator.

The One who laid the foundations of the world is the One who dug deep channels for water. And the One who channeled the water infused into his creation of iron and copper to inspire his people’s future inventions. So, where does material technology come from? The Lord. God’s sovereign plan for each nation unfolds according to the available resources he has given. It was he who determined, “Let’s put 70 billion tons of high-grade phosphate rock in Norway and another 40 billion tons of lithium in Nevada for them to use in 2024.” That’s one way the Creator sovereignly guides the future of nations.

If you think that’s only true for Israel and not Europe, I’ll add our friend Spurgeon into the chat. I can’t talk tech without a Spurgeon quote. He got it. And it would be unforgivable to speak here without a Spurgeon mention. Here he is landing a sermon illustration about coal. Spurgeon said this:

A man, looking at the coal mines of England, naturally considers that God made that coal with the intention of supplying the world’s inhabitants with fuel, and that he stored it, as it were, away in those dark cellars underground for this favored nation [England], that the wheels of its commerce might be set in motion.

God made coal — made it for man to discover and burn — then hid that coal until just the right moment to reveal his generosity to England and to fire her economic engine. That’s how Christians view the material world, through the lens of Deuteronomy 8.

Our inventions unfold according to the discoveries we continue to make into God’s creation, in God’s timing. And so, Israel was positioned to discover and invent and build, “being gratefully aware” that all the “material resources, imagination, planning, skills, energy” — all of it was given to them by God. God governs the unfolding story of nations by governing the story of human inventiveness by how he designed his creation. True for Israel, Norway, Nevada, England.

2. Marvel at God’s glory exposed in our mining discoveries.

We won’t go there, but Job 28:1–11 is all about mining. An amazing “hymn celebrating human technology,” specifically of man’s “technological ability” to excavate what’s in the earth. That text led theologian Abraham Kuyper to say this, long before the digital age:

Man was designed and intended for digging up what God has hidden in the earth and for glorifying the greatness of God through doing this. . . . God enclosed gold and silver, all precious metals and precious stones, in the heart of the earth, and if there had been no human beings to bring these treasures to the surface, and to let the luster of the gold shine and to bring out the brilliance of the diamond by cutting it, then God would never have received the honor and praise for these, his more delicate creations in the mineral kingdom. (Common Grace, 2:97)

Amazing. True of gold, silver, diamonds, the brass on the temple, coal, and high-grade phosphate and the resources that feed our economies. Miners continue to set free the otherwise unseen creative brilliance of our God.

3. Enjoy the Creator in your inventions.

We so easily miss the main point of why mining exists. Kuyper just said it. Many previous nations have failed here. We will too if we’re not careful. We must also heed God’s warning in Deuteronomy 8:17–18. So, what’s the safe way to go here? Should we, God’s people, just diss on material things? Hate on technology? Scoff at EVs? Ignore the Norway discovery as vain worldliness? Let’s find out.

Beware lest you say in your heart . . . (Deuteronomy 8:17a)

Here it is again. What our industries do with all that high-grade phosphate rock in Norway or lithium in Nevada is one thing. What our heart does with all that phosphate rock and lithium is the concern of God. The heart of his people is the far bigger issue. Do you see God’s generosity or not? What does your heart do with all this culture-making and city-building and human tech-making? The temptation is to say,

“My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.” (8:17b)

To say that is to utterly fail! Israel, when you’ve settled into this land, you’ll stand back and enjoy the skyline of your cities. You’ll look at all the houses you have made. The new shoes and new clothes you wear. All the copper and brass and iron tools you invented to make you strong, prosperous, and wealthy. Your temple will shine in the sun. You will see oil and wine flowing from your industry. You will see farmers hauling carts of grain. You will see bakeries full of bread. Your markets will be full of food. You will make banks and financial systems and succeed in international trade. And if you fail to see God’s generosity in it all, you are an idolater.

The only explanation for why anything in the world works — why tech works, why our cars work, our computers, our phones, our batteries, why we generate wealth — is owing to the power and generosity of God. So instead,

You shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth. (8:18a)

God claims the glory for every penny of Israel’s wealth. He claims credit for the ultimate, final product of Israel’s industry. All the economic momentum of Israel is all because of God. He claims credit not merely for the iron and copper — or the phosphorus and lithium — but for the power to excavate these materials, and then he claims credit for wealth generated by turning those raw materials into solar panels and batteries. Why? Because all industrial wealth is traced back to its first cause: God’s generosity in creation. The God who gives out manna day by day in the desert is the same God who plants mineral deposits to spur Israel’s creativity and to spur us forward in our batteries and solar panels. Same God. Same generosity. Do you see it? Do you see him?

Every nation is held accountable here, as verses 19 and 20 suggest. Everything we make spotlights God’s abounding generosity. So, build houses. Burn coal. Make batteries and solar panels. Build economic systems. Engage in international trade. Grow trees for lumber to build homes. Harness the lightning and electrify your cities. Replicate the sun in nuclear fusion. Listen as the Creator helps you max out your farm yields. Make new things out of metal. Make new cars. Make EVs if you want. Make more comfortable clothing materials. Make new gadgets. And when you do all of it, people of God, enjoy God in it.

“The first cause of our life is not what goes into our mouths, but what comes out of God’s mouth.”

God never assumes his people will do this well! Deuteronomy 8 assumes that God’s own people will grow blind to his generosity in the shiny metal things they hold in hand. If we hold our iPhone up and cannot see God’s generosity in it — that’s inexcusable. This world will condition us — us Christians — to see mining headlines and to think man-centered thoughts. We’re wired to do everything but move from mining discoveries to the iPhone to the Creator’s generosity. Deuteronomy 8 corrects us.

4. Employ your inventions to reach the nations.

We often make the mistake of thinking technology is outside of redemptive history and inconsequential to the church. Silicon Valley is just humans doing human things. It’s Babel. It’s rebellion. Ignore it. And then we open our Bibles to find the story of human innovation woven right into redemptive history, as God claims credit for everything we make out of metal — our gadgets, cities, temples, homes, economies. Technology is there, not as some intruder into God’s redemptive plan, but as a servant within God’s redemptive plan. We have tech because we have a mission.

There’s a world of lost sinners to reach, so the temple needs brass and the missionary’s bush plane needs gas. And God is the first cause of both the brass and the gasoline. The best of our inventions is missionally useful. Israel’s iron and brass was meant to attract the nations.

In the story of the church, we could talk about the history of metallurgy and the iron nails used in the cross, or the invention of the Greek language to codify a far-reaching tongue, or the brilliance of Roman roads, wooden ships, the codex Bible, printing presses, steam trains, steamships, fossil fuels, combustion engines, off-road trucks, bush planes. Everything needed to pull off a Spurgeon sermon and then a Billy Graham revival meeting, or to show the Jesus Film in a dark village, or to broadcast the gospel on AM/FM airwaves, or for digital media to enter closed and remote countries through smartphones. Tech exists because the church exists. Tech exists because the Great Commission exists.

Here’s the bottom line: In 70 billion tons of phosphate in Norway or 40 billion tons of lithium in Nevada, never grow blind to God’s glory and generosity on display. Marvel at the Maker. Don’t watch a SpaceX rocket fire through the sky and marvel at man. Don’t watch a SpaceX rocket launch and diss on man. See beyond man. Marvel at the Maker of our makers. And marvel in your heart at the foresight of a Maker whose creation would produce rockets and cars and gasoline and batteries and solar panels and iPhones, and thousands of innovations we’re using right now and take for granted every day. God claims it all.

Audio Transcript

Hello, APJ listeners. Thanks for spending so much time with Pastor John and me over the years. We’re honored to be along on this ride of what God has done — and continues to do — through the podcast. It’s bigger than us.

It’s just me today, with an update for you about a few new programming changes to be aware of. And the first change is an announcement — an exciting one for us here at desiringGod.org because we are now offering a brand-new John Piper sermon podcast. It launched in mid-April. Maybe you heard about it. It’s called Light + Truth. Be sure to subscribe to the new podcast feed to enjoy sermons from Pastor John’s pulpit ministry — classic sermons and new sermons, five days a week, all curated in a new podcast hosted by Dan Cruver. It’ll be a great addition to your podcast feed.

And with the addition of the new podcast come two changes to Ask Pastor John. The first is that we’re going to bring sermon-clip-curation Wednesdays to an end. That was a lot of fun, and you all sent me a ton of great clips over the years. Thank you for sharing those clips with us and sharing your memories too. Many of us have stories about unforgettable moments in life when a sermon from Pastor John met us in a moment of need. But sermon-clip Wednesdays will end in May. Instead of sermon clips, those of you who want to listen to curated John Piper sermons can subscribe to the new Light + Truth podcast.

And that brings me to change two. In removing the Wednesday slot, APJ is moving to two times per week. We will be publishing two episodes per week, now on Mondays and Thursdays. For a number of years now, we’ve been publishing on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Now we’re going to publish new APJs on Mondays and Thursdays. That change begins in June. Just wanted to give you a heads up.

Thank you for listening in, supporting us, and sending in your questions. Keep those coming, which you are — we have no shortage of questions ahead of us. In fact, we already have May and June and all of July, and much of August, now scheduled out with themes. It’s as busy as ever. And Pastor John continues to love investing his time in APJ. In fact, we were recently looking over his schedule for the next year ahead and his ministry commitments, and he said, “APJ remains a deeply satisfying investment of effort. And it’s probably the hardest thing I do.” Ha! Yes — not easy work, but deeply satisfying work. Amen. And I love working on this podcast, and we have much work ahead of us in this second decade of the podcast.

So those are the updates. Subscribe to Light + Truth today. And APJ moves to Mondays and Thursdays in June.

I’m your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast. We’ll see you soon.

Audio Transcript

Today we say farewell to our friend, pastor and author Tim Keller. Tim passed away in New York City at the age of 72. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2020.

Over the years, Dr. Keller graciously appeared as a guest on this podcast, leaving us with nine rich APJ episodes on topics like vocation (or work) and on the themes of prayer and solitude. I’m thankful for the time he invested with us.

Cancer, for Dr. Keller, was an old nemesis. Back in 2002, he was first diagnosed with thyroid cancer, a battle he would fight between 2003 and 2004. God would heal and restore Keller, but not before thyroid surgery knocked him out of the pulpit for three months. A decade later, Keller preached a sermon on boldness in the face of death and recounted what he learned during that first cancer battle, opening up about his fears as he was rolled into the operating room. In that moment, he caught a glimpse of something otherworldly. He saw the sheer magnitude of God’s glory and God’s joy beyond this world of pain and suffering and cancer and death.

I want to play for you a sermon clip that comes to my mind on this day, celebrating his life, knowing he has passed into the presence of God and into God’s incredible, unspeakable joy that the rest of us are left longing for. Here’s Tim Keller, in 2013, answering this question: Where do we find courage for life’s scariest moments?

To me, my favorite version of this example of what real courage is comes out of this little passage near the end of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. If you’re one of the three or four people in the world who has never heard of The Lord of the Rings, it’s a story. There are these two little heroes. One is the master, and one is the servant of the master. Sam is the servant, and he loves his master. They’re on this terrible quest, and at one point, his master is imprisoned in a tower. Sam rescues Frodo, his master, largely by screwing himself up and saying, “You are not going to hurt him. I’m going to do this. You can’t stop me. I’m the great . . . here I come.” He does rescue him.

After that, they’re still on their terrible quest, and the danger is still very real. One night, Sam looks up into the sky and sees a star. This is in the book, not the movie. This is what the passage says:

Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart. . . . For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach. His song in the Tower had been defiance rather than hope; for then he was thinking of himself. Now . . . his own fate, and even his master’s, ceased to trouble him . . . [and he fell] into a deep untroubled sleep. (922)

The author, Tolkien, is trying to say there’s a difference between defiance, in which you screw yourself up (“I can do it!”) — that’s still, in the end, not the courage you need, because you’re looking at yourself. Courage, on the one hand, is not looking at yourself and banishing fear. No, it’s just letting the fears play their role, and not letting the fears play too much of a role by looking away from yourself. “Okay,” you say, “but then to what?” It’s even in the text I just read. It was defiance, not hope. Hope.

When Paul met Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus, “‘Who are you, Lord?’ [I asked.] ‘I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting’” (Acts 22:8 NIV) — the resurrected Jesus. When we were going through Acts 9, the first account of Paul’s conversion, we talked a little bit about this. When Paul realized that Jesus had been resurrected from the dead, suddenly everything broke open. Suddenly the meaning of his death made sense, and the hope for the future made sense.

If Jesus Christ really died on the cross, taking our punishment, and he’s now raised from the dead, now when we believe in him, not only are our sins forgiven, but now we have an incredible hope about the future. We’re going to be raised, and everything in this world is going to be put right, and there is not going to be any suffering or death. That is an astonishing hope.

As I said, the first part of courage is looking away from yourself. The world tells you, “Look at yourself and banish fear.” The second part of courage is looking toward hope, getting a hope. Real courage is not the absence of fear; it’s the presence of joy — so much joy that the fear plays its proper role. Well, how do you get that joy?

“Real courage is not the absence of fear; it’s the presence of joy.”

Before we get to that, let me just tell you there is a second way out there in the world that people are counseling each other to get courage. I think the primary way is this sort of “self-esteemism.” The primary way the world tries to tell you to get courage is this: “Just tell yourself, ‘No fear — you can do it!’ Summon up the blood and go do it.”

I do think there’s an alternate discourse out there, and it’s older. It’s more ancient. It goes back to the East. It goes back to the Greeks. Cicero, for example, who was one of the Roman Stoics, wrote a very famous couple of treatises on why you shouldn’t be afraid of anything, especially not death. You shouldn’t be afraid of death. He says, “Courage makes light of death, for the dead are only as they were before they were born. It encounters pain by recollecting that the great pains are ended by death. Others we can usually control, if they are endurable, but if they are not, we can serenely quit life’s theater when the play has ceased to please us.”

What he’s saying here is, “There is no reason to be afraid of anything, including not of death. Why? Because when you die, that’s it. It’s like before. You’re just not there.” What is he saying? You shouldn’t be afraid of anything, because you tell yourself, “I’m going to lose it all anyway. There’s no use crying over spilled milk. When you die, that’s it. I’m enjoying things, but everybody loses things.”

What are they doing? You’re still deadening your heart, aren’t you? There is a way of getting courage, not by deadening your heart to fear, but by deadening your heart to love. And it’s not just Cicero — I’ve read it in the New Yorker. So many smart secular people today say the same thing. “There’s no reason to be afraid of things. There’s no reason to be afraid of death. When you’re dead, that’s it. There’s no reason to be afraid of death.” Oh no?

What is it that makes your life meaningful? Is it your health? Partly. Is it your wealth? Partly. Is it your success? Partly. But what if you had those things and you didn’t have love? What if you had nobody in your life to love you, nobody in your life for you to love? It would be meaningless. What makes your life meaningful are the people you love and the people who love you. That’s what makes your life meaningful.

Now you’re going to stand there, Cicero (or whoever), and you’re going to tell me I should not fear a future state in which the one thing that makes life meaningful is taken away? All love and all loved ones are taken away. That’s the state. And you’re telling me I shouldn’t be afraid of that? Are you crazy? Of course we should be afraid of that. I’m sorry, but deadening your heart to love is just like deadening your heart to fear. It kind of works, partly, but I don’t know. It’s certainly not good for your heart.

Here’s a better way. George Herbert, a seventeenth-century Anglican priest — incredible poet. One of my favorite poems in the history of the world is his little poem called “A Dialogue-Anthem.” It’s a dialogue between a Christian and Death. Christian starts.

Chr.Alas, poor Death! where is thy glory?Where is thy famous force, thy ancient sting?

Dea.Alas, poor mortal, void of story!Go spell and read how I have killed thy King.

Chr.Poor Death! and who was hurt thereby?Thy curse being laid on Him makes thee accursed.

Dea.Let losers talk: yet thou shalt die;These arms shall crush thee.

Chr.     Spare not, do thy worst.I shall be one day better than before;Thou so much worse, that thou shalt be no more.

Do you want to be fearless? Do you want to look out there and say, “Nothing can really hurt me because of my infallible hope”? Do you want to look out there, saying, “Even the worst thing that can happen to me — death — can only make me better”? “Spare not, Death! Come on. All you could do is make me better than I am now.”

George Herbert has a great line where he says, “Death used to be an executioner, but the gospel has made him just a gardener.” All he can do is plant you, and you finally come up into the beautiful flower that you were meant to be. You’re just a seed, and death just plants you, and then you finally become who you were meant to be. That’s not courage the Ciceronian way. “Just kill your heart. Just say, ‘Well, we’re going to lose everything anyway.’ Just deaden it.” This isn’t Hercules. This isn’t King Arthur. This is Jesus.

“Christianity is the only religion that even claims our God has the attribute of courage.”

How can you be utterly, utterly sure you have that hope? How can you say to even death itself, “Spare not, do thy worst”? I can tell you how. You have to believe in the only God. There are a lot of religions out there, and they all claim “God, God, God,” but Christianity is the only religion that even claims our God has the attribute of courage. Why? Because when God became Jesus Christ, he became vulnerable. He became human. When he was in the garden of Gethsemane, when everybody was asleep and it was dark and there was nobody there and he realized what he was about to face.

I actually think the garden of Gethsemane is the place where you see the greatest act of courage in the history of the world, because by the time he got nailed to the cross, even if he wanted to turn around, it would have been too late. There he was, nailed to the cross. But that night, he could have left. In fact, he even thought about it. He says, “My soul is overwhelmed . . . to the point of death” (Matthew 26:38 NIV). What do you see in Jesus Christ? You see courage.

You don’t see him saying, “Bring it on.” The bloody sweat showed he was feeling fear. He wasn’t saying, “Come on.” What was he doing? We’re told all about it in Hebrews 12:1–3 (NIV):

Therefore . . . let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

There it is. He looked away from himself, and what did he look toward? Joy. What was the joy? The joy of pleasing his Father and redeeming his friends. The joy of that enabled him to have courage. Listen: if you see him courageously dying for you like that so you can say to death, “Spare not, do thy worst,” then you can have courage.

One of the few times I needed courage, God was very happy to give it to me, and it was very nice. When I was going under, being wheeled in for my only cancer surgery — I had thyroid cancer years ago — I do remember (it was so nice) I suddenly had this sense that the world is wonderful and the universe is this big ball of the glory of God, and we’re just trapped in this little tiny speck of darkness. And even that’s going to be taken away eventually. Therefore, no matter what happens now, whatever happens with the surgery, I’m going to be all right. My family is going to be all right. The world is going to be all right. Everything is going to be all right. It was very nice to have a moment of courage.

“By looking at the joy of what is now there for you, you’ll face whatever you have to face.”

I have to tell you, I haven’t had many of those moments. I can’t hold on to them. But guess what? The courageous Jesus Christ holds on to me and holds on to you. And if you look at him and the joy of what he accomplished through his courageous act — by looking at the joy of what is now there for you, you’ll face whatever you have to face.

“Real courage is not the absence of fear; it’s the presence of joy.” A moving testimony of the sheer magnitude of God’s glory. A clip from Tim Keller’s sermon titled “The Gospel and Courage,” preached on May 26, 2013.

A couple of years later, Dr. Keller took this story and wrote it into his book Walking with God through Pain and Suffering (2015). I want to read his published version.

There have not been many times in my life when I felt “the peace that passes understanding.” But there was one time for which I am very grateful. . . . It was just before my cancer surgery. My thyroid was about to be removed, and after that, I faced a treatment with radioactive iodine to destroy any residual cancerous thyroid tissue in my body. Of course my whole family and I were shaken by it all, and deeply anxious. On the morning of my surgery, after I said my good-byes to my wife and sons, I was wheeled into a room to be prepped. And in the moments before they gave me the anesthetic, I prayed. To my surprise, I got a sudden, clear new perspective on everything. It seemed to me that the universe was an enormous realm of joy, mirth, and high beauty. Of course it was — didn’t the triune God make it to be filled with his own boundless joy, wisdom, love, and delight? And within this great globe of glory was only one little speck of darkness — our world — where there was temporarily pain and suffering. But it was only one speck, and soon that speck would fade away and everything would be light. And I thought, “It doesn’t really matter how the surgery goes. Everything will be all right. Me — my wife, my children, my church — will all be all right.” I went to sleep with a bright peace on my heart. (318)

I trust that in his last days Tim was given this courage and this vision again of the magnitude of God’s joy enveloping everything else.

Dr. Keller escaped this speck of darkness for the high beauty forever beyond the Shadow’s reach and entered into the boundless joy of his master at the age of 72. Farewell for now, Dr. Keller.

Today I get to share with you the 3,000-year backstory to Tesla electric cars. But the story doesn’t start here in Silicon Valley. For that story we need to cross the country to America’s epicenter of innovation in the 1740s, to New England, and to the time of Benjamin Franklin and his lightning rod, for an electrifying story filled with lightning and thunder.

The Lightning Rod Arrives

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, churches built steeples high into the sky. And within those steeples they installed bells. And on those bells was often inscribed some form of the Latin phrase fulgura frango — translated, “I break up the lightning flashes.” Church bells did many things, including suppressing thunderstorms. It became a common practice, beginning in the medieval age and extending into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, during a major thunderstorm, for local bellringers to climb up into the church’s steeple and ring the church bells loudly. By doing so they could — perhaps, perhaps — ward off the divine wrath and the devilish invasion in the skies.

That was the theory. But that theory was plagued by two design fails. First, the bells were cast metal. And second, those cast metal bells hung in the steeple, usually the town’s high-point. So, you can imagine how well this worked out for bell ringers! In France and Belgium alone, over the span of just three decades, nearly 400 bell towers were hit by lightning. Many of them burned down, killing more than 100 bell ringers (Electricity in the 17th and 18th Centuries, 341). In a twist of irony, during thunderstorms, townspeople were encouraged to keep their distance from churches — while the town’s pubs and shadier establishments almost always escaped untouched from the divine displeasure in the tempest.

So bell ringers were not fans of steeples in thunderstorms. But one man loved them. Benjamin Franklin. For him, the steeple was the perfect focal point for his lightning experiments. Franklin came to understand that “storm clouds contained electrical charges, notwithstanding their heavy loads of water.” Even though electricity was a fire, he theorized, “it was a different kind of fire, one that could coexist with water.” So, he developed the concept of a lightning rod to protect structures from fire by drawing off the electrical charge from lightning.

By 1750, he was proving his theory. He made little miniature houses and put gunpowder in them. Then, he’d strike the little house with a spark from a battery, and the mini-house would explode. On a second little house he installed a replica lightning rod, a wire, then struck the house with another spark. The house didn’t explode.

Theological Alarm Bells

But even as the evidence became indisputable, Franklin’s invention raised theological alarm bells. One pastor in Boston proposed that if you diverted God’s wrath of lightning into the earth, it would simply supercharge future earthquakes (Benjamin Franklin, 173). In fact, a major earthquake hit New England soon after Franklin began diverting bolts into the ground, seemingly proving this fear to be true.

John Adams, a future president, summarized what he was hearing from leaders in New England, that the lightning rod was “an impious attempt to rob the Almighty of his thunder, to wrest the bolt of vengeance out of his hand” (Stealing God’s Thunder, 111).

Across the Atlantic Ocean, the French, who loved Franklin, more eagerly adopted his lightning rod. But even there, the French pastor and famous physicist, Jean-Antoine Nollet, who bought in 100% to the rod’s effectiveness, refused to adopt it, saying the rod was, quote, “as impious to ward off heaven’s lightnings as for a child to ward off the chastening rod of its father” (Stealing God’s Thunder, 96).

To his dismay, Benjamin Franklin found himself locked inside a theology debate. “The more scientists knew about the workings of lightning and electricity, the less mysterious those phenomena appeared. The more one could control lightning’s fury, the less vulnerable the world seemed before God’s wrath” (Benjamin Franklin, 176). Franklin, it seemed, was stealing God’s thunder.

His lightning rods sparked a debate that split the eighteenth century. Is a lightning rod on a church steeple an act of faith? Or an act of God-thwarting unbelief? That’s the debate I want to settle today. Because if we can answer this, I think we will get clarity on electric cars and resolve one key tension Christians face here inside Silicon Valley, the epicenter of the most highly advanced technological society the world has ever known. And to understand our latest tech, we turn to an old book: the book of Job.

Where Is God in the Thunderstorm?

Job is an ancient book, perhaps the oldest book in the Bible. It’s about the sufferings of a man named Job — a kingly figure, a wealthy man, perhaps a local ruler. Then his life was upended, partly due to a major storm brought by Satan and permitted by God.

In Job we find the longest and most vivid sermon in the Bible on thunderstorms, from a young man named Elihu, the youngest of Job’s friends. Because he’s one of Job’s friends, we can put an asterisk on everything he says, though he seems especially trustworthy. But Elihu is not an infallible prophet. He’s not a professional theologian. He’s just a relatively trustworthy guy who affirms God’s sovereignty as he tries to figure out how weather patterns work. Elihu is a forerunner to Ben Franklin.

“Elihu is a forerunner to Ben Franklin.”

And so thunderstorms are a major theme in the book of Job. At the start, Job had 7,000 sheep and “very many servants,” but then a lightning storm hit, “the fire of God fell from heaven,” and it “burned up” his 7,000 sheep and “consumed” his many servants (Job 1:3, 16). So a storm of huge magnitude shatters Job’s life at the start of the book. And now we jump into the story at the end of the book. A second storm is brewing.

God’s Greatness from Afar

God will soon speak from this second thunderstorm, beginning in chapter 38. But in chapters 36 and 37 this thunderstorm is still gathering in the background. So imagine Elihu, the final human voice in Job, in the last speech of the book, setting up God’s dramatic entrance. That’s our scene. So, we find Elihu preaching on lightning as a thunderstorm brews behind him. Distant thunder is growling, the winds are picking up, the sun is shrouded, and lightning marches closer to Job. The storm is brewing. And God will speak from this storm, directly to Job. So this is the dramatic context of Elihu’s sermon we will study now in Job 36:24 and following.

In this thunderstorm we marvel at God, exult over his power, and witness his direct actions in creation. We pick up Elihu’s sermon here, as he speaks to his friend Job in Job 36:24–26:

“Remember to extol his work [thunderstorms],     of which men have sung.All mankind has looked on it;     man beholds it from afar.Behold, God is great, and we know him not;     the number of his years is unsearchable.”

So we meet the theme of this text: storms and God. God is eternal Spirit, wholly other than us. Ancient. Wise. A mystery beyond our understanding. But storms and natural laws are different. We can learn from them — within limits, Elihu says. The natural world is hard to understand, not because it cannot be known, but because it’s all happening from “afar” — far away, far up in the sky. Elihu wants to investigate God’s works in nature, but he can only see nature from a distance. We can understand the natural world today because we can zoom in closer. Weather balloons, drones, satellites, telescopes, microscopes — proximity is our scientific advantage. We can get close to storms. Elihu has none of these advantages.

God Is Invisible, Yet Present

And yet, this distance doesn’t stop Elihu from investigating God’s work over nature.

For he draws up the drops of water;     they distill his mist in rain,which the skies pour down     and drop on mankind abundantly. (Job 36:27–28)

This is amazing! Elihu delivers a “proto-scientific description of the formation of rain”(Job 21–37, 869). It’s primitive, but he’s on to atmospheric water cycles. He does not understand evaporation as we now understand it, but he’s pressing into a natural phenomenon with the scientific curiosity that will eventually lead to the discovery of evaporation — a law set in place by the Creator. So he’s inquiring into the atmospheric phenomena at play.

And as Elihu works to figure out storms, notice that he clings to two truths: God is invisible, but majestically present in his creation. That’s what I want you to see all over this text. We can’t see God; but we can see his acts.

So Elihu investigates nature, far off and full of mystery. But he knows this much: Every lightning strike is fired directly by God and is aimed at a specific target. That’s what we see next.

Present in Every Lightning Bolt

Can anyone understand the spreading of the clouds,     the thunderings of his pavilion? [There’s natural mystery here.]Behold, he scatters his lightning about him [where lightning bolts are, there God is]     and covers the roots of the sea. [More literally, he uncovers the roots of the sea — a lightning strike hits the sea and illuminates that underworld for a flash of a moment.]For by these [bolts] he judges peoples;     [and] he gives food in abundance. (Job 36:29–31)

So Elihu doesn’t fully understand the weather patterns. But he knows enough to see that rain gives food to all creatures — and that blessing is connected to lightning, and that lightning is connected to God. So on one hand, yes, the lightning expresses God’s displeasure. But lightning also expresses God’s love. Lightning judges. Lightning feeds. Lightning is complex, as we will see in a moment. But in every bolt, God is present, according to this incredible statement:

He [God] covers his hands with the lightning     and commands it to strike the mark. (Job 36:32)

God’s hands are charged with crackling lightning. You can’t help but think of Zeus and his thunderbolt — the most powerful, unrivaled weapon feared among all the pagan gods. Or the storm gods of Elihu’s age, who held lightning bolts in their hands (Job, 358). Those fictional characters are one-dimensional. But the living God of the universe truly holds thunderbolts in his hands. And not only does he hold them, he shoots them. And not only does he shoot them, he aims them. And not only does he aim them, this forked, zigzagging fire from heaven nails its bullseye every single time (The Book of Job, 480).

God never misses. And this is what led to the utter confusion of Bible-believing Christians in New England. The town bar is never tasered. But the church bells are bullseyes. What gives?

God Speaks Through Lightning

Whatever else lightning is, it’s never less than the presence of God shown to us in the natural world. God is here. He is speaking.

Its crashing declares his presence;     the cattle also declare that he rises.At this also my heart trembles     and leaps out of its place. (Job 36:33–37:1)

Thunder from the skies triggers a thunder inside Elihu’s chest. It does for us, too, right? This past summer we were driving home late in the desert, watching cloud-to-cloud strikes of a huge thunderstorm west of Phoenix — 20-mile-long bolts of lightning flashing like silent strobe lights across the black sky. And my son said, “Every time I see that, something inside of me moves.” Yes! Same for Elihu. Lightning sets off an internal thunder inside us.

Keep listening to the thunder of his voice     and the rumbling that comes from his mouth [that deep growl you hear in the distant storm as it marches close].[Until] Under the whole heaven he [God] lets it go,     and his lightning to the corners of the earth. (Job 37:2–3)

Ever felt that? Lightning hitting in every direction around you? North, south, east, west. And when a bolt flashes and hits especially close — what do we do? We count. One one-thousand, two one-thousand . . . boom!

After it [after the bolt] his voice roars;     he thunders with his majestic voice,     and he does not restrain the lightnings when his voice is heard.God thunders wondrously with his voice;     he does great things that we cannot comprehend. (Job 37:4–5)

“Whatever else lightning is, it’s never less than the presence of God shown to us in the natural world.”

Again, Elihu is not saying that we cannot understand nature. He’s saying that we cannot fully understand God’s purposes in nature. And we certainly cannot stop God’s fire from the sky. We sense our powerlessness (The Book of Job, 480). And yet every peal of thunder is the voice of God speaking.

God’s Purposes in the Storm

Back to Job, who is suffering in dust and ashes. Job’s “bitter” complaint was that God had left him in the dark and disappeared (Job 23:1–9). But Elihu corrects Job. God didn’t abandon Job. He is no absentee Creator. God is here. God’s closeness echoes in the skies in every peal of thunder — a point made in all four seasons.

For to the snow he says, ‘Fall on the earth,’     likewise to the downpour, his mighty downpour.He seals up the hand of every man,     that all men whom he made may know it.Then the beasts go into their lairs,     and remain in their dens. (Job 37:6–8)

By inclement weather, God seals the hand of every man. With his storms, he zip-ties our hands and places us under house arrest. Or as the NIV says: “he stops all people from their labor.” Blizzards and monsoons shut people inside their homes and beasts inside their caves.

Guiding Creatures Where He Wants Them

So God commands dumps of snow and torrents of rain. Why? Because he is positioning (and repositioning) each of his creatures as on a chessboard. In all four seasons, God uses his creation to guide the work of man. Major weather disruptions are one of God’s means to guide his creatures to where he wants them (The Book of Job, 480–481).

Delayed flights. Cancelled meetings. Viruses. If God chose to keep us all shut inside in 2020, it was no hard thing for him to pull off. God governs the business of his creatures through his created order — and very often through weather patterns. He governs our travels through snow, ice, lightning storms, power outages, flooding — you name it. All the seasons are included here. But winter especially.

From its chamber comes the whirlwind,     and cold from the scattering winds.By the breath of God ice is given,     and the broad waters are frozen fast. (Job 37:9–10)

Showing His Presence and Control

And then of course, again, God wields lightning.

He loads the thick cloud with moisture;     the clouds scatter his lightning. (Job 37:11)

Again, we’ve seen this. Elihu is on to evaporation. Water goes up, makes clouds thicken, and then lightning strikes, and that same water pours back down (Job 36:27–28). Elihu gets that. The NIV translates this verse, God “loads the clouds with moisture; he scatters his lightning through them.” So God shoots lightning from his hands. And he shoots them through an atmospheric channel (Job 38:26). Elihu is doing something remarkable here by making two points at the same time. (1) The unseen God is here. (2) His presence is mediated in the natural laws that govern the skies. He’s here. He’s in charge. And he’s leading storms like a leashed dog.

They turn around and around by his guidance,     to accomplish all that he commands them     on the face of the habitable world. (Job 37:12)

Bolts of Correction, Blessing, and Love

God harnesses the storm — leads it, directs it, so that every lightning bolt fulfills his will for creation. So what is his will? Three things, in verse 13.

Whether for correction     or for his land     or for love [ḥesed],     he causes it to happen. (Job 37:13)

So beyond God’s repositioning of his creatures, lightning fulfills his will in three other ways.

One, he uses bolts to chasten and correct sinners.

Two, he shoots bolts to rain down blessings on the thirsty land to feed all his creatures, including us.

“Lightning expresses God’s ‘hesed’ — his loyal love.”

Three, he sends bolts “for love.” Lightning expresses God’s ḥesed — his loyal love. Undying covenant love. So, if you can only imagine God and lightning in a one-dimensional context — like Zeus, some angry god firing off a pistol of lightning to whomever aggravates him — you’ll miss the love of God.

None of this means that it’s easy to interpret what each storm means, says Elihu. We know that God sends the storms. But we don’t know exactly why. And trying to figure out God’s intent in providence is a dangerous task. God’s will is complex. So Elihu is throwing serious side-eye to Job’s older friends who tried to draw definite conclusions from Job’s misfortunes.

Realigning Human Attitudes

Now, finally, as the storm builds up to God’s speech, Elihu makes eye contact with his suffering friend Job.

Hear this, O Job;     stop and consider the wondrous works of God.Do you know how God lays his command upon them     and causes the lightning of his cloud to shine? (Job 37:14–15)

Job desperately needs to realign his attitude. But what can change Job’s attitude in suffering? Consider the wonders of God in the natural world. Here’s a preview of what God is about to unleash in Job 38–42. He will speak to Job from a storm to remind Job of wonder after wonder after wonder in creation.

Traveling from Job to Tesla

But we end Job’s story here. Elihu is trying to understand lightning. He’s an observant man of faith. He trusts God. He marvels at the patterns in the atmosphere. He’s the Bible’s Ben Franklin, but with better theology. And he’s asking his friend Job, “Job, do you know how lightning works? Do you know about the electricity in the clouds, like batteries that hold a charge until it’s time to fire a bolt? Can you explain how water and fire coexist in the sky? No.”

For Job these are great mysteries. But for us? Not anymore. We understand how a lot of it works. And that’s where the tension with science arises. And so we need to move from Elihu to Ben Franklin to Nichola Tesla and down to the Tesla Model X and to the brand new F-150 EV truck, fittingly called the “Lightning.” Let me do that with six brief takeaways.

1. God fires every lightning bolt. He never misses.

God shoots lightning from his hands to a bullseye every time. Elihu makes this clear, and his words are confirmed by other Old Testament texts — namely Psalm 135 and Jeremiah 10. For some, this is news to you — a missing piece of your theology. God is present in lightning bolts. That’s not pagan superstition. That’s biblical orthodoxy.

2. God fires every lightning bolt through atmospheric channels. He ordains the means.

God shoots lightning from his hands to a bullseye every time, but this sovereign marvel does not stop Elihu’s curiosity. He still searches for the atmospheric means God uses in thunderstorms. Providence drives him into natural science, not away from it. Elihu is both trying to unriddle the mystery of God’s providence in the storm, and he’s trying to unriddle the atmospheric mechanics of a storm. And he’s doing both at the same time.

You can pursue science and believe in God without contradiction. So Elihu is simultaneously seeking to decipher the voice of God and atmospheric physics; the invisible world and the visible world; the spirit realm and the physical realm; the laws of providence and the laws of nature. He’s modeling faith-filled science, because these two worlds work in tandem.

3. God governs every natural law. We ignore them to our peril.

God governs his creation “by certain fixed laws.” Do those laws bend “and make allowance for” our mistakes? No, says the nineteenth-century preacher Charles Spurgeon: “Every violation of them is avenged,” Spurgeon says of the laws of lightning, offering this grisly example.

“The simple countryman, in his ignorance of the laws of electricity, is overtaken by a pelting storm, and to escape from the drenching rain he runs beneath some lofty tree to screen himself beneath its spreading branches. It is a law of nature that elevated points should attract the lightning: the man does not know this, he does not intend to defy his Maker’s natural law, but for all that, when the death-dealing fluid splits the tree it leaves a senseless corpse. The law does not suspend its operations though that man may be the husband upon whose life the bread of many children may depend, though he may have been one of the most guileless and prayerful of mankind, though he may have been utterly unconscious of having exposed himself to the force of a physical law of God, yet still he dies, for he has placed himself in the way of a settled law of nature, and it takes its course.”

The natural law is fixed. Be dumb with lightning and it will cost you — perhaps your life (MTPS, 22:13–15). Don’t be dumb with the fixed natural laws. That’s dangerous and deadly. Fear nature. Fear God.

4. Fear drives our inventors.

Necessity is the mother of invention. And so is fear. One way God ignites science and innovation is through fear. He uses all sorts of human desires to motivate our discoveries of creation, but fear is a biggie. Our fear drives us to understand, and understanding leads to discovery. So why do we understand electricity today? Because humans faced the sheer power of lightning, and were motivated to engineer. Fear drives man into God’s created patterns. And that fear is how you end up with the lightning rod.

5. Lightning rod strikes obey God.

So if God commands each bolt, it would be an act of unbelief to divert that bolt with a lightning rod, right? That’s the question we are back to.

And the answer is, no. Actually, God teaches us to make lightning rods. To divert the lightning is not an act of unbelief — but one that can be made in faith. This is because, as theologian Abraham Kuyper writes,

“When God accumulates electricity in the clouds and the possibility increases of a lightning strike that might endanger the lives of a family or their property, we are not only permitted but obligated to apply every means available to avert or at least mitigate this danger. It is none other than God himself who has included within nature this means to divert the lightning.… And when a dangerous bolt of lightning travels down along the metal rod and terminates in the ground, it is God himself who guides the lightning along that rod and who smothers the enormous spark in the earth. Humankind does not do this, and Satan does not do this; it is God. And whoever honors God’s majesty in the lightning that flashes, yet does not honor the majesty with which God draws this flashing lightning to the rod, grounding and guiding it away, takes from God half the honor due him” (Common Grace, 2:596)

Realize this: No bolt travels harmlessly down a lightning rod unless God directs it that way, through the innovation of man. When the bolt travels down the rod, God guides it there. This is the key theological point missing from 1750 New England, and for many Christians today — who fear that human innovation strongarms God, or makes him look weaker. No. That’s a myth. New tech never bullies our sovereign God. It reveals more of him, his patterns in creation, and his generosity to us. Leading to point 6.

6. No one sees God’s love in lightning like we do.

Once Ben Franklin proved decisively with a kite that clouds hold an electric charge, like a huge battery in the sky, he opened a floodgate of new human innovation. We could make battery farms. We could envision man-made lightning bolts to power cities. And “the power we now recognize in electricity God had already hidden in nature from the very hour of paradise.” The electrified age was hidden by God in the lightning bolt from the beginning of time. “In due time,” innovators were ordained to discover electricity, and to electrify cities and industries, although in doing so we “actually added nothing new to creation as such” (Pro Rege, 3:34).

The power was there all along. And if we had failed to harness electricity, we would have deprived God of the honor due to him. Electricity was hidden for millennia in the lightning bolt, a harnessed power that changed the world forever. In electricity we give God glory for lightning in ways that lightning alone cannot accomplish. Human innovation, the harnessing of this creation, magnifies the Creator’s brilliance more than a simple lightning storm. That’s the highest value and purpose possible for human tech — to disclose more of the Creator’s brilliance.

So Ben Franklin didn’t steal God’s thunder. No. He discovered lightning — diverted it — and introduced the world to electricity at the scale of what could eventually power cities. Electricity was not invented by Ben Franklin. Nor did it originate by inventors with the last names of Watts, Ampere, Volta, Faraday, Ohm, or Tesla. No. These innovators were raised up by God, at the right time, to discover and to divert and to harness what was hidden in plain sight from the beginning of creation. God was hiding electricity all along in lightning. Electricity was hidden in the bolt, awaiting discovery. And once we did, the age of electrification began — a watershed moment in human history — the electrified age — and it added nothing new to God’s creation! It was there all along. God used the fear of lightning to drive us to discover what now powers this room.

The natural lightning bolt that tears through the sky, and the artificial lightning bolt in the power plant that causes our lights to work right now, are equally from God. Yes, he uses means. Yes, he uses clouds. Yes, he uses power plants. But if Elihu were here today, he would say: Behold the love of God in the lightning bolt coursing through the wires of Silicon Valley, a power hidden in creation from day one in the lightning bolt. So why does your smartphone have power right now? The loyal love of God — his ḥesed.

God Over Lightning and Electricity

Let me attempt to summarize it all — and it’s a lot. Human fear of God in lightning drives us to discover the love of God in electricity. Elihu had no idea how much of God’s love to us was charged into the lightning bolt. He could never have predicted God’s love to thousands of COVID sufferers whose lives would be saved by ventilators. He could not have imagined God’s love in millions of heart defibrillators and pacemakers. Or in lights, air conditioning, dishwashers, computers, smartphones, televisions, electric cars—all the electrified things we take for granted every single day. All of them originated in the first cause of the electrified age—in the lightning bolt.

Elihu could never have imagined that the electricity hidden in lightning is animation, a life force, an invisible force coursing through wires to power farms, cities, homes, tools, industries. And now it’s nearly impossible for us to imagine life on this planet without electricity. Most of our jobs and hobbies and ministries are only possible because of it.

So, the challenge for us is this: Don’t ignore the God of the lightning bolt. Don’t take electricity from creation without giving your awe to the Creator who created every bolt of energy. Don’t hear the voice of God in lightning and then grow deaf to his glory and his love to us in the electricity powering our lives every day. As we see in Elihu himself, the utter transcendence and all-sufficiency of God does not stop us from investigating natural causes. It pushes us into the science of understanding how the means work. So we study physics and quantum physics. We study atmospheric phenomena, we harness those powers, then we use them to disclose the glory of God.

So don’t be dumb with electricity. Don’t stand under a tree in a lightning storm. And don’t use electricity to ignore the God who patterned electricity and who gave you this gift from his kindness. Put lightning rods on your steeples. Redirect the lightning. Harness its power. Make electric cars. And use every watt of power to do what lightning has always intended to do: to showcase the majesty and uniqueness and beauty of the Creator, who loves us lavishly with good gifts.