Audio Transcript

Welcome back to the podcast on this Monday, and thanks for listening. Tomorrow we read Isaiah 62–64 together in our Bible reading plan. And that leads to today’s question from a listener named Mattie: “Pastor John, hello to you! I’m a doer. I’m always doing the next thing. I have a lot of energy. If I see something I need, or that others need, I get to work. And then I read a verse like this one in Isaiah: ‘No eye has seen a God besides you, who acts for those who wait for him’ (Isaiah 64:4). I’m not a wait-er. I don’t wait for anything. My groceries, my coffee — everything — I preorder on an app so I can just drive up to the store and get my stuff and drive off. What does an active person like me need to learn about waiting on God to act? What does waiting look like for an active person like me?”

Tony, one of the things that you and I both hope for in doing these podcasts is that, over time, people will not only get answers from the Bible to their questions but will learn how to go to the Bible and get answers for themselves. And it may be helpful with this particular question to give a simple glimpse into how I prepare to answer a question like this, or how she might answer her own question.

Searching the Scriptures for Ourselves

I do this with most episodes. I take the key word or idea that someone asks — in this case, “waiting for the Lord.” I use a concordance or the word-search feature of my Bible software to look up how that word or idea is used in the Bible. So, if you look up in the ESV, for example, the word “wait,” with all of its forms (like “waited” and “waiting”), you get 135 uses in the Bible. If you look up the phrase “wait for,” you get 75 uses, and if you look up the phrase “wait for the Lord,” you get 12 uses with that precise wording. So, that’s what I did.

The point of reading all of these uses of the word “wait” in the Bible is to see what we can find out about how God intends for us to understand and practice this reality of waiting in all kinds of circumstances, including living a very busy, active life, which Mattie lives and most of us live today. I take then a piece of 8.5-by-11 paper — I do this for sermon preparation; I do this for APJ preparation — and I fold it in half. I fold the 8.5-by-11 paper in half. I use a lot of scrap paper, so that I can just fold it and use the back side, and as I read all those uses in the Bible, I make notes on the paper how it’s being used.

“The Christian life is essentially a waiting, longing, expecting, hoping life, because Christ is our supreme treasure.”

Then, as I collect all these notes, I mark similarities and differences. I’ll circle, “Oh, there in that psalm it had this meaning. Down here in Proverbs, it has a very similar meaning.” I’ll circle those and draw a line between those two so I can connect those and see if there’s a pattern emerging. When I’m done, I step back and look at that big messy piece of paper and try to fit it all together to see whether or not there’s some pattern that’s emerging or some unifying theme that’s growing out of it. So, that’s what I did with “wait for the Lord.”

When We Wait for God

So, here’s a glimpse into what I saw concerning the meaning of “waiting for the Lord.” I’ll just give my running glimpses and then draw some inferences for Mattie at the end.

1. Psalm 106:13: “They did not wait for his counsel.” So, the first meaning of waiting that I saw was this: when you have a decision in front of you, don’t run ahead, consulting your own intelligence, your own preparation, consulting your own expert, your own doctor first. All that’s fine, of course, but first, consult the Lord. There are a lot of texts in the Bible that criticize God’s people for running ahead to Egypt or running ahead to some helper rather than running to the Lord. So, turn to the Lord first and wait for his direction rather than just blundering ahead.

2. Psalm 33:20–21: “Our soul waits for the Lord; he is our help and our shield. For our heart is glad in him, because we trust in his holy name.” So, waiting for the Lord means not only that we pause to consult his will, searching his word, but that, once we know God’s direction, we trust him. We trust him. There’s a heart disposition to expect and wait for him to act in a trustworthy way.

3. Psalm 39:7–8: “Now, O Lord, for what do I wait? My hope is in you. Deliver me from all my transgressions.” Psalm 130:6: “My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning.” So, waiting for the Lord means not only taking time to consult him, then trusting him, but also eagerly expecting and hoping that he will act. We are looking for his action in our lives. That’s the text she quoted: the Lord “acts [works] for those who wait for him” (Isaiah 64:4).

4. Proverbs 20:22: “Do not say, ‘I will repay evil’; wait for the Lord, and he will deliver you.” In other words, since God says that he will settle accounts for you and that you should not return evil for evil, then don’t take matters into your own hands. Go about your business and wait for the Lord to bring justice. Wait for the Lord to vindicate your cause.

5. Isaiah 8:17: “I will wait for the Lord, who is hiding his face from the house of Jacob, and I will hope in him.” There are times in the Christian life when God hides his face from us and puts us to the test. Will we forget him? Will we start to build our lives on another foundation when his visage has grown dim? Or will we wait for him with patience in seasons of darkness until God returns and gives us light?

6. Romans 8:23: “We . . . who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies,” and “we wait for it with patience” (Romans 8:25). The whole posture of the Christian life is one of eagerly waiting for the coming of Christ and the redemption of our bodies. The absence of the one we love, Jesus Christ, from this earth — his absence physically from our presence and this earth — implies that the Christian life is essentially a waiting, longing, expecting, hoping life, because Christ is our supreme treasure, nothing on the earth.

7. Finally, there is a cluster of texts that make clear that this life of waiting is a life full of Spirit-dependent action. Now Mattie’s ears should perk up. For example, Titus 2:11–14: “The grace of God . . . [is] training us to . . . live self-controlled, upright, godly lives” — it sounds like Mattie is very self-controlled — “in this present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself . . . [to make us] zealous for good works.” So, this is a very active, zealous, working waiting. We are “waiting for our blessed hope,” and he makes us in that waiting zealous for good work.

Busy but Waiting

So, we step back from our very brief survey of some of those 135 instances of waiting. We step back from our collection of biblical revelation concerning the meaning of waiting and ask, Are there any common denominators running through all of these uses of the word “waiting”? And I would sum it up like this:

1. The person who waits for the Lord is first continually conscious of God — his will, his promises, his grace to help. It’s a God-conscious person, not a person who forgets God all day long. You’re not waiting for God all day long if you’re forgetting God all day long.

2. The person who waits for the Lord is desiring God to show up and reveal himself and act in whatever way is needed.

3. The person who waits for the Lord has a spirit of moment-by-moment dependence on the ever-arriving future grace of God — like a river coming toward you moment by moment. We’re depending on that.

So, for Mattie, this would mean that, in all her busyness, she doesn’t lose her consciousness of God, she doesn’t lose her continual desire for him to act, and even in her most busy moments, she realizes that, unless the Lord acts for her, in her, through her, all her busyness is in vain. So, she’s ever expecting, ever waiting for the moment-by-moment arrival of the sustaining, guiding, helping grace of God.

You, like me, have probably watched it happen. A friend or family member gets excited about Jesus, comes alive to his gospel, joins his mission. In their zeal, they make a clean cut with former sins. They gladly associate with God’s church. They evangelize unashamed. They don’t mind looking strange.

But then, slowly, like the Israelites in the wilderness, they begin to cast backward glances, as if Egypt were calling them home. They remember parts of that former life; they want some things back. And though they once didn’t mind looking strange, now they do. They feel drawn to the normal they once knew.

“The more you feel strange to the people around you, the more help you need to stay strange.”

To bring the point closer to home, you have probably not only watched it happen but felt it happen. Like me, you have probably passed through seasons where you became a little (or a lot) less strange in this world, where you traded your heavenly clothes for garments less conspicuous. You once were quite strange (and happy to be so); then, over time, you became quietly normal.

Christians are, by definition, “sojourners and exiles” in this world (1 Peter 2:11) — strangers. But we do not always live up to the name. We strangers need help staying strange.

Stay Strange

The apostle Peter was a man familiar with strangeness — familiar too with the difficulty of remaining so. As he surveyed his beloved churches, and as he considered his own soul, he saw an array of forces bent on making Christian strangers normal: the unrelenting passions of our flesh (1 Peter 2:11), a surprised and smirking world (1 Peter 4:4), a prowling devil (1 Peter 5:8).

Among these various forces, Peter seems to have been especially sensitive to the normalizing influence of the world — of friends and neighbors and family and coworkers who look at your life and “are surprised” at what you do and don’t do, what you say and don’t say (1 Peter 4:4). As the King James Version puts it, “They think it strange.” They think you strange.

However strong our identity in Christ, Peter knows that quizzical looks, awkward conversations, and constant cultural messaging can take their toll on Christian integrity. The more you feel strange to the people around you, the more help you need to stay strange. And for that, you need other strangers.

And so, amid his calls to Christian strangeness in 1 Peter 4, he describes the kind of community that keeps and cultivates that strangeness. Granted, Peter knows that not even the healthiest community can prevent all apostasy. But he also knows that if strangers do not find a home in the church, then sooner or later they will find a home in the world. Only together do we stay strange.

So, over against the passions and patterns of unbelieving society, Peter mentions four features of a faithfully strange community — churches that offer a home on the journey to heaven.

1. Strange Posture

Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. (1 Peter 4:8)

In 1 Peter 4:3, Peter lists the kinds of community sins these Christians once enjoyed and that their neighbors still enjoy: “sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry.” His vision of Christian community in verses 7–11 offers an alternative society, a place where such passions are not only renounced but replaced by God-glorifying, soul-dignifying patterns.

The first of these patterns is love — earnest, sincere, sin-covering love. Sinful communities like those of verse 3 may know some kind of friendship or camaraderie; they do not know this kind of love. Nor did we know this kind of love when we were living in “malice and . . . deceit and hypocrisy and envy and . . . slander” (1 Peter 2:1). Back then, we stirred up sin in others and ourselves. Now, however, we cover it.

“Love covers a multitude of sins” means that, when wounded, we forgive, overlook, show mercy, refuse to grow bitter. A brother snubs you; you pray, forgive in your heart, and go on loving him. A sister speaks a shameful word against you; you tell her how that felt, gently restore her, and go on loving her. Some sins we pass over; some we confront — all we cover.

Such love is strange in this world. But every time we practice it, we remind each other of the Christ who “suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18). Sin-covering love not only keeps our strange communities together — it also keeps our communities near Christ, whose nearness makes all our strangeness sweet.

2. Strange Place

Show hospitality to one another without grumbling. (1 Peter 4:9)

Peter’s charge to cover over sins implies we know each other deeply enough to wound each other deeply. It implies relationship beyond acquaintance and fellowship beyond Sunday. Healthy churches know, with Peter, that gathering once a week does not keep Christians strange. And so, throughout the week, we bring our strange posture into a strange place: our homes.

Hospitality (literally “love of strangers”) may have been more common in Peter’s world than it is in ours (at least in the West), but it was not so common that Peter felt no need to command it. Nor was it so easy that he felt no need to add that phrase “without grumbling.” Then, as now, Christian hospitality came with many costs and temptations to complain. If our love covers a multitude of sins, our hospitality covers a multitude of inconveniences.

But when we open our homes to other Christians, especially to those far different from us, we help make strangers feel a bit more at home. We invite each other into a world where, for an afternoon or evening at least, we feel welcomed, at ease, a stranger among fellow strangers — and therefore a stranger among friends. In the home, we catch a small glimpse of Home, and we leave with a little more courage to stay strange.

If our churches are going to feel like a home for Christian strangers, then we will need to open our actual homes — often and without grumbling.

3. Strange Practice

As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace. (1 Peter 4:10)

When Peter’s readers moved about in the world, they were allotted a certain place and significance. Their society paid close attention to whether someone was high-born or low-born, master or servant, man or woman, old or young — and assigned value accordingly.

But when Peter’s readers moved about in the church, these wildly different people found themselves on spiritually level ground. Without losing their earthly identities (Peter still addresses servants as servants, wives as wives, the younger as the younger), they gained a remarkable equality in Christ. “Each . . . received a gift,” each became a good steward “of God’s varied grace,” and each was called “to serve one another.”

An unbelieving neighbor observing such a church would have seen society unstratified, partiality put away, as low served high and high served low — each a steward of the King. Our own worthy Lord did not count himself too high for foot-washing. And in a hundred ways, with a hundred gifts — teaching, leading, exhorting, giving, administrating — his church continues to upend social expectations and wash unlikely feet.

Such communities still seem strange, even in supposedly egalitarian societies. No matter how much we prize equality, we each (apart from grace) have categories of people we will not gladly serve — or be served by. But when, in the church, our service extends to all and receives from all, we embody the coming kingdom, reflect the coming King, and minister the “varied grace” we need to stay strange.

4. Strange Perspective

The end of all things is at hand. . . . To [God] belong glory and dominion forever and ever. (1 Peter 4:7, 11)

The church’s strange posture, place, and practice cultivate and keep Christian strangeness, but not apart from the strangest quality of all: our perspective. So, Peter begins and ends this passage by flipping forward a few pages in the story, reminding us of history’s next and last chapter. In the end, we stay strange by remembering that we live in the end.

Christ has come, Christ has died, Christ has risen and ascended — and now no major event stands between us and Christ coming again. “The end of all things is at hand”; the end of this world is at hand. And therefore, the end of our strangeness is at hand as well.

“If strangers do not find a home in the church, then sooner or later they will find a home in the world.”

Faithful Christians cannot help but look strange to unbelievers of all sorts — progressive and conservative, urban and rural, young and old. But that doesn’t mean we fundamentally are strange, not from the standpoint of eternity. No, from the perspective of “forever and ever,” the strangest thing of all is this present world of sin, this God-ignoring age. Such was not the case in eternity past, such is not the case in heaven now, and such will not be the case everywhere soon. “To him belong glory and dominion” — and to him they will always be.

The more eternity rests on our minds, the more this world, which can seem so normal, will begin to look alien, fugitive, dislocated, strange. And so, together, we pray for God’s kingdom to come. We preach and talk of Christ’s return. And we remind each other that this world is not our home. However strange we seem here, we are not strange to God, not strange to the angels, not strange to the cloud of witnesses gone before us.

Stay strange, then, for a few moments longer, for you live on the threshold of home.

Kirollos, a young man from Alexandria, Egypt, was part of a local-church Bible study on the book of Romans. The study profoundly impacted him, revealing depths of God’s grace and sovereignty he had never seen before. Through this study, Kirollos embraced Reformed doctrine, moving away from previous beliefs strongly shaped by man-centered theology and the prosperity gospel. His passion for sound doctrine led him to enroll in the Alexandria School of Theology (AST), where he deepened his knowledge and commitment to biblical principles. This year, Kirollos is set to graduate from AST, equipped to spread the truths he has come to cherish in a context that desperately needs faithful gospel proclamation.

By God’s grace, Kirollos’s story is not unique. Today, God is raising up a growing number of men and women who long to see Egypt and the Arab-speaking world filled with the knowledge of Christ.

Egypt’s Doctrinal Decline

Christianity in Egypt dates as far back as the first century. In the early centuries of the Egyptian church, prominent theologians such as Athanasius and Cyril of Alexandria emerged, significantly contributing to Christian theology. Despite this rich heritage, however, the Egyptian church soon faced significant challenges — particularly after the Chalcedonian debate about the person of Christ in the fifth century, and even more after the Muslim conquest in the seventh century. The church in Egypt became known as the Coptic Church (“Coptic” is the name of a language descending from ancient Egyptian).

The Coptic Church constitutes about 9 or 10 percent of Egypt’s population, while Muslims make up around 90 percent. The Coptic Church, with its episcopalian governance under the patriarch of Alexandria, holds doctrines that differ significantly from Protestant beliefs, such as the mass as an atoning sacrifice, the priest as a mediator between God and man, the saints (especially the virgin Mary) as intercessors, fasting as an important means of mortifying sins, and baptism as regenerative. Protestants in Egypt form only about 1 percent of the population, with the majority of them Presbyterian (at least in name!).

The Protestant movement in Egypt began with Moravian missionaries in 1752, followed by the Anglican Church Mission Society in 1825, which focused on Bible distribution and education. Then the American Presbyterian Mission began in 1854, establishing the first presbytery in 1860 and a theological seminary in 1863. Tadrus Yusif became the first Reformed Egyptian minister in 1871. For the next century or so, the Presbyterian work was marked by vibrant churches, sound biblical literature, and a church constitution based on the Westminster Confession of Faith.

In the last few decades of the twentieth century, however, doctrinal decline and a shift toward the social gospel weakened the Presbyterian Church in Egypt. Over time, man-centered theology became rampant. Foundational Reformed doctrines, such as the doctrines of grace, were lost or even abhorred. Liberal professors and ideas invaded academia. Feminism spread throughout the church. And expository preaching was replaced by shallow motivational speeches, leading to a loss of the gospel message. This was the state of the Protestant church around the year 2000.

However, as the Scripture says, “But God . . .”

Sovereign Resurgence

God, being rich in mercy, has begun to visit the church in Egypt over the last two and a half decades. In 2005, the Alexandria School of Theology (AST) was founded under the Anglican church of Egypt, with a missionary from the Presbyterian Church in America as its first principal. This seminary has played a pivotal role in reintroducing sound doctrine to the Egyptian church. AST, with its emphasis on Reformed doctrines and solid biblical teaching, started training a new generation of theologians and pastors. Graduates from the school, along with other like-minded believers, have now begun to reintroduce faithful teaching to local churches throughout the country.

“God, being rich in mercy, has begun to visit the church in Egypt.”

One significant change was seen in Sidi Beshr Kebly Presbyterian Church in Alexandria, the church that introduced Kirollos to the sovereign God of Romans (and the church where I serve). Members of the church who studied at AST later became elders and leaders in the church, helping to move it toward robust Reformed doctrine. Soon, the church began preaching expository sermons and teaching on the five solas, the doctrines of grace, and the sovereignty of God.

Though this resurgence of Reformed theology was met with opposition and accusations of rigidity and arrogance (from both within and without), the church has been kept from division and has remained faithful to biblical doctrine, by God’s sustaining grace. At the same time, we became increasingly aware of the great need to bring these doctrines to others.

Publishing Sound Doctrine

In 2014, four lecturers at AST (two from my church — including myself — and two brothers from other churches) started to talk about bringing Reformed doctrine to the wider church in Egypt and the Arabic-speaking world. Eventually, we started a new teaching ministry named “El-Soora” (“The Standard,” from Romans 6:17) under the governance of our local church in Alexandria, focused on publishing, multimedia, and conferences. Our first major event in 2015 featured Don Carson in Alexandria, teaching a seminar titled “What Is the Gospel?” From this encouraging beginning, partnerships with like-minded ministries — such as The Gospel Coalition, Ligonier, Desiring God, Reformation Heritage Books, 9Marks, Crossway, and P&R — have furthered our reach.

God has been using AST and El-Soora in an amazing way to bring back Reformed doctrines to Egypt, but he has also quickened other brothers and sisters in Egypt and beyond with the same convictions. If the number of Reformed Christians in Egypt numbered in the tens in the early 2000s, now it is in the hundreds, if not more. Twenty years ago, finding sound Christian literature in Arabic could be very difficult. But now, translation efforts have made many sound books available in Arabic, and the number is increasing every year. Even more exciting are the Egyptian leaders who are writing articles and books in Arabic and speaking at churches and conferences in Egypt. One elder in a church has produced hymns based on Reformed doctrines from the Scriptures. Egyptian professors are also teaching Reformed doctrines at seminaries inside and outside of Egypt.

In 2019, El-Soora helped to start an annual Reformed conference. These gatherings have provided a platform to expose more leaders to Reformed theology and demonstrate that such doctrines align with the global church and the teachings of the early missionaries to Egypt. The conference also offers a safe environment for distributing and selling Reformed books from El-Soora and other publishers. By God’s grace, attendance has increased yearly, with 350 attendees at the last conference and hundreds of books sold.

Praying for a Harvest

Today, while truly Reformed churches remain rare in Egypt, interest is growing. The movement, though young, is expanding. The number of Reformed Christians is small in a country of more than 110 million people, but we can testify that God has visited us in Egypt. He did not leave us in our blindness. In the book of Acts, the church started with only 120 people, but by God’s grace the gospel went out, many churches were planted, and the word of God was taught and preached through the whole Roman world, even in antagonistic contexts (a reality that sounds familiar to us). “Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart” (2 Corinthians 4:1).

As our Lord said, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest” (Matthew 9:37–38). Despite the progress, we still see a pressing need for well-trained Reformed teachers and pastors in Egypt and beyond. The hunger for sound teaching and a gospel-centered pastorate is growing. Many believers struggle to find healthy local churches in which they and their families may be cared for as Christ’s sheep. We continue to pray for a revival in local churches and for God to raise more laborers for his harvest, confident that Christ is building his church and that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

One of the most well-known quotes about the Puritans comes from controversial journalist and critic H.L. Menken, who in 1925 claimed that the Puritans had “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”1 Recently, there has been a resurgence of interest in the Puritans’ understanding of joy, with essays and even whole books dedicated to the topic.2 In the most recent and robust treatment on the subject, Nathaniel Warne rightly points out that the Puritans’ fear was not that someone might be happy, but rather that someone might live and “not experience the true and rich happiness that they were created to experience by God.”3 Indeed, the Puritans may have been more concerned about the happiness of humanity than any other group in the history of the world. They understood that true happiness is not a flippant circumstantial feeling, but a deep and abiding joy in God that draws its source from the fountain of joy: God himself.

While it is easy to pick on secular historians for missing the link between Puritanism and joy, my experience — as someone hailing from the confessional Reformed wing of the Protestant house — suggests something more surprising: whole churches and traditions with Presbyterian and Reformed heritages can sometimes miss the reality that joy in God is a central tenant celebrated in their own confessional standards. The Westminster Shorter Catechism (hereafter WSC) begins with a central question that uses superlative language: “What is the chief end of man?” Answer: “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.”

By exploring the historical context behind the crafting of the Westminster Standards and specifically the WSC, this article will argue that the Puritans considered the pursuit of God’s glory and our joy in him to be central to the Christian life. It will also show how this joy-saturated theological tradition was inherited by and continued to spread through later figures, especially Jonathan Edwards. Finally, it will end by drawing out two practical lessons we can learn from the Puritans’ focus on joy in God.

On July 1, 1643, Parliament convened the first of 1,330 meetings that would take place over the next decade (1643–1652) at Westminster Abbey. This group, known as the Westminster Assembly, was a gathering of “Learned and Godlie divines . . . for the Settling of the Government and the Litturgie of the Church of England.” The publication of the Minutes and Papers of the Westminster Assembly — containing, among other things, a multivolume transcription of the official minutes of the Assembly — has recently provided us the clearest window revealing what went into the crafting of the Westminster Confession and the Larger and Shorter catechisms.

For example, we know that the Assembly delegated the drafting of the WSC to a committee of at least eight members — which included Chairman Herbert Palmer, who had compiled his own catechism — and that the first debate on the Shorter Catechism took place on October 21, 1647, the same day as the last debate on the Larger Catechism.4 We also know that, following the completion of a draft of the WSC on November 8, 1647, they debated whether they would “follow the standard format of expounding the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer and Apostles’ Creed, or that those texts would be appended to the shorter catechism” and that the Assembly opted for the second option.5 We even know that the WSC was finally approved on November 16, 1647, and that, for final approval, Parliament instructed them on November 26, 1647, “to append Scripture proofs to both catechisms.”6

Still, despite shedding light on countless facets of the Assembly previously unknown, there are gaps in our understanding of precisely why they made some decisions. There are whole days in the record where the scribe of the minutes simply records, “Debate of the lesser catechism,” or “Proceeded in the debate of the catechism,” or even shorter “Deb. Catchisme [sic].”7 In many cases, then, we must infer — from the historical context and the emphases within the broader theological tradition of the Puritan movement — what motivated them in their various decisions on individual catechetical questions. As we explore the divines’ historical context and broader theological tradition, we get clarity on the importance of joy in God in the WSC and Puritan theology.

Orthodoxy’s Beating Heart

The calling of the Westminster Assembly to redefine and refine orthodoxy in England followed a tumultuous decade of reform under King Charles I and Archbishop William Laud. The king and archbishop persecuted members of the Puritan movement and sought to move the Church of England in a distinctly more Catholic direction. Against this backdrop, the Puritans gathered in 1643 to clarify what they believed were central theological truths of Christian doctrine and life. Among their concerns was to emphasize that Reformed orthodoxy was not merely doctrinal or behavioral, but experiential or affectional; that is, true, vital Christianity embraces love for God and joy in God.

The Puritans had witnessed firsthand a conformist Christianity that was devoid of a vital experiential emphasis. In the 1630s, the conformist clergy in the Church of England had promoted a Christianity that was performative, emphasizing liturgy, ritual, and ceremony. This was most clearly seen in how conformist clergy redefined the central tasks of pastoral ministry. In stark contrast to the Puritans, these ministers claimed that on Sundays pastors were chiefly called by God to lead in liturgy, read Scripture, and administer the sacraments.

The Puritans responded by arguing that pastors are “physicians of souls” and therefore must move beyond a surface-level reading of Scripture and recitation of words. In short, they must pierce the hearts of their hearers with the Scriptures. What were the ministers’ tools, their proverbial scalpel and surgical instruments? God had equipped them and called them to shepherd God’s people through deep experiential preaching to the heart. Through their powerful preaching, the Spirit would take the word, apply it to men’s consciences, transform their hearers’ affections, and give them a new joy in God himself.

“Do not deprive God of his glory by refusing to exult in him while you worship. It is the reason you were created.”

The fact that question 1 of the WSC begins by linking the glory of God and our joy is no accident. Great thought and care were given not only to the content but to the order of these Standards. The order highlights that they believed joy and the pursuit of God’s glory were primary. And the fact that these two key topics were treated in the same catechetical question signals that the Puritans believed the glory of God and the joy of the believer were linked. In the minds of the Puritans, the first duty of believers is to enjoy God and to glorify God. And these two duties are not separate callings but one glorious opportunity — believers glorify God through their very enjoyment of him.

In this way, the first question reflects the Puritans’ pastoral concerns within their historical context. It also shows that joy in God was a central tenant of their entire theological system. For the Puritans, the believer’s joy was not a cherry on top of the ice-cream sundae of the Christian life, but the very cream that permeates the entire dessert. Indeed, the way believers glorify God is by showing that communion with him is both the most satisfying thing in all the universe and the very reason they were created.

Joy Before Westminster and Beyond

The emphasis on personal enjoyment of and communion with Christ goes all the way back to the founding of Puritanism itself. William Perkins, the “father of Puritanism” and author of the first Puritan preaching manual, The Art of Prophesying (prophecy being the old Puritan word for preaching), used the analogy of the preachers as bakers, carefully slicing bread and feeding those in need of spiritual nourishment. What was the end of this feeding? It was not merely transactional, but deeply personal — to discover Christ himself.8 Perkins was not alone. Thomas Watson, in his Body of Practical Divinity, says, the “end of Scripture” is to obtain “a clear discovery of Christ” and to “quicken our Affections” to him.9 Likewise, John Owen wrote that a believer reads Scripture so that he “might find all that is necessary unto his happiness.”10

This conviction explains why the Puritans often referred to communion with Christ as delight in “spiritual marriage.”11 Particularly in the sermons and writings on the Song of Solomon, they used the language of “ravishment” to describe the love of Christ for them.12 Tom Schwanda points out that their reading of the Song of Solomon led them to speak “freely of the intimacy and joys of spiritual marriage with Jesus, as the divine Bridegroom,” as they expressed their “delight and enjoyment of God.”13

This theme of joy’s centrality to the Christian life continued in figures like Matthew Henry and his The Pleasantness of a Religious Life (1714). It finds its fullest expression, however, in the writings of America’s greatest theologian, Jonathan Edwards. Toward the end of his life, Edwards wrote a book that was published seven years after he died. In Edwards’s Dissertation Concerning the End for Which God Created the World (1765), he argues that a believer’s joy is found supremely in making much of God. The very essence of “joy,” according to Edwards, is “the exulting of the heart in God’s glory.”14 Edwards argues that three seemingly independent realities — God’s seeking of his glory, his seeking of our joy, and our seeking of our joy by seeking God’s glory — are actually intrinsically connected in God’s ordering of the universe. By seeking his glory and encouraging those he created to do the same, God seeks the everlasting and ever-increasing joy of his creatures.15

Two Lessons for Today

What can Christians learn from this study of the centrality of joy in Puritanism? The first lesson is for Christians living in an increasingly post-Christian society. The Puritans’ emphasis on finding our joy in God is completely countercultural to our society’s understanding of joy. The message from the culture is that joy comes from being made much of and establishing one’s own self-made identity using the tools of the age (including, first and foremost, social media). The Puritans clear this cultural fog with the sunbeams of the gospel: true joy comes when we make much of God and enjoy our new identity in Christ. They challenge us to see that the pursuit of God’s glory is indeed enjoyable; the greatest joy one can have in life is to make much of him.

The second lesson is for Christians living and ministering in churches that have experientially (at least in part) drifted from their own theological traditions. The Puritans’ emphasis on joy in God contrasts with what some Christians (indeed, some Reformed Christians) think of as the point of worship — namely, to shrug off motivations of self-interest. I have heard many well-meaning Christians say on Sunday mornings, “We are here not for ourselves, but to give worship to God.” While there is indeed a sinful selfishness, the Puritans point us to a holy, God-designed self-interest: Christians are by God’s very design to seek their own good in glorifying God.

Let us never forget this: we walk into worship on Sunday mornings to glorify God by finding our joy in him. As songs are sung, Scripture is read, prayers are prayed, liturgy is conducted, the word is preached, and the sacraments are received, make it your aim to go vertical with God — to be satisfied by God and enjoy him. As Edwards argues, since God’s “happiness consists in enjoying and rejoicing in himself . . . so does also the creature’s happiness . . . [consist] in rejoicing in God; by which also God is magnified and exalted.”16 Do not deprive God of his glory by refusing to exult in him while you worship. It is the reason you were created. Indeed, the reason we enjoy making much of God is because God designed us this way in his image. Just as he takes great delight in making much of himself, so we follow him and glorify his name.

Audio Transcript

Worldliness — a theme addressed many times here over the years. Especially worldly media. I just glanced at the APJ book here, on pages 291–307, to be reminded of how big a theme worldliness has been for us over the years, Pastor John. A permanent challenge for the church. But not one every preacher wants to address in the pulpit, it seems, according to this note of concern from an anonymous young woman, who sees worldliness creeping in around her, in the lives of the professing Christians in her life.

She wrote us this: “Pastor John, thank you for the innumerable ways in which this ministry blesses me and other Christians around the world, as well as for your and Tony’s books, which also contribute to that. I don’t want to exclude myself; I am sure I also have blind spots, but when I see the ways in which Christians today use their free time and celebrate events in their lives, my heart feels heavy and saddened because of what I perceive to be worldliness. The celebrations are just like those of unbelievers; they often go to concerts by popular artists, stay out late on Saturday nights, then skip church the next day or arrive one hour late. They’re usually absent from prayer meetings. They vacation without giving Sunday worship so much as a moment of consideration. Christ is not present in most of their conversations.

“Some of these individuals are locally seen as mature, model Christians. My own church has solid Bible- and Christ-centered preaching. Yet I don’t see the subject of worldliness mentioned often. Nor do I see it even on websites with solid theology. In APJ 603, titled “What Qualifies as Worldly Music?” you said, ‘Worldly isn’t a sound; worldly is leaving Christ out. That is why it is called worldly and not Christ-ly. And it approves of what he disapproves. It is called worldly because it treasures the world above the one who made the world.’ Could you expand on that in relation to my concerns above? What can Christians do to encourage one another in faith and treasuring Christ? I am saddened and worried about the future of the church and Christianity because of what I see being normalized in the church today.”

I share your sadness and your concern for the church. In fact, I see most of my ministry as a ministry devoted to weaning the church off of the world and its pleasures onto Christ and his pleasures. I try to speak and write in such a way as to create spiritual taste buds in people’s hearts, so that they find distasteful things that don’t honor God and find desirable the things that do.

We Long for Revival

I think what we are longing for together has historically been called “revival” — a work of God in the church first. We call it “awakening” when it touches the world, but in the church first, “revival,” a work of God that causes the hearts of God’s people to burn — like in Luke 24:32: “Did not our hearts burn within us when we walked with him?” Revival causes our hearts to burn with love for God’s word and love for God’s people, love for God’s service, all rooted in an increasingly intense love for God himself, and for communion with God in prayer and meditation, with a growing delight in holiness and a growing horror at sin (especially our own), and a growing concern for lost people.

I think one of the greatest signs of worldliness is little concern for the reality of hell and people going there because they don’t believe, and in all of that, a greater intensification of our sense of spiritual truth and spiritual realities. That’s my sense of what revival is and what the church needs today. This is a sovereign work of God. We can pray toward it and we can preach toward it, teach toward it, write toward it, embody in our individual lives as much of it as possible, but in the end, it’s a gift God gives to his church with irresistible, sovereign power, and I agree that we are certainly in need of it.

Why Such Worldliness?

When I was in college, a popular little book by J.B. Phillips — called Your God Is Too Small — was very effective in many of our experiences and lives. It was a provocative little book that pleaded with the church to stop treating God as though he were a side issue in life and to wake up to his massive centrality — the fact that all things are “from him and through him and to him” (Romans 11:36). It had a significant awakening effect upon me.

“We can pray toward revival, but in the end, it’s a gift God gives to his church with irresistible, sovereign power.”

About forty years ago, David Wells wrote a book called No Place for Truth, which made the case that in the American church, God rests far too lightly on the people of God. He doesn’t have weight. It was the same heart cry from Dr. Wells as from J.B. Phillips. God is marginal. God has little weight in our worship services and little weight in our lives. He’s taken lightly. He’s simply one among many factors rather than the all-consuming factor, and I have thought that if I were to write a book today with a similar burden, it might have this title: Your Christ Is Too Cheap, Your Heaven Is Too Distant, Your Earth Is Too Big.

Christ Too Cheap

When I say, “Your Christ is too cheap,” I have in mind Philippians 3:8. Do the people who flirt with the world and seem to be totally at home in secular entertainments that are void of God, Christ, Christian morality — do those people really say, with the apostle Paul, “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ”?

For Paul, Christ was the supreme and all-pervasive treasure of his life, and I would ask all of us, How does our treasuring of Christ compare to our treasuring of entertainments offered us by the world? Where are our affections? Because that is the key bottom issue. Where are our affections? Not first our behaviors, but our heart.

Heaven Too Distant

When I say, “Your heaven is too distant,” I mean that the reality of the afterlife is simply not operational in the daily mindset of many believers and virtually all unbelievers. But as I read the New Testament, the call to lay up for ourselves treasures in heaven and not on earth is pervasive (Matthew 6:19–21). We are called to set our minds on things that are above (Colossians 3:1–2). We are called to look to things that are eternal, not transient (2 Corinthians 4:18). We are called to bank our hope on the rewards of the resurrection, not the rewards of this life (1 Timothy 6:17–19).

Heaven is a dominant, life-shaping reality in the New Testament, but a minor reality in most people’s lives today. It is too distant and, therefore, ineffective, leaving us sitting ducks for worldliness.

Earth Too Big

When I say, “Your earth is too big,” I mean that people are simply not thinking clearly when it comes to how tiny this earth is — not only in the universe, which is not very significant, but in the scope of eternity, which is very significant. I wonder if people ever think that, in one hundred years, virtually every person alive today will be gone — eight billion people gone. There is a complete turnover of humanity on the earth every ten decades, which seems very short to me now because I’m in my eighth. The number of people who live longer than one hundred is 0.0002% of the population. It is statistically insignificant. Every one hundred years, there is a complete turnover of humanity. Virtually everybody who was 22 years old when I was born is gone, and in 22 years, everybody born before me will be gone. That turnover has been happening for thousands of years.

We tend to think of humanity in terms that don’t really fit individual experience. Humanity has been around for thousands of years on the earth, but the earth has been home to individual humans no more than one hundred years and, in most cases, way shorter than one hundred years. And after that brief eighty to one hundred years (or less), every single one of those humans enters eternity and, compared to eternity, those one hundred years on earth were nothing. The Bible calls it a vapor (James 4:14). It lasts two seconds when you breathe it out on a cold winter morning.

If people were rational, they would not be earthly minded; they would be heavenly minded. And if they were heavenly minded, they would not find their greatest pleasures in the entertainments produced by earthly minded people. So, we pray and we teach and we live with the hope that God would break in with sovereign, reviving power, and cause his word to be so loved that it will no longer be, as Jesus says, choked out “by the cares and riches and pleasures” of this world (Luke 8:14).

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.

After giving my name to the first man holding a huge ancient book, I ask the other — the gatekeeper — where I can find the green room. He looks blank. “Where do your VIPs go?”

“There are only three,” he mutters.

I ask for my lanyard. Same blank expression. I press him, “A name tag?”

“There is only One Name in this country.”

He shows little concern when I ask him how people will know who I am. Then the thought occurs to me that this might not be a very organized affair after all. I turn back to the bookkeeper, watching as he continues to scan the book, which he holds like a feather. I repeat my last name.

He doesn’t remove his eyes from the pages. “It’s not in alphabetical order.”

“Excuse me!” The interruption comes from my taxi driver, who has stepped forward to try his chances. “Mr. Martin George Dart of Hackney Road,” he barely manages through quivers.

In half a second, the bookkeeper nods. “Yes, we have you here, Mr. Dart. Do go in.”

My mouth drops open in disbelief. My taxi driver removes his cap and presses it to his chest. His eyes well as he takes another step and then disappears.

Two Different Fames

The gatekeeper looks at me with sympathy. “Can’t you just let me in?” I beg. “I’m pretty well-known on earth . . . in the right evangelical circles, of course.”

“Fame in this country and fame on earth are two quite different things.”1

“Okay. Just take me to a place where I can find a wider sphere of usefulness for the talents God has given me.”2

He shakes his head. “It’s not like that. You are not needed here at all.”

“Not needed?” I gulp uncomfortably.

“Wanted — yes. But not needed. And there is no grand platform for your talents. Only forgiveness for having perverted them.”3

I recoil in shock. “Perverted?” I search his face, seeking relief. His eyes are small but crystal blue — pools of wisdom.

He returns my gaze. “When you started out, there was genuine concern for souls. But slowly you learned how to produce a response — even applause. In time you fully cashed in on the gospel, using Christ’s name as your means and merchandise to further your own popularity.”

I defend myself. “No! For the gospel I labored. Day in, day out. I traveled miles and miles, speaking and teaching till I was hoarse. I slogged through meeting after meeting. I exhausted myself. In ministry I gave, gave, gave!”

“Yes, you worked hard! You hardly just sat at the foot of the cross, resting. Instead, you churned out social-media posts, podcasts, books, conference messages. To keep your followers, readers, invitations, and prestige. In it all, were you really much different from those of whom Paul writes — preaching the gospel out of selfish ambition?4 Your endless teaching — it spoke the name of Christ, but you treasured mostly your own.

“There were sparks of sincerity, of course.” His hand rests on my shoulder. “I say this to help you understand, before you enter through the gate. ‘There is no heaven with a little of hell in it. We can’t retain this or that of the devil in our hearts or our pockets. Out Satan must go, every hair and feather.’5 This country cannot, and does not, tolerate self-idolatry.”

Enter Empty-Handed

His words are arrows. The pain is horrific, but I feel no anger. Only a terrible realization that everything he speaks is true. I see myself as I was on earth. One who traveled with a little box to serve as a portable stage. I can see now that my heart spent many of my earth-days standing on that little box, teaching, yet inserting my name over and over again.

I blush deeply. Alas! My self-promotion filled not just one street of milling shoppers and bystanders, but with the technological unification of the planet, my desperate advertisements of self echoed down feeds worldwide. Soapboxes constructed of software.

“You are not alone,” he says next. “Many even in quiet faithfulness long for recognition, tempted to bitterness when it doesn’t arrive.6 You wanted glory, and that was right and natural. The human life is rightly bent on making glory. But not for oneself. That’s where you went wrong. The glory is for the One Name. Even the Son, when ministering among us in our own humanity, did not glorify himself.7 How then could you seek glory for yourself? But you will see now. For it has been said that the kernel of what we were really seeking on earth, even in our most misguided wishes, will be here, beyond expectation, waiting for us in ‘the High Countries.’”8

I am on my knees, weeping. Despair rips at my heart. But then the bookkeeper suddenly cries, “Here it is! Your name! It was one of the last. You may go in now!”

Relief washes over me. “Thank you! Thank you!” Pleased to begin feeling myself again, I rise and gather my belongings. The officials look helplessly at me.

“Those must be left.”

“But what of my books? Won’t they be useful here?”

“No.”

“Can’t I take in my certificates? I paid the earth to have them framed. What about my robes? My titles? My subscribers? My accolades?” I hold them out like trophies.

My friend the gatekeeper shakes his head. “You cannot take all luggage with you on all journeys; on this journey even your right hand and your right eye may be among the things you have to leave behind.9 Will you be like the man who came and spent many years seeking the place in this country where his name resounds? He never found it. Because only One Name resounds here. He was devastated to find that all his earth-strivings were pointless. He was one of those who said, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do mighty works in your name?’ The reply was, ‘I never knew you.’10 This man’s disappointment was so bitter.” The gatekeeper’s eyes blaze. “Do not be that man!”

I nod mutely, terrified. And I enter. Empty-handed. There is a voice of welcome:

Come and see. He is endless. Come and feed.11

Doorkeepers

There is light. So much light. Yet it is different from light on Earth — it is Pure Essence. And the sweetest music — music ears were made to hear. And the lyrics — his Name. I walk, following the music to what seems to be its source. The center of this new country.

Doors loom before me, and a woman loiters there, almost unseen. She bows and greets me. “I am a doorkeeper. I stand here at the door before the courts of the Lord.”

If envy were possible in that land, I am sure I would feel it. John Milton foresaw her joyous labors when he wrote,

Thousands at his bidding speed     And post o’er Land and Ocean without rest:     They also serve who only stand and wait.

Here is a soul that longs, faints for the courts of the Lord.12 She waits close to The Glory — unseen, lingering in the Presence. She is the lowly swallow nesting close to the throne.

The reality of it all floods my mind. There are no evangelical celebrities here, only doorkeepers. It comes with regret. Oh that I had lived with my heart more aligned with the psalmist! “I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness.”13 And I did dwell in “the tents of wickedness,” as my heart was bent on erecting my own royal pavilion. I grieve that the humility of Spurgeon was not mine. “If he shall leave me to be a doorkeeper in his house, I will cheerfully bless him for his grace in permitting me to do anything in his service.”

I wonder at my own slowness. If my eternity is to behold him on a throne of jasper and carnelian — to declare without ceasing his praises, holiness, and worthiness — why on earth have I cultivated habits so opposed to this? In my short, numbered days, why did I not practice my heart into being a doorkeeper? “Blessed is the one you choose and bring near, to dwell in your courts! We shall be satisfied with the goodness of your house, the holiness of your temple!”14

I do not delay; I enter — but alas! As is the case with dreams, one awakes at the most anticipated moment! But I wake with a new resolve: to live for the chief end of my Eternity. To practice my heart into being a doorkeeper. To be thirsty for the glory and presence of the One Name. Thus, heaven will be only a great satisfaction, not a great disappointment.

If I were in your shoes, and a new preacher comes to town and presumes to stand in this sacred place where the word of God has been so faithfully proclaimed by your pastor, I would want to know, “Who are you?” Not your name. Not your address. Not your job. Not your education. But, “What do you stand for? What are you committed to? What’s your standard of truth? What’s your authority? What’s your aim in coming here?”

Let me begin with three statements about my commitments so that you can decide whether you want to lean in or not.

Committed to Scripture, God — and You

First, I come with a total allegiance and submission to the Bible — the Christian Scriptures — as our only infallible authority. Which means I come to you with no authority except what I am able to see in the Scriptures, to savor in my own soul, and to show in the power of the Holy Spirit for your building up. If you don’t see what I say in the Bible, don’t believe it just because I say it.

Second, my life mission statement is “I exist to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ.” Which means: I’m not in Cincinnati and in this church willy-nilly, or aimlessly, or to tickle anybody’s ears. I am here on a mission. My aim in this message is to speak God’s word to you in the hope and the prayer that your passion for the supremacy of God in every area of your life will soar, with joy, through Jesus Christ. Which leads me to the third commitment (about how God’s supremacy and your joy fit together).

Third, I am driven by a particular truth that became clear to me from Scripture about 56 years ago (when I was 22 years old), which has a profound and pervasive effect upon the way I think and feel about the glory of God and the joy of the human soul. That truth is this: God is most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in him, especially through your suffering in the path of love.

In other words, when you experience the living God himself (not his precious gifts, but himself), through his Son, Jesus Christ, as so satisfying to your soul that no suffering in your life can rob you of that satisfaction in God, you make him look great! Which he is. I call that kind of joy “serious joy.” You can hear what I mean by “serious joy” in Paul’s phrase in 2 Corinthians 6:10: “sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.”

How Can We Be Freed?

Therefore, under those three commitments, I invite you to look with me in the Scriptures at Hebrews 12:1–2. And what I hope to show is that this kind of joy is the spring of love — and I mean love for people, especially the kind of love that is very costly. So, the question I am trying to answer is, How can I be set free from selfishness so that — at any cost to myself — I will love other people in a way that makes Christ look great?

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

We’re not going to focus on everything in the text, but rather almost entirely on these words in verse 2: “for the joy that was set before him [he] endured the cross.” But let’s at least get these words situated in the flow of thought so that they don’t dangle in isolation.

Run, Christian, Run

Chapter 11 celebrates the faith of Old Testament saints who, though they are dead, yet continue to speak (Hebrews 11:4). That is, their lives remain a living witness to us about the value of living by faith. So, you can see at the beginning of chapter 12, in verse 1, that the writer pictures us as running our own race, with the lives of these saints, as it were, crying out to us, “You can do this! You can make it to the end! We finished our race in faith. You can finish yours. Don’t quit!”

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses [all those stories from chapter 11], let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.

In other words, life is a marathon. It’s not a 100-meter dash. It is long, and there are hills that make your muscles burn to the point where they are screaming at you, “You can’t finish this!” And all these witnesses are saying, “Yes, you can!” There may be hills and sleet and heat and wind in your face. But the book of Hebrews was written to help us finish in faith and love.

And verse 1 says that you don’t run this marathon with an overcoat on your shoulders and that you don’t run this marathon with performance-enhancing drugs in your veins. Do you see that in the middle of verse 1? “Let us lay aside every weight, and sin.” We’re not stupid, and we don’t cheat. It’s stupid to wear an overcoat, and it’s cheating to use drugs. Weights and sins.

I tried to raise four sons and one daughter in the Lord. And I recall times of them wanting to do something I disapproved of. They would ask, “What’s wrong with it?” With this text in my mind, I would say, “Don’t ask about your music, your movies, your parties, your habits, ‘What’s wrong with it?’ Ask instead, ‘Does it help me run the race? Does it help me to run with all my focus and energy and love for Jesus? Does it help me to be the best Christ-exalting marathon runner I can be?’” Don’t set your sights on the minimal standard of avoiding cheating. Set your sights on the maximal standard: “How can I be the most devoted, Christ-exalting runner possible?”

So, the main point of this text is this: Run! Get rid of all the sins that you can. Get rid of all the weights and hindrances that you can. Take hold of the marathon of your life, and don’t just set the pitifully low standard that asks, “What’s against the rules?” But rather: “How can I train, and eat, and think, and dress to be the best runner possible? How can I live my life and finish my course with maximal, Christ-exalting faith and sacrificial love?”

Selfishness-Killing Power

Verse 2 now gives us perhaps the deepest answer to that question. You are going to face the hills, and cold, and heat, and wind, and the burning in your legs, and the thundering of your heart and the thoughts of hopelessness about finishing — you are going to face them like this:

. . . looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

You are going to look to Jesus as you run. And what you are going to focus on, as you look to him, is this: He too ran. His race was 33 years long. And it ended with a horrific gauntlet of opposition and suffering — namely, with the unspeakable torture of the cross and the immeasurable shame of such a death. He ran it. He finished it. How?

“Go deep with Jesus until he is the all-satisfying joy set before you at the end of your marathon.”

Mark the words in the middle of verse 2: “for the joy that was set before him [he] endured the cross, despising the shame.” And surely you will agree that the marathon Jesus ran was a marathon of love. He ran the last several hundred yards of the marathon with nails in his hands and his feet, and a spear in his side, and a crown of thorns on his head. Surely this was the greatest act of love that has ever been performed in the history of the world — because he was dying for our sins, not his own.

My question for my life — and your life — is, How can I run like this? How can I be set free from my selfishness so that — at any cost to myself — I will love other people in a way that makes this Christ look great? And the central answer of this verse is that the greatest act of love that was ever performed was performed “for the joy that was set before him.”

So, perhaps you can see where I got the title for this message, namely, “How Is Joy the Root of Sacrificial Love?” Verse 2 teaches us that Jesus was sustained through the cross and through the shame by the joy that he anticipated at the end of his marathon. That does not mean that there is no powerful, sustaining experience of joy on the marathon itself, that there is only joy at the end.

And I say that because the book of Hebrews defines faith, by which we run the marathon, like this: “Faith is the assurance [or substance] of things hoped for” (Hebrews 11:1). Which means that the full, complete, all-satisfying, everlasting joy in God that we are hoping for at the end of our marathon becomes, in some measure, an experience right now, by faith, in the midst of our “cross,” in the midst of our “shame” — our marathon. That’s why it has such selfishness-killing, cross-bearing, shame-enduring power.

Selfishness Wouldn’t Die

What if someone says, “Doesn’t that turn the love of Christ, at the cross, into selfishness? If he’s just seeking his own joy at the end of the race, is he loving us?” The answer is this: in being sustained through the cross by the joy at the end of his race, he’s not being selfish, because selfishness is when you use other people to get your own happiness.

But nobody calls it selfishness when you’re willing to die to include other people in your happiness. This joy, which Jesus was sustained by at the end of his marathon, was precisely designed to be shared by everyone for whom he died. It was the joy of being surrounded by countless blood-bought people supremely happy in Jesus.

Which means that for you and me, in all the sufferings of our marathon, it is not selfish — it is love — to be sustained by the hope of everlasting joy in God, into which we are bringing as many people as we can. That’s what the marathon is for — joy in Christ, sustaining you through the sacrifices of love, that makes Christ look so satisfying, others want to go with you.

So, let’s ask this question: If this joy that’s set before us — this spring, overflowing from the future back into the present — is so powerful in producing and supporting the sacrifices of love, and if this is not only the way Jesus was sustained in the greatest act of love, but the way we should be sustained in our acts of love, are there examples elsewhere in the book of Hebrews that would show us what this experience is like?

Yes, there are. I’ll show you two.

Joyfully Plundered People

First, consider Hebrews 10:32–34. Listen for echoes of “for the joy that was set before him [he] endured the cross.”

Recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, and sometimes being partners with those so treated. For you had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one.

Cincinnati, where you live, and Minneapolis, where I live, need to see Christians like this more than anything. Some of them had been thrown into prison. The others had to decide whether to identify with them as fellow Christians and risk the plundering of the property or to go underground and save their skin. They conquered their fear and selfishness, and they took the risk of visiting the prison and paid the price of plundered property.

How did that happen? How did they become people like that? How did they overcome their selfishness and their love of comfort and security? The answer is that joy streamed from hope in the future back into the present and sustained them and empowered them for love. Let’s read it in verse 34: “For you had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property [How? Where did that costly compassion come from? Answer:], since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one.”

This was the joy that was set before them. They might lose their reputation. They might lose their houses. They might lose their positions. They might lose their lives. But those were not the spring of their joy. That was with Christ, in the future, streaming back into the present, by faith, making love possible. If this world is your treasure, rather than the immeasurable pleasures of being with Christ forever, you will not be able to love in a way that makes Christ look great. But if Christ is the all-satisfying joy set before you, you will.

Joyfully Reproached Leader

Here’s the second example: Hebrews 11:24–26, a description of how Moses was able to choose the hard path of loving the people of Israel rather than staying in the comforts of Pharaoh’s palace.

By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God [like Jesus chose the cross] than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin [there are sinful pleasures, but they’re not the ones we’re after, because they are too short — they only last eighty years or so]. He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward.

This was the joy set before him. More precious, more satisfying than all the treasures of Egypt was the reward of finishing his marathon with Israel through the wilderness — through the cross, the shame — and joining all those Old Testament witnesses in the presence of the Messiah.

Go Deep with Jesus

My concluding plea is this: Get to know Jesus Christ. Go deep with Jesus until he is the supreme Treasure of your life and the all-satisfying joy set before you at the end of your marathon.

Go deep with the vastness of his wisdom, far greater than Solomon’s.
Go deep with the greatness of his power, upholding the universe with his mind.
Go deep with his majesty, this very day above all governments and armies.
Go deep with the tenderness of his kindness — blessing children and everyone like them.
Go deep with the uniqueness of his words — no one ever spoke like this man.
Go deep with the length of his patience, perfect toward all penitent sinners.
Go deep with the suffering of his love, even for enemies.
Go deep with his mercy, touching lepers, putting ears back on to attacking soldiers.

Get to know him until he is the joy set before you at the end of your marathon.

If he becomes that for you, three things will happen: (1) Your joy, even in the sufferings of this life, will overflow. (2) That joy will sustain a life of sacrificial love for others. And (3) that joy-sustained love will make Jesus look like the all-satisfying Savior that he is.

Thirty-seven hours after my father died, my phone rang. “Dan, your mother only has hours to live. You need to come to the hospital now.”

Even now, over three years later, my heart rate speeds up as I recall the ICU doctor’s words. The first words I spoke after hanging up the phone were to my wife, Melissa. “I just can’t take this again. I have no emotional capital left. How am I going to make it?”

What I needed at that moment, and in the hours that followed, was exactly what my mother had needed just two days before when we told her that her husband, our father, was in his last hours: endurance to continue trusting in the God who never fails to love us, even when all we see is a frowning providence. The razor’s-edge difference between doubt and assurance lies in the strength to believe God loves us when circumstances scream otherwise.

Such moments of crisis reveal the profound need for a deep assurance of God’s love.

Grasping Niagara

In his book Children of the Living God, Sinclair Ferguson recognizes that, for many Christians, “the reality of the love of God for us is often the last thing in the world to dawn upon us. As we fix our eyes upon ourselves, our past failures, our present guilt, it seems impossible to us that the Father could love us” (27). This seeming impossibility underscores our need for divine strength to truly grasp God’s love.

In Ephesians 3:14, Paul introduces a prayer for the Ephesians with the words “for this reason” (picking up his train of thought from 3:1) precisely because of our tendency to doubt God’s love and grace. Paul’s two opening chapters lifted us up to the towering heights of what the Father has done for us in Christ by the Spirit. Imagine standing beneath the plummeting waters of Niagara Falls, trying to take a drink. The sheer force and volume might just make it impossible. In the same way, we have no natural capacity to grasp the magnitude of what the Father has graciously done for us in Christ. We cannot comprehend the depth of God’s love without divine strength.

And so, Paul prays that the Father may grant us to “have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge” (Ephesians 3:18–19). If we are to find doubt-banishing assurance in the Niagara of Christ’s unfathomable love for us, we need a strength we do not naturally possess.

When my wife was three months into her pregnancy with our oldest child, Hannah, I started journaling prayers to the Father about the daughter I had yet to meet. Each morning, I’d write a prayer about my desire for her to come to know the Father and Jesus Christ (John 17:3). These written prayers revealed my heart’s deep desires.

“Your Father wants you to grasp the ungraspable so your heart will be strengthened in hard times.”

The same is true of Paul’s prayers. But we can go a step further. As inspired Scripture, Paul’s prayers are “breathed out by God” himself (2 Timothy 3:16). Paul prayed this prayer because the Father wanted him to pray it. God-inspired prayers like Ephesians 3:14–19 reveal the very depths of the Father’s heart for us. The Father wanted Paul to pray this because he sovereignly intended to grant his requests. Your Father wants you to grasp the ungraspable so your heart will be strengthened in hard times.

None Left Out

For as long as I can remember, I have struggled with severe introspection and regular bouts of doubt. I have talked to many Christians who also struggle with assurance. On the other hand, my wife does not struggle with too much introspection. She rarely, if ever, experiences doubt. From time to time, I find myself envying her and other Christians with the same experience. On the surface, I seem to require more strength to grasp Christ’s vast love than they do.

In God’s kindness, Paul reassures us that our particular inclinations will not exclude us from a deeper experience of God’s love. Paul prays that we would have the strength to grasp this love “with all the saints” (Ephesians 3:18), whether Jews or Gentiles (2:11, 17–18), husbands or wives (5:22–33), children or parents (6:1–4), slaves or masters (6:5–9). This unity in experiencing God’s love emphasizes that his grace and strength extend to every believer, regardless of background, personality, or struggles. Paul prays with confidence that all believers can receive the strength to grasp the depth of Christ’s love, even those with a past marked by fear and uncertainty.

I am helped by remembering that Paul’s prayer is a corporate prayer. You, like me, may read Paul’s prayer and think mainly in terms of yourself rather than the whole church. But every “you” in Ephesians 3:14–19 is plural. So, when Paul prays that God would grant strength to comprehend “with all the saints,” I think he means every singular “you” within the plural “you” of the church at Ephesus, but he also implies that God answers this request mainly when the saints are gathered together. The Father loves to answer this corporate request within the gathered church.

Christians often wrestle with doubt in isolation, striving to preach the gospel to their lonely heart. However, the best place where assurance replaces doubt is in the gathering of the whole church. It is in the fellowship of believers, united in our need for grace, that the strength to comprehend Christ’s love is most powerfully imparted. Here, amid our brothers and sisters in Christ, we find that our collective faith and mutual encouragement help to dispel the dark shadows of doubt. The gathered church becomes a sanctuary where our wavering hearts are fortified (Psalm 73:16–17), and together we grasp the boundless love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.

Our Father does not want any of his children left out of his warm home of assurance, including you.

Our Naming Father

When it comes to replacing doubt with assurance, it truly matters to whom we pray. In light of the towering doctrinal heights of Ephesians 1–2, Paul kneels “before the Father” — and not just any father, but the Father “from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named” (Ephesians 3:14–15). A better translation of “every family” might be “the whole family in heaven and on earth,” emphasizing the unity of all believers under the fatherhood of God. The whole family is named by the Father.

Earlier, Paul described the Ephesians before their conversion as alienated, outsiders, and strangers without hope (Ephesians 2:12). But now the Father has named them. Isaiah 62:2–4 illustrates what it means for the Father to name us. Although God’s people were returning from exile, they still felt forsaken. Then Isaiah says,

You shall be called by a new name that the mouth of the Lord will give. . . . You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall no more be termed Desolate, but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her, and your land Married; for the Lord delights in you, and your land shall be married.

In a similar way, Paul tells us that God has “predestined us for adoption to himself as sons” (Ephesians 1:5) and that “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Ephesians 5:25). In other words, the Father and the Son have named us sons of God and the bride of Christ. The name we carry in this world, even amidst our relational trials, is this: “My delight is in you.”

This is one crucial reason we gather: to hear and be reminded through faith that the Father actually delights in us. Only the love of this Father can cast out our doubt when we are weak.

When the news that my mother was in her final hours drained the strength out of me, the Father provided the strength I needed to grasp more of the ungraspable love of Christ, especially as I gathered with all the saints in the weeks and months that followed. In the midst of my profound grief and weakness, the assurance of God’s love “strengthened [me] with power through his Spirit” (Ephesians 3:16) in the gathering of the saints, to the praise of the Father’s glorious grace (Ephesians 1:6, 12, 14).

Audio Transcript

There are certain Bible texts that are so important to Pastor John’s life and ministry that we need to stop and focus on them. We saw one last time, on the “gutsy guilt” of Micah 7:8–9, looking at what we do when we come face to face with the guilt of our darkest sin. And today we look at another important text, Isaiah 43:6–7. It’s essential to know and study and maybe memorize. It’s so rich, which is why it comes up all the time on this podcast, which you’ll see in the APJ book on pages 87–88.

Isaiah 43:6–7 is on my mind today because we read it today. We read Isaiah 42 and 43 together in our reading plan, alongside three other texts. It’s a lot of reading today. And again, Pastor John, one of my fears with a reading plan like this one, trying to read the whole Bible in one year, is that it just makes it so easy to breeze past important texts, especially ones you draw from all the time. So, I want to hit pause and have you slow us down to meditate on Isaiah 43:6–7 for ten minutes or so to draw out the points we need on this text. It seems like a huge and awesome blessing that the Creator would explain to us why we exist.

It is huge. One of the reasons these verses from Isaiah 43 have been so central to my thinking is that 55 years ago, when I was in seminary, I bought a book by the seminary faculty titled Things Most Surely Believed. In that book, Daniel Fuller, one of the faculty, my most influential teacher, had a chapter titled “Why God Created the World.” And that chapter was an exposition of these verses.

I was drawn into a living discussion of that text and what seemed to me to be just about the most important question in the world. Why do I exist? Why does anything exist? And I’ve never tired of returning to these verses, because when I read them in context over and over, I not only see fresh glimpses of God’s peculiar design for me as a human being, but I also feel welling up in my heart fresh zeal to bring my life into alignment with God’s ultimate purpose and so experience the greatest significance possible in this life and not waste my one single life that I have to live on this earth. And that just has been huge for me. I mean, over and over again, it has kindled in me, “Don’t waste your life. There’s a purpose for your life. God has revealed it. Get in line with it. This will make everything count.” And that’s what I would love for our listeners in this session.

So, hear the words that I’ve returned to over and over — this is Isaiah 43:6–7: “Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth, everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.” Let’s gaze at the wonder of this statement through five different lenses.

1. God’s Purpose for All Peoples

Let’s look at it through the Jewish lens. This is a statement made to Israel. We just have to own that right off. We’re Gentiles reading it, and we take it for ourselves (as we should), but you have to give that a little bit of thought. This is made to Israel. The paragraph — verse 1 — begins, “Now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel.” There are unique ways by which God is glorified in the history of Israel. No doubt about that. And he’s talking about that here.

But it would be a mistake not to see ourselves — as Christians, lovers of Messiah Jesus — in this verse and not to see his purpose for the nations as well in this verse. Because the Bible teaches that not just Israel but all the nations, indeed all humans created in God’s image — to image forth God; that is, to glorify God by virtue of being created in his image — all of us exist for the glory of God. “Every tongue,” Paul says in Philippians 2:11, willingly or unwillingly, will “confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” Not just confess Christ, but confess Christ “to the glory of God the Father.”

“People should put their eyes to the lens of our life and see through it the greatness of the glory of God.”

As far as Christians are concerned, the whole New Testament is designed to show that Gentile believers, like me and you, Tony, and most of the people listening, probably — Gentile believers in Jesus — are now included in God’s chosen people, the true Israel. So, if you are in Christ, in the Jewish Messiah, by faith, “you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise” (Galatians 3:29). Therefore, the fullness of God’s blessing in Isaiah 43 applies not only to Jewish believers but also to Gentile believers. So, we should read this chapter and revel in it as ours — Gentiles, believers in Messiah.

2. God’s Self-Exaltation

Let’s look at it through the lens of God’s self-exaltation. Isaiah 43:7 says, “I created [my sons and daughters] for my glory” — whom I created “for my glory.” This is just inescapably and plainly an instance of God’s self-exaltation. He’s saying, in effect, “The universe is about me, folks. It’s about me. The bigness of the universe is about my bigness. The workings of the universe in their amazing, intricate wisdom are about my wisdom. The weight and greatness of the universe are about my power. The gift of the universe to the human race is about my grace.” God’s purpose in creation is self-exalting. It’s about him. “From him and through him,” Paul said, “are all things” (Romans 11:36). So, that’s the second lens, and we’ll circle back to that to show why that’s good news.

3. God’s Eternal Glory

To say that God created the world and us for his glory does not mean he created us in order to become glorious — that’s really important to clarify — but rather to show, display, communicate, share his glory. God’s sons and daughters do not magnify him like a microscope, which makes small things look bigger than they are, but like a telescope, which makes unimaginably great things look more like what they are. He created us to glorify him like a telescope. People should put their eyes to the lens of our life and see through it the greatness of the glory of God — how satisfying he is to us.

4. God’s Self-Sufficiency

Therefore, we are able to see God in this text through the lens of his self-sufficiency. He did not create out of need. He wasn’t desperate for a friend. If you heard that growing up, like God made you because he needed a friend — not true. He was free and not constrained by any defect or any deficiency. “It is no defect in a fountain,” Edwards said, “that it is prone to overflow” (see God’s Passion for His Glory, 165). God did not create out of the deficiency of need; he created out of the fullness of love.

5. Our Everlasting Joy

This brings us to the most wonderful part of this text that I hadn’t meditated on for a long time. And it really jumped out at me in a most wonderful way in getting ready for this — namely, looking at it through the lens of our own experience of God’s purpose to glorify God in us. If God created us for his glory, what does that imply about our experience of God’s glory? Now, here are the key words from verses 1–5, and if you read them slowly and you count them, they are simply glorious, amazing, wonderful, encouraging. Here they are:

Fear not, for I have redeemed you;     I have called you by name, you are mine.When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;     and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,     and the flame shall not consume you.For I am the Lord your God,     the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. . . .Because you are precious in my eyes,     and [glorified], and I love you. . . .Fear not, for I am with you.

To have the Creator of the universe talk to you that way — what could be more glorious? “Loved,” “redeemed,” “called,” “owned,” “protected,” “precious,” “glorified.” God has said everything he can say, has he not? He said everything he can say to make it plain that his own self-exaltation is good for me, is good for us.

We fulfill the destiny of the universe — we fulfill God’s purpose to be glorified in us — when we revel in being loved by him, revel in being redeemed by him, revel in being called by him, revel in being owned by him, revel in being protected by him, revel in being precious to him, revel in being glorified, actually sharing in the glory that he created the world to display. God created us for his glory, and this is spectacularly good news because, as is so plain in this text, God is glorified in us when we are satisfied in him. That’s why he made the world.