“I will say to the north, ‘Give them up!’ and to the south, ‘Do not hold them back.’ Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth— everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.” Isaiah 43: 6,7 |
“See, I have refined you, though not as silver; I have tested you in the furnace of affliction. For my own sake, for my own sake, I do this. How can I let myself be defamed? I will not yield my glory to another.” Isaiah 48: 10, 11 |
Yesterday was a very important day in my church. I had prayed that God would bring to them the same message that three years ago changed my life forever: that what God loves most of all is his own glory and he does everything for his glory. Shocking as it sounds in a human context where selfishness is seen as a vice and unselfishness as a virtue, from the heavenly and eternal reality, the truth remains that God loves himself most of all because he is the only Holy one, and therefore, the most worthy of love and praise and honor and glory. This truth is above all truths and it rules everything in existence. If it wasn’t so, God would be defcient and we we would be lost. The most precious gift that God can give us is himself and his own glory. The proof that God loves us so deeply is shown in his giving us highest gift he could ever give to save us: himself. If he gave us houses, cars, riches, boats, planes, companies, but witheld himself from us, he would not be loving us. At the same time, the worst judgement and the worst calamity that can befall humanity is not an earthquake, a flood, famine, disease, but God witholding himself from us. We all fell in idolatry, we all valued the created things more than the creator and worshiped them by putting them in the first place in our lives. What we deserve God hiding his glory but his grace is so great and so immense that he does not. And the sun rises every morning as a small sample of everything great and deep that he does for us day by day through his grace .
I first heard this message from pastor John Piper, but last night, the same was given in my church, in almost exactly the same words as John Piper uses, to my sudden surprise and joy. I thank God for the wonderful and specifc way in which he answered my prayer.
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