Learning Joy
By John Piper

    "Serving God is utterly different from serving anyone else.  God is extremely jealous that we understand this- and enjoy it.  For example, He commands us “Serve the LORD with gladness!” (Psalms 100:2).  There is reason for this gladness.  It is given is Acts 17:25, “[God is not] served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all men life and breath and everything.” We serve him with gladness because we do not bear the burden of meeting His needs.  Rather, we rejoice in a service where He meets our needs.

    The psalmist compares it to a servants dependence on a gracious master: “Behold as the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of the maid to the hand of her mistress; so our eyes look to the LORD our God, till He have mercy on upon us” (Psalms 123:2).  Serving God always means receiving grace from God.

    To show how Jealous God is for us to get this and glory in it, there is a story in 2 Chronicles 12.  Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, who ruled the Southern kingdom after the revolt of the ten tribes, “forsook the law of the LORD” (v1).  He chose against serving the Lord and gave his service to other gods and other kingdoms.  As judgment, God sent Shishak, king of Egypt, against Rehoboam with twelve hundred chariots and sixty thousand horseman (v3).

    In mercy, God sent the prophet Shemaiah to Rehoboam with this message: “Thus says the LORD, ‘You abandoned me, so I have abandoned you to the hand of Shishak’” (v5).  The happy upshot of that message was that Rehoboam and his princes humbled themselves in a repentance and said, “the LORD is righteous.” (v6)

    When the Lord saw that they had humbled themselves, He said, “They have humbled themselves so I will not destroy them, but I will grant them some measure of deliverance, and My wrath shall not be poured on Jerusalem by means of Shishak” (v7).  Yet as a discipline to them, He said, They will become his slaves so that they may learn the difference between My service and the service of the kingdoms of the countries” (v8).

    The lesson they had to learn was that serving God is a glad service, or as Jesus said, a light burden and an easy yoke (Mt. 11:30).  From this we may learn, as Jeremy Taylor (Puritan) said, that God threatened terrible things if we will not be happy.  Moses said, “Because you did not serve the LORD your God with joy and a glad heart… therefore you shall serve your enemies.” (Dt. 28:47-48).  Serving God is a receiving, a blessing, a joy.  Beware of serving God in a way that makes Him look like the gods of the nations."


Seeing and Savoring the Glory of God
By John Piper  

    "The created universe is all about glory.  The deepest longing of the human heart and the deepest meaning of heaven and earth are summed up in this; the glory of God.  The universe was made to show it, and we were made to see it and savor it.  Nothing less will do.  Which is why the world is as disordered and dysfunctional as it is.  We have exchanged the glory of God for other things (Rom. 1:23).

    “The heavens are telling of the glory of God” (PS. 19:1).  That is why all the universe exists.  It’s all about glory.  The Hubble Space Telescope sends back infrared images of faint galaxies perhaps 12 billion light years away (12 billion times 6 trillion miles).  Even with in our Milky Way there are stars so great as to defy description, like Eta Carinae, which is 5 million times brighter than our sun.

    Sometimes people stumble over this vastness in relation to the apparent insignificance of man.  It does seem to make is infinitesimally small.  But the meaning of this magnitude is not mainly about us.  It’s about God!  The reason for “wasting” so much space on a universe to house a speck of humanity is to make a point about our maker, not us.  “Lift up your eyes on high and see who has created these stars, the One who leads forth their hosts by number, He calls then all by name; because of the greatness of His might and the strength of His power, not one of them is missing” (Ps. 40:26).

    The deepest longing in every human heart is an ache for this.  We are all starved for the glory of God, not self.  No one goes to the Gramd Canyon to increase self-esteem.  There is healing for the soul in beholding splendor than beholding self.  What could be more ludicrous in vast and glorious universe like this than a human on a speck called Earth, standing in front of a mirror trying to find significance in his own self-image?  This is the gospel of the world, sadly.  Man is the center of the universe and not God.

    But this is not the Christian gospel.  Into the darkness of petty self-preoccupation has shone ‘the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Cor. 4:4).  This is about the glory of Christ, not about me.  And when it is - in some measure – about me, it is not about my being made much of by God, but about God mercifully enabling me to enjoy making much of Him forever.  What was the most loving thing Jesus could do for us?  Redemption?  Forgiveness?  Reconciliation? Adoption?  These are all great but they are means to something greater.  Jesus asked the Father to give us something, “Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me."


Why Being Truth Driven is So Crucial
By John Piper  

    "Our concern with truth is an inevitable expression of our concern with God.  If God exists, then He is the measure of all things and what He thinks about all things is the measure of what we should think.  Not to care about truth is not to care about God, To love God passionately is to love truth passionately.  Being God centered in life means being truth-driven in ministry.  What is not true is not of God.  What is false is anti-God.  Indifference to the truth is indifference to the mind of God.  Pretense is rebellion against reality, and what makes reality is God.

    To love God the Father, the Son, and Spirit is to love the truth.  To pursue them is to pursue truth.  Passion for their vindication in the world involves a passion for the truth.  There is no separating God and truth, as if one can put a relationship against the truth.  od is' precedes 'God is love', and 'God is' has content and meaning.  God is one thing and not the other thing.  He has character.  His Nature has Contours that define Him.  Concern with the true God who is not created in our image, is at the Bottom of a truth-driven life.

    The Bible also says that to not love the truth is eternally suicidal.  Paul speaks of a lawless one at the end of the age who will come with, 'all power and signs and false wonders, and with all the deception of wickedness for those who perish, because they did not receive the love to the truth so as to be saved' (2 Thessalonians 2:9-10).  Loving the truth is a matter of perishing of being saved.

    Paul goes on and contrasts believing the truth with taking pleasure in wickedness.  They all [will] be judged who did not believe the truth, but took pleasure in wickedness.'  (2 Thessalonians 2:12).  Truth is moral and not just cognitive, since its alternative is wickedness and not just falsehood.  The overwhelming impact of this text, however is that loving the truth- believing the truth with your whole heart- is a matter of eternal life and death."