Everlasting Joy For All Peoples - Part 4 — John Piper

The Objection to God’s Demand for Praise

Understand, suppose we postulate an omnipotent being who, for reasons inscrutable to us, decided to create something other than himself. Why should he expect us to worship him? We didn't ask to be created.

Our lives are often troubled. We know that human tyrants puffed up with pride crave adulation and homage, but a morally perfect God would surely have no character defects. So why are all these people on their knees every Sunday?

You hear what the objection is there? The only incentive that Michael Prowse can conceive for why a God would demand that we praise him is that he's needy. That's what we are when we demand that people praise us.

If I were to demand you to praise me, I would be needy and you would be disgusted. So what's it with God, right? You can see why people would stumble at this. Everywhere I go and talk to believers about God's God-centeredness and God's passion to be praised, I see question marks on people's faces.

They stumble over this. Some people see why they stumble and some people don't. Some people, like him, put it into an objection. Others just can feel uncomfortable. So what's the answer to that objection for why we should be okay with God saying, Praise me, all you peoples!

Admiration of God as the Highest Pleasure

What if admiration were the highest pleasure and what if God were the most admirable being? Would not His beckoning us, summoning us, indeed dying to help us admire Him be called love and not arrogance?

If He's the most admirable person and admiration is one of the deepest longings of the human heart, not to be admired, oh that's a sinful longing, believe me. I feel it and I try to crucify it over and over again.

But I feel the wonder of having my heart drawn out before an admirable thing, beauty, a person. That's a freeing pleasure. That's a selfless, self-forgetting pleasure. And what if God is the most admirable person and what if that is the highest pleasure?

And then wouldn't He be loving in order to draw us into that experience and say, Admire me if you want to be sad. C .S. Lewis had the same stumbling block and he found the answer. I hope Michael Proust does pray for him.

C. S. Lewis on Praise and Enjoyment

I'll read you C .S. Lewis' discovery. Changed my life in 1968. The most obvious fact about praise, whether of God or anything, strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, the giving of honor.

I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise, unless, sometimes even if, shyness or the fear of boring others is deliberately brought in to check it. The world rings with praise.

Lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favorite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favorite game, praise of weather, wines, dishes, actors, motors, horses, colleges, countries, historical personages, children, flowers, mountains, rare stamps, rare beetles, even sometimes politicians and scholars.

I had never noticed how the humblest and at the same time the most balanced and capacious minds praised most, while the cranks and the misfits and the malcontents praised least. I had not noticed either that just as men spontaneously praise whatever they value, so they spontaneously urge us to join in praising it.

Isn't she lovely? Wasn't it glorious? Don't you think that magnificent? The psalmists, in telling everyone to praise God, are doing what all men do when they speak of what they care about. My whole more general difficulty about the praise of God depended on my absurdly denying to us, as regards the supremely valuable, what we delight to do, indeed what we cannot help doing about everything else we value.

Praise Completes the Enjoyment of God

I think, he said in conclusion, I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment. That sentence changed my whole way of thinking about God.

I think the reason people praise what they enjoy is not merely to express the joy, but to complete the joy, which means that if God would have your joy complete, He must command you to do what will make you infinitely and eternally happy, namely, see, savor, and say His praises.

God is the one being in the universe for whom gathering attention for Himself is not arrogant, is not selfish, is not abusive and manipulative, but is love, pure and simple. If God is to be loving towards us, He must do for us what is most satisfying to us.

If He is most satisfying to us, and therefore He must draw us to Himself, get attention for Himself, tell us to praise Himself, and move every obstacle out of the way so that we can do it, which is why Jesus Christ died.

Missions and the Glory of God

Missions is calling the world to do what they were created to do, namely, enjoy making much of God forever. If we fail, if we do not penetrate a people where there is no gospel and where there is no Christian God, God will be dishonored and they will be miserable forever.

The Unity of God’s Glory and Human Joy

So we have two motives in missions, right? And they are one. This is a great discovery. You don't have to even, Scotty, think about, am I going for the glory of God or am I going for the deepest joy of my own soul in ministry and sacrifice?

Because the enjoyment of God in walking with Him is an honor to Him and praising Him completes the enjoyment. So the honor of God and the joy of those people and us, one, if it's joy in God. A great discovery, I commend it to you.

The Scriptural Basis of the People’s Praise

Finally, third point, last point. What's the basis of the people's praise? We've seen what people's means and we've seen what the purpose of God for the people's is, namely the praise of His name for their joy and our joy.

Now, what's the basis of the people's? Well, it's in verse 2, which begins with a basis word, right? Praise the Lord, all nations. Extol Him, all peoples. For great, for, for, great is His steadfast love toward us.

And the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever. Praise the Lord. Now, this is really surprising because right here, we find ourselves led right to Jesus Christ. It's not mentioned, but we're led right to Jesus Christ.