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The Gift of God’s God-Centeredness · Pastor John Piper's answers

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  God is all sovereign, all powerful, and he is all happy in himself.
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  He lacks nothing and he wants things from us. So does he need
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  us or need what we can give him? Matthew is trying to put these
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  pieces together in his email to us today, Pastor John, Hello and thank
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  you for your ministry. Matthew writes, early in your wonderful book Providence,
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  on page forty three, you talk about how God has full glory. We
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  don't give him any glory he doesn't inherently possess already. What God creates is
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  never essential to God. That seems to be the point of Acts seventeen twenty
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  five. So we ascribe glory to God, the only God, and we
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  ascribe that glory to him before all time, before creation even existed Jude twenty
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  five. Considering this, does this mean that if we glorify God by enjoying
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  him, we can say that He created us not because he needed anything from
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  us, but that he created us solely to share in his delight of delighting
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  in himself. In other words, God's self delight in himself seems to have
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  nothing to do with his neediness, but it is the greatest gift conceivable.
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  To the creation. That God is self sufficiently happy in himself is the best
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  news in the world for us to hear. Am I following your line of
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  thought here? And if so, wow, yes, wow indeed, And
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  Matthew is following me. Number one, God is self sufficiently happy in himself.
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  Number two, God created us not because he needed anything from us.
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  He has no needs, no deficiencies. Number three, He created us so
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  that we would share in the delight that He has in himself. So those
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  three points, he's tracking perfectly with what I think and what I believe.
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  The Bible teaches. As Jonathan Edwards put it, it is no deficiency in
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  a fountain that it is prone to overflow. But what Matthew is really following
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  here is not so much me as the Bible. So let me try to
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  sum that up. We read in the Bible that God the Father says he
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  loves the Son with pleasure. This is my loved son in whom I am
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  well pleased Matthew three point seventeen. God the Father takes pleasure in God the
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  Son, And in John fourteen thirty one, the Son says, I love
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  the Father. So in the fellowship of the Trinity, there is an eternal
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  mutual love. Not the kind of love this is so important to get,
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  not the kind of love that loves in spite of defects, the way God
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  loves us, but the kind of love that is only delight. The Father
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  and the Son find in each other the totally satisfying reality of a perfect,
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  all glorious God. In one Timothy one to eleven, Paul refers to the
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  glory of our happy God makari ou ouh blessed God. Not the kind of
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  blessedness that is translated a praise or honor, but rather happy, the same
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  as in the Beatitudes, the happy God. It belongs to God's nature from
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  eternity to be perfectly happy in the fellowship of the Trinity. That's the foundation
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  of saying He has no needs. He did not create us to meet any
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  needs or to make up for any deficiencies. Act seventeen twenty five. God
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  is not served by human hands as though he needed anything. How clear can
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  that be? He doesn't need anything, since he himself gives to all mankind
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  life and breath and everything, Mark ten forty five. The Son of Man
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  did not come into the world to recruit servants to meet his needs. The
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  Son of Man came not to be served, the Bible says, but to
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  serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. And Psalm fifty,
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  verses twelve to fifteen. If I were hungry, God says, I
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  would not tell you, for the world and all its fullness is mine.
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  Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats? You
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  offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and perform your vows to the most
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  high. Call on me in the day of trouble. I will deliver you,
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  and you will glorify me. The glorious dynamic of God's self sufficiency.
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  So did we notice as we heard Psalm fifty did we notice that in that
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  text and in Acts seventy twenty five and in Mark ten forty five, the
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  effect is such good news. The effect of God having no needs, that
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  is, being self sufficient, is the basis of his meeting our needs.
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  That's the glory of talking about this. In other words, God's self sufficiency
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  is the basis of grace, the overflow of grace, which is why Paul
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  says in Ephesians one that everything is done to the praise of the glory of
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  his grace, because grace is the apex, It's the highest point of God's
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  godness. He spills over his self sufficiency is the basis of his grace,
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  his love. Now, I think we need to just pause and let that
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  sink in, Tony, because I think a lot of people here asks you,
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  me desiring God, talk about God's self sufficiency, and they feel like
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  we're dealing in some high level, obscure, irrelevant theological speculation about the nature
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  of God that has no bearing on our daily lives. Good night. How
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  absolutely wrong is that when the Bible speaks of God's infinite, all timate self
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  sufficiency, it ties it together with God's being a generous, gracious, overflowing
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  need meeting God. So in Acts seventeen twenty five, the fact that God
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  is not served by human hands as though he needed anything, leads to this,
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  He himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And in
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  Mark ten forty five, the fact that the Son of Man came not to
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  be served leads to this. Instead, he came to serve and to give
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  his life a ransom for many. And in Psalm fifty, verse fifteen,
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  the fact that God doesn't need to be fed by anybody else leads to this
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  call on me in the day of trouble, I'll deliver you, and that
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  next phrase, the next phrase in Psal fifty, verse fifteen, ties it
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  together with the glory of God. It says, call on me in the
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  day of trouble, and I will deliver you, and you will glorify me.
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  In other words, the giver gets the glory. The one who meets
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  the needs of others gets the glory because it shows his overflowing fullness. When
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  Isaiah forty three seven says that God created us for his glory, it means
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  God created as the overflow of his fullness, the overflow of his greatness,
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  his beauty, his worth. We call it his glory, so that his
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  glory would be our all satisfying treasure. That's how you glorify an infinitely valuable
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  treasure by treasuring it, by treasuring it above everything else, by being satisfied
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  in his self giving revelation above everything else. God did not create to become
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  glorious. He created to share his glory for the enjoyment of his creatures and
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  wonder of wonders, our enjoyment of the all glorious God is the very means
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  by which His glory shines most brightly in the creation. The eternal happiness of
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  God in God is the foundation of our eternal happiness in Him, and our
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  supreme happiness in God is the seal that we put on the supreme worth of
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  God's glory, which is why we never tire of saying God is most glorified
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  in us when we are most satisfied in Him. Yeah, say it again.
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  I Lovevessor John, and just hearing all your mentions of God's self sufficiency
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  in Psalm fifty, it reminds me of tithing episodes on the podcast of All
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  Things Tithing. It's one of those key applications of Psalm fifty on the podcast
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  that we've heard over and over over the years, because if God is all
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  sufficient in himself, our giving to him is not something that he needs when
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  we put money into the offering plate. We never put God in our debt
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  ever. And if you want more on how this point of God's all happiness
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  in himself informs our giving our tithing, see the episodes I digest in the
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  New APJ book on pages one oh one to one oh three. If you
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  have a copy of that new APJ book, pages one oh one to one
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  of three. Well, God is all sovereign over our suffering. God is
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  all sovereign over our deliverance too. And once you understand those two facts,
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  they must get resolved. Our delivering God brings the suffering. It's as heavy
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  as it is liberating. That's next time, as we study Psalms seventy one
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  twenty together. I'm Tony Rinky. We'll see you on Monday.