God is sui generis. He is in a class by himself. He is God. To put it very bluntly, he is stuck with being glorious, infinitely.

Infinitely glorious. And the only way an all-glorious God can love is to offer himself to us for our

enjoyment and then seek the consummation of our enjoyment in praise to himself.

He must be self-exhaulting in order to be loving.

A lot of people stumble at the thought that God is passionate about exalting himself.

When you first heard that God is all about his own glory, what did you think? Did it sound

off to you or did it sound like love? I'm Dan Kruver. In this episode

of Light and Truth, John Piper takes us to Isaiah 48, the show why God's self-exaltation

is actually the greatest expression of his love.

This message was originally delivered at the EFAC National Conference in Melbourne, Australia

on June 26, 1996.

Now the question I'm posing is, is God for you or is he for himself?

And no doubt we're far enough along in our Christian walk and our biblical studies to know that that's true.

But if you take that truth as a given, as very obvious, well, of course he's for us, it could

have a very wrong ring to it.

And so I want to get the ring right by posing the question, is God for us or is he really for himself?

Or how do those two things relate to each other?

Now, in Isaiah 48, God is indicting his people for their rebelliousness and their corruption

and their hard-heartedness.

They have necks of steel.

But he relents in his judgment, and he does so for a particular reason,

and that's expressed in verses 9, 10, and 11.

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