I will come to God who is the joy in all my joy. There are other joys, aren't there? You have a good supper tonight maybe? Or you

go home and have a dessert tonight or you have somebody you love with you there are other joys but I

think the biblical point is and we'll talk about this more that God is the joy of all our joys

all of our joys should have at their bottom, their center,

their essence, joy in God, the giver.

What is God's goal in the gospel?

That's the question John Piper answers in this episode of Light and Truth.

This message was originally given in Phoenix, Arizona at the Desire and God 2006 Regional Conference.

Let's pray together.

Father, we've been praying for... Let's pray together.

Father, we've been praying for a long time now

about this moment and these hours together.

And the prayer has grown to a crescendo

in the last couple of hours and I just want to ask one more time

that you would help me to be faithful to your word and that you would do what I cannot do.

I planted apollus watered, Paul said, but God gave the growth, and so it is. I'll sow some seeds here, I'll scatter on the ground.

And oh, I pray that the devil would not pluck it up and that the cares of this world would not choke it out and that the heat of hard times would not burn it up,

but that it would find good soil. You can make the soil good. And so, I pray, make the soil good.

Would you open hearts to hear whatever's true and would you protect all of us from anything I say that would be a miss or

imbalanced. We want you to be exalted as the ultimate and highest good of the Gospel.

So come and do that, not just intellectually and the way we say it,

but in our hearts may we experience that and know it in our affections and not just in our thinking.

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