The climax of joy in God is when it is so full it spills over for other people.

And the really thrilling thing in the human soul is when you see another human being delighting in God,

because you've delighted in God enough to die for that person, or least visit them in the hospital or do something that yes is inconvenient.

Yes involves self-denial, but no ultimate self-denial.

You're questing life and joy and fulfillment at every point when you lay down your life for Jesus.

Why is forsaking God for anything else a tragic mistake?

In this episode of Light and Truth, John Piper shows that turning from God to empty alternatives leads only to dissatisfaction.

This sermon was originally given at Trinity Baptist

Church in Wheaton, Illinois on September 19, 1988.

Jeremiah chapter 2, verse 12 and 13, I love this text. This is one of the most wonderful texts for preaching

Christian hedonism. Jeremiah 2, 12, and 13 says, be appalled, oh heavens, at this. Be shocked.

Be utterly desolate, says the Lord, for my people have committed two evils.

Now let's watch the definition of these two evils.

Number one, they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters

and have hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.

Now what is sin?

Just picture it.

God comes to a sinner and he's this gushing, overflowing, infinite, all-satisfying,

founting, of living water. And he lets a drop fall on a sinner's tongue in the sinner

This is spark on this and turns over stoops down in the mud and makes the mud into a bowl and tries to suck moisture out of that mud the rest of his life.

That's sin.

So the nature of sin is this.

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