God means to be known through preaching like this.

God wants to be known for who He is, for what He's done.

That's why Paul preached like this, and that's why you should preach like this.

Why is it that God means to be known through preaching?

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

This sermon was originally preached in February 1999 to a group of pastors in Kansas City, Missouri.

So maybe what I could do this morning is ask the question, why we should hold up the supremacy of God in preaching,

and then how? Let me give a brief answer to why.

Why should the supremacy of God, the glory of God, the greatness of God, the majesty of God, the reality of God, all the godness of God be the substance of every sermon?

Please don't misunderstand me now, put in a parenthesis here, and if you read my little teeny book on preaching, you'll know I believe this and I say this.

You should preach about marriage, and divorce, and drugs, and eating disorders, and how to go on in the workplace, but the difference is this.

Everybody else is doing that too. What unique thing do you bring to bear here?

What unique thing do you bring to bear? And the answer is you bring to bear God, and you don't bring God down and say,

he's relevant. You take these things up and let them get consumed up there in God.

You try to help a poor housewife who's just at her with in with all these kids and all this work and a husband who doesn't get it.

You try to help her not just figure out little routines to make it better.

You try to fill her up with God. You try to show her something that just catches her up out of that into God and then thinned her like a missionary back into those five kids to say, show them God.

Unleash on this world five human beings that are ravished with the glory of God.

There's a difference. There's a difference here.

The reason we should preach that way and make God central is because God is central in the Bible and God is central in God's own affections and purposes.

I learned this from Jonathan Edwards and the Bible, that that most recent book, God's passion for his glory is my tribute to what I owe to Jonathan Edwards and his book,

the end for which God created the world which is the glory of God. God created the world for the glory of God. God is passionately committed to God and his glory.

...