Today's question comes from an international listener named Wagonjo Kamotho.

Hello Pastor John, my question is over a few lines from your daily devotional dated August 21st, 2016.

It all made perfect sense to me until I got to this line where you write this quote,

all the works of God culminate in the praise of His redeemed people."

And this was even more confusing when you wrote quote,

the climax of God's happiness is the delight he takes in the echoes of his excellence in the

praises of his saints. In quote, maybe it's due to the length of the sentence, I don't know,

but please elaborate what you mean the rest I understand. Well, I'm happy happy happy happy

to elaborate on that sentence because he is one of my favorites. Let's take let's take the second

sentence, the one that Wagonjo, I'm not sure how to pronounce it. Wagonjo, okay.

The one that Wagonjo says is quote, even more confusing and break it down to see if I can help

make it clearer. I think this is worth doing because this sentence is one of those incredibly

important expressions of what the heart of Christian hedonism is and I think what the heart of

biblical truth is. So let me say the sentence again, the climax of God's happiness is the delight

he takes in the echoes of his excellence in the praises of the saints.

It's true that when you read a sentence like that, if you're not familiar with the thinking

and concepts behind it, you will need to slow down and take it phrase by phrase and seriously think

about the relationships between those praises. So I would really encourage you not to give up too

quickly when you read a perplexing sentence. If there are reasons to believe that the author

might have genuine insight and not just be confused himself, there are confusing sentences that

are owing not to the complexity of reality, but to the confusion of the author is there really are.

And whether I am that, maybe you'll know by the end of this podcast.

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