The following message is by pastor John Piper.

More information from desiring God is available at

W.

W.

Desiring God.

O. Before I pray, God dot O-R-G.

Before I pray, I want to read a passage of scripture.

I'll put it on the overhead.

The reason I want to read it is because there is a massive assumption behind your capacity

to perceive the doctrines of God's sovereignty in salvation as good news.

And that assumption is that the supreme value in the universe is the glory of God, not you, not me, not all of humanity, or all of the universe put together.

Which is why Jonathan Edwards in his book,

the nature of true virtue said that if you loved everybody on the planet and the entire

universe as much as you could love them,

and didn't love God, you would be infinitely provincial.

That sentence really helped me because we are so prone to think of ourselves, then our land, then our world, then our solar system, then our galaxy, as very important. And it is as nothing compared to God. And until you feel that, these doctrines will not commend

themselves to

express that biblically let me begin by reading a text.

It's almost a whole chapter and then we'll pray together that God would make us

have the kinds of hearts that would be amenable to God-centered biblical truth. He will tend his flock.

The reason I chose as much of this passage as I did, not just a few key verses that you will recognize as relevant to what I just said,

is that it's the juxtaposition of the tenderness of the shepherd and the massiveness of the creator that jars us.

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