The worth and the glory and the beauty and the value and the dignity of the creator and sustainer and redeemer of the universe is such that an offense against him,

to ignore him, not to trust him, not to be in allegiance to him, not to follow him,

to despise him is an infinite crime.

And no hell will be an overreaction to that crime.

Most of us instinctively think punishment should fit the crime.

That's built into us.

But what if we've never really reckoned with the weight of the one being sinned against?

What if we've minimized God without even realizing it?

I'm your host, Dan Kruver.

In this episode of Light and Truth, John Piper presses

into the glory of God to explain why divine wrath is not an overreaction, but a reflection of God's

infinite worth. This message was originally delivered at Columbia International University

on Thursday, February 25, 1999.

The last thing I said to my people was I wrote in our, I said, you'll be getting later this

week, so that's today or Monday, our church newsletter,

and I wrote an article on the wrath of God, and I just piled up as many texts I could fit on

the page, and I said, would you please take these and meditate on them? Because the only way I know

to quicken our thoughts about the wrath of God is to think about them

because your worldview is being shaped by what you spend time thinking about.

And if you watch television, it's being shaped by a secular, God-omitting worldview.

And it seems very innocent.

I mean, most people say to me, what's wrong with this program? And what's wrong with that program? I don't have a television. I haven't had a television since I was 18 years old. My wife and I have raised four sons. They've never complained one minute about not having a television. I don't think everybody should live that way. I'll just tell you, I live that way, because I know the way my mind works. I know how addictive I am to those things on vacation.

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