I hope you're beginning to catch on that your hope as a sinner is based upon God's love for his name.

This is not widely taught. It's not widely understood.

It's just ignored. This massive biblical foundation for the gospel generally we

simply start with john 316 for god so love the world that he sent his own son that anybody who

believes in him might not perish but have eternal life. And we don't go beneath that and say,

why would God do that?

How can God do that?

How can he just forgive sinners?

Just boom, like that.

And we don't move down a level

to his great namesake.

I think it's easy to assume we know why God saves.

Many of us have heard John 316 our entire lives.

But what John Piper does in this seminar is slow us down and ask, but why did God save us in the first place?

I'm Dan Kroover. In this episode of Light and Truth, John Piper takes us beneath the surface of John 316 to show that the foundation of our salvation is God's passion for his own name.

This seminar was originally delivered at Bethlehem Baptist Church on Wednesday evening,

November 13, 1991.

What I'd like to do to begin is read a passage, really just a verse, from Ezekiel chapter 20.

It's a verse that I wrote down on a little piece of paper that I've been carrying around with me now for a couple of days

because it is the very heart of what I want to teach tonight from this chapter

and I think the heart of the gospel or the foundation of the gospel anyway and a tremendous

encouragement to me and let me read it and my goal for tonight is to be sort of repetitive and get one simple

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