If God comes to you and wants to love you to the infinite degree, he has to seek your praise,

because your delight in Him as your treasure comes to consummation in expressions of praise to him.

And therefore he's the one being in the universe for whom self-aggrandizement is the highest

virtue is the most loving thing to do.

I think most of us instinctively recoil at the idea that someone would be all about their own praise.

But John Piper shows us here why with God it's actually the most loving thing possible.

I'm Dan Kroover. In this episode of Light and Truth, John Piper helps us see why God's

glory and our joy actually belong together. The seminar was originally delivered at Bethlehem

Baptist Church on Wednesday evening, November 13, 1991.

Let me pose a question. evening November 13th, 1991.

Let me pose a question. Like me, you would be troubled by this question now. Namely,

if you say God is a show-off, or if you say he loves his reputation, or if you say he has a passionate zeal to become famous

there's something inside us that says yeah but we're not supposed to do that so how come god's supposed to do

that i don't like it there's a gut reaction until you've got all the pieces in place that make you say,

that doesn't sound like the kind of John 316 God I learned about in Sunday school.

Or to sum it up, it doesn't sound like God is loving he's so wrapped up himself now let me try to

answer that in a nutshell here before moving on and those of you who've read Desiring

God I hope would be able to reproduce this argument but it's really crucial

God is unique in the universe nobody is like God he is totally self-sufficient and needs nobody

we are not like that we are needy we are deficient we are sinners we are

finite we are weak we are utterly unlike God in that regard and therefore it may

be that it's right for God to do some things is not right for us to do and love on

...