Glorifying God Through Joy and Dependence

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God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him yes an amen, but wouldn't God also be glorified in us if we were just minions his slavish labourers? It's a question from a listener named Gage. Pastor John, hello. I just finished reading the first chapter of your book Desiring God. [00:00:03]

My confusion hit when I began reading about the happiness of God as you described the chief end of God. I didn't find myself in disbelief. If God's chief end is to glorify himself, that is absolutely believable. Where I am awestruck is the fact that his glorification is his chief end and yet he still doesn't require us to live by works to satisfy him. [00:00:35]

Why is it that with God his chief end being to glorify himself doesn't require us to slave away in works? Couldn't he be just as glorified in us if we were tireless slaves for him? Pastor John, what would you say? Couldn't he be just as glorified in us if we were tireless slaves for him? [00:00:57]

The best way to come at a question like this is not first to dig into the nature of God to explain why this is so. That's what I was frankly tempted to do because it's not hard to do and it's glorious to do it. But I think first is to dig into scripture to show that this is so. [00:01:32]

God does get more glory from our serving freely by faith in His enabling power than providing needed slave labor. So let's look at a few passages and then circle back to the why question why he would be more glorified this way than by tireless slave labor. First Peter 4:11, whoever serves let him serve as one who serves by the strength that God supplies. [00:02:32]

So God gets the glory because God gave the strength so the giver gets the glory. If we were the giver of slave labor and God were the needy plantation owner dependent on us, then we would get the glory, our power and our wisdom and our resourcefulness providing his need. That's the gist of the argument in 1st Peter 4:11. [00:03:46]

We always pray for you that our God may make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill, get this, fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power so God fulfills our good resolves to serve God so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you. [00:04:19]

God is glorified because he fulfills every good resolve and work of faith. We don't provide his slave labor; he provides our strength to give any labor. That's why he gets the glory according to second Thessalonians 1:12. Here's Acts 17:24 and 25, the God who made the world and everything in it. [00:04:49]

God's glory is such that he is not and cannot be served as though he needed anything, especially slave labor. He's the giver of all, not the receiver. And in Romans 11:34 and 35, who has known the mind of the Lord or who has been his counselor? Answer: nobody. Nobody counsels God. [00:05:34]

Faith in God's promises of provision is how we glorify God, not by showing that we have resources for slave labor in ourselves to contribute to God's faltering labour force. So Jesus says to his disciples, no longer do I call you slaves, not gonna call you that, for the slave does not know what his master is doing. [00:07:19]

God knows that he is seen to be more glorious when the beauty of all of his perfections bind us to him not with chains but with cherishing, not with coercion but with contentment, not because he's a tyrant but because he's a treasure that we won't leave. He's not a tyrant that we can't leave. [00:09:03]

God would not get more glory from a tireless slave labor force. He gets more glory, he gets glory by being so beautiful in his character and in his ways that we are bound to him not because we are held in jail but because we are held by joy. A man that is a beautiful word. [00:09:59]

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