If in the process of these talks questions
come to your mind that I don't answer,
I hope that you will write them down
and come back for the question and answer
session time tomorrow.
I really do enjoy interacting with things, and
so if you feel frustrated that I didn't
get around to answering yours, come.
Let me try to recap this morning's talk,
even though it seems like we hardly took
a breather.
The point I wanted to get across this
morning was that the aim of biblical preaching
is to bring people to worship God.
And one of the ways I tried to
justify that, especially there at the end, was
to point out that in numerous Pauline texts,
the aim of preaching is to bring people
to faith, and then I pointed out that
I believe both in Paul and in John,
and I think we could show it elsewhere,
the essence, the heart, the indispensable core of
saving faith is to be satisfied with all
that God is for us in Jesus, and
that this being satisfied with all that God
is for us in Jesus magnifies God.
And that magnifying of God is worship, and
therefore since the aim of preaching is faith,
which magnifies God, the aim of preaching is
worship.
That was the point this morning.
So always in every text, however practical the
issue is that you're taking up into God,
the aim is that God-exalting satisfaction in
God would be created in the hearts of
your hearers.
James Henry Thornwell was a great old preacher
in South Carolina where I grew up in
Greenville.
1834, Henry Ward Beecher called him the most
brilliant minister in the old school Presbyterian church,
and he wrote a letter near the beginning
of his ministry which captures this focus of
preaching that I'm trying to capture, let me
quote from him.
I felt that a new era had commenced
in my life in that I was no
longer a citizen of the world, but an
ambassador of God, standing in the stead of
Jesus Christ and beseeching men to turn away
from unsatisfying vanities of a fleeting life and
to fix their hopes on the enduring sources
of beatitude.
It's amazing what you can say if you
use flowery words.
It really means make people happy.
But if you say that, people get upset
at you.
So I'll say it the way he said
it.
To persuade people to turn away from unsatisfying
vanities of a fleeting life and fix their
hopes on the enduring sources of beatitude which
surrounds the throne of God.
You know, the text in the Bible is
not nearly so squeamish in the language that
it uses from which that's taken.
Thou dost show me the path of life.
In thy presence is fullness of joy, and
at thy right hand are pleasures forevermore.
We say, oh, don't you mean joy?
You don't mean pleasure, do you?
Well, the Bible doesn't whitewash its happiness language
all the time like we try to.
It is indiscriminate in the slinging out of
words like happiness and joy and pleasure and
delight.
What Thornwell is trying to say is that
the task of preaching is to warn people
that they're not going to find satisfaction in
the world and they need to find it
in the living water that satisfies.
You know this text.
Oh, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters.
He who has no money, come buy and
eat.
Come buy wine and milk without money and
without price.
Why do you spend your money for that
which is not bread and labor?
For that which does not satisfy.
Hearken diligently to me and satisfy yourselves with
abundance.
That's preaching, Isaiah 55.
That's the goal of preaching.
Turn away from what doesn't satisfy.
Come to what does satisfy is what you
say every Sunday morning as you spread the
banquet table.
The essence of preaching, the best way to
glorify an inexhaustible fountain is to drink and
drink and drink and drink and then stand
up and say, ah.
And that ah is worship.
And the satisfaction you feel is sanctification's power
because the power of sex and drink and
drugs and pride and popularity, power is broken
by a superior satisfaction.
The biblical way to liberate people from sin
is to give them the expulsive power of
a new affection as Thomas Chalmers in a
great sermon once said.
The task of preaching, therefore, is to display
the all-satisfying glories of God in such
a way that the power of competing allegiances
and competing satisfaction is broken and falls away
and people are held captive by the presence
of God and its joy and its pleasure.
So what I said this morning, I just
alluded to it in passing and we'll talk
more about it now and especially tomorrow, is
that pastors can make their own music.
They don't have to have a synthesizer or
an organ or drums.
They can make their own music.
And that music is the singing of the
soul over the truth of God that they
are preaching and the sound is worship.
And therefore, all true preaching not only tries
to beget and sustain worship, but all true
preaching is worship.
And if you don't see worship happening in
the pulpit on Sunday, you're probably not seeing
genuine preaching.
One of the reasons people do not buy
into what the preacher is saying is because
it doesn't look like he's bought into it
with his heart.
His passions are not engaged.
He woke up and watched the news on
television.
He went to bed watching something that's on
TV Saturday night.
I've been preaching for 14 years.
I taught six years before that.
I've never had a TV in my house.
You do not have to have a television
to be relevant.
Believe me, you don't.
My people have never accused me of being
out of touch or irrelevant.
I know my weaknesses.
I know the power of television.
It is a deadly instrument in America.
It kills preachers.
That's not in the paper.
You can make your own music.
It doesn't need to be with an instrument.
When the worship-seeking word comes, it needs
to come worshiping.
In other words, James Stewart.
Remember him?
A great Scottish preacher.
He wrote a book 20 years ago called
Heralds of God.
In it he says this, If in a
congregation one soul here, another there, may be
receiving, as the sermon proceeds, some vision of
the majesty of God, some glimpse of the
loveliness of Christ, some revelation of personal need
beneath the searchlight of the Spirit, is the
ministry of the word to be minimized or
regarded as less divine than the other parts
of the service, is not such preaching worship?
And I would say it is worship, not
only because it is begetting or sustaining it
in the people as they're listening, but it
is it because the delight that it is
trying to create in the people is being
expressed through the preacher.
That sense of being satisfied in God is
not only happening in the hearts of the
people, it is being expressed through the voice
and the demeanor of the preacher.
And it makes a difference.
That song will awaken the hearts of the
people.
I'm going to talk about that tomorrow.
Tomorrow is the worshipping of the pastor.
But before we get to that, today, this
afternoon, I want to focus in on this
half of my definition of the preacher called
expository.
I define preaching as expository exaltation.
We talk about the exaltation tomorrow.
And we talk about the expository now.
The song that the preacher sings while he's
preaching over the truth that he's preaching is
a song that has spiritual God-given power
only when it is a song sung over
truth.
If it isn't being sung over biblical truth,
it isn't God's song and it isn't genuine
worship.
And therefore, truth matters.
Expository exaltation is necessary.
My definition of expository I take straight out
of John Stott's book On Between Two Worlds,
and I'll read it for you.
I think it's excellent.
I can't improve on it.
He says, It is my contention that all
true Christian preaching is expository preaching.
Of course, if an expository sermon is meant
a verse-by-verse explanation of a lengthy
passage of Scripture, then indeed it is only
a possible way of preaching, but that would
be a misuse of the word.
Properly speaking, he says, exposition has a much
broader meaning.
It refers to the content of the sermon,
biblical truth, rather than its style, a running
commentary.
To expound Scripture is to bring out of
the text what is there and expose it
to view.
The expositor pries open what appears to be
closed, makes plain what is obscure, unravels what
is knotted, and unfolds what is tightly packed.
The opposite of exposition is imposition, which is
to impose on the text, verse, sentence, single
word, what isn't there.
It could equally be a paragraph or a
chapter, a whole book.
The size of the text is immaterial, so
long as it is biblical.
What matters is what we do with it.
Whether it is long or short, our responsibility
as expositors is to open it up in
such a way that it speaks its message
clearly, plainly, accurately, and relevantly.
That's excellent.
And it's what I believe exposition is.
So when I call preaching expository exaltation, I
mean that by expository.
It says to expound Scripture is to bring
out of the text what is there and
expose it to view.
Now, what is mainly there is God.
In every text, on every subject, whether commanding,
warning, promising, teaching, the main reality of every
text is God.
And wherever God is present, He is supreme.
And wherever He is supreme, He is to
be worshipped.
And therefore, every sermon is about worship.
Every sermon is meant to gather the affections
of the people, satisfy them in God, and
lift their hearts to God for whatever the
topic is that you are dealing in.
When we ask, therefore, as every preacher ought
to ask, what the aim of preaching is
or how can I awaken the slumbering passions
of my people so that they say that
the surpassing worth of God satisfies them or
they say with the Apostle Paul, I count
everything as rubbish for the surpassing value of
just knowing Christ Jesus my Lord and fellowshipping
in His sufferings and joining Him in the
resurrection.
How do you bring people to feel that
in their hearts so they count everything as
loss for the surpassing value of connecting with
Jesus?
The answer is going to be at least
this.
In our preaching, we must display from Scripture
the glories of God in Christ.
We must display from Scripture the glories of
God in Christ.
Now, it won't do here.
I know this is partially jargon and can
go easily in your ear and out the
other.
I want to bank here for a minute.
It isn't enough to say briefly, my preaching
is for the glory of God and the
passion of our church and the mission of
our church is that God be glorified and
then hasten on to talk about other things
that you really like to talk about and
you know your people like to hear about.
That will not do.
Oh, how many preachers in pulpits, how many
teachers in seminaries and colleges and how many
counselors in clinics give an account of their
God-neglecting sermons and God-neglecting teaching and
God-neglecting syllabi and God-neglecting counseling by
saying, oh, we believe that the glory of
God is the foundation of everything.
We assume that.
We take that for granted and everything we
are now saying in this sermon, in this
class, in this counseling is built on that.
That will not do.
Absolutely will not do to say that we
take it for granted or we assume God.
More and more in recent years I have
become so deeply persuaded God does not like
to be taken for granted.
He does not like to be assumed as
the unspoken premise.
He created the universe to what?
Display His glory.
The heavens declare the glory of God.
The firmaments declare His handiwork.
Day unto day pours forth speech about God.
He did not create the universe to go
secret.
Nor did He do redemption or send His
Son into the world so that He would
be buried underneath as the unseen foundation of
everything else we like to talk about and
show where our heart really is.
No, I have come to see that once
I was wrong in the use of an
analogy about this reality of God, namely the
analogy of foundation.
He is the foundation of my courses.
He is the foundation of my counseling.
He is the foundation of my preaching.
Do you know the problem with that?
Nobody thinks about the cement blocks in their
basement.
Nobody.
It won't do to say He is the
foundation under our church.
He is the foundation under my syllabi.
Oh, I'm sorry I didn't mention Him, but
we all know that He's there.
I think it's an offense to God to
enjoy the food in the kitchen and the
TV in the den and the sex in
the bedroom, and now and then remember, oh
yeah, there's a foundation under the house.
That's right.
Let's give tribute to the foundation.
When you really like the food, you really
like the TV, and you really like the
sex, He's not honored.
He's not honored.
So I beseech you, stop using that if
you use it as the warrant for a
God-neglecting sermon or a warrant for a
God-neglecting class or a warrant for a
God-neglecting counseling session.
It will not do.
God does not like to be taken for
granted.
He likes to saturate everything.
He will be displayed.
He wants to be on the agenda all
the time.
That's the burden of my life to say
that to as many people as I can.
I have never ever met anybody who displays,
knows, loves, cherishes, worships and thinks about the
foundation in their house.
It's an inadequate image, even if true, because
the house will fall without it, but you
can be an idolater in it while it
stands.
We will awaken worship in our people when
we stop treating God as an out-of
-sight foundation for all the other things we
like to talk about and begin to talk
about God.
The glories, plural.
I'm using plural to just break the synapse
in your brain which allows glory to go
zap-zap.
Glories.
We must talk about glories.
The glories of God and Christ.
And we must get specific.
We must get specific.
It won't do to just stand up and
give a broad, vague generalization at the beginning
of your message that you're going to talk
about the glory of God or you really
hope that people will come to delight in
the glory of God and then talk about
everything else but the glories of God.
That won't do.
We must talk about His value and His
worth.
We must talk about His triumphs past, present,
and future over sin and death and hell
and Satan.
There's a series.
We must talk about His knowledge.
We must talk about His knowledge that makes
the Library of Congress look like a little
matchbox and makes quantum physics like a first
-grade reader.
You must talk about His knowledge and you
must talk about His wisdom which has never
been, never will be counseled by anybody.
We must talk about His authority over heaven
and earth and by whose permission Satan cannot...
He can't move an inch without that permission
of God's authority.
He has absolute authority over all the demons
in the world.
We must talk about His providence without which
not one bird in the dark jungle of
Africa falls dead to the ground and not
one hair on this 48-year-old head
turns gray.
Not one without His sovereign, providential permission.
And we must talk about His Word that
upholds the universe and keeps all the atoms
and molecules together.
Everything coheres in His Word.
We must talk about His power to walk
on water and to cleanse lepers and to
heal the lame and open the eyes of
the blind and open the ears of the
deaf and to still storms and to raise
the dead.
There's a year's worth of glories.
We must talk about His purity never to
sin.
We must talk about His trustworthiness never ever
has will break one promise nor will one
eona fall to the ground.
He is absolutely full of integrity and trustworthiness
which is a rare thing today and therefore
is relevant.
We must talk about His justice.
This is so fantastically important when you talk
about family systems and who will have the
last say and what will we do with
that guy who abused my kids and the
justice of God which will call and settle
every account either in hell or on the
cross.
There's a series, The Justice of God.
And we must talk about His patience to
endure people like me decade after decade of
half-heartedness and failure and irritability with my
wife and out of control with my children
and failing to follow through and the awesome
patience of God slow to anger and abounding
in steadfast love and forgiving iniquity and transgression
and sin.
And we must talk about His endurance.
Have you ever had anything like a nail
driven through your hand?
And to choose it to choose it to
embrace it to keep there instead of pulling
off and leveling them with His voice.
What an endurance!
And we must talk about His wrath one
of these days.
One of these days the Lamb is going
to stand forth and people are going to
cry for rocks and mountains to crush the
life out of them so they don't have
to see the Lamb.
There's a series.
The wrath has to be seen in its
glory and we must talk about His grace
that justifies the ungodly and His love that
dies for sinners.
In other words, brothers and sisters, if you
want to beget worship in your people you
can't use vague generalities about the glory of
God.
You can't do it.
You've got to be specific about the contours.
There's a contour to our God.
It's in this book.
The contours.
You make enemies with contours but you flame
people with contours.
You hold up a vague cloud and call
it glory, they'll see it.
You've got to show the contours.
You've got to blow the cloud away.
You've got to let the diamond shine with
its sharp edges.
God has edges.
And we are called upon to clean the
diamond off and blow the cloud away and
turn it before our people and let them
see the preciseness of our God.
There are glories to be magnified.
Every Sunday our people need a fresh picture
of why God is the all-satisfying treasure
of their lives.
They need to be reminded.
I know that because that's where I live.
I tell my people again and again I've
got to get saved every morning all over
again.
Which simply means the devil sits on my
face when I wake up in the morning.
And the only way I can get him
off is with the Word of God.
If I were to wake up in the
morning and do anything but quote Scripture, I
would be a goner at the breakfast table.
I don't know how people neglect the Word
of God and neglect the battle with the
evil one and expect to be God's person.
Our people need to see some particular concrete,
stunning representation of His greatness.
Some fresh angle on the old glory that
makes people say, I count everything as loss
for the surpassing value of knowing Jesus.
I want my people to say that every
Sunday as they leave.
However the topic has been.
Let me give you an example about this
concreteness.
Last week, I'm reading my devotions and I'm
reading in John 8.
And I use this just because the way
the Lord used it.
What are we, Tuesday?
The day before yesterday I did the pastoral
prayer and this came.
I was reading on Friday, I think it
was, last week and Jesus spoke powerfully.
He said to me, this is the only
way Jesus has ever spoken to me, naming
the words of Scripture.
I wish He did other things and I
believe He can do other things, I just
don't happen to have the gift of prophecy,
I suppose, like Wayne Grudem says I'm supposed
to have.
But God spoke to me very powerfully.
He said, truly, truly I say to you,
if anyone will keep my word, he will
never see death.
I don't even see it.
I mean, it just hit me like a
ton of bricks.
Who on television today could look out over
America and say, if anyone will keep my
word, he will never see death.
Ha!
Now there's a text on authority.
There's a text on power.
Who do you think you are?
You either put people like that in jail
or you bow down and worship.
So I was praying my pastoral prayer on
Sunday.
I was praying for the children.
I was praying for the teenagers.
Let me tell you what I said to
the teenagers.
This is absolutely irrelevant to this point.
But I'll tell you what I said.
I said, Lord, I just thank you so
much that Christian teenagers can say yes, your
majesty to the king of kings instead of
following everybody else who says yes, your majesty
to the mirror.
I thought that was really proper.
But nobody laughed.
And it wasn't supposed to be funny because
it's a tragedy.
And then I got to the single people
and I prayed for them.
I'll tell you what I said for the
single people.
And I got to the old people.
And I said, Lord, I just beg of
you for the saints who count their days
not in decades now or in years but
in months, that you right now would speak
to them this word.
If anyone keeps my word, he will never
see death.
And I said, when death raises its hideous
face in that last split second and reaches
out its horrid tentacles in that last split
second, the Lord Jesus comes.
Pow!
And you're gone.
You will not see it.
Isn't that awesome?
You won't see it in the split second
of that last whatever it is.
None of us has ever gone there in
return.
We pastors have watched people die.
And we think we've seen death.
We've not seen death.
The only people who fear they'll see death
is when they're about two seconds away from
it and it is opening its jaws.
And if they're Christians, He comes!
He comes!
And they do not see it.
They don't see it.
And I just prayed that reality down upon
the old saints of our church.
And my hope right now, there's an element
of preaching in praying.
And that's not unbiblical.
You can make it unbiblical by turning a
prayer into a sermon and slipping in your
little points that you couldn't make any other
way.
But when Paul said in 1 Corinthians 14,
if I pray in a tongue, how are
they going to say amen?
In other words, you want people to say
amen when you pray.
I mean pray.
Same thing almost.
You want people to say amen.
You are praying.
I can't even separate the two.
You are praying.
You are praying in a way that you
hope to God that they are agreeing with.
Because reality is being pressed on them by
the Spirit in the name of God.
So that's an example of how in my
life, last week a word came to me,
a very specific contour of the glory, of
the power and the authority of Jesus Christ
to stand back and say anybody in the
world who keeps my word will never see
the biggest enemy that we ever had.
I mean that's just incredible.
You just take a nugget like that and
you press it and you press it and
you press it until they see it and
feel it as glorious.
And so the point there is not merely
that they are not going to die, but
God is great.
Jesus is great.
That's the point of that text.
The sub-point is therefore you won't die.
You won't die.
Because Jesus is great.
You put a man like that behind bars
or you bow down and worship.
You don't trifle with him.
One last thing.
There's a tendency today, just like there's a
tendency to take the glory of God and
His reality and put it underneath and call
it foundation while we talk about what we
really like to talk about, things that are
on everybody's front agenda, front burner, and so
we know we can stir them up good.
And if somebody says, where was God in
that sermon?
Well, He was down here upholding the sermon.
Just like there's a tendency to do that,
there is also a tendency today to do
the same thing with biblical texts.
That is to take the concrete text of
Scripture and hide it as the unseen foundation
of the sermon.
There seems to exist the idea that if
you open the Bible and read the text
and then tell people to look at the
text with you or quote it repeatedly in
your sermon so that they hear the actual
words of the text, it's academic, pedantic, and
therefore associated with lectures which are always boring
and therefore you shouldn't do it.
Instead, maybe read your text but build on
it.
Don't work with it because if you do,
you'll sound like a scholar and a boring
lecturer.
Well, I don't agree with that, as you
might guess.
I don't think it has to be boring.
I don't think it has to be pedantic,
and I do think it holds the attention
of the hearer, and I do think it
stirs affection and worship, and I want to
plead for that in these last couple of
minutes.
Our people need to know that what we
say about God is what God says about
God.
Because what I think about God is not
worth anything!
Nothing!
Pastors who do not direct the attention of
their listeners repeatedly to the text of God's
Word are presuming that they should take His
Word for it, which means they are elevating
their word above God's Word.
We must not only believe that what we
say is based on God's Word, we must,
I believe, show people that it is so,
that what we're saying comes out of the
Bible.
And that does not have to be pedantic.
It doesn't have to be lecture-like.
We must show them the very words and
phrases and clauses that give us this flame
of love to God.
Where did we get it anyway?
From listening to loosey-goosey music in the
morning?
If we did, close our mouths!
If our song has not been born out
of the truth of Scripture, our song is
fake!
Our emotions, our emotional ism, the difference between
emotion and emotional ism is where the truth
is underneath and permeating the emotion.
I'm pleading, in other words, not merely that
what you show of Christ really be from
the text.
Not merely that.
That's crucial.
But that it be manifestly from the text.
That it be obviously from the text.
That your people walk out knowing that they
have gotten your point from that book, not
from your imagination.
And if they don't see that, they're building
on sin in taking your word for it.
I'll close with an example.
Just pretend like you're my people now.
And I'll give you a three or five
minute sermon.
Our text is Matthew 13, verse 44.
And if you were my church, I'd wait
until I heard all the pages swishing.
But you know this verse by heart.
And you don't have to have people have
Bibles.
You know, I.G. Fernando was here last
week, right?
I've had people criticize me on this point
and say, you talk like a westerner because
you don't realize that most of the preaching
that's done in the world is done to
pre-literate who don't have a Bible in
their lap.
And therefore, your way of preaching won't work
in most of the places in the world.
I'm, hmm, that's an interesting thought.
And I went to I.G. Fernando.
And I asked him.
And I said, now you know he does
most all of his preaching in villages to
pre-literate people.
And I said, is that true?
Is my emphasis on taking your points from
precise words and clauses of biblical text that
people can see and know why you're getting
your points from that text, is that something
that won't work in cultures where they don't
have Bibles yet?
And he said, absolutely not.
And then he proceeded to describe to me
how he does it.
He said, I often have a person memorize
the text with me or have a Bible,
the book there, from the village.
And I have them read it.
And then I go verse by verse and
I review it.
And I say, now say that one again.
He reads it again.
And then he makes his point.
You can do verbally what I'm talking about
with a book.
You don't have to have the book in
your lap.
I think in our land it is so
awesomely precious to have the book that to
have it in our laps is a glorious
thing and we should encourage people to have
it there.
But don't tell me, at least you write
I.G. Fernando and get it from the
horse's mouth who works in that kind of
situation before you make that kind of criticism
that the kind of text permeated preaching I'm
pleading for is not possible in pre-literate
cultures.
Okay, back to the text.
Matthew 13.44 The kingdom of heaven is
like a treasure hidden in a field which
a man found and hid and from joy
over it he goes and sells all that
he has and buys that field.
And I say to my people, look at
this.
Look at this.
Don't look at me.
Look down.
Look at this.
And I ask them questions.
They say, is that true?
How valuable is the kingdom of God?
Is the kingdom of God so valuable that
you will part with your clothes and your
wedding ring and your retirement portfolio and your
health insurance and your house and your car
and your computer and everything else to have
it?
Is it that valuable?
Tell me from the text, people.
And some of them will nod and say,
yes, yes, it's that valuable.
There it is.
We see it.
He sold everything he had to buy that
text.
I say, yes, yes, so far so good.
But is that all?
Is that all this text wants us to
feel about the value of King Jesus and
his rule in our lives and over this
world?
No, no.
That's not all.
There's more here.
Look at it.
Don't miss the key phrase.
We haven't seen the key phrase yet.
What's the key phrase here, folks?
Where do we get the power to release
goods and kindred and let them go?
What phrase in this text has changed my
life, John Piper's life, and underlies every book
on that table out there and has transformed
my preaching totally in the last 18 years?
What phrase in this text do I want
you to walk away with?
Well, in my church, they'd all know what
the text is, and perhaps you do, too.
The text is, or the phrase is, and
from joy over it, he goes and sells
all that he has.
It's the joy that drives him to sell
everything he has to get that field.
The power to let goods and kindred go,
this mortal life also.
The power to destroy the health, wealth, and
prosperity gospel, which is no gospel.
The power that binds us to God and
severs us from the fleeting pleasures of sin,
and therefore the power of sanctification is this
phrase.
From joy over it, he sold everything.
From joy over it, he let everything go.
He walked away from health, wealth, and prosperity.
From joy over it, he embraced the kingdom.
From joy over it, the all-satisfying glory
of the kingdom so filled him with joy
that it broke the power of every competing
satisfaction.
Freedom from those sexual addictions.
Freedom from the temptation to commit adultery.
Freedom from the need to rise the corporate
ladder and neglect his family.
And on and on and on.
The practical significance of a radical, God-centered
orientation on the glory of the Lord is
endless.
It's endless.
All sacrifice, all obedience, all worship find their
impulse in this joy in God.
And therefore, the goal of God, the goal
of life, and the goal of preaching is
God-exalting, soul-satisfying satisfaction or pleasure in
God.
What I want to do tomorrow is talk
about what the song is like that is
sung while we preach.
Let's pray.
Father, I pray that one of the effects
of this message today would be that in
hundreds of pulpits over the next years represented
in this room right now and in classrooms
and in counseling sessions there would be a
reverberation of the glory, the glory, the glories
of the Lord Jesus and of yourself, Father,
and of the Holy Spirit.
A reverberation in what we say, how we
preach, how we teach, how we counsel.
Oh, Lord God, forbid that we would hide
you beneath all the other things we talk
about and call you foundation.
In Jesus' name I pray.
This concludes Dr. Piper's message.
For information on other resources produced by Desiring
God Ministries, contact us at the address or
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We at DGM want to help you make
God your treasure because God is most glorified
in us when we are most satisfied in
Him.