IS GOD AN EGOMANIAC?

Everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven (Matt. 10:32-33).

Have you ever thought about this? We are demanded by God to love Him, worship Him, glorify Him, and acknowledge Him. Does that offend you or is the greatest news you have ever heard?

Is Jesus — is God — an egomaniac? How you answer that question will dramatically affect the way you relate to, worship, love, and follow the God revealed in the Bible. There are many that cannot follow a God that they perceive is an egomaniac. Sam storms has written an excellent response to this question that I have posted this week in my blog. Please read it prayerfully, reflectively, and openly and I think it will cause you to worship him more than ever.

The answer can be given in a syllogism. (You recall from your logic classes at the university: All men are mortal. Plato was a man. Therefore, Plato was mortal. Two premises, which if they are true, lead to a true conclusion.)

My first premise is a definition of one essential aspect of true, authentic love. In other words, if this is missing, our feelings and actions may bring some relief or pleasure to the one we love, but it will fall short of true, authentic love, complete love—love the way God calls us to love.

Premise #1: Love desires and works and is willing to suffer to enthrall the beloved with the fullest and longest happiness.

Now, I think this is what the Christian Scriptures teach, but mainly I want you to understand what I mean, and follow my argument. You’ll have to decide for yourselves whether you think this definition is true. But for now, see if you follow me and see if the syllogism is valid.

So when I say, “love desires and works and is willing to suffer” I simply mean that authentic love is never mere action without a heart that cares, and never a mere emotion that has no action behind it. And that this desire and this action — when they are real — are willing to suffer in order to do the beloved as much good as they can.

And when I say that the aim of love’s desiring and working and suffering is to “enthrall” the beloved, I mean that someday — sooner or later — the beloved will be caught up in an experience that is so soul-pervading and body-pervading that no part of personal existence is left out, and that the experience will involve a kind of self-forgetfulness that is the mark of all true ecstasy.

And when I say that love aims to enthrall the beloved with “the fullest and longest happiness,” I mean a happiness, or joy, or satisfaction, or contentment, or pleasure, or gladness, or delight — the word is not the essence, the experience is — that is so full it cannot be fuller and so long it cannot be longer. This means that love aims at the infinite and eternal joy of the beloved.

Which is why I said, we can have many feelings for people, and many actions toward people that may bring them some relief or pleasure, but if we don’t desire and work toward this fullest and longest happiness, we do not love them fully, truly, authentically, as we are called to do by Jesus.

So that is Premise #1: Love desires and works and is willing to suffer to enthrall the beloved with the fullest and longest happiness.

Premise #2: Being eternally enthralled with Jesus as the decisive revelation of God is the fullest and longest happiness in the universe.

This is because Jesus is the wisest, smartest, strongest, deepest, most creative, most loving, most just, and therefore, most admirable and most valuable person in the universe — because he is himself the very essence of God. So there is no more satisfying experience than to know and admire and be the everlasting friend and family of Jesus. God created us to be fully and eternally enthralled with God through his Son Jesus Christ.

Conclusion: Therefore, when Jesus tells us that we must love him — treasure him, be satisfied in him — above all others, he is loving us.

He is desiring and working and willing to suffer to enthrall us with the fullest and longest happiness, namely, himself.
Here is the end of the matter: God is the one being in the universe for whom self-exaltation is not the act of a needy ego, but an act of infinite giving. The reason God seeks our supreme praise, or that Jesus seeks our supreme love, is not because he’s needy and won’t be fully God until he getsit, but because we are needy and won’t be fully happy until we give it.

This is not arrogance. This is grace.
This is not egomania. This is love.
And the very heart of the Christian gospel is that this is what Christ died to achieve — our full and everlasting enjoyment of the greatness of God.

Christ suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God (1 Peter 3:18).
In your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore(Psalm 16:11

LET GOD BE GOD!

"Just as it is written, [Malachi 1:2-3] "Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated...What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God's part? By no means! For he says to Moses, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion...But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, "Why have you made me like this?" Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honored use and another for dishonorable use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory-- even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles?" (Romans 9:12,14,20-24)

The book of Romans is a precious, important, yet difficult book to understand. To glean from it demands much thought, reflection, and humble prayerfulness. Romans Chapters 9-11 especially, are chapters that are difficult, tedious, and demand much thought and prayer. They are full of difficult statements that challenge our understanding of God.

It is easy for us to misread God’s actions. There are times when God is going to act in ways that we don’t understand and are contrary to the ways we think He should act. This is one of the problems we face in dealing with God. When confronted with the truth of Romans 9, we realize that God is beyond us. The human heart is a deceitful but very resourceful thing, and one way it expresses these characteristics is by dismissing God, on the one hand, and/or blaming him on the other.

“Why is God doing this to me?” is one of the most common questions I have faced as a pastor and in my own experience. Even if we don’t ask it aloud, it is a question that many of us ask in our private thoughts. When we ask that question what we are really doing is asking why God is unfair. This is the kind of thinking Paul deals with in Romans 9. There is a big difference between life being unfair and God being unfair. Romans 9 is one of those chapters that are often avoided in today’s pulpit because it is not light, easy, have to think a little bit, and is God centered rather than man centered. Just what the devil hates! I call it “Let God be God!” because it focuses upon how God works out His plans and purposes for salvation among fallen men. Phillip Yancey writes in his book The Jesus I Never Knew:“What we think and believe about God matters-really matters-as much as anything in life matters.”

We must be very careful in our reading of scriptures such as Romans 9. Be careful that you do not play God and tell him how he should save. Be careful you do not stand above Scripture and demand that it be one way and not another. Be careful that you let scripture stand-to let it teach you what it will and not to tell it what it cannot say. Be careful that you allow things to stand in scripture even when you do not understand it. Be careful that you do not assume that your heart is good enough to judge the goodness of God. Or wise enough to judge the wisdom of God.

There are a thousand reasons why God does what he does which we cannot yet comprehend. "The secret things belong to the Lord our God" (Deuteronomy 29:29). "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways," says the LORD. "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts" (Isaiah 55:8-9)

Oh how we must humbly read, study, reflect upon , and pray Romans 9! But along with that, this is how our posture should be in all that Paul teaches us at the very end of Romans 11:

"Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! "For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?" "Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?" For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen". (Romans 11:33-36)

Standing in awe of God's being God,
Pastor Bill

A PECULIAR APPETITE

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,

For they shall be filled.

Matt 5:6

If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. 38 He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.

John 7:37-39

I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and are dead. This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world."

John 6:48-51

“Oh Lord thou hast made us for Thyself and our hearts can find no rest except we find it in Thee.”

Augustine

“We taste Thee, O Thou Living Bread, And long to feast upon Thee still; We drink of Thee, the Fountainhead And thirst our souls from Thee to fill.”

Bernard of Clairveux

I remember as a little kid being invited to a friend’s house to eat. My friend’s mother made a banquet type meal complete with Chicken Parmesan, spaghetti, salad, garlic bread, and spumoni ice cream. (At least it is my idea of a banquet!) But before I went I didn’t know what I was going to be having for supper. I was afraid that it might be a meal like my mother’s favorite meal. I called this “the meal from hell”. It consisted of a combination of pork chops, liver, or spam, along with broccoli, hominy (which I called agony), and Swanson’s T.V. Corn Bread (whose constitution was much like eating sawdust!) So dreading the possibilities I loaded up beforehand upon good old peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (also known as PB and J). As a result, when I got to my friend’s house, to my surprise my dream feast was being served, but to my disappointment I had absolutely no appetite and therefore ended up passing on the meal. I missed out on the feast because I settled for a sandwich.

I am afraid that many of us are in danger of becoming peanut butter and jelly Christians stuffed with other food that has robbed us of an appetite for God. Every day of life a war goes on in regards to our appetites. Every one of us has all been born with appetites and desires. They dictate what directs us and what satisfies us whether it is the cravings of our physical hunger, the desire for the things that this world offers, or the deep longings of our souls for God.

Augustine said, “Oh Lord thou hast made us for Thyself and our hearts can find no rest except we find it in Thee.” ⁱ The heart of man is full of restlessness and longing. We are both afflicted and blessed with a chronic restlessness, an insatiable soul-thirst for this reason: that we might keep looking until we find Christ. And that having found him we might be turned back to Him again and again when we leave His spring to taste of other springs and find them lacking. As Augustine said, we were made for God. Our souls longing was made to be satisfied in fellowship with the Son of God. No wonder that Jesus said in John 6:35:

"I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst. John 4:14, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life."

Salvation is the awakening of our appetites for God. It is a “peculiar appetite”. It is an appetite that God gives the palette of our souls for Him. “Oh taste and see that the Lord is good”, says the Psalmest (Psalm 34:8). Once you have tasted the Lord, nothing less will ever satisfy your longings. No wonder, for when we taste of God’s ultimate goodness, anything else would be like penute butter and jelly sandwhiches compared to filete mignonge!

When I lived in Mexico my family and I lived on fish. Every day I would have to catch or spear dinner. Unfortunately, I had neither the ability to catch fish nor the availability of many fish except Opal Eye (Which is a reef fish full of scales, bones, and tastes aweful but is edible). We would eat this every day until one day a fisherman brought us some Red Snapper and Sierra. Once we tasted these delicious fish’s we were never able to be satisfied with Opal Eye again. The more of these we ate the less we desired Opal Eye. Our palttes had been awakened to real fish, good fish, and thus we lost our appetite for Opal Eye’s.

When we are converted God awakens in us we a new appetite for Him and a new delight in God. Saint Augustine describes this in his description of his own conversion when he writes:

“How sweet all at once it was for me to be rid of those fruitless joys that I once feared to lose was now a joy to part with.You drove them from me, you who are the true soveriegn joy. You drove them from me and took their place, you who are sweeter than all pleasure, though not to flesh and blood, you who outshine all light, yet are hidden deeper than any secret in our hearts, you who surpass all honor, though not in the eyes of men who see honor in themselves…Oh Lord my God, my light, my wealth, and my salvation!”ⁱⁱ

The Bible is full of examples of the creation of this new “peculiar appetite”. It is a precious gift of grace from God. Throughout the Bible we see people yearning, hungering, thirsting, longing for, and desiring God.

Asaph describes an appetite for God that is so strong that it eliminates all other desires. “Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” (Psalm 75:25-26) David describes this appetite in terms of a deer thirsting for water. “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.” (Psalm 42:1-2) Another time David uses similar words to describe his desire for God. “O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory. Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you” (Psalm 63:1-3). The Apostle Paul went from a man who persecuted Christians to one whose desires had been transformed to cry out. “My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better…But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ” (Philippians 1:23; 3:7-8).

The creation of a peculair appetite for God alone also leads to a peculair satisfaction in God alone. As God graces us with peculiar desiring craving, hungering, thirsting, and longing so He also graces us with a peculair satisfaction, joy, delight, fulfillment, pleasure, happiness, gladness. They go together. Listen to the words of David who discovered such satisfaction in God that he proclaimed in Psalm 16:11, “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” Jesus spoke of conversion in such a way that the discovery of the pleasures and value of heaven “is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it” (Matthew 13:44-46).

So Christianity is the creation of new desires and the fulment of those desires. God is the object of our desire and God is the fulfillment of our desire. Our whole life is a life of desiring God and tasting God and enjoying God which leads to a deeper hunger for God and more satisfaction in God. We always want more of God and the more of Him we get, the more we want. Bernard of Clairveux so aptly described his own experience of cravings and satisfaction:

“We taste Thee, O Thou Living Bread, And long to feast upon Thee still; We drink of Thee, the Fountainhead And thirst our souls from Thee to fill.” ⁱⁱⁱAnother time he wrote:

“Jesus, Thou joy of loving hearts Thou fount of lifr, Thou light of men from the best bliss that earth imparts we trun unfulfilled to Thee again.”^iv

This appetite for God and the satisfaction that results in God are the most important ways we fulfill our creation purpose. The apostle Paul writes, “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). The Westminster Catechism begins “The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.” The lynchpin of my mentor John Piper’s theology is that “God is most glorified when we are most satisfied in Him.”^v

The truth of God’s creation of these new peculiar appetites and their new fulfilments is both our greatest blessing and our greatest downfall. It is our greatest blessing because it shows that the worth and value of God is the source of our deepest satisfaction. But it is our greatest downfall because it reveals to us that our desires and the fulfillment of those desires are often far below what God created and saved us for. Augustine described it this way from his own experience:

“I was astonished that though I now loved Thee…yet I did not press on to enjoy my God. Your beauty drove me to you, but soon I was dragged away by my own weight sinking with sorrow into those inferior things…as though I sensed the fragence of the fare but was not yet able to eat it.”^vi

Indwelling sin is what stands in the way of my desire for God and my satisfaction in God. God defines sin in this way through the prophet Jeremiah. "My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water" (Jeremiah 2:13).

Here God pictures himself as a constant flowing fountain of refreshing life-giving water. The way to affirm the worth of a fountain like this is to enjoy the water, and praise the water, and keep coming back to the water, and point other people to the water, and get strength from the water, and never, never, never prefer any drink in the world over this water. That is what makes the fountain look valuable. That is how we glorify the worth and value God, the fountain of living water.

But in Jeremiah's day people tasted the fountain of God's grace and did not like it. So they gave their energies to finding better water, more sat­isfying water. Not only did God call this effort futile ("broken cisterns that can hold no water"), but he called it evil: "My people have committed two evils." They put God's perfections to the tongue of their souls and disliked what they tasted; then they turned and craved the suicidal cisterns of the world. That double insult to God is the very essence of what evil is.

Preferring the pleasures of self, possessions, money, power, acheivement, fame, or sex over the pleasures of God is a great evil. The sins of Israel, like all of our sins, stood in the way of their satisfaction with God alone. Sin always opposes and perverts our pursuit of God. It opposes our pursuit by making other things look more desirable than God. And it perverts our pursuit by making us think that we are pursuing God when in fact we are in love with His gifts. Indeed it is the ultimate mean­ing of evil. Esteeming God less than anything is the essence of evil.

Life is war. The Apostle Paul calls it “the good fight of faith” (1 Timothy 6:12). Every day of our lives here on this earth is a battle for our appetites and their satisfaction. What we desire for is what will lead to what we believe will satisfy us. The great enemy in this war is what Jesus calls “the desires or appetite for other things” (Mark 4:19). And the only weapon that will triumph is a deep hunger and thirst for God. There are those whose lack of a hunger for God is not because God is unpleasant. Perhaps at one time their palatte was awakened when they “tasted and saw that the Lord was good” (Psalm 34:8). But, because they have kept themselves stuffed with “other things” they’ve lost their appetite for God. Their soul has been stuffed with small insignificant things, and there is no room any more for the great and worthy thing; they are full of what the world has offered.

This is what took place with Israel in Psalm 106. We read: “They soon forgot His works; They did not wait for His counsel, But lusted exceedingly in the wilderness, And tested God in the desert. And He gave them their request, But sent leanness into their soul.” (Psalm 106:13-15)

The Psalmist takes us back to the time of the deliverance of Israel from Egypt and God’s leading them in the wilderness of Canaan. In verses 13-14, the Psalmist says that the Israelites forgot God’s works and did not want to wait for His counsel or word. In short, they didn’t want to wait for Him! Instead, they craved meat for their stomachs. They were tired of eating the bread (manna) from heaven that God provided for them. Manna represented more than the provision for Israel’s physical hunger. Moses said that God humbled them “causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD” (Deuteronomy 8:3). In short, manna was meant to teach Israel to live on God and to be satisifed with Him.

But Israel lost their appetite for God and His provision. So He gave them their request (verse 15). He showered the camp with quails. But along with the food God sent “leaness into their soul”. The people wasted away even while feasting upon “quail under glass.”

This illustrates how God's greatest adversaries are His gifts. The greatest enemy of hunger for God is endless nibbling at the table of the world. For all the ill that Satan can do, listen to how Jesus sadly describes what keeps us from the banquet table of his love:

"A certain man was preparing a great banquet and invited many guests. At the time of the banquet he sent his servant to tell those who had been invited, 'Come, for everything is now ready.' "But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said, 'I have just bought a field, and I must go and see it. Please excuse me.' "Another said, 'I have just bought five yoke of oxen, and I'm on my way to try them out. Please excuse me.' "Still another said, 'I just got married, so I can't come.' "The servant came back and reported this to his master. Then the owner of the house became angry and ordered his servant, 'Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame.' "'Sir,' the servant said, 'what you ordered has been done, but there is still room.' "Then the master told his servant, 'Go out to the roads and country lanes and make them come in, so that my house will be full. I tell you, not one of those men who were invited will get a taste of my banquet.'"

(Luke 14:16-24)

Do you see what keeps us from His banquet table? All are things that in themselves are good. It is a piece of land, a yoke of oxen, and a wife (Luke 14:18-20). The greatest adversary of love to God is not His enemies but His gifts. And the most deadly appetites are not for the poison of evil, but for the simple pleasures of earth. For when these replace an appetite for God himself, the idolatry is scarcely recognizable, and almost incurable.

Jesus said another time that some people hear the word of God, and a desire for God is awakened in their hearts. But then, "as they go on their way they are choked with worries and riches and pleasures of this life" (Luke 8:14). In another place he said, "The desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful" (Mark 4:19). "The pleasures of this life" and "the desires for other things", these are not evil in themselves. These are not vices. These are gifts of God. They are family dinners and coffee at Starbucks and gardening and reading a good book and decorating your house and playing with your kids and traveling across the U.S. and family get-togethers and date nights and investing in real estate and CD listening and DVD -watching and Internet-surfing and shopping and exercising and collecting and talking. And all of them can become deadly substitutes for God. These can be the very things that kill the soul.

PRAYER

Oh Lord, fountain of life, living water, bread from heaven. You are our true desire and true delight to our hungry and thirsty souls. But Lord, we are weak. We desire the wrong things and are satisfied with the wrong things. No wonder we are so empty inside. Forgive us for our opposition to you by looking to other things to satisfy our restless longings and forgive us from perverting what satisfies us by looking to your gifts rather than you for our hearts delight. We agree with the Psalmist, “Who have we in heaven but You and there is nothing on earth that we want besides You. Though our flesh and heart may fail, You alone are the strength of our heart and our portion forever.” Oh Jesus, create in us a desire to desire You and a delight to delight in You. In Jesus satisfying and delightful Name, AMEN.

i Saint Augustine, edited by Edward Pursey The Confessions of Saint Augustine (New York, N.Y.:Collier Books) book 1,p. 11

ii Ibid, Book 9, p.133

iii Bernard of Clairveux quoted in The New Encyclopedia of Christian Quotations (Grand Rapids, MI.: Baker Books) p. 923

iv Bernard of Clairveux quoted by John Piper in Desring God (Eugene Or.: Multnomah Press) p.105

v John Piper Desring God , p.10

vi Augustine, Confessions, Book 7, p. 109-110