Believe it or not, God’s ultimate goal in all that He does is to bring honor to Himself. Any attempt to understand our place in His world will be inadequate until we grasp this most startling and seemingly unappealing characteristic of His.
And why is it that this opening statement doesn’t sit right in our minds? Perhaps it is our disdain for people who are like this – I mean, who wants to spend any amount of time (let alone eternity!) with someone who’s full of himself?
But God is not vain in the same way that people are vain. And I will even go so far as say that I am super glad that my God is this way. Why? Because it is in God’s enjoyment of and sufficiency in Himself that He is a very happy God.
Happy? Never heard that used as an adjective to describe God. Yet the Bible depicts God as unashamedly happy. Psalm 115:3 says, “Our God is in the heavens; He does whatever He pleases!” Imagine that – not being frustrated by anyone or anything.
Well if God’s so stuck on Himself, what does that mean for mankind? What does that mean for the people of Eastern Europe? What does that mean for me? It’s time to make a second shocking statement: God is most honored in us when we find our most pleasure in Him.
Wait, did you say pleasure? I thought Christians were a bunch of joyless, pleasure-bashing stoics? On the contrary, we who believe in God proclaim that “in His presence is fulness of joy, in His right hand there are pleasures forever” (Psalm 16:11).
In the book of Jeremiah, God rails on the nation of Israel for chasing after other gods. His rebuke clearly identifies the cause of His anger: “For My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, to hew for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water” (Jeremiah 2:13).
It is for this very reason that all of us stand in a very bad place before our Maker. For the God who is infinitely happy and who is most honored when His people seek His goodness is also most dishonored when His people mock His goodness and seek fulfillment in broken things that cannot satisfy. To put it in crass human terms, imagine your shame when your boyfriend/girlfriend dumps you and starts going out with a water buffalo!
Sounds silly, but that is the very concept of sin. Just as Eve was tricked into thinking that God was holding something back from her by telling her not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, when we disobey God, we are making a declaration of independence to Him: “I know what’s best for me; you obviously don’t. So I’m going to exercise my freedom and pursue whatever I want, and it’s not going to be you.”
The upshot of all this is that God honors this request. Just as the thirteen colonies secured their independence from King George, our desire to secede from God’s Kingdom ifs fulfilled. A main gripe that many people today have with Christians is that they are so elitist: “Who are they to say that they’re going to heaven and we’re going to hell? The nerve!” Sorry to say, but all who are either in hell now or are going to hell have personally chosen that fate.
Christians, on the other hand, are people who have caught a glimpse of God’s goodness. We have heard that this God is a fountain of living water, and we are desperately thirsty. Yet we are so lame – despite our God-given capacity for pleasure, we find ourselves unable to belong fully to God, constantly chasing after modern-day equivalents of “broken cisterns.”
We therefore look to a Savior, Jesus of Nazareth, who God was pleased to send to us to become a “ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). Because if God is most honored when we find our most pleasure in Him, then He will do anything to change our inability to enjoy Him. He would even be pleased to crush His own Beloved Son and put Him to grief (Isaiah 53:10).
See, for Jesus to be our “ransom,” He had to be imprisoned and punished for us, so that we could go free., And He did just that, humbling Himself before the whips and taunts or mere men and eventually submitting Himself to the worst curse of all, death by crucifixion (Deuteronomy 21:23).
Have you ever been falsely accused of a crime you did not commit? Jesus was fully innocent, yet before those accusers whose guilt He was suffering for, He was silent, as was predicted by the prophet Isaiah some 700 years before (Isaiah 53:7). Similarly, we will one day stand silent before our Maker, unable to argue that we have been falsely accused of doubting God’s goodness and chasing after broken cisterns.
I am a Christian because I’ve tried many cisterns, and found them all to be broken. Ever since I said, “Jesus, will you be my ransom?” God has been vigorously at work, not at purging me of my longings, but rather making sure that I fulfill myself with the very thing that my whole heart was meant to long for: God Himself. And as I struggle with my faithlessness and as God shows me more of Himself in Scripture, I am increasingly convinced that such a hedonistic approach to obeying God is the only approach that gives God His proper glory.
I am going to Eastern Europe this summer to call the people there to turn from the pitiful cisterns they choose to fulfill their longings with and inform them there is a Savior who will willingly suffer the shame of such a declaration of independence so that they can be fully reconciled to their Maker. And I present this most wonderful news to you so that you too might believe that God is good and that in asking Jesus to be your ransom, you are declared “not guilty” in God’s court and can unashamedly join with me in beholding God’s wonderful glory.
“Our God is in the heavens; He does whatever He pleases!” He is therefore not frustrated by anything. Challenge Him to show you how abundant He is. But be forewarned: He must first show you how empty you are. For if you came to Him with gifts and talents to present to Him, He would not be glorified. Come to Him confessing that you have spent a lifetime avoiding His eternal spring and settling for broken cisterns.
It is a humbling thing indeed to be stripped of any sense of self-righteousness; after all, haven’t we spent our entire lives seeking acceptance and honor? Yet how much better to be accepted and honored by God, no longer naked and ashamed like man and woman in the garden, but fully clothed in the righteousness of Christ (2 Corinthians 5:21).
“Then you will say on that day, ‘I will give thanks to You, O LORD; for although You were angry with me, Your anger is turned away, and You do comfort me. Behold, God is my salvation, I will trust and not be afraid; for the LORD God is my strength and song, and He has become my salvation.’ Therefore you will draw joyously from the springs of salvation” (Isaiah 21:1-3). Won’t you join with me in adoring this good and happy and fulfilling God of ours?
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