The Glory of God: God’s Chief End By Jack Sawyer I. What is God’s glory 1? A. The term “glory” is not easy to define. (It is like trying to define beauty) B. God’s glory is the beauty of His manifold perfections, and together these manifold perfections signify a reality of infinite greatness and worth. 1. A comment about terminology: a. The term “glory of God” in the Bible generally refers to the visible splendor or moral beauty of God’s manifold perfections. It is an attempt to put into words what cannot be contained in words what God is like in His infinite, unveiled magnificence and excellence. 2. Understanding the infinity of God’s glory is extremely difficult for finite sinners. Why? a. Something finite cannot comprehensively understand something infinite (Ps 139:6; 145:3). b. Rebel sinners resist understanding God’s glory (Rom 1:18-23; Jn 3:19,20). c. Converted sinners must learn about God’s glory gradually and incrementally (Ex 33:12-34:8). C. God’s glory can refer to the infinite moral excellence of His character (Ex 33:18,19; 34:6,7; Jn 1:14). D. God’s glory can refer to an awesome radiance of His divine attributes in things visibly manifested. 1. Supernaturally: Christ’s transfiguration, appearance to Saul on the road to Damascus, second coming etc. (Mat 17:1-5; Acts 9:3-6; Mat 24:30; 1 Jn 3:2). 2. Naturally: ominous ravines and thunderstorms, unapproachable cliffs, majestic and awesome mountains, vastness of the heavens, brilliance of the sun, independence of the wind, beauty and purity of a fresh fall of snow, goodness of a needed rainfall, happiness in nature’s morning songs and sounds etc. a. God’s glorious signature is everywhere in nature! E. Essentially, God’s glory has to do with who God is and what He has done (and is doing) to display and exalt Himself. 1. God’s works of creation glorify Him (Rom 1:20; Ps 19:1-4). 2. God’s works of redemption glorify Him (Eph 1:5,6, 11-14). 3. God’s works of creation and redemption synchronize in their aims to give Him glory (Isa 44:23). II. What is the Chief End of God? A. The chief end of God is to glorify God and enjoy Himself forever . 1. All things in the universe ultimately exist for God’s glory and pleasure (Rom 11:36; Rev 4:11). 1 ( F o r s i m i l a r s t u d y m a t e r i a l s v i s i t t h e s o u r c e o f t h i s o n e @ www. o u t p o s t s i t e . c o m )

The Glory of God: God’s Chief End 2. God’s ultimate goal is to preserve and display His infinite and awesome greatness and worth, that is, His glory. a. Pursuing His own glory is clearly the uppermost reality in God’s affections. He loves His glory infinitely. He loves Himself infinitely. b. God’s overwhelming passion is to exalt the value of His glory. 1. To that end He seeks to display it, to oppose those who belittle it, and to vindicate it from all contempt (Isa 6:3; 42:8; Mal 2:2; Acts 12:23). c. The Scriptures emphatically and repeatedly reflect that God’s chief end is to glorify Himself (Rom 16:27; Gal 1:5; Eph 3:21; Phil 4:20; 1 Tim 1:17; 2 Tim 4:18; Heb 13:21; 1 Pet 4:11; 5:11; 2 Pet 3:18; Jude 1:25; Rev 1:6; 5:13; 7:12). III. Is God happy? A. God is not a frustrated God, but a deeply happy God. 1. Because God is sovereign, and none of His purposes can be frustrated, He is the happiest of all beings (Ps 115:3). 2. God has been supremely and eternally happy in the fellowship of the Trinity (Jn 17:5, 21-26; 1 Cor 2:10b-11). a. God is not 3 but 1, like an egg. He is 3 and 1, unlike anything we have ever known. b. The unshakable happiness of God is indeed a happiness in Himself. B. Can you imagine what it would be like if the God who ruled the world were not happy? IV. What makes God happy? A. If we could discover what one thing God pursues in everything He does, we would know what He delights in most. B. God’s own glory is uppermost in His affections. In everything He does, His purpose is to preserve and display His glory . 1. To say God’s glory is uppermost in His own affections means that He puts a greater value on it than on anything else. He delights in His glory above all things. 2. God’s goals to redeem, save, and restore are subordinate to His goal to glorify Himself. a. God’s allegiance to Himself is the foundation of His allegiance to us. b. If God were not infinitely devoted to the preservation, display, and enjoyment of His own glory, we could have no hope of finding happiness in Him. C. All the different ways God has chosen to display His glory in creation and redemption seem to reach their culmination in the praises of His redeemed people. 1. God governs the world with glory precisely that He might be admired, marveled at, exalted, and praised. 2 ( F o r s i m i l a r s t u d y m a t e r i a l s v i s i t t h e s o u r c e o f t h i s o n e @ www. o u t p o s t s i t e . c o m )

The Glory of God: God’s Chief End 2. The climax of God’s happiness is the delight He takes in the echoes of His excellence in the praises of the saints (1 Chron 29:10-13; Ps 86:12; 145:4,5; 2 Thes 1:10). V. How is it that God’s unshakable happiness is the foundation of His people’s supreme happiness? A. God is loving toward His people precisely because He relentlessly pursues the praises of His name in the hearts of His people. How is this so? 1. What could God give us that would prove Him most loving? Himself! (Ex 33:11a, 13, 16-18). a. If God withholds Himself from our contemplation and companionship, no matter what else He gives us, He is not loving. 2. What do we all do when we are given or shown something beautiful or excellent? We praise it! a. We praise what we enjoy because the delight is incomplete until it is expressed in praise. b. If we were not allowed to speak of what we value, and celebrate what we love, and praise what we admire, our joy would not be full. c. Praise completes enjoyment (Ex 34:8; 2 Chron 7:1-3). d. A joy shared is a joy doubled. 3. If God loves us enough to make our joy full, He must not only give us Himself; He must also win from us the praise of our hearts. a. God does not need to win the praise of our hearts to shore up some weakness in Himself or compensate for some deficiency. b. God seeks to win from us the praise of our hearts because He loves us and seeks the fullness of our joy that can be found only in knowing, praising, and thus enjoying Him, the most magnificent of all Beings (Ps 16:11). VI. How can we say God is happy when there is so much sin and misery in the world? A. How can we affirm the happiness of God on the basis of His sovereignty when much of what God permits in the world is contrary to His own commands in Scripture? 1. The infinite complexity of God’s divine mind is such that He has the capacity to look at the world through two lenses. He can look through a narrow lens or through a wide-angle lens (i.e., God has both a preceptive will and a decretive will). a. When God looks at a painful or wicked event through His narrow lens (His preceptive will), He sees the tragedy or the sin for what it is in itself and He is angered and grieved (Ps 7:11; Gen 6:5-7; 37:3,4,17b18,23-28). b. When God looks at a painful or wicked event through His wide-angle lens (His decretive will), He sees the tragedy or the sin in relation to everything leading up to it and everything flowing out of it. He sees it in all the connections and effects that form a pattern or mosaic 3 ( F o r s i m i l a r s t u d y m a t e r i a l s v i s i t t h e s o u r c e o f t h i s o n e @ www. o u t p o s t s i t e . c o m )

The Glory of God: God’s Chief End stretching into eternity. This mosaic in all its parts good and evilbrings Him delight (Gen 50:15-21; Eph 1:11). 1. Even the evil events in the world are part of God’s sovereign design (Matt 2:13-18). 2. Even people who lift their hand to rebel against God unwittingly serve the wonderful purposes of God (Rom 9:17). c. Just as our joy is based on the promise that God is strong enough and wise enough to make all things work together for our good (Rom 8:28), so God’s joy is based on that same sovereign control: He makes all things work together for His glory (Rom 11:36). VII. Why is God just in passionately pursuing His own glory? A. How can God be loving and yet be utterly devoted to seeking His own glory and praise and joy? How can God be for us if He is so utterly for Himself? 1. If God is on an ego trip and out of reach, then it is vain that we pursue our happiness in Him. B. People do not like to hear that God is uppermost in His own affections, or that He does all things for His own glory, or that He exalts Himself and seeks the praises of men. Why? There are at least three reasons: 1. We don’t like people who are like that. 2. The Bible teaches us not to be like that. 3. People who exalt themselves generally do so because of some weakness or deficiency within them. C. Because God is unique as an all-glorious, totally self-sufficient Being, He must be for Himself if He is to be for us. 1. God’s zeal to seek His own glory and to be praised by men cannot be owing to His need to shore up some weakness or compensate for some deficiency. a. God is not weak and has no deficiencies! (Rom 11:36; Acts 17:25b, 28a). b. God’s impulse to create the world was not from weakness, as though God were lacking in some perfection which creation could supply. 2. The rules of humility that belong to a creature cannot apply in the same way to its Creator (Ps 71:19b; Rev 4:11). a. God is unique; He is infinitely other in His perfect magnificence and excellence. 3. If God should turn away from Himself as the Source of infinite joy, He would cease to be God: a. He would deny the reality and beauty of His manifold perfections. b. He would deny the infinite greatness and worth of His own glory. c. He would imply that there is something more valuable outside Himself. d. He would commit idolatry. 4. God would be unjust if He valued anything more than what is supremely valuableHe Himself is supremely valuable! 4 ( F o r s i m i l a r s t u d y m a t e r i a l s v i s i t t h e s o u r c e o f t h i s o n e @ www. o u t p o s t s i t e . c o m )

The Glory of God: God’s Chief End a. If God did not take infinite delight in the worth of His own glory He would be unrighteous. 1. It is right to take delight in a person in proportion to the excellence of that person’s glory (Job 1:8; Prov 31:28-30). 5. The rules of love that apply to us do not apply in the same way to God (1 Cor 13:4,5: “love...does not seek its own”). a. We do not turn God’s self-exaltation into a higher, purer love by demanding that God cease to be God. 6. God is the one Being in all the universe for whom seeking His own glory and praise is the ultimately loving act. For Him self-exaltation is the highest virtue. a. Our valueas creatures created in God’s imageis rooted in God’s greatness and worth (Gen 1:26,27; 2:7; 9:6; Ps 139:13-16; Matt 10:30; 16:26). b. When God does all things for the praise of His glory, He preserves for us and offers to us the only thing in all the world which can satisfy our deep yearnings for personal happiness: He preserves and offers us the fullness of our joy. 1. A joy that can only be found in enjoying and praising Him, the most magnificent of all Beings. 2. Ps 16:11: “In Thy presence is fullness of joy; In Thy right hand there are pleasures forever.” c. God is for us! And the foundation of this love is that God has been, is now, and always will be, for Himself. VIII. What moved God to pursue His own glory in His works of creation and redemption? A. There is something about the fullness of God’s joy that inclines it to overflow. There is an expansive quality to God’s joy. It wants to share itself. 1. God is a self-sufficient and inexhaustible fountain of joy. a. “It is no argument of the emptiness or deficiency of a fountain, that it is inclined to overflow.” 2 B. God loves to behold His glory reflected in His works. So the eternal happiness of the triune God spilled over in the works of creation and redemption. 1. The happiness that God has in all His works of creation and redemption is nothing other than a delight in His own glory. a. God has done all things, from creation to consummation, for the preservation and display of His glory. b. All God’s works are simply the spillover of His infinite exuberance for His own excellence. IX. Why does the glory of God sometimes positively overwhelm God’s people in their worship? A. There were precious moments of worship in the O.T. when God’s glory filled the O.T. temple (2 Chron 7:1-3). 5 ( F o r s i m i l a r s t u d y m a t e r i a l s v i s i t t h e s o u r c e o f t h i s o n e @ www. o u t p o s t s i t e . c o m )

The Glory of God: God’s Chief End B. There are precious moments of worship in the N.T. when God’s glory fills His N.T. templeHis people! (1 Cor 3:16; 6:19; Eph 5:18-20; Jn 4:23,24). 1. Sometimes a spiritual ambivalence exists in the worship experience of believers who ardently seek to give God expressed, verbal honor. Finding adequate words that truly express their praise proves positively difficult. a. At times, God’s glorious presence and mighty works graciously overwhelm His people with a precious, ineffable joy: 1. “Who can speak of the mighty deeds of the Lord, or can show forth all His praise” (Ps 106:2). 2. Truly, a finite creature cannot adequately adore an infinite Creator’s glory! 3. Truly, obeying the exhortation to “give the Lord the glory due His name...” is pleasingly impossible! (Ps 96:8).

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W ith the p rio r wr itten p er missio n o f the p ub lisher, much o f this o utline was excerp ted fro m the b o o k Desirin g Go d : Med ita tio n s o f a Ch ristia n Hed o n ist b y J o hn P ip er. P o rtland : Multno mah (a p art o f the Questar p ub lishing family) . p p . 2 3 -3 9 , 2 2 7 , 2 3 8 .  1 9 8 6 b y Multno mah P ress. 2 “Dissertatio n Co ncer ning the End fo r W hich Go d Created the W o rld ,” Th e Wo rks o f Jo n a th a n Ed wa rd s , vo l. 1 , p . 1 0 2 . T his “Disser tatio n” is o f immense value in hand ling the who le q uestio n o f Go d ’s go al in histo ry.

6 ( F o r s i m i l a r s t u d y m a t e r i a l s v i s i t t h e s o u r c e o f t h i s o n e @ www. o u t p o s t s i t e . c o m )