The Lord was pleased to bruise him;
he has put him to grief;
when he makes himself an offering for sin,
he shall see his offspring,
he shall prolong his days;
the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.
Jesus said that the first and greatest commandment in all the world is that we should love the Lord our God with all our heart and all our soul and all our mind and all our strength (Mark 12:30). I take this to mean at least that every one who claims to be a Christian should have a great zeal for the glory of God.
If I love God with all my heart, nothing should make me more glad than when the cause of God prospers and when the name of God is the boast of more and more hearts and more and more people. And nothing should trouble me more than when the glory of God is cheapened and the name of God is despised.
In other words, when Jesus commands us to love God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength, he is commanding us to have a radically God-centered heart and a radically God-centered soul and a radically God-centered mind and radically God-centered strength. And God-centered people are troubled by the eclipse of God’s glory, and they rejoice when it shines forth in full strength.
God’s Pleasure in His Name and Love for His People
Now if this is true, then something very troubling has emerged in this series of messages on the pleasures of God. We have seen that God has pleasure in his Son: He delights in the glory of his own perfections reflected back to him in the countenance of his Son.
We have seen that God has pleasure in his own name: He aims to make a name for himself in all the world and win a reputation for the glory of his grace from every people and tribe and tongue and nation.
And we have seen that as a means to that end, God has pleasure in election: He delights to reveal the glory of his Son to babes and hide it from the wise. He delights to call out for himself an unlikely people who will make their boast only in the Lord.
And then last week).
Something Troubling Arising From This Series
Now what is troubling about all this for the God-centered person?
The troubling thing is that all these people God is saving and singing over are sinners. And what is sin? Romans 3:23 says that it is a falling short of God’s glory. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Paul means that sinners have fallen short of prizing the glory of God. We have exchanged the glory of God in our affections for something else: for images of glory, like a new home or car or VCR or computers or vacation days or impressive resumes or whatever makes your ticker tick more than the wonder of God.
That’s what sin is. And that is what all those people are like that God has chosen to save. And even after he makes them his own, they often bring disgrace upon his name by their inconsistency and half-hearted response to Jesus’ command to love God with their whole heart.
So the troubling thing is that God is so enthusiastic about being good to people whose sinfulness is a blight on his name. It seems schizophrenic. The Bible makes God out to love his name and his glory with omnipotent energy and unbounded joy. And then it pictures him rejoicing with loud singing over people who have despised his glory and cheapened his name.
