Sunday Morning

Highlights from the John Piper sermon I listened to this morning from John 7:1-24, mainly verses 17 and 18.

So Jesus did the same thing with this unspiritual admiration of his words that he did with his brothers' unspiritual admiration of his miracles: he deflected it. Verse 16: "So Jesus answered them, 'My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me.'" He took the admiration directed to his words and pointed them to God.

Of course, he could have said, "I'm the divine Son of God, the eternal Word incarnate! What did you expect?" But at this point in his ministry, he is confronting human pride and human love of praise, and he is doing it by modeling what it is to be truly and deeply human, not what it is to be divine. He was the God-man, and there are times in John's Gospel where one is foremost, and times when the other is foremost.

So he deflects their amazement away from himself to God and says that the reason his teaching is astonishing is that it comes from God. Verse 16: "My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me."

The mark of his truth is a passion for God-exaltation, not self-exaltation. "The one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true." For me to see that as a mark of his truth, my will has to join him in that. I have to will God-exaltation over self-exaltation. And this is not what I will by nature. I am like the brothers of Jesus and like the Jewish crowds. I want him to do his miracles in a way that endorses my own love for self-exaltation. I want him to endorse my Sabbath-keeping, my law-keeping, in a way that confirms my self-exaltation.

I need love the glory of God more than my own glory. I need to will God-exaltation more than self-exaltation.

And if you want to love the glory of God above all other glories, then you will study God and spend time with lovers of God, and listen to God and look at God and gaze and gaze and gaze at the revelation of the glory of God—especially in Jesus.