What is God's Providence? - Part 3

All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ. Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to Himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure. So we praise God for the glorious grace he has poured out on us who belong to his dear Son. He is so rich in kindness and grace that he purchased our freedom with the blood of his Son and forgave our sins. He has showered his kindness on us, along with all wisdom and understanding. God has now revealed to us his mysterious will regarding Christ—which is to fulfill his own good plan. And this is the plan: At the right time, he will bring everything together under the authority of Christ—everything in heaven and on earth. Furthermore, because we are united with Christ, we have received an inheritance from God, for he chose us in advance, and he makes everything work out according to his plan. God’s purpose was that we Jews, who were the first to trust in Christ, would bring praise and glory to God. And now you Gentiles have also heard the truth, the Good News that God saves you. And when you believed in Christ, he identified you as his own by giving you the Holy Spirit, whom he promised long ago. The Spirit is God’s guarantee that he will give us the inheritance he promised and that he has purchased us to be his own people. He did this so we would praise and glorify him. - Ephesians 1:1-14 (NLT)

The most obvious fact about praise—whether of God or anything—strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or the giving of honor. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise. . . . The world rings with praise—lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favorite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favorite game—praise of weather, wines, dishes, actors, horses, colleges, countries, historical personages, children, flowers, mountains, rare stamps, rare beetles, even sometimes politicians and scholars. My whole, more general difficulty about the praise of God depended on my absurdly denying to us, as regards the supremely Valuable, what we delight to do, what indeed we can’t help doing, about everything else we value. I think we delight in praising what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed. - C. S. Lewis

So God’s self-exaltation is different from human self-exaltation in that, by exalting himself, he is not distracting us from what is ultimately satisfying but displaying it and inviting us into the enjoyment of it. When we exalt ourselves, we misdirect the hearts of others. We try to get their attention and praise for ourselves. We are thus not only encouraging idolatry but encouraging misery. We are luring people away from joy. We are saying, in effect, that it is better for them to admire us than to admire God—to enjoy our glory rather than God’s. Paradoxically, then, God is the one being in the universe for whom self-exaltation is a form of love. For he is the only being whose worth and beauty can satisfy the human soul fully and forever. When God makes his praise the goal of his providence, he is pursuing our full and lasting pleasure. That is love. This is why God’s self-exaltation does not contradict those Scriptures we saw in the previous chapter that treat self-exaltation as sin (John 8:54; 1 Cor. 10:24; 13:5). God never sins (1 John 1:5). Nor did Jesus (Heb. 4:15). Yet people thought Jesus sinned when he exalted himself to forgive sins. “Who is this who speaks blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God alone?” (Luke 5:21). But he was not sinning, because he was more than man. He really could forgive sins against God, for he was God. The point is this: there are things that are sinful for man to do that are not sinful for God to do. Such as forgive sins—or uphold and communicate his glory for the enjoyment of the world. - John Piper, Providence

Praise the Lord!
Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty heaven!
Praise him for his mighty works; praise his unequaled greatness
Praise him with a blast of the ram’s horn; praise him with the lyre and harp!
Praise him with the tambourine and dancing; praise him with strings and flutes!
Praise him with a clash of cymbals; praise him with loud clanging cymbals.
Let everything that breathes sing praises to the Lord!
Praise the Lord! - Psalm 150:1-6 (NLT)

The praising of grace that God aims at before the foundation of the world will be accomplished “through Jesus Christ.” “He predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ . . . to the praise of the glory of his grace” (Eph. 1:5–6). What does that mean? Paul tells us plainly in verse 7: “In [the Beloved—Jesus!] we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace.” This takes your breath away. Before the foundation of the world, before there were any human beings who had sinned, before any human needed to be redeemed, God planned that the goal of creation and providence would be “the praise of the glory of his grace,” and that this grace would come to people through “the forgiveness of . . . trespasses,” “through [the] blood” of “the Beloved”—the beloved Son of God (cf. Col. 1:13). In other words, not only was grace for undeserving people planned as the capstone of God’s glory, but God planned for that grace to be expressed through the blood shedding of his beloved Son for trespasses that he never committed. You can see, perhaps, why I say that my omission of an extended treatment of grace in this chapter is owing not to the fact that grace is minor but to the fact that it is massive. In the coming chapters, we will see repeatedly that God’s purpose is to exalt his glory through the exercise of his grace. His aim is the greatness of his name and the gladness of his undeserving people. That is, his aim is the God-exalting, soul-satisfying praise of the glory of his grace. And the glory of that grace will be seen most beautifully in the suffering of the beloved Son of God for undeserving sinners. - John Piper, Providence

To God be the glory, great things he has done!
So loved he the world that he gave us his Son,
who yielded his life an atonement for sin,
and opened the life-gate that all may go in.

Great things he has taught us, great things he has done,
and great our rejoicing through Jesus the Son,
but purer and higher and greater will be
our joy and our wonder, when Jesus we see.

Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord,
Let the earth hear his voice!
Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!
Let the people rejoice!

O come to the Father through Jesus the Son
and give him the glory, great things he has done! - Fanny Crosby

Praise God, from whom all blessings flow;
Praise Him, all creatures here below;
Praise Him above, ye heav'nly host;
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
Amen. - Thomas Ken

Be Encouraged to praise God from whom ALL blessings flow.

-Jeffrey Thornton