a rediscovery

How great is God's desire to do you good?
(an excerpt from a John Piper sermon)

Behold, I will gather them out of all the lands to which I have driven them in My anger, in My wrath, and in great indignation; and I will bring them back to this place and make them dwell in safety.

And they shall be My people, and I will be their God; and I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear Me always, for their own good, and for the good of their children after them.

And I will make an everlasting covenant with them that I will not turn away from them, to do them good; and I will put the fear of Me in their hearts so that they will not turn away from Me. And I will rejoice over them to do them good, and I will faithfully plant them in this land with all My heart and with all My soul.

Jeremiah 32:37-41

He rejoices to sustain you and he rejoices with all his heart and with all his soul. Now I ask you, not with any sermonic exaggeration or rhetorical flourish or with any sense of overstatement at all—I ask you, I challenge you, can you conceive of an intensity of desire that is greater than a desire empowered by "All God's heart and All God's soul"?

Suppose you took all the desire for food and sex and money and fame and power and meaning and friends and security in the hearts and souls of all the human beings on the earth—say about six billion—and you put all that desire, multiplied by all those six billion hearts and souls into a container. How would it compare to the desire of God to do you good implied in the words, "with all his heart and with all his soul"?

It would compare like a thimble to the Pacific Ocean. Because the heart and soul of God are infinite. And the hearts and souls of man are finite. There is no intensity greater than the intensity of ... the joy he has in sustaining you with sovereign grace: "I will rejoice over them to do them good . . . with all my heart and all my soul."

It's almost good to be true. But it is: God loves me!

It's amazing enough that God would pardon me, a perverted criminal, and send His only Son to suffer a wretched death in my place. But that He would desire to lavish me the greatest gift He could ever give, the gift of Himself, that He would engage every bit of His being to ravish and enrapture me with the manifold perfections of His glory for all eternity!

It's ---

I run out of words.