Let me begin by putting the theme of this conference, “Big-God Preaching,” in a cultural and historical context that may be surprising, but I think will be helpful in liberating you from a certain fear or hesitancy to give yourself to big-God preaching. I hope this context will free you to go home and saturate your preaching with the biblical reality of big-God theology without being intimidated by the thought or the accusation that you are simply Western, Eurocentric, provincial, white, and out of touch with the vastness and diversity and complexity of human culture on planet Earth.

Big-God Theology

The term big-God theology, of which big-God preaching is an outgrowth, has probably been used for hundreds of years somewhere by somebody, but it entered my vocabulary in 2012. It happened like this. To the astonishment of many culture watchers, including Time magazine, Calvinism, as a vision of God’s sovereignty in salvation and providence, suddenly registered as a force to be reckoned with in contemporary evangelicalism. Time magazine (March 2009) reckoned “The New Calvinism” as number 3 of “10 Ideas Changing the World Right Now.” That was sixteen years ago, and it was the year before (2008) that Collin Hansen described this phenomenon in his book Young, Restless, Reformed.

One of the striking and most encouraging things about that upsurge of love for the sovereignty of God is that it was cutting across racial, ethnic, and national lines in ways no biblical theology had done in my lifetime. I was meeting and working with African-American brothers in St. Louis, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Lexington, Kentucky, and with Latino brothers in the Dominican Republic and Brazil. In all these groups, there was an upsurge of awareness and embrace of Reformed theology, especially the doctrines of grace summed up in the five points (TULIP).

In 2002, 23 years ago, we dedicated this conference to the theme “The Sovereignty of God and the Soul Dynamic.” The aim was “to light a fire . . . that would forge a link between the sovereignty of God and God-centered theology, on the one hand, and the soul dynamic and black experience in America, on the other hand.” Carl Ellis had written a book Free at Last?, which was about the black and white experience of rich biblical theology, which blew me away in the summer of 2001. So, I invited him to come to the conference.

“Few things reveal the remnants of man-centered pride like the biblical tidal wave of God’s God-centeredness.”

Now comes the link with our conference theme this year — big-God theology and big-God preaching. Ten years later, in 2012, Pastor Michael Campbell, an African-American brother who is now a pastor in Miami, preached a sermon at his church in Jackson, Mississippi. He spoke of encountering Reformed theology in college for the first time. At first, he was devastated because it was so different from his upbringing. But being biblically convinced, he enrolled at RTS Jackson and became disillusioned that this Calvinism could ever be at home in his culture.

He only knew of one other African American who held to this theology, Carl Ellis. So, he wrote to him how he was doubting that he could be true to his culture and to Reformed theology. To his amazement, Ellis wrote back. He made some comments about all theology being embedded in culture, and then he said this:

The second thing Carl said to me — and this is the thing that really kept me going — was this. He said, “Mike, within the history of the African-American Christian experience in America, there is this thread — though it may not use the same language or the theological terminology that we’ve come to get used to in Reformed circles — that is expressed in songs, testimonies, prayers, and the history of the rhythms of black preaching. And it’s about big-God theology.”

There it was — a cultural translation of Calvinism, or Reformed theology, into “big-God theology” from Carl Ellis through Mike Campbell. That was the first time I heard the phrase. A year later, Jemar Tisby picked it up in an article at TGC called “Why African Americans Need ‘Big God’ Theology.” And Trillia Newbell echoed the same at her blog: “African Americans and ‘Big God’ Theology.”

People began digging into the history of African-American preaching to discover that this big-God theology was not new. I jumped in with an article in 2013 called “The Seedbed of Big-God Preaching,” and in 2014 with an article called “Some Historical Roots of African-American Big-God Theology.” I tried to show that finding big-God theology in African-American experience was not a discovery but a rediscovery.

Pained to the Heart, Exulting in God

Jupiter Hammon, for example, was one of the first African-American writers to be published in the United States. He lived in Lloyd Harbor, New York. He deplored the condition of his enslaved brothers and their “poor, despised, miserable state.” He wrote in 1786 (almost a hundred years before the Civil War),

I am pained to the heart. It is at times almost too much for human nature to bear, and I am obliged to turn my thoughts from the subject or endeavor to still my mind, by considering that it is permitted thus to be, by that God who governs all things, who setteth up one and pulleth down another.

Then he pleads with the blacks of New York to take every opportunity to learn how to read because then they may read the Bible:

Therein [in the Bible!] we may learn what God is. That he made all things by the power of his word, and that he made all things for his own glory, and not for our glory. That he is over all, and above all his creatures, and more above them than we can think or conceive — that they can do nothing without him — that he upholds them all and will overrule all things for his own glory. (Moral Evil and Redemptive Suffering, 34)

Forty-one years later, African American Nathaniel Paul preached a message in 1827 in Albany, the day after slavery was abolished in New York, in which he lamented slavery as he knew it, calling it the “pernicious and abominable of all enterprises.” And then he soared with his big-God theology in his big-God preaching:

Oh thou immaculate God, be not angry with us while we come into this thy sanctuary, and make the bold inquiry . . . why it was that thou didst look on with the calm indifference of any unconcerned spectator, when thy holy law was violated, thy divine authority despised, and a portion of thine own creatures reduced to a state of mere vassalage and misery.

And he hears God answer:

Hark! While he answers from on high hear him proclaiming from the skies — Be still, and know that I am God! Clouds and darkness are round about me; yet righteousness and judgment are the habitation of my throne. I do my will and pleasure in the heaven above, and in the earth beneath; it is my sovereign prerogative to bring good out of evil, and cause the wrath of man to praise me. (Moral Evil and Redemptive Suffering, 50)

Brothers, if you go home to your church and you preach like that — humbled under and exulting in the all-governing providence of God and the sovereign work of God as the decisive cause of regeneration and faith — you do not need to fear if someone tries to tell you that this Calvinism stuff is just a white, Eurocentric, Western, parochial, culturally created human opinion. It’s not.

Two weeks ago, I was in Dubai with Kevin DeYoung, Sinclair Ferguson, and Joel Beeke speaking at the Puritan conference to about 1,300 people from all over the world: Turkey, Ethiopia, Indonesia, India, Jordan, Philippines, Sweden, Egypt — dozens and dozens of nations and cultures, virtually all of them reveling the sovereignty of God in salvation and providence. This reality of big-God theology is not provincial — neither chronologically nor culturally nor geographically — because it is biblical. It is the word of God. And when it takes hold of you — when big-God theology takes hold of you — it creates big-God preaching, which the world and your people desperately need, whether they know it or not.

Rejoicing in Place of Resistance

My assignment in this conference is “The Goal of Big-God Preaching: The Glory of God.” My plan and my prayer is to magnify the glory of God by pleading with you for three things to happen in your preaching so that it becomes big-God preaching — so that the glory of God becomes preeminent and pervasive in our people’s lives. I’ll give a brief summary of these three steps, and then we will go back and show them from Scripture.

Step 1: We must be done — and help our people be done — with all resistance to the God-centeredness of God. Or to put it positively, all resistance to God’s God-centeredness must be replaced with rejoicing in God’s zeal for his glory. We must see this truth as preeminent and pervasive in the Bible, not marginal or secondary. And we must believe that this is reality — that God is infinitely and joyfully committed to communicating and exalting his glory in the everlasting happiness of his people in him. We must renounce every temptation to call this self-exaltation “megalomania,” and instead we must see his passion to be praised for the glory of his grace as the wellspring of all our happiness. To say it briefly, our people must be shown in our big-God preaching not just the duty of their God-centeredness but also the glory of God’s God-centeredness.

Step 2: In big-God preaching, we must help our people love the centrality of the glory of God in their lives by bringing every reality that they are concerned with, or should be concerned with, into relationship with the glory of God. Big-God preaching takes up all the nitty-gritty, daily, ordinary issues of life and takes them all the way up and brings them into connection with the glory of God. And in that way, it gives massive significance to all of human life — from making a meal to martyrdom. Everything is amazing, because everything relates to God, who is amazing. So, step two, relate everything in your people’s experience to the glory of God.

Step 3: In big-God preaching, we help our people treasure the glory of God over all things by the manifest effect it has to make us seriously joyful. I define Christian preaching as expository exultation. That is, in preaching we communicate what God intends to communicate by his word — that’s exposition. And as we preach, we exult over it in proportion to its greatness and beauty and worth — that’s exultation. Kēryxon ton logon (2 Timothy 4:2) — “herald the word” — means “Deliver the king’s message, like a town crier, so as to make clear and priceless its meaning and value.” Preaching embodies the truth and the worth of the word. So, step three, let the people see with all authenticity the effect that God’s glory has had on your mind and your emotions. Let them see what it looks like to treasure the glory of God above all things. Treasuring the glory of God over all things is caught as much as taught.

Let’s take these one at a time and show them from Scripture.

Glory of God’s God-Centeredness

Step 1: Our people must be shown not just the duty of their God-centeredness but also the glory of God’s God-centeredness.

First, here’s a word about my own pilgrimage. Few things were clearer to me in the first 22 years of my life than the fact that 1 Corinthians 10:31 was true and ought to dictate the way I live: “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” I have never met any Christian who says, “I don’t think that’s the Christian duty. I don’t think Paul should say that.” Evidently, it is relatively easy for Christians to accept the truth that their duty is to live for the glory of God — whether they do it or not.

But something fundamental and profound happened in my life in between the ages of 22 and 25, when I was confronted by Dan Fuller and Jonathan Edwards with God’s God centeredness — that not only should I do everything for God’s glory but that God does everything for God’s glory. I had never heard anybody say that, at least not that I could remember. I am arguing now that faithful, biblical big-God preaching confronts your people with God’s God-centeredness.

As this tidal wave of God’s God-centeredness in the Bible broke over me, it revealed remaining corruption in my heart. I discovered — and your people will discover — that it is possible to embrace their duty to live for God’s glory and at the same time feel deep resistance to God’s passion for his glory. God does deep heart work by confronting us with his pervasive passion for his own glory. Until you and your people are happy with God’s God-centeredness, God will not have his rightful place among you.

God’s Passion for His Glory

Here’s a salty taste of this tidal wave that broke over me 55 years ago and changed everything.

God chose us for his own glory.

He chose us in [Christ] before the foundation of the world . . . according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace. (Ephesians 1:4–6)

Or, Ephesians 1:12 says, “to the praise of his glory.” And again, Ephesians 1:14 says, “to the praise of his glory.” God’s purpose in election was the praise of the glory of his grace. Salvation is first and finally designed by God for his own glory.

God created us for his own glory.

Bring my sons from afar
     and my daughters from the end of the earth,
everyone who is called by my name,
     whom I created for my glory. (Isaiah 43:6–7)

God called Israel for his own glory.

I made the whole house of Israel cling to me, . . . declares the Lord, that they might be for me a people, a name, a praise, and a glory. (Jeremiah 13:11)

God rescued them from Egypt for his own glory.

     They . . . rebelled by the sea, at the Red Sea.
Yet he saved them for his name’s sake,
     that he might make known his mighty power. (Psalm 106:7–8)

What was God’s purpose in the exodus? They got saved, and God’s name and God’s power got the glory.

Why did he spare them again and again in the wilderness?

I acted for the sake of my name, that it should not be profaned in the sight of the nations. (Ezekiel 20:14)

Why did he not cast them away when they demanded a king to be like the nations?

[Because] the Lord will not forsake his people, for his great name’s sake. (1 Samuel 12:22)

Why did he rescue his people and bring them back from exile?

Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord God: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came. . . . And the nations will know that I am the Lord. (Ezekiel 36:22–23)

Why did God send Jesus into the world and bring him to his final hour of suffering?

“Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven: “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” (John 12:27–28)

In the life and death and resurrection of Jesus, God was glorifying God.

Why the cross?

God put [Christ] forward as a propitiation by his blood . . . to show God’s righteousness. . . . It was to show his righteousness at the present time. (Romans 3:25–26)

God’s purpose in the cross was first his own vindication, and then our salvation.

Why does he forgive our sins?

I, I am he
     who blots out your transgressions for my own sake. (Isaiah 43:25)

So, we pray, “For your name’s sake, O Lord, pardon my guilt, for it is great” (Psalm 25:11).

Why does God give us strength to serve him?

[Serve] by the strength that God supplies — in order that in everything God may be glorified. (1 Peter 4:11)

And woe to those who do not give God glory.

Immediately an angel of the Lord struck [Herod] down, because he did not give God the glory. (Acts 12:23)

Why is Jesus coming again?

He comes on that day to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed. (2 Thessalonians 1:10)

Jesus is coming back for his own glory — to be marveled at.

And the aim of it all?

The earth will be filled
     with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord
     as the waters cover the sea. (Habakkuk 2:14)

It will be made plain to all in that day that “from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen” (Romans 11:36).

Enthralled with God

Why are there hundreds of such statements in the Bible that tell us that God’s purpose in everything he does is to communicate and exalt the greatness and the beauty and the worth of his glory? Why? Because God wants you and your people to be confronted with God’s God-centeredness. Why? Because few things reveal the remnants of man-centered pride like the biblical tidal wave of God’s God-centeredness. That’s what happened to me. I believe that’s what will happen to your people.

God will lead them to repent and to humble themselves under the mighty hand of God. And with the help of your big-God preaching, they will awaken to some of the best news in the world: God is most glorified in them when they are most satisfied in him. In other words, Christian Hedonism is the answer to why God’s God-centeredness — God’s pursuit of his own glory in all he does — is not megalomania. And brothers, it’s the only answer — whatever you call it — namely, God’s ultimate design is that his glory shine most brightly in the gladness of his people in God. God’s God-centeredness is not megalomania or egomania. It is love. Love is the intention of God’s heart to enthrall his people with the greatest and longest happiness, even at the cost of his Son’s life — namely, happiness in God. “In your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11).

One of those in attendance in Dubai a couple weeks ago wrote me a letter, which I got last week, and he tells how this discovery of Christian Hedonism answering the charge of megalomania saved his life.

He had come to Christ a couple decades ago, only to discover God’s God-centeredness soon afterward, which, as he put it, sounded like this: “All this time, Jesus didn’t really care about me and was only using me to elevate himself in the eyes of everyone else — it was just devastating. I became passively suicidal — I no longer wanted to live.”

When his worship pastor heard this, he said, “There’s this book I’ve been meaning to read called Desiring God. Would you like to read it with me?” He agreed. This is what he wrote:

First sentence: “The saving designs of God are penultimate, not ultimate.” Great. As I slowly worked my way through page after page of chapter 1, I felt myself becoming more and more angry. Like Martin Luther hating the word “righteous” in Romans 1:17, God was exposing my misdirected offense on account of not realizing what words like “glory” and “righteous” really mean with regards to God.

Even now I tear up, remembering how that felt and thinking about where that path could have taken me. And I have tears of deep gratitude toward God and for how he used you through what came next. I got to the end of the chapter, where you bring everything together — that God, because he loves us, must give us himself without holding anything back, for our full and eternal pleasure, and then command us to complete our joy in him by praising him; and how in doing so he gets the glory and we, the glad recipients of his love, get the joy!

You would have loved to have been a fly on the wall. I jumped up, spiked the book onto the floor, and started jumping up and down — “You love me! You love me! You love me!” That has been (and I believe will always be) the greatest revelation of God’s love I will ever receive. Because it is anchored in the bedrock foundation of God’s commitment to his own glory.

That’s step 1. Our people must be shown not just the duty of their God-centeredness but also the glory of God’s God-centeredness.

Everything Connected to God

Step 2: Help your people rejoice in the centrality of the glory of God in their lives by bringing every reality that they are concerned with, or should be concerned with, into relationship with the glory of God.

Big-God preaching is constantly eager to bring the little things of our lives into connection to the bigness of God. I hope you hear your people say, “It seems like my pastor is dealing with the greatest things in the world and the most ordinary things in the world all the time — at the same time.”

Are your people concerned with conversion and what it means to be born again? You take them to 1 Timothy 1:11 and explain “the gospel of the glory of the blessed God.” You take them to 2 Corinthians 4:6 and show them how God does it as on the day when light was created: “[He] has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

Are your people concerned about sanctification and growth in holiness and becoming more like Jesus? You take them to 2 Corinthians 3:18 and show them that, “beholding the glory of the Lord,” they are being “transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.”

Are your people wondering about the precious promises of God? You take them to 2 Corinthians 1:20, which says, “All the promises of God find their Yes in [Christ]. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory.”

Are they anxious and concerned about a multitude of needs in their finances, in their health, in their relationships? You take them to Philippians 4:19: “My God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.”

Are they wondering which pizza to order and whether to get Diet Coke or Diet Pepsi? You tell them, “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). And you smile, and when they stop laughing, you get one of those joyfully serious looks on your face and say, “I mean it. Choose the pizza for God’s glory. Choose the drink for God’s glory.” And then you write an article in your church newsletter that week on “How to Drink Diet Coke to the Glory of God.” And they see that you meant it. They see that you’re willing to help them obey this command.

Are they concerned about whether they will persevere to the end? You take them to 2 Timothy 4:18: “The Lord will . . . bring me safely into his heavenly kingdom. To him be the glory forever and ever.” And you take them to Jude 24–25, which says, “Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling . . . be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever.”

Are they concerned about death? You take them to Romans 14:7–8: “None of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.” And if it must be martyrdom, we take them to John 21:19 and listen as Jesus shows Peter “by what kind of death he was to glorify God.”

Do they respond to your big-God preaching by asking, “Pastor, what about man? Doesn’t man count? Doesn’t man have a great dignity?” Then you take them to Psalm 8, and you show them the immeasurable dignity of man. Psalm 8:1 says, “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens.” Then Psalm 8:4–5 says, “What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.” Then again, Psalm 8:9 says, “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” And you ask them, “Why do you think this psalm begins and ends with the majesty of God’s name while sandwiching the glorious dignity of man in between?” And you let them do the work.

And finally, are your people concerned with Christ? Who is Jesus Christ? You take them to Hebrews 1:3: “He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature.”

Big-God preaching takes up all big and little issues of life and brings them into connection with the glory of God. In that way, your preaching gives massive significance to all of human life. Everything is amazing because everything relates to God, who is amazing. That’s step 2: relate everything in your people’s experience to the glory of God.

Tell Them of the Treasure

Step 3: In your big-God preaching, let the people see, with all authenticity, the effect that the glory of God has had on your mind and your emotions. Let them see what it looks like to treasure the glory of God above all things.

“Big-God preaching is constantly eager to bring the little things of our lives into connection to the bigness of God.”

Treasuring the glory of God over all things is caught as much as taught. When Hebrews 13:17 says that the leaders — the big-God preachers — should watch over the souls of the saints “with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you,” it is saying, “You can’t be a blessing to your people if your heart is not glad in the glory of God.”

The greatest warfare in the preacher’s life is to treasure the glory of God above all things — to feel its worth. Without this, any effort to manufacture emotion in the pulpit will ring hollow. The people will know. You’re not preaching. You’re not living. You’re acting. Staying in love with the glory of God is the great work of the Christian ministry.

This is serious joy in the glory of God, unshakable joy, so that Paul can say, “I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls” (2 Corinthians 12:15). “In all our affliction, I am overflowing with joy” (2 Corinthians 7:4). Because I am standing in the glory of grace now, and I “rejoice in hope of the glory of God” to come (Romans 5:2). We teach our people, and we show them, the worth of the glory of God.

Big-God preachers lead their people beyond the duty of their God-centeredness to the glory of God’s God-centeredness, and it defends God from the charge of megalomania with the precious reality that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.

Big-God preachers help their people connect everything to the glory of God, from the making of a meal to martyrdom, from Diet Coke to terminal disease, from cinema to the second coming. Everything becomes amazing, because everything relates to God, who is amazing.

Big-God preachers treasure the glory of God over all things and, with all authenticity, let their people see the effect that God’s glory is having on their minds and their emotions. Big-God preaching is expository exultation.

In this way, big-God preaching obeys 1 Corinthians 10:31 — do all things, including preaching, to the glory of God.