John Piper Friday

"One of my favorite poems is "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" by Thomas Gray in 1751. One of the stanzas says,

Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Gray had been moved by the thought that on the bottom of the ocean there were beautiful gems that no human eye would ever see, and that in distant deserts millions of flowers would bloom, blush with vivid colors, give off a sweet fragrance, and never be touched or seen or smelled by anybody—but God!
The psalmist is moved by the same thing, it seems, in Psalm 19, verse 7: "Praise the Lord, you sea monsters and all deeps!" He doesn't even know what is in all the deeps of the sea! So the praise of thedeeps is not merely what they can testify to man.
It seems to me that creation praises God by simply being what it was created to be in all its incredible variety. And since most of the creation is beyond the awareness of mankind (in the reaches of space, and in the heights of mountains and at the bottom of thesea), it wasn't created merely to serve purposes that have to do with us. It was created for the enjoyment of God. "

Sermon - The Pleasure of God in His Creation, February 8, 1987