THE END FOR WHICH GOD CREATED THE WORLD
Before anything came into being, there was God and God alone. He existed in perfect glory, love, and beauty within the Trinity. God had a purpose when He created the world and that purpose was either to provide something He did not have or display something He already had. As a perfectly rational being, God must have had a perfectly rational goal or end which He sought in creating. As a perfectly moral being, God’s perfectly rational end would be in line with His perfect morality as well.
He best knows his own heart and what his own ends and designs were, in the wonderful works which he has wrought. Nor is it to be supposed that mankind—who, while destitute of revelation, by the utmost improvements of their own reason and advances in science and philosophy could come to no clear and established determination who the author of the world was—would ever have obtained any tolerable settled judgment of the end which the author of it proposed to himself in so vast, complicated, and wonderful a work of his hands. (Jonathan Edwards, The End for Which God Created the World)
What this line of reasoning by Edwards points to is that God Himself can tell us what His greatest purpose and goal was in creating the world and all things in it. If one reflects for a few moments that is self-evident. So we can look at nature and know that there must have been a reason, but we must look at Scripture to know that reason. When we look at Scripture there are verses that are quite specific, but in another sense we can look at different things in Scripture that tell the same story as the specific verses. For example, we can look at the saints in Scripture and ask what their highest goal in life was. What did the Old Testament saints seek above all? What is the purpose of a human being in the economy of God both now and for all eternity?
In looking through the Scriptures we can see that God had many subordinate ends in His various actions, but those only make sense in light of one great and overarching end that He had in mind and sought as the greatest good in the entire universe. In looking at this one great and overarching end that God had in mind, we can see the real purpose behind the Gospel of the glory of God and we can see the real purpose in morality. We can also see the real end or purpose God had for each person and for each church. But we can also see that this real end and purpose that God had in mind for all things must be looked at closely or we can use the same word as Scripture uses and mean something totally different. As God has different motives in creating and yet they all line up under His greatest purpose and goal, so man also has differing motives as well. The problem with man, however, is that man is a fallen being and so his purposes and goals are mixed and when that is combined with a sinful heart and a darkened reason, man can be easily deceived.
God must be looked at and His reasons for creating all things must be determined from who He is and what He has truly revealed. God is His own standard and when we try to judge God by the standards and fallen reason of men we are on shaky ground at the very best. Men reason about God by judging him with their own physical and moral limitations rather than what God has revealed about Himself. Fallen man tries to make a god in his own image rather than fall on his face in humility to receive light about the nature of God. Proud man makes his own reason his standard rather and as such makes himself an idol in his horribly wicked practice of trying to think of God as like himself.
Revelation 4: 8 And the four living creatures, each one of them having six wings, are full of eyes around and within; and day and night they do not cease to say, “HOLY, HOLY, HOLY is THE LORD GOD, THE ALMIGHTY, WHO WAS AND WHO IS AND WHO IS TO COME.” 9 And when the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to Him who sits on the throne, to Him who lives forever and ever, 10 the twenty-four elders will fall down before Him who sits on the throne, and will worship Him who lives forever and ever, and will cast their crowns before the throne, saying,11 “Worthy are You, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honor and power; for You created all things, and because of Your will [pleasure] they existed, and were created.”
As this scene from heaven shows, God created all things for His own pleasure and is worthy of adoration and praise for doing so. Now it remains to be seen just exactly what it means for God to create for His own pleasure.
God Loves... Himself 
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