Why did God create the world? By Charles Spurgeon

Can your minds fly back to the time when there was no time? To the day when there was no day, but the ancient of days? Can you speed back to that period when God dwelt alone? When this round world and all the things that are upon it had not come from his hand, when the sun flamed not in his strength, and the stars flashed not in their brightness. Can you go back to the period when there were no angels, where cherubim and seraphim had not been born, and if there be creatures older than they, when none of them had as yet been formed? Is it possible, I say, for you to fly so far back as to contemplate God alone, no creature, no breath of song, no motion of wing, God Himself alone, without another?

Then, indeed, he had no rival. None, then, could contest with him, for none existed. All power and glory and honor and majesty were gathered up into himself. And we have no reason to believe that he was less glorious than he is now, when his servants delight to do his pleasure, nor less great than now, when he has crested worlds on worlds, and thrown them into space, scattering over the sky, stars with both his hands. He sat on no precarious throne. He needed none to add to his power. He needed none to bring him a revenue of praise. His all-sufficiency could have no lack.

Consider next, if you can, the eternal purpose of God that he would create. He determines it in his mind. Could any but a divine motive actuate the divine architect? What must that motive have been? He creates that he may display his own perfections. He does beget, as it were, creatures after his own image that he may live in them, that he may manifest to others the joy, the pleasure, the satisfaction which he so intensely feels in himself. I am certain his own glory must have been the end he had in view. He would reveal his glory to the sons of men, to angels, and to such creatures as he had formed, in order that they might reflect his honor and sing his praise.