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Dec 22, 2013

The Glory of It All, Pt. 2

Passage: Ephesians 3:21

Preacher: John Repsold

Series: Christmas 2013

Keywords: glory, church, body of christ, glorify

Summary:

This message looks at how Jesus displayed the glory of God through every word and deed he did while on earth. Then it looks at how and where God's glory is evident today--through individual followers of Christ who together make up, at various times, the Body of Christ in this world. No one shows God like Jesus did but together God is revealing His glory in our generation.

Detail:

The Glory of it All—Part 2

The Glory of Christ in this World

Christmas 2013

December 22, 2013

Welcome to the second Sunday in our Christmas series entitled “The Glory of It All!” If you were with us last week, you got to catch a brief glimpse of a handful of physical realities in both the outer space of our massive universe and the inner space of a single human cell. As Paul wrote in Romans 1, God’s divine nature is reflected in the macro and micro elements of the creation.

            My intent was, in some small way, to help us stand in awe and wonder at the glory of our Creator-Savior, Jesus Christ, who is the creative intelligence, wisdom and power behind what the best minds of the centuries have been just trying to figure out through the ages…and are still baffled by.

When the angel came to those shepherds in Bethlehem in Luke 2 announcing the Christ’s divine presence, we are told that God pulled back that curtain between time and eternity just long enough for humble sheep herders to catch a glimpse of what all beings in right relationship with God do. Listen.

Luke 2:13-- And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying: 14 “Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace, goodwill toward men!”

When you think of “giving glory” to someone or something, what is it you are doing? (Get answers.)

  • Proclaiming their greatness.
  • Verbally and possibly physically demonstrating how wonderful you think they are.
  • Telling other people about them.

Actually, “glory” is not one of those words we use very often in English.

  • We may talk about something being “a glorified version” of something else, like saying a Lamborghini is just a “glorified version” of a Fiat 500. By that we mean that they are basically the same but a fancier, nicer, more expensive, more luxurious version of…a car.  
  • We talk about certain sights and scenery as being “glorious”. By that we mean that there is a high level of beauty about what we are seeing. It catches our attention. It moves us to comment about how amazing it is. Something pulls at us and causes us to want to say, “Wow!”
  • Then we use the word “glory” negatively when we speak of someone being a “glory-hound” or “glorifying themselves.” People like that are always trying to bring attention to themselves, to make others think they are above average, better than everyone else. The irony of it is that when you really are glorious, no one has to tell you that. It’s sort of self-evident…like an amazing sunset or a beautiful vista.

So when we start talking about the glory of God, we either come up with sort of an empty set or a slightly or even vehemently negative reaction to even an angel’s exclamation of “Glory to God in the highest….” Isn’t that a bit egotistical to either call someone to glorify someone else OR to even let others glorify you?

So first off this morning, let’s tackle that sort of gut response we may have to recoil at the idea of God being someone who appreciates and calls for glory to be brought to Him. That’s what the very first article in the Westminster Shorter Catechism says is the “chief end” or “purpose” of mankind: “to glorify God and enjoy him forever.”

May I propose that what would be improper for us to do with each other (namely glorify ourselves) is not improper for God. In fact, let me propose that anything short of honoring, glorifying, delighting in or enjoying God above all else falls short of the way life should be and will leave us farther from truly enjoying life and enjoying the best of life.

            Even in human relationships, we intuitively understand that honoring someone who is generous and kind and caring towards other people is a good thing. But if I were to start praising Hitler for being a kind, caring and generous man because he was nice to his mistress, Eva Braun, not only would I lose all credibility but you would start to question my own concept of kindness and generosity, right?

            So whenever someone’s character and actions conform to goodness and truth, we are more inclined to honor/praise them. But the more they conform to evil and hatred, the less we want to praise or honor them. If the reverse is true, you really need to see a psychiatrist…or be locked away somewhere where you won’t do real damage to others.

            So, it is wrong for we flawed and imperfect beings to glorify that which isn’t really glorious or good. But it is right and good for us to draw attention to and glorify that which is good and true, even that which we see in each other which conforms to God.

            Furthermore, as Christians we know that God and God alone is the BEST good, the ultimate TRUTH, the only real perfection in the universe. So even for God himself, for him to seek to exalt or bring attention to any being less than Himself is to invite all other beings to engage in idolatry. It is to invite the creatures of his creation to worship the creation rather than the Creator.

And God knows that whenever any spiritual, moral being does that, they are heading down a road that will ultimately deliver more pain, more disappointment and more denial of reality as it truly is. God calls us to worship, honor and glorify Him because he knows that is where our deepest and greatest joy, happiness and fulfillment will be.

Remember how we defined glory last week? I gave you some of the synonyms first-- magnificence, splendor, majesty, greatness, great beauty, nobility. But there are 2 components to biblical “glory” that have to be applied to God. One is the infinite moral excellence of his character—God’s moral beauty and goodness. His perfect love, grace, mercy, kindness, justice, etc. all is worthy of our praise and glory-giving. The other is the visible or discernible radiance of his person that is discernible to anyone the closer they get to His manifest presence and the more God allows us to see that.

  • That’s what happened in the O.T. when God’s manifest presence was visible to the Israelites at Mt. Sinai or in Solomon’s Temple or in visions such as Isaiah or Ezekiel had.
  • It’s what happened on the Mt. of Transfiguration when Jesus displayed his heavenly glory to Peter and John for a few brief moments. In essence, I think we can say it is a mixture of beauty and awesomeness all wrapped up.

            So in a phrase, the glory of God is the beauty and awesomeness of His many perfections, His all-perfect and complete characteristics.

So God is in a class all by himself in this universe. Every other being is either marred by sin (fallen angels/demons and all humans but Jesus) OR is less than complete, less than God (angels & redeemed sinners).

God is not seeking for all creation to glorify Him because he needs our accolades. WE need His perfection and the ability to glorify Him in order to experience the highest degrees of joy, praise and adoration that dependent beings like us are made for. Were God to turn away from himself as the Source of infinite joy, he would cease to be God. He would deny the infinite worth of his own glory. And he would imply that there is something more valuable outside Himself. And if that were true, he would not be God.  

But we must go one more step. What do we do when we are given or shown something beautiful or excellent? We naturally and almost involuntarily talk about it; we praise it. As C.S. Lewis wrote, “…all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise unless (sometimes even if) shyness or the fear of boring others is deliberately brought in to check it.” He goes on to talk about how the world rings with praise—

  • lovers can’t seem to stop praising what they find beautiful or enjoyable in their beloved
  • readers praise their favorite authors or poets.
  • walkers sing the praises of their favorite hikes.
  • athletes and fans their favorite sport or team.

Healthy, happy people are those full of delight and praise for the weather, wines, dishes, actors, motors, colleges, countries, children, flowers, mountains, rare stamps, you name it. We spontaneously praise what we find beautiful and valuable…and we spontaneously urge others to join us in our praise. We say things like, “Isn’t that beautiful!” or “Wasn’t that glorious?”

In fact, when we see or experience something like that and don’t say something or call others to enjoy it with us, something is incomplete. To come over the rise in the road and be presented with some amazing vista demands some sort of praise. To find your wife or husband beautiful and enjoyable without saying something about it diminishes, not their beauty, but one’s own experience of it and them.

Lewis says,

“I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed.” [Quoted by John Piper in Desiring God, p. 37.]

John Piper says this about giving glory to God.

“We praise what we enjoy because the delight is incomplete until it is expressed in praise. If we were not allowed to speak of what we value, and celebrate what we love, and praise what we admire, our joy would not be full. So if God loves us enough to make our joy full, he must not only give us himself; he must also win from us the praise of our hearts—not because he needs to shore up some weakness in himself or compensate for some deficiency, but because he loves us and seeks the fullness of our joy that can be found only in knowing and praising him, the most magnificent of all Beings. If he is truly for us he must be for himself!

“God is the one Being in all the universe for whom seeking his own praise is the ultimately loving act. For him, self-exaltation is the highest virtue. When he does all things “for the praise of his glory,” [as he says in Eph. 1:12 & 14], he preserves for us and offers to us the only thin in all the world which can satisfy our longings. God is for us! And the foundation of this love is that God has been, is now, and always will be for himself” (p. 37).

So it stands to reason that whatever “shows off” God’s character and perfections (his glory) should illicit from all created beings in his creation our praise, honor and adoration…but only if we are in right relationship with Him. If sinful disobedience is separating us from God, we’re not going to want to be near Him or talk about Him.

The same holds true even on the human plain.

  • When couples are out of sorts with each other, no one wants to praise the other.
  • When kids are angry and rebellious against parents, they don’t want to honor them.

Rebellion and sin against others destroys praise and honor. They are mutually exclusive entities.

This is why being right with God through Jesus Christ is THE deepest need of every human being. If we fail to acknowledge that our rebellion against God, manifest in every sin we have or ever will commit, has destroyed right relationship with God, we will never be able to get right with God. And since the sinless life and death of Jesus, infinite God-in-human-flesh, is the only way the sins of every one of us is canceled, right relationship with Jesus Christ is THE single most important relationship we will ever have.

So when people want Christmas without Christ, they are dooming themselves to an inferior experience. The glory of Christmas IS Jesus Christ. Take Him out and all you are left with is colorful stuff that breaks, wears out, goes out of style, and costs too much. And we’ll be left with a bunch of imperfect people who disappoint, don’t always love, get grumpy and are quite frequently just plain selfish.

When Jesus entered this world, he became history’s best and brightest display of who God is. For 33 years he glorified the Father by showing off the true nature of God.

            That’s why John could write, “And the Word [Christ] became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” Jesus was constantly “glorifying God” because he was constantly showing God off as he really is.

  • He displayed the wisdom of God when, for instance, he confounded the best minds of the day in the Temple at age 12 or left the Pharisees flat-footed when he answered their trick questions with one liners like, “Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s,” or “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.”
  • He displayed the power of God in every miracle from making an insane amount of really good wine at a wedding feast to feeding 5,000 hungry men and their families on a hillside after teaching them Kingdom truth all day.
  • He displayed the mercy of God when he forgave tax collectors, prostitutes, and religious snobs of their sins and set them free to know their heavenly Father.
  • He showed off God’s anger towards people who saw Temple business as just that--a way to make money rather than help even lost Gentiles get to know God.

Go down every one of God’s humanly-understandable qualities and you will see Jesus “glorifying” or making visible God’s “invisible qualities.”

That’s why being his followers must be all about pointing people to the real Jesus. Since every person’s greatest need is to see God as he really is, THE best thing we can do for anyone is to help them see the glory of God. When how we live, what we say, how we love people, our attitudes and actions mirror the glorious nature of God, people will catch glimpses of God as He truly is just as they were able to 2,000 years ago when God invaded human history for 33 years starting in Bethlehem with a little baby born of a virgin.

The Apostle John in his Gospel talked quite a bit about the glory of God shown through the work of Jesus in this world. Not a few times John points to miracles as showing God off to people.

  • After Jesus rescued a newlywed couple from what could have been a terribly embarrassing if not outright destructive situation of running out of wine at their wedding feast, John makes this comment in John 2:11: “This beginning of signs Jesus did in Cana of Galilee, and manifested His glory; and His disciples believed in Him.” What did this miracle “show off” about God?

o   His compassion for a young, newlywed couple.

o   God’s heart to involve even the lowliest of people (servants) on the inside track of great miracles.

o   That God partners with our hard work.

o   His power over the most fundamental and basic physical elements and laws of nature in this world.

o   His humility not to do it in a showy way. (Even the master of the feast and the newlywed couple didn’t know how it had happened…and apparently only a few people, like the disciples and servants, really knew what had happened.)

o   Others?

  • Over in John 11 where Jesus is going to do a very dramatic and public miracle of raising his good friend Lazarus from the dead, Jesus himself talks about how that will display who God is…His glory…to people.
  • John 11:4—“When Jesus heard [that Lazarus was deathly sick], He said, “This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” So let’s ask the same question: What did this miracle “show off” about God?

o   His power over humanity’s final enemy, death…and His ability to breathe life into inanimate matter.

o   His compassion for grieving people/friends…and his hatred of the effects of sin?

o   His sovereignty in timing—seemed late to everyone else but was right on time for what God wanted done.

o   His friendship towards sinners.

  • Later in that same story, in John 11:40, when Martha protests about Jesus command to remove the stone from in front of her brother’s tomb, Jesus says to her, “Did I not say to you that if you would believe you would see the glory of God?” FAITH in what God says is true allows God to display who He is in and around us in this world. Martha was facing a huge human impossibility—the death of her brother. But Jesus reminded her that belief in Him and his power to do the impossible was something that made room for God’s glory in her experience.

APP: This is why God is always inviting us to live by faith. The bigger the miracle or event He wants to use to display some characteristic of God, the greater the faith that will be required.

  • This is why God doesn’t fund ministries or churches or mission outreach through the lottery. He wants to enter into the normal flow of life and do things that show us about Him. The lottery shows how the world and the devil works. Just read the stories about what happens to many of the people who are winners! But faith in God gives great room for God to be glorified.
  • What is God nudging you to step out on by faith?
  • BTW: seeing God’s glory does not obligate anyone to belief. Just look at what the Pharisees wanted to do to both Jesus and Lazarus after this miracle. (Kill them!) For those who don’t want God leading their lives, seeing His glory will may well make them more rebellious, obstinate and angry against Him.

So the question becomes, what does the Bible specifically say WE can do to help others see the glory of God in our generation? Let me walk you through a few specific things God loves to use in relation to us to show off His glory in our day.

John 17:22ff (NET)—Speaking to the Father, Jesus says, “I pray that they [his disciples] will be in us, so that the world will believe that you sent me. 22 The glory [i.e. the ability and capacity to display the amazing nature of God] you gave to me I have given to them, that they may be one just as we are one— 23 I in them and you in me—that they may be completely one, so that the world will know that you sent me, and you have loved them just as you have loved me.

Abiding in Christ is something that opens a huge door for God’s glory to be displayed…and the amazing thing is that it can happen through us. Is it any wonder that guarding and maintaining the unity of the Spirit between brothers and sisters in Christ is such a challenging thing? Satan knows that if he can get us to divide and distance ourselves from each other, he has effectively gotten us to stop abiding in Jesus.

For all the headaches and heartaches the disciples caused Jesus, he never stopped loving them. He never stopped fellowshipping with them. He never pulled away or started criticizing them to others, not even His Father. That’s not the nature or character of God. So he didn’t. And it’s not our new life in Christ either. We don’t have to defend each others knuckle-headed behaviors and words, but a passionate fervor for oneness in God’s family will characterize anyone who is abiding in Christ.

ILL: As I look back on 35 years in ministry, without a doubt the times I have felt I was experiencing the unity of God’s very diverse children the most were times when I have been in extended sessions of prayer before God that emptied us of our personal and human agendas and filled us with a sense of the glorious presence of God.

  • International Renewal’s Pastor’s Prayer Summit at Warm Beach Conf. Center in 1989, Kitsap County.
  • Atlanta Promise Keeper’s Pastor’s Conference in Feb. 1996 with almost 40,000 pastors, priests and clergy there to worship God, pray and declare our oneness in Jesus Christ. It was THE largest gathering of clergy ever in the history of the church.
  • Ministries that draw the people of God together around everyone’s need of Jesus—YFC, Billy & Franklin Graham Crusades, Promise Keepers, etc.

Jesus knew that abiding in Him would lead to bonding in the church. We err when we strive to “get together” and “find unity.” But when we strive to get close to Christ and submit ourselves completely to Him, there is no way we will not get closer to each other and show off the reality about God to this world.

This is why Paul, in Ephesians 3, having just prayed that the Ephesian church would be able to experimentally know how wide, long deep and high the love of Christ is, says in vs. 21, “to Him [God] be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations…” When we learn to live in the love of Christ together in the church, God really is displayed/glorified in this world.

Jesus said pretty much the same thing in John 15:8 when he said, “By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples.” That whole chapter points back to abiding in Christ as the key to fruitfulness. The more the fibers of our lives are enmeshed in the life of Jesus, the more the qualities of Christ will be demonstrated to others.

When we talk about the “glory of the incarnation…of ‘God with us,’” it can tend to seem so very far back in history. Sure, that was great for everyone who got to see that glory a couple thousand years ago. But where has that glory gone? Why does the church seem so inglorious so much of the time?

May I suggest that institutions and buildings and non-profit corporations were never intended to be where God is displayed and His glory is manifested among us. God has always intended that PEOPLE…people filled with the Holy Spirit of God…people fixing their spiritual eyes on Jesus Christ day after day and thus learning to live as He lived here on this imperfect earth with imperfect people…those people of His would bear the life of Christ out in this century, this generation.

We don’t do it perfectly. We are people who follow the leading of the Holy Spirit, step out by faith to do something Christ-like, and then, often in the process, get our eyes off Christ. We find that we’re not as spiritual as we thought we were. We grow weary…and forget to keep sinking our roots deeper into Christ. But still, fruit comes along. People know we are Jesus’ followers. And God is displayed, albeit imperfectly, through us to generation after generation.

As I meditated on this truth this week, I found myself asking where I had seen God’s glory…His character and nature…in the fruitfulness of His followers. And I kept coming up with people who I have known “in the church” for most of my life. People who, imperfect though they were, really showed the nature of God to me. Some showed one thing; others another.

Nobody showed it all. They would have had to be Jesus to do that! And that’s why the church IS called “the body of Christ” in the world today!

So let me name some of those “fruits” of God’s nature—his glory—that we all long to see and experience more of. And as I do, ask God to remind you of the people you have known…other followers of Jesus…who displayed that quality, that characteristic to you in some God-like way.

(PRAY asking God to bring to mind specific people.) You may want to close your eyes and let God do the revealing.

What follower of Christ has shown you…

  • God’s kindness?
  • His joy?
  • Peace?
  • Gentleness?
  • Moral purity?
  • Patience?
  • Unconditional love?
  • Generosity?
  • Grace?
  • Strength?
  • Steadfast faithfulness?
  • Humility?
  • Self-control?
  • Justice?
  • Impartiality?
  • Integrity?

That is the glory of God on display in your lifetime. That is “the glory of it all”—all the different people of God manifesting all the different God-like qualities that the Holy Spirit works into Christ-followers, one person at a time, maybe even one season of life at a time.

2 Cor. 3:17—“But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.”

PRAY

  • Thank God for the people who have shown you some of these aspects of the glory of God by being Christ-like.
  • Is there some quality God is asking you to abide in Him more about so that others can see the glory of Christ in you more?
  • Do you need to respond to Jesus by faith and surrender to Him?