Soli Deo Gloria

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Transcript:

This morning we’re going to be in John chapter 17, John chapter 17, and we’re going to be talking about the subject of glory this morning, specifically the glory that God deserves, because as we’ve been looking at some of the teachings that were, some of the biblical teachings that were rediscovered during the time of the Reformation, and this is the last of the five messages that I have planned on this. As we’ve been looking at this, one of the teachings that was rediscovered was the idea that God alone deserves the glory when it comes to our salvation and our spiritual growth.

In that day, as I’ve mentioned a few times, 500 years ago, in that time when Martin Luther nailed his list of disagreements to the door of the castle church there, one of the things that he objected most strongly to was the sale of the indulgences, the pieces of paper, the certificates that said you could have time off of your sentence in purgatory, that you could have certain sins forgiven and be assured eternal life by paying X number of dollars or whatever their currency was then to the Catholic Church. And the idea was that these, you know, you could take these things to the bank because the Pope said so. And so we’re at that point, we’re glorifying the Pope and saying he has the ability to say, yeah, your sins are forgiven because I said so.

That’s a pretty lofty position, right? I would never tell you your sins are forgiven because I say so. I might tell you your sins are forgiven because God’s word says so, but that’s not a position I’m going to take on myself.

Part of the reason for the sale of the indulgences in the first place was to finance the reconstruction, the refurbishment of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. A massive church that still stands there today in the Vatican that glorifies St.

Peter and glorified the Pope. Look at me, look at what I’ve built. There were all sorts of monuments there to the glory of the Popes and the glory of the church.

And Martin Luther said, this is ridiculous. He said, we’re We’re taking from the people in the pews all throughout Europe who can barely scrape together enough money or enough food to survive, and we’re taking their money so that we can build these magnificent monuments in Rome, and we’re doing that with these false promises that their sins can be forgiven, and it’s ridiculous. And one of the teachings that grew out of this, or better said, one of the biblical teachings that was rediscovered during this time was the idea, again, as I said, that God alone deserves the glory when it comes to our salvation and our spiritual growth.

It’s not me that’s glorified. It’s not you that’s glorified. It’s God, ultimately, that’s glorified through this and in this.

And glory is a funny thing. No matter how much or how little we deserve it, we all crave it. Now, some may crave it more than others, but we all want to be recognized.

We all want to have our ego stroked and our pride fed. We all want to, even if it’s just by, I mean, most people don’t want a big spotlight and, you know, some people would rather die than be on stage in front of people, but at least in our circle, we want people to recognize us and think we’re special. We want recognition. And it seems like for some people, for most of us, I guess, the more glory we receive, the more recognition we receive, the more we want it.

It’s like a drug. That’s why most dictators build cults of personality around themselves. For Stalin, it wasn’t enough just to have absolute power in the Soviet Union.

He wanted the people to worship him. That’s why they had massive parades with paper mache Stalin heads moving down through Red Square. That’s why everything in Nazi Germany was named after Adolf Hitler.

That’s why they had statues built of Ceausescu in Romania staring down on the people all the time. That’s why Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un, I couldn’t remember the new guy’s name. That’s why their faces are plastered on every poster and every wall in North Korea.

Because they get a little bit of recognition, a little bit of glory, and then they start to crave all of it. Glory is like a drug. But when we get right down to it, there’s one who is deserving of all the glory that we could ever give, and then some.

And that person is God. That’s not to say that we don’t from time to time deserve a pat on the back when we’ve done something well, but when it comes to our salvation, it’s God and God alone that deserves the glory. I remember being just, oh, I don’t know what the word is, creeped out, I guess, a few years ago when, excuse me, I was, I went for many years to our associational kids camp.

I don’t know why, I did kids camp instead of youth camp because little children freak me out. I don’t understand little children. I much prefer teenagers where I can speak sarcasm with them.

And yet I always went to the kids camp, first through sixth grade. And I remember one year after we came back, reading on one of the teenage sponsors who went along with us, reading on her Facebook feed about X number of girls in her cabin who got saved that week at camp. And I’m just so proud of these girls.

Good job, guys. And I read that, I thought, oh, we might need to go back and talk to them. And make sure they understand what the gospel really is.

Make sure they understand they didn’t do anything to earn this. And I think I get what she was trying to say. Because when Benjamin made a profession of faith in Christ, that was a proud moment for me.

Maybe better said an exciting moment for me. As a parent, that thrilled me, especially as we talked about it more in the weeks after that. And I drilled him trying to make sure that there was no part of him that thought he earned this or deserved it.

That he realized that Jesus died to pay for his sins. And that was an exciting thing to realize that he really did understand this. And so I think I understand the sentiment that she was going for.

But it was just the words, I’m proud of you and good job, guys. Wait a minute. I understand the sentiment, but they didn’t do anything.

If you want to say good job to somebody for the salvation that these children received, good job, God. Now, that’s a better way to say it. That’s a more accurate way to say it.

Good job, Jesus, because he accomplished everything that was necessary for them to be saved. God orchestrated this whole plan, not you or me. We weren’t smart enough as a human race to come up with the idea of Jesus coming to save us.

because apart from God and his Holy Spirit convicting us, I think we’re not even smart enough to realize that we need a Savior. Half of us don’t even want to admit that there’s anything wrong with the sin that we commit. And Jesus, in John chapter 17, talks about this idea of glorifying God, of him being the one who deserves all the glory.

And before we get too deep into it, excuse me, I want to define my terms here, because glorifying is one of those words that we throw around in church. I mean, I say that almost every Sunday morning during prayer, either in the prayer meeting or when I start the service. I pray that God will be glorified above everything else that happens here this morning.

If nothing else happens during our time together, I pray that God will be glorified. And that’s a word that we throw out, but don’t always know what it means. It’s one of those church words.

To glorify somebody, I went and looked it up in Webster’s, the old Webster’s, the 1828 Webster’s. Went and looked it up this week, and what glorify means is simply to give somebody the honor that they deserve. I think we know, I think we probably knew that, but it seems like a word like glorify, there should be more to it than that.

No, it’s that simple. To glorify God means to give him the honor that he deserves. Nothing less, nothing more.

now can I ever give God as much honor as he deserves no I can spend my whole life trying to glorify him trying to honor him with every breath and it still wouldn’t even begin to touch what he deserves but I still ought to try I ought to give him as much honor and glory as I possibly can and Jesus excuse me Jesus as he’s praying on the night before his crucifixion he knows that He’s about to be arrested. He knows He’s about to be leaving His disciples, and so that He prays that both He and the Father would be glorified and that the disciples would be secure. We talked a little bit last week about His discussion with the disciples about what would happen when He goes away, and Him trying to prepare them for that.

After that, He goes and He prays to the Father, and He asks for them to be secure. He asked for them to be useful, but ultimately he asked that God would glorify, that God the Father would glorify himself and Jesus through what’s about to be done. Chapter 17, verse 1 says, These words spake Jesus and lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, Father, the hour has come.

Glorify thy son that thy son also may glorify thee. And thou hast given him power over all flesh that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him. And this is life eternal, that they may know, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.

So he’s praying that God would be glorified through what he’s about to do on the cross. Not only that, but he prays that God would glorify him through what he’s about to do on the cross. Now, please understand, when I say in this message, you know, he asked God this, he requested that God do this.

I’m not saying that Jesus Christ was not God. I understand that. I just want to make sure we’re clear here.

I believe that Jesus Christ is God in human flesh. So when I refer to God in that way, I’m talking about the Father. Just in case I don’t clarify it at some point, I don’t want anybody to misunderstand and think that I think Jesus is anything less than God.

But he’s praying here and asking that the Father would glorify him through what he’s about to do on the cross. I apologize for all the coughing. I’m taking everything I know to take, and sometimes it still just gets the best of me.

He’s asking for God, the Father, to glorify him through what he’s about to do. Now, that’s a strange request, it would seem, on the surface of it, because he’s about to be executed on the cross in the most humiliating way. They reserved this execution method for the lowest of the low.

As a matter of fact, in my understanding, a Roman citizen could not be executed in that way. Okay? It’s just like, unless they’ve changed it or there’s something that goes on that I don’t know about.

You know, we have certain constitutional protections, and I think an American citizen can’t be waterboarded at Guantanamo. Is that right? Does that sound right?

Okay. You can’t do that to our own. Now, they can do other things to you, I’m sure, to get you to talk.

But it’s that kind of thing. This is considered so bad, the Romans wouldn’t even do it to their own people, even if they were criminals. This was reserved for non-Romans, for thieves, for people who wanted to overthrow the government, anybody that they wanted to humiliate and degrade.

And Jesus is about to go through this humiliating experience, and he says, Father, glorify me in this, so that I can glorify you. Glorify thy son, he says, that thy son may glorify thee. And it’s not because the cross was such a glorious experience.

It’s because he would be glorifying the Father through his obedience. And really, when he would go through the cross, it was the glory of fulfilling all of these prophecies and proving that he was the Messiah that he claimed to be all along. And going forward to where he would be resurrected from the dead and prove that he was God in human flesh just like he said.

There’s nothing glorious about the cross itself, but through the whole ordeal that he might be able to glorify God through his obedience and what God was able to do in and through him with it. It’s just like when we go through difficult times. And you and I will never face anything as difficult as the cross.

We just won’t. Because it wasn’t just the physical torture he went through. It was the harassment.

It was the degradation. It was the mocking, the humiliation, everything that he went through. the feeling of somebody who never knew sin and guilt and shame, having it all dumped on him, all of our sin being dumped on him and feeling this sensation of separation from God, the Father.

None of us will ever experience what that was like for Jesus. But we’ll still go through difficult times. We will still go through those valleys.

Maybe you’re in one today. We can also glorify God in those times. Not because the situation is so glorious.

not because it’s glorious to be broke not because it’s glorious to be involved in a family dispute not because it’s glorious to be out of work not because it’s glorious to suffer any of the things that we suffer through but because we remain obedient to God all through it so that the people around us can see what he does through us and he’s glorified in that and he says here you’ve given him all power referring to himself as thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him. He says that, Father, you’ve given me all power and all authority. Now, Jesus is God the Son.

He’s co-equal, co-eternal with God the Father. But here in his human flesh, in his human form, he’s saying, I still have divine authority. The Father has sent me.

The Father has made it to be this way. I have power even as someone who is about to be crucified. I have power over all flesh.

I have power over the entire physical world so that I can give eternal life to all of those that the Father has given me. And this is life eternal, he says, that they might know the only true God and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. He said this is where the eternal life comes from, that they know God, that they recognize him as the true God and know who he is, and that they recognize Jesus Christ is the Messiah that he has sent for them.

And so he’s praying for the Father’s help as he prepares to go to the cross to purchase eternal life. He’s asking for the Father’s help, but he’s also focused on the idea of giving the Father glory in everything that he’s about to do. And his mission here is not just to seek and to save that which is lost. His mission here is also to bring glory to the Father and bring glory to himself, the glory that they both deserved.

Now, growing up, I used to hear a very man-centered gospel from some teachers. I don’t think it was purposely that way, but, you know, God loves you and everything he did was for you and he went to the cross for you, and I think that’s true. I think the Bible teaches that, but that’s part of the story.

That’s just part of the story. Then when I was a teenager, I used to hear people pushing back on this, like the pendulum swings from one extreme to the other. I started hearing teachers teach, God didn’t do this for you.

He did this for his own glory. God sent Jesus to the cross for his own glory. Okay, I think the Bible teaches that too.

There’s truth in that too. But again, that’s just part of the story. Folks, the Bible teaches both.

That he came to seek and to save that which was lost. Jesus Christ already deserved all the glory for being God and for being co-creator with God the Father. He already deserved all the glory that could ever be given to him just by virtue of being who he was. If he’d never done anything for us.

But he looked through time and he looked through eternity and he loved you enough, even in your sin, that he chose to come to the cross willingly and take responsibility for your sins and die for you. He did that because he loved you. and yet he also deserves glory all the more for what he did.

It doesn’t have to be one extreme of the pendulum or the other. The truth is right there in the middle. Jesus Christ died because he loved you and wanted you to be in heaven with him but also to receive the glory that he rightly deserves from a people who would love him because he loved us first. He says, I have glorified thee on earth.

I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was. Jesus’ whole ministry on earth had been about glorifying God.

Wasn’t it? His whole ministry was about glorifying God. He had modeled obedience to God for his followers.

Even when he mixed it up with the Pharisees, he didn’t come to them and say, Oh, I’m bringing you some brand new teaching. No, he took them back to God’s law and says, this is how you really obey God. This is how you really live in obedience to God.

Here’s how you do it. Here’s what God’s word really says. And not only that, he modeled obedience.

He didn’t just teach it, he modeled it. Look at his baptism. Jesus didn’t need, I mean, there was seemingly no spiritual benefit to Jesus being baptized.

I mean, I think I understand John the Baptist’s hesitance to baptize him. wait a minute, I’m not even worthy to unbuckle your shoes, and you want me to baptize you. You should be baptizing me.

And Jesus looks at him and says, no, I need to be baptized, because he says it becometh us to fulfill all righteousness. He said this is the right thing to do. This is a mark of obedience.

It was a pattern of obedience to his father. Jesus is the lawgiver, and he could have made up his own rules as he went along. but no everything came back to this is the father’s will he said this is this is my food this is my sustenance to do the father’s will everything came back to obedience and he modeled that the the pharisees tried to catch him all the time doing something wrong we talked about this a few weeks ago I think it was on a wednesday night maybe about washing the washing of the hands the pharisees tried to find something that they could accuse jesus with they watched him and watched him and watched him and couldn’t find anywhere where he violated god’s law so they had to try to nail him some made-up tradition that they had, because he was constantly obedient to the Father and taught his disciples to do the same thing.

He taught about the holiness of God, that God is not just okay with whatever you want to do, that God is completely holy and completely separate from us in that holiness. And that’s a message we need to get back to today, because the world likes to look at Jesus and say, oh, Jesus wouldn’t judge. Jesus wouldn’t do.

Jesus, you know, let the lady caught in adultery Yet Jesus also said, you know, I don’t accuse you either, but go and sin no more. He didn’t say, this is fine, whatever you want to do. He said, I’m not going to condemn you, but you need to stop.

And when he came with, folks, the world also likes to talk about the things he taught in the Sermon on the Mount. Oh, Jesus taught love, and Jesus taught forgiveness, and Jesus taught not to judge. Jesus taught all of those things.

But it was part of a wider message of you’ve put God’s standard here, and you’ve misinterpreted God’s standard of being right here with this behavior that you think it’s so easy not to do. And he said God’s standard is really up here, not with the outward behavior but with the condition of the heart. And that Sermon on the Mount was a whole message about the condition of the heart and how it was impossible for us, even the Pharisees.

It was impossible for anybody to live up to the standard of God’s holiness. So he came preaching that we serve a God who is so holy that it’s beyond our comprehension. And he taught about the justice of God.

I know we talked about this a few Wednesday nights ago when we talked about people suffering and our disasters, punishment for sins, and all these related questions. And Jesus talked about those who had been killed when a tower collapsed and there was another calamity. And he said, do you think that, oh, Pilate executed some people and he said, do you think that these suffered because they were more sinful than others?

Didn’t even really give them time to respond. He said, here’s what I say to you, that unless you repent, you’ll likewise perish. He was telling supposedly the good people that, hey, you’ve got things to repent for.

And unless you get right with God, you’re going to be destroyed too. So he taught that God is a God of justice. And God is somebody we need to take seriously.

God is someone that we need to stand in awe of. Jesus is the Son of God. He’s God in human flesh.

He talks about being there with the Father in verse 5, before the world was even created. And he was there when the world was created. He was part of that work.

He’s the creator and the ruler of the universe. But think about this. The creator and ruler of the universe stepped away from his throne, where he was at the right hand of God the Father, and he humbled himself to come down and live among us because the Father sent him.

Because the Father sent him. Think of everything that Jesus put aside to be obedient. It would cost us a whole lot less to be obedient to God the Father.

And he was about to fulfill the work that the Father had given him to do. He says, I finished the work which thou gavest me to do. Now that doesn’t mean that everything is done.

Because it’s as he’s about to die on the cross, he says it is finished. That’s when the work was really done. But as far as what he needed to do, as far as everything being, the wheels were in motion.

The stage was set from then on out, he’s just waiting for them to take him to the cross. And so he’s at the end and he says, I’ve done everything you’ve given me to do. The work is completed.

And he’s looking forward to returning to his rightful place of glory at the right hand of God the Father. Now we look at verse 6. He says, I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world.

Thine they were and thou gavest them me and they have kept thy word. Now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee. So he had sought to honor the Father by proclaiming the Father’s message to the world, bringing honor to the Father’s name, getting people to realize who God was, who God is, and what God expects from them, and what God deserves, and by teaching them what God says and how to obey.

It’s been his entire ministry drawing people back into a relationship with the Father. And in the process of doing this, he had collected a following of people who were going to be redeemed through his death on the cross so that then they would go forward and love and serve God. And that’s what he’s done for us.

We look at his words and we can learn everything that he taught about the father. And through his death, we can have a relationship with the father. And then God begins to transform us to where we love and serve him.

And God is glorified when that happens. God’s plan all along has been to redeem a people who would choose him and who would love him. Free will is a funny thing.

People like to blame God for all the evil, all the icky stuff that goes on in our world. They don’t take into account free will. That we are surrounded by people who make choices.

That we ourselves are people who make choices. And that’s really responsible. That’s really at the root of everything negative that happens around us.

is that we have this free will and we use it in the wrong direction. People who are angry at God like to complain about that, but they wouldn’t give up their free will for anything. I mean, we wouldn’t want to be members of the animal kingdom, and we wouldn’t want to be robots.

We like our free will. We can’t have it both ways. See, God could have created yet another creature who would love him and glorify him because they had no choice.

But what God did was to create someone he could have a relationship with, Someone who would choose to love him. Someone who would choose to bring him glory. And yes, that involved creating creatures that had the capacity to sin.

And yes, that involved creating creatures that some of them would reject him. And some of, well, I take that back, that all of them would reject him. And some of them would reject him entirely and forever.

But that he would send Jesus to pay for our sins. Knowing that some would choose to love him. And not because we’re so loving, but because he loved us first. Verse 8 says, For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me.

And they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee. And they have believed that thou didst send me. I pray for them.

I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me, for they are thine. and all mine are thine, and thine are mine, and I am glorified in them. So again, he talks about teaching the Father’s words.

The disciples had heard these words, they’d recognized them, they’d acknowledged that what Jesus said came from God, and they had committed to follow them in obedience. Now, they would not always do that perfectly. As you see in the next few pages, the disciples all kind of cut and run when Jesus is crucified.

But once he’s raised from the dead, they come back and they are radically changed. And they follow him in obedience. And just as they believed in God, they were convinced that Jesus was the son of God.

And that that meant he was the Messiah that God had promised for all these thousands of years. The one who would come and save them from their sins. And so Jesus prayed for them.

Jesus asked the father to watch over them. And prayed that he and the father might be glorified through their obedience. and folks I think that applies to us as well that the Father and Son are glorified through our obedience as well and he says in verse 11 and now I am no more in the world but these are in the world and I come to thee Holy Father keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me that they may be one as we are while I was with them in the world I kept them in thy name those that thou gavest me I have kept and none of them is lost but the son of perdition that the scripture might be fulfilled That’s interesting right there.

He says, these that have belonged to me, I’m out of here. But they’re going to stay. My followers are going to stay.

And by your power, I’ve kept them. I’ve held on to them. None of them are lost, says except Judas.

And it’s because Judas never really was a disciple, that the scripture might be fulfilled. See, Judas was there because somebody needed to betray Jesus. And now come I to thee, and these things I speak in the world, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves.

So throughout his ministry, Jesus had upheld all these and had not lost any of the true believers. But now in his absence, he prays that they would be kept through God’s power, seeing that these were people who had been called by his name, that they belonged to God. When the Bible talks about us being called by his name, it doesn’t mean that, Okay, I’m going to call you God, and I’m going to call you God, I’m going to call you Jesus.

That’s not what he’s talking about. It’s saying I’ve been stamped with his name. I belong to him.

He owns me. I belong to him. I’m called by his name.

You know, all of these little people on this front row right here are called by the name Byrns because they belong to me. Right? And they belong to Charlotte too, but it was my name first. I’m not going to say she belongs to me because I don’t want to have to have that discussion later.

We belong to each other, I’ll put it that way. No, they’re called by my name because they belong to me. Same principle here.

They’re called by God’s name because they belong to him. And you can see as he’s about to go, this is not the whole prayer that he prays the night before his crucifixion. It is a big part of it.

And as he’s about to go through the crucifixion, we don’t see it recorded, oh, Lord, make it not hurt. Make it go as quickly as possible. we do see if there’s any other way, let me do it that way.

But Father, I’ll do whatever you want. So we know that he’s not just a robot here, ready to go through the crucifixion. We see Jesus’ human nature here saying, if there’s any other way, I’d really rather not go through the crucifixion, and I think we can all understand that.

But still there’s the obedience of Jesus saying, nevertheless, not my will, but thy will be done. And what we see in this passage is his overall focus on God being glorified. In other words, God receiving the honor that he deserves.

Now that had been the driving force behind his ministry for three years. And we see it on display here at the end too. That he’s about to go and purchase our salvation.

What he was about to do wasn’t just to purchase the salvation for the 11 remaining disciples. It was to purchase your salvation as well. And when he was about to go do that, his thoughts weren’t on, oh, they’re so horrible, I can’t believe I have to do this to save them.

it wasn’t this is going to hurt it wasn’t can you make this go quickly it was God I want you to be glorified because you deserve it he’s pointing out that God deserves the glory and folks there are many passages in scripture that talk about the glory of God and salvation but I wanted to turn to this one today because we see it from Jesus own lips right there if you’ve got a red letter Bible that whole thing is in red indicating that those are Jesus’ words. You see it from Jesus’ own mouth, right as he’s about to go through the crucifixion for your salvation, that it was all about God’s glory. It was all about God’s glory.

On top of everything else Jesus did, he set an example for us by his obedience to the Father, by demonstrating how we should live, how God’s people should honor him, how God’s people should glorify him with our lives and with our message. It means giving him the honor he deserves through our words, our thoughts and our actions. And Jesus glorified the Father in his ministry and in our salvation.

He glorified the Father because his truth was proclaimed. The Father’s truth was proclaimed. He talks about it in verse 8.

I’ve given them the words which you gave me. In other words, what you told me to speak, I spoke to them, and they received them and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they believed that thou didst send me. So he says, everything you told me to say to them, I said to them.

And they accepted it, and they believed it, and they accepted that you sent me. Jesus didn’t come proclaiming his own message. He