Soli Deo Gloria: John 12

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Listen in as Pastor Mike preaches this recent sermon. Soli Deo Gloria.

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Well, I don't know if you are heliocentric or geocentric.
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Which one are you? When you think about the solar system, does it revolve around the sun, heliocentric?
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Or does it revolve around the earth, geocentric? Probably back in the...
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pardon me? That was a rhetorical question. It was about the 3rd century
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BC, Aristarchus had some ideas that the earth revolved around the sun. But it wasn't until about the 16th century where you have
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Copernicus thinking, you know what? With his math and with his background and his thinking, a
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Roman Catholic man thinking, you know what? The world doesn't revolve around itself, the world revolves around the sun.
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Then Kepler comes along and then Galileo and they realized that it's not the earth that's the center of the solar system.
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It's the sun. Whenever I hear the words heliocentric and geocentric,
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I think, you know what? I'm microcentric. I don't just think the solar system revolves around me.
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I think the universe revolves around me. And both the geocentric people and the heliocentric people knew we're talking about the solar system only, not the universe.
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But when it comes to me, and you're probably just like me, our default is everything swirls around the unholy trinity, me, myself, and I.
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It's so easy. It's our default. Because of sin even affecting the
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Christian, we live like we're the center of everything.
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Now to use theological language, we need to think more theocentrically, correct?
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That God is at the center, at the hub, at the pinnacle. He is at the center of everything.
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Really what happens for us when we become Christians, there is a theological, spiritual, Copernican revolution that goes on.
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We are not the center. We are not the captains of our fate. And the weird thing about this whole idea where things revolve around us, so often we can come to a worship service and think,
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Oh, I didn't like that. I didn't prefer that. We even as worshipers want the worship to be tuned to ourselves.
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And you can see in evangelicalism, we've taken platforms and turned them into stages. We've taken buildings and turned them into theaters.
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We've got programs and we've got stages and theater seatings. And I think it was Spurgeon who said,
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Congregations are now dealt with by pastors as he entertains goats instead of feeding sheep.
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So today we come to our fifth and final sola of the Reformation. Soli Deo Gloria, to God alone be the glory.
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We will pick up Hebrews chapter 3 verse 6 next week as we go verse by verse through the book of Hebrews. But today the final installment, the umbrella, if you will, to all the other solas.
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Soli Deo Gloria, to God alone be the glory. Now what was happening during the time of the
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Reformation, the 1500s and 1600s? You have the reformers saying, you know what, we don't want to leave the church of Rome.
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We want to reform the church. And where there are excesses, we'd like to change those excesses to be more biblical.
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And while they didn't have the five solas codified back in the Reformation, all of those five principles were there.
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Sola Scriptura as the foundation, the Bible alone, no other authority is on par with it.
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It was there in the writings. And you move over a little bit and you think, by grace alone, God's initiating grace alone was there in the writings of the reformers because they realized we were so sinful.
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How could we cooperate with God? God's grace alone must save. In the writings of the
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Reformation, there was Christ alone. There are no other mediators. You don't have to come to me as a mediator or any priest or any pope or any vicar or any bishop.
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Christ alone is the great high priest. And how do you receive those benefits? You receive those benefits not by doing anything, not by climbing up steps or saying certain incantations.
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You receive the benefits, the gracious benefits of Christ Jesus by faith and faith alone.
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And so you have Scripture alone, you have grace alone, Christ alone, and faith alone.
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And since God did all those things, He preserves His word, He writes His word, He reveals
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His word, He inspires His word, He illumines His word. He, He, He, He alone gets glory when it comes to the word.
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When it comes to grace, God's grace alone saved. By grace you've been saved through faith.
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You want to know the cause of your salvation? It's the grace of God and not us. So to God alone be the glory.
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This is like the pinnacle of everything. And you move forward and you think, it's Christ. There's no other person who can save like Jesus did.
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No one with His love towards sinners, no one with His power over death. When Jesus' words are recalled in Acts chapter 20, it's better to give than what?
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Receive. It's more blessed to give than receive. And matter of fact, that is the attitude
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Luther said of the Holy Trinity, to give the Son to save sinners.
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And since only Jesus saves, He alone gets the glory. And when it comes to the reception of those benefits, it's not faith plus baptism, faith plus church membership, it's faith alone.
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We simply receive. We don't contribute anything. Faith is even a gift, Philippians 129.
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Then that must mean God alone gets the glory. And today we're coming to the fact that it's the logical conclusion to all the other four solas.
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If Scripture alone is the authority and Christ alone is the Savior and the motivation is by grace alone and we receive
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Him by faith alone, then what's our response? I think the game is at one today or is it four?
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I mean, to stand in the presence of a thrice holy God and He did everything for you. We contribute to salvation, yes,
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I know, our own sin and foolishness. But God says, I am going to demonstrate my love toward you that while you were yet what?
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Sinners, Christ dies for you. And if He dies for you as a sinner, now how does He treat you as a son or a daughter?
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And so many times we'll say, to God alone be the glory. And that is a very good thing.
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It is a natural outcome of the other four solas. But what does it really mean to give
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God glory? And that's what we're going to look at today. So first I'd like you to take your Bible and turn to Exodus 40.
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To God alone be the glory. I think it's important for us to establish this question.
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What is glory? And then to answer it. If we're to say to God alone be the glory, is it just Christianese?
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Is it just the vernacular, the nomenclature of Christianity? We're going to give God glory whether you eat or drink or whatever you do.
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To all give God glory, 1 Corinthians 10. So what is glory? And we're going to look at two kinds of glory.
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God's intrinsic glory, that is, He by essence and by nature is glorious.
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His being is glorious. He is the Lord of glory. Intrinsic glory, ontological glory, nature glory, by nature
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God is glory, by essence. And then we'll look at extrinsic glory.
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We as people then recognizing God's inherent glory,
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His intrinsic glory, and we acknowledge that and praise Him for that and thank Him for that and worship
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Him for that, that's what extrinsic glory is. We're not adding to God's glory.
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We're not saying, God, You're less glorious if we don't talk about You. But it's good to look at these two things because our default is how do we give glory to God?
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And we forget by nature God is glorious. And there will be all kinds of practical ramifications that go along with it.
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So Exodus chapter 40 is a good place to begin. What is the glory of God?
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Verse 34, please. Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the
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Lord filled the tabernacle. And Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud settled on it.
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And the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. Throughout all their journeys, whenever the cloud was taken up from over the tabernacle, the people of Israel would set out.
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But if the cloud was not taken up, then they did not set out till the day that it was taken up.
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For the cloud of the Lord was on the tabernacle by day, and fire was in it by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel throughout all their journeys.
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The Bible says that God is so glorious, He is called in the Bible the God of glory.
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He's called the Lord of glory, glorious Father, the King of glory.
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And what is glory? You could describe it a lot of ways. You could say it's the splendor of God, the radiance of God.
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The other day I was doing a radio show on the glory of God, and since I've been going under radiation and having radiation done to me,
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I said the radiation of God, that's not quite glory. The radiance of God, the effulgent glory of God.
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By the way, Dave Copper couldn't make it today. And as I talked to him this week, he said his bones are really hurting and everything, and he's in my discipleship group.
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And he said, I can't make it this Sunday, but I do have my Bible verse memory done.
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And so he typed it out. And I said, when you had the MRI, what were you thinking this week?
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He said, I don't like these full -body MRIs. And, you know, you've got the little mirror up here, and you're all the way down in this big chasm, and you've got the headphones on, and you're just laying there.
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And he said, I just kept thinking about our memory verse, 1 Peter 1, verse 3, and I kept rehearsing it over and over and over.
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Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.
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Those are good words to meditate on. What is glory?
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Now, some think it's an attribute, power, wisdom, glory. Others think, and probably more rightly so, that it reveals all his attributes and all that God is and all that he does is glory.
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His beauty, his renown, the sum of all his attributes, the sum of his divine being is his glory.
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Now, what does glory mean in the Old Testament? It's a word that's a fascinating word. It means heavy. Kavod is the word.
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It means something has weight. And if someone's rich back in those days, they had a lot of gold, they were very heavy with their riches, and then they could have all kinds of influence on people, even back in the 60s and 70s.
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What would we sometimes say? Sometimes we might say that was groovy, but that has nothing to do with glory.
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We would say it's a heavy thought that's got weight to it.
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Ten years ago in politics, we always heard the word gravitas. There's something about that person where he's influential, he's weighty, he carries himself with gravity.
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And, of course, God's glory is great. His glory is immeasurable because he has an infinite wealth, not of money, but of his character and his person.
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Thomas Watson, the Puritan writer, said, God will give temporal blessings to his children, such as wisdom, riches, honor.
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He will give them spiritual blessings. He will give them grace. He will give them his love.
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He will give them heaven. But his essential glory he will not give to another.
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Isaiah 48, 11. My glory I will not give to another. And so what we have to do as we think through Soli Deo Gloria is before we default to what we have to do, how we respond to God for saving us.
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A call to moral action, a call to, you know what, whether I eat or drink, I don't have a secular job or a sacred job.
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Everything in life is sacred. That's what the Reformers said up against the Roman Catholic Church. Since that's all true, that's fine and dandy, but we don't want to take the
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Sola that says, to God alone be the glory, and turn it into something that focuses primarily on us.
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So how do we prevent that? How do we prevent our default to be what's the chief end of man?
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That's right. You are good Presbyterians for the most part. Man's chief end is to glorify
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God and enjoy Him forever. But I would submit to you that you can't really do it properly unless you understand the intrinsic nature of the glory of God.
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When the Bible says, Ascribe to the Lord, O sons of the mighty, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength, you do that because He is in fact glorious.
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Now let's turn our Bibles to John 1, please. We're going to look at a couple of passages in John as we're talking about intrinsic glory leading to the fact that then we will respond with,
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To God be the glory, great things He has done. But too often we're forgetting that God by nature is glorious, so we want to make sure we think properly.
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And it will help us see the world theocentrically. Now remember the glory cloud in the
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Old Testament? The Shekinah glory? And now we come to the Gospel of John, John 1 .14.
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What's the pinnacle of God's glory? What's the apex of God's glory? In biblical revelation, in progressive revelation, we're moving along.
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We've got the Shekinah glory in the Old Testament and we move to the New Testament, verse 14. The Word became flesh.
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We're talking about that eternal Word, the second person of the Trinity. Chapter 1, verses 1 and following, And made
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His dwelling among us. He put up His tent among us. He put up His tabernacle. Just like you've got things in the tabernacle in the
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Old Testament, just like you've got things in the temple in the Old Testament, what's at the center of the tabernacle?
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What's at the center of the tent? We have seen what? This is amazing.
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His glory. Human flesh. The glory of the one and only
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Son who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. The glory of God dwells on earth in a very personal, relational way.
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You've got the glory in the Old Testament. You can't even look at it and live, essentially. And didn't we get a little taste of the glory of God inherently in Himself?
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The Son, when at the transfiguration, it says He's metamorphosized. That is, what was on the inside,
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His glory, comes shining out on the outside. In Exodus 40, the glory of the
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Lord filled the temple. In John 1, the glory is displayed in the incarnate
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Word, the little child. Low condition. Feeble condition.
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How can the climactic end of the revelation of God in John and with glory coming through a human?
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Especially one that Isaiah says, He had no beauty or a majesty to attract us to Him, nothing in His appearance that we should desire
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Him, like one from whom people hid their faces. He was despised and we held
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Him in low esteem. Jesus is the incarnate One who is the
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Lord of glory. Can you imagine the angels when they were swirling around in Luke 2?
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Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,
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Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom His favor rests.
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From the angelic swarms of those saying the glory of God, to now we've got a little baby.
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A child born in a stall. Glory cloaked in humility. That is the incarnation.
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Now go to John chapter 12 please, as we continue to just think about intrinsic glory.
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If we are to give God glory in everything, does it not in fact stem from His glory by nature?
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It's not something we just do, give God glory. It's something God is glorious.
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I'm just going to pick it up in context. The best thing you can do to find out where you are is look at the context. So let's just pick it up in verse 20 of John 12.
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I'm going to read several verses and then we're going to highlight something that helps us understand the intrinsic glory of God.
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I should live my life to glorify God because He is so glorious. That's the point.
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John 12 .20, Now among those who went up to worship at the feast, there were some Greeks. So these came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and asked him,
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Sir, we wish to see Jesus. Philip went and told Andrew. Andrew and Philip went and told
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Jesus. And Jesus answered them, The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.
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Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone.
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But if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it. Whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.
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If anyone serves me, he must follow me. And where I am, there will my servant be also.
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If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him. Verse 27,
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Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour.
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But for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.
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Then a voice came from heaven, I have glorified it, even at the incarnation, and I will glorify it again at the crucifixion and resurrection.
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Jesus says, I'm willing to die. I will obey you. And what does the crowd say?
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Verse 29, And the crowd that stood there, and they heard it, said that it had thundered. Hey, it's thundering out.
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I hear some loud noise. Others, they were mistaken too. An angel has spoken to him. Jesus answered.
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He knew who was talking. This voice has come for your sake, not mine.
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Now is the judgment of this world. Now will the ruler of this world be cast out, and I, when
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I'm lifted up from the earth, talking about the crucifixion, will draw all people to myself.
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And now we're coming to our point. He said this to show by what kind of death he was going to die. So the crowd answered him.
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We have heard from the law that the Christ reigns forever. How can you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this
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Son of Man? So Jesus said to them, The light is among you for a little while longer.
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Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you. The one who walks in the darkness does not know where he is going.
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While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of the light. And when Jesus said these things, he departed and hid himself from them.
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Don't miss verse 37. Though he had done so many signs, he had done so many signs, miraculous, supernatural signs before them, they still did not believe in him.
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What's the explanation? Jesus on earth doing signs from raising
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Lazarus to the dead in the last chapter all the way back to taking water and changing it into wine and everything in between.
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How can you not believe? And so the writer, John, through the inspiration of the
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Spirit, tells us, and it's because prophecy must be fulfilled, so that the words spoken by the prophet
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Isaiah might be fulfilled. Lord, who has believed what he heard from us?
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And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? Therefore, they could not believe.
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For Isaiah again said, he has blinded their eyes, this is judicial hardening of God, and hardened their heart, lest they see with their eyes and understand with their heart and turn and I would heal them.
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How could it be? Jesus is on earth and you see him do all these miracles. And there are other miracles that aren't found in John and you just watch what happens to people and they will not believe.
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How can it be explained? And the writer is tuning you in to think biblically. Isaiah said this was going to happen.
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Isaiah predicted it. This was going to happen. They were going to be hardened in their unbelief. Isaiah is quoted.
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Now when you think of the book of Isaiah, it's kind of fun to think about because there are 66 books in the Bible and how many
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English chapters do we have in Isaiah? 66. And early on, or even if I ask you, what are the key chapters in Isaiah?
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If I said, if you know anything about Isaiah, what are the key chapters? And your probably default might be the suffering servant in Isaiah 53.
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That would be good. And what's the other default that's in your mind? When you think of Isaiah and you're reading,
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Isaiah said this. Why did he say these things? Verse 41, here's the other clue. Isaiah said these things because he,
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Isaiah, saw the second person of the Trinity's glory and spoke of Christ.
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Now the English just says he saw His glory and spoke of Him. But he's talking about Jesus.
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Wait a second. Some place in Isaiah, Isaiah sees the glory of Jesus, the pre -incarnate
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Son, the eternal Son before He's added humanity. He sees
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Him and He sees Him in all His glory and then this quote comes from the prophecy. Turn to Isaiah chapter 6 and let's see it.
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We're talking about the intrinsic glory of God Himself, especially the Son. You know
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Isaiah 6. I love to preach Isaiah 6. It's hard not to go back to it. But when you look at the glory of God, no sermon would be complete without looking at the glory of Jesus Christ in Isaiah 6.
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There are far too many sermons on these are the ways you give God glory. Ladies, men, tomorrow when you're washing your dishes and changing the diapers, you can do all to the glory of God.
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That is true. Amen. Verily, verily. But the motivation comes from when you see how glorious God is.
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Then it's the knee -jerk response. I love
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Isaiah chapter 6. In the year of King Uzziah's death, Scripture doesn't usually say that, at least in Isaiah, but it's so important that we realize this is a year that long -term king died.
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I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple.
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By the way, King Uzziah, he wasn't perfect. But if there was a motto for the reign of King Uzziah, and they had a song, one commentator said the song would be,
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Happy days are here again. Peace, security, food.
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What's going to happen when this good king dies? We're going to get the bad son? What's going to happen?
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Isaiah needs to have a right view of God so he can respond and go preach to people who, by the way, aren't going to believe in him because they've been hardened.
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What do you tell someone who's going to go evangelize? We used to meet here to go evangelize in the city, and what if I were to say to you,
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Thanks for coming out. Way to go. Does everybody have Bibles? Did everybody have tracts? Let's pray first. By the way, this would be true in New England anyway, pretty much, without the grace of God, no one's going to say,
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I believed. Everybody's going to slam the door. It was 1998, I believe.
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We had that Jesus movie, VHS. Do you know what VHS is? It's like reel -to -reel,
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A -track, VHS. We had like a tract in there, the stop tract.
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We had, Please come to a concert, and VBS, and here's the Jesus video. This is our gift to you as your neighbor.
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And we went to every house in West Boylston. We had teams, and put one of those on there. Do you know, for weeks,
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I would come to the church building and drive up on a Tuesday to come to work, and I would see the little packages returned.
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They would take them off their door, and they would bring them right back without looking, because I don't know why, but they don't want to have anything to do with it.
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I don't think anybody that day said, I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, I repent. Isaiah's going to be told, you're going to get sent out to preach to people, and nobody's going to believe.
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How can you bear that weight? What kind of knowledge do you need? What kind of thought of God do you need to go on that kind of preaching trip for your life?
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The answer is, to see a king that doesn't die on a throne.
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To see a king whose power isn't diluted, to see him on the throne.
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And that's the view that Isaiah is given about this king who will never die, who sits on a throne.
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He's the sovereign one. And what's going on here?
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And the train of his robe was filling the temple. I hope this doesn't ruin it for you, but I'm just trying to imagine this scene.
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If you're an Oriental monarch, and you're thinking, you know what, I want to impress people, and you're just a human, you have a lot of attendants, who are fanning you, you have a lot of sumptuous food around, and you have a train at the end of your robe that's huge, it fills up the entire scene, and you have a throne, a seat, a desk that's highly exalted, all picturing,
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I'm the king. So you kind of get that here. The train of his robe filling the temple. If I was talking to junior high kids,
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I'd bring in some dry ice. You know how dry ice just starts coming out, and then it filters down nice and low.
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Filling. I can't prove this, but so far we've just seen Isaiah describing things from the ground around here.
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He's not looking up too high. He knows there's a throne there, but he starts describing what's going on in the ground. I don't know, is he on his face?
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When Moses saw God in Exodus 24, it says, they saw the
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God of Israel, and under his feet there appeared to be a pavement of sapphire, not looking right at him. What's Isaiah saying?
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I'm kind of bored with your holiness, God. I don't really like that kind of music.
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I don't really like those, you know, the color of your train's not really up to my par. Seraphim, verse 2, stood above him, each having six wings.
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I think of hummingbirds just swirling and twirling. Two, he covered his face.
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It's like they're blushing, but they're created, but not sinful. Two, he covered his feet.
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You don't show your feet to kings back in those days. And with two, he flew at the beck and call of the king, flying around, hiding their faces, covering their feet.
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But there's not just prostration, there's praise. And one called out to another, holy, holy, holy is
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Yahweh of hosts. Holiness to the superlative degree.
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He's not just holy. He's not just holy, holy. He's holy, holy, holy. And when you see this repetition of words, it's not just I want to repeat the words, but there's a very personal aspect to it.
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Absalom, Absalom. Holy, holy, holy. I could translate this into the
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New Testament. Hallowed be thy name. Holy, holy, holy is the
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Lord of hosts. That king that's on the throne, this God who's on the throne, Isaiah said, is
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Jesus. That's what John 12, verse 42 says.
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He spoke of His glory. That's what's going on here. This is just like Revelation 4, 8. Holy, holy, holy is the
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Lord God, the Almighty, who was and who is and who is to come. Now, lots of times when you think of holiness, you think purity.
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You think ethical. You think moral. You think set apart. Fine, fine, fine, and fine.
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But you must also think, because that's secondary, you must think transcendent. You must think over.
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You must think different. You must think alien. The transcendent purity of God is on display.
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Holy, holy, holy. And then what does it say?
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The glory of God is really the thrice holy God put on display.
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The whole earth is full of His, you would think He would say, holiness. Everywhere you go, the holiness of God is on display.
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But what does He show? What does He say here? The whole earth is full of His glory.
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Do you know when the essence of God's transcendence is put on display, the glory of God is put on display.
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That's the point here. The godness of God is put on display. And where is it displayed?
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On the whole earth. The stage is the earth. The glory of God.
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Do you know the most important being in the universe is God? Well, I know you know that.
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Do you know worship is about God and not us? When people play fast and loose with worship,
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I worship God this way. I mean, the pagans do it and we all laugh. I worship God on the golf course.
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With that swing you do? Oh, that's a different point. I worship God this way.
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I don't really go to church. I worship God such and such. You know, there's all those sinful people at church that might hurt me.
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The referent is wrong. This is how I worship. No, this is how God, this is who
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He is, and this is how He demands to be worshipped. You don't make up worship. Ask Aaron's son
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Nadab and Abihu about making up worship. Nobody saunters on in to this king's throne.
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Not in a real king's throne, nor this king's throne, where there's so much holiness that the earth is full of His glory.
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It just permeates with His transcendence and His otherness. Isaiah's not trying to say, well, this guy on the throne, he's got a beard and he's five foot tall.
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There's just too much otherness going on. And it's like the earth knows it, verse 6, when there's so much transcendence of God and glory, and He's so different than we are.
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When the foundations know that and the trembles and thresholds, what do they do? They tremble at the voice of Him who calls out.
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Well, the temple was filling with smoke. I mean, it's running.
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If I was in Nebraska right now, I'd get to that particular corner where you get to where the tornadoes aren't supposed to kill you.
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Get in the basement, shaking in smoke. And what's
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Isaiah say? I don't really like that Berber carpet under that throne there.
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It's not my style. Woe is me, I'm ruined. If you're that holy, I know
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I'm sinful. And by the way, he's not a terrorist, he's not a rapist. He's the prophet of God.
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I'm ruined. I'm a man of unclean lips. I live among a people of unclean lips, for my eyes have seen the
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King, the Lord of hosts. And John says he's talking about Jesus.
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That's Jesus on the throne. Remember Isaiah? He's like, you know,
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I'll play the priest, he gets leprosy. Now Isaiah basically is saying, I'm a leper.
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You walk by people when you have leprosy in the Old Testament? Woe is me, woe is me, here I am, stay clear, watch out. So many phobias in this world.
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Talk about xenophobia. Every time you read xenophobia on the newspaper, fear of foreigners, fear of strangers, you ought to think the ultimate stranger, who's transcendent above all, is
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God. There should be some real xenophobia, and Isaiah is experiencing it. You can't just approach this
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God. You can't just walk in. What did Henry David Thoreau say? I saunter.
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You might saunter on Walden Pond, but there's no sauntering here. This is
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Jesus. No wonder when Peter realizes that the
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God of the universe is in his boat, he fell down at Jesus' feet saying, go away from me,
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Lord, for I am a sinful man. That's exactly how Isaiah was thinking and feeling.
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It's like the MRI of God penetrates into the soul and heart of Isaiah, and he knew he was undone.
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I used to have integrity. I have no more integrity. And you know what, friends? God would be holy and glorious and transcendent and righteous and just if he just let
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Isaiah die. I'd just like to die. And so, what does
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God do? If you didn't know the story, you'd think God's going to kill him. Verse 6,
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Then one of the seraphim flew to me. I'm dead with a burning coal in his hand.
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I'm doubly dead, which he had taken from the altar with tongs. Isaiah's not saying anything, but he's thinking,
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I've just asked for death and I'm going to get it. Woe is me. Damn me. Curse me to hell. Send me away from your presence.
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I can't stand it. You're too different. And so God is going to grant him swift execution.
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And here comes the death angel. Except you know God's glory is not just found in justice and righteousness.
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God's glory is found in what? Forgiveness. If you're a sinner, you should be glad that God can be glorified as he forgives sinners based on a perfect substitute.
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Verse 6, And he touched my mouth with it and said,
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Behold, this has touched your lips and your iniquity is taken away, cleansed, and here's wonderful language and your sin is atoned for.
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Your sin is removed. That's language of the mercy seat. Someone else is going to pay for your sin.
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You don't have to. Forgiven. This is not
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Isaiah saying, Please forgive me. You know what? Could I get baptized first in order to receive this good pleasure from you
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God? I will do whatever you want. I will walk on glass. I will fast. I will do
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Yom Kippur. I'll do all these things. He didn't ask for anything. This is the sovereign initiating grace and mercy and love of God.
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Just like in 1 Peter 1, according to his great mercy, he says, I'm going to atone for your sin.
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And God speaks. Whom shall I send and who will go for us? Who's going to go?
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When you've seen God so great, you can even be given a ministry where no one's going to respond.
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Verse 9, Go and tell this people. I mean, can you imagine? These are your two points for your sermon next
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Sunday. One, keep on listening but do not perceive. Two, keep on looking but do not understand.
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That's the message. And there's no poem there. Two points and a poem. Isaiah, here's your job.
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Go harden people's hearts. Go rub spiritual calluses on their souls.
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And what's he going to do? Well, I would prefer the ministry where lots of people get saved and we have kind of like a large church.
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We send lots of missionaries out. That's what I prefer. The ministry I prefer is, and everything gets switched around from instead of, this is what
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I want, microcentric to, if God is so different and glorious and holy, yet He's forgiven you your sins, where wouldn't you go?
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And do you need the results or do you need to be told, do you know what? I've sent you. I know you're going to run into trouble, but you keep telling them about my name anyway.
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You keep telling them Jesus is the only way anyway. You have to be faithful only. You don't have to be creative.
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You don't have to be pragmatic. Verse 10, Render the hearts of this people insensitive. Just keep preaching.
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Their ears dull, their eyes dim, lest they see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and return and be healed.
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Doesn't that sound familiar? Isn't that what
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John is talking about? And then I said, Lord, how long? Please make it be a short -term missions trip.
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Ten days would be fine. To like, you know, Fuji. One time
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Kim and I were supposed to go to some extravagant place and do ministry. This was back at Grace Church. And I was supposed to send out prayer letters and it means support letters.
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Could you give us money to go? And I thought, you know, maybe if I was going to some awful place, but how could
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I say, you know, I need to go to Australia and maybe the Great Barrier Reef and a few other places on the way and could you pay my way?
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That's just a side note. By the way, if you want to send out a letter to say, please pray for me and give money, why don't you just say, please pray for me, could you give some money?
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Would that be better? Okay, side note. Now let's think about what's going on here.
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The eternal Shekinah glory of God, the blazing eminence of the holiness of God and all
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His attributes on display in the earth particularly shows up in the temple. And then we see this glory cloaked in humanity in John chapter 1.
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And what's going on in John chapter 12, the writer does not want you to forget that this in fact is the one who is thrice holy and glorious.
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When John says Isaiah was talking here, he was talking about Jesus. He said this because he saw
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Jesus' glory and spoke about Him. No wonder 1 Corinthians 2 says they crucified the
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Lord of glory. No wonder Acts 2 says you will not allow your
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Holy One to undergo decay when it comes to the burial of Jesus. No wonder the demon's testimony of Jesus was you are the
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Holy One of God. So what's our response?
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If God is this glorious, where He too, like with Isaiah, has forgiven you,
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Christian, of all your sins, what's the response? When I realize that and see it progress in Revelation, then
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I can say with plenty of import and rationale and reasons and a response to God, since you're so glorious, to God alone be the glory.
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Soli Deo Gloria. Since you're that glorious, I want to live my life commensurate with that glory.
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If you are intrinsically glorious by nature and action and attitude and being and perfections, then
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I want to ascribe that glory to you. When I evangelize, I want to talk about you and who you are.
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That is the extrinsic glory. To God alone be the glory. Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God because He is glorious.
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God, I appreciate you and thank you and praise you that you're so glorious.
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God, I admire you. When we were in France not that long ago, we went to the
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Louvre. And of course, where do you go when you're at the Louvre? You don't even have to ask.
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Where's the Mona Lisa? You don't have to say where's the Mona Lisa either. You just follow the crowds.
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The people that have their phones like this and their programs like this, you just follow the crowds and before you know it, you get in this hot, sweaty
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Mona Lisa room. And what do people do the entire time? Well, they try to take selfies is what they do, but that's not my point.
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They admire. They gaze. They contemplate.
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The people that know about art, they'll stand with different kinds of lighting here and there and look and see.
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Does her eyes follow me? I walk across the room. That's the extent of my art knowledge. She's looking at me.
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They just appreciate. See, that's really soli deo gloria is to sit back and go,
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I can just think a while about who God is and His glory and just be caught up and think about and appreciate and praise and thank and wonder.
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And by the way, friends, you become like the people you study. You can't perfectly become like God, I know that, but there are some communicable attributes that as you gaze on who
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Jesus is, there's a sanctifying effect, and we know that from Scripture. When you think about the glory due
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His name, there's even a humility. Nehemiah 8 says, They bowed their heads and worshipped the
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Lord with their faces toward the ground. One of my favorite prayer postures is just to lay on the ground.
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I can't really do it that much these days because I'm too old. One, it's hard for me to get up. Two, I fall asleep.
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But when I do get on my face and pray, God doesn't hear it more.
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But I sense the idea that I'm before the transcendent, glorious God.
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And when you see God in His glory, then you say to yourself, the worship service has nothing to do with me and what
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I like or don't like. Oh, if the worship service is biblical or unbiblical, that's fine. But I'm here to worship, and worship means,
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God, You're worthy, and I want to talk about it. I want to sing about it. Isaiah understood what
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John Calvin said, We never truly glory in God until we have utterly discarded our own glory.
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So when Robert Schuller came along and said, the problem with the Reformation was that it was too God -centered, and it needed to be more man -centered.
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Robert Schuller, at least when he wrote this, had no idea about the seraphim and Isaiah's vision of Jesus on the throne.
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Whether then you eat or drink or whatever you do, and may I add, since God is glorious, then do all to the glory of God.
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Soli Deo Gloria. Let's pray. Father, I acknowledge with this dear congregation that You are glorious, that You are great, that You are transcendent, that Your ways are past finding out, and that what
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You would even think about us, let alone set Your affection on us, let alone make promises to us, and then send
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Your Son to die for us, is amazing. That is amazing grace.
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And we would like to respond to Your kindness toward us with being kind to others.
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We want to respond to Your love toward us to be loving towards others. Since You're glorious, we want our lives at work tomorrow, whether we wake up at work or go to work or go to school, to God alone be the glory, because intrinsically
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You are, and extrinsically we ought to. For the sake of Jesus, Amen.