Mission: Glorifying God Together

About nine years ago, I believe that the

Lord was calling me to something called church planting. I had heard about it, I had seen some articles about it from this organization called

Acts 29, and I believe that the Lord put a burden on my heart that what this country needs is more churches that preach the gospel, that teach the word of God, and that stand against the rising tide of secularism and liberalism and pluralism and all of the dreaded isms, and will simply preach and herald the word of God, the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The very first service that we did 14 months ago, the theme verse that we launched this church with was

Romans 1 .16, for the gospel is the power of God unto salvation for the

Jew first and then the Gentile. It's the gospel that's the power of God. We're not commanded to be woke, we're not commanded to be relevant, we're not commanded to be seeker -sensitive, open and affirming or to spouse any other godless ideologies in order to reach the world.

The power that reaches the world, the power that changes hearts, the power that saves and brings dead people out of darkness and into light is the gospel.

It's not Marxism, it's not signs and wonderism, it's the gospel. So a church, it's not called to throw parties, we're not called to entertain goats.

The church is designed to serve and to preach the gospel of God.

Now, I believe that the church was crafted, called and created by God to do that very work.

That means that the church is not for the unbeliever. Unbelievers are welcome, don't hear me wrongly, but the church is not by its purpose and by its nature for the unbeliever.

The church is also not for the believer. The church does not exist to make Christians comfortable.

The church does not exist to have coffee bars and all of those things. The church exists, as Pastor Derek has said before, the church doesn't exist for unbelievers or for believers, the church exists for God.

The church is for God. The church is to gather together to glorify

God and that's what we're gonna be talking about today. Now, as you can see, we're not in John.

For the next two weeks, we felt like that it would be appropriate to go through our mission statement, to revisit why we started.

Our mission statement is that we exist to glorify God together through the preaching, singing, hearing and doing of God's word.

We gather together to glorify God alone and we do that together. And we do that with four means.

We preach the gospel, we sing the gospel, we hear the gospel and we leave to go do the gospel in a world that needs to see it more now than ever.

Now, you might be asking yourself, why would we revisit this topic? Well, some of us weren't here when we went through that 14 months ago.

But I also think it's particularly relevant since Thursday at three o 'clock, I signed a five -year lease for the

Shepherd's Church. December the 1st,

I'm gonna get the keys to a new building in Chelmsford. 10

Gene Avenue is the address. And now that we're stepping into this next chapter of our lives,

I want us not to forget who we are. I want us not to forget why we started this because we're gonna be in a new area.

We're gonna be Sunday morning. Sunday morning means we're gonna meet new people. And I want the identity of the

Shepherd's Church to be what it always was, the glory of God first through the preaching, singing, hearing, and doing of God's word.

Now, if all goes well and I get the keys December the 1st and you guys are available seven o 'clock on that evening,

I'd like for us to get together at that building and pray. Just ask the Lord to bless that building, bless our time.

December the 6th will be our very first service. I'm not gonna say that everything will be polished.

I think I'm loud enough to where I could probably yell at you loud enough to where you'd hear me. We might not have speakers hung yet, but we wanna be there so badly we don't wanna wait.

So we wanna meet there December the 6th, the first day that we can. So today we're gonna be looking at why does the

Shepherd's Church exist so that as we move into this next season that that'll be strong and solid, amen?

Let's pray. Lord, thank you so much for the Shepherd's Church and for what you've done.

Thank you God for the fact that we signed a lease this week. It seems like it's been going on for a long time trying to move into our own space.

Lord, we ask that the finances would be available for us to continue to grow strong and healthy. And Lord, we ask that our hearts would be sold out to the purpose of what you've called us to do.

Lord, I pray that we would get to meet men and women who don't know Christ. And Lord, I pray that you would keep us anchored to the purpose of why we exist.

So glorify you together in Christ's name, amen. Now today we're gonna be covering the first two aspects of that mission statement, glorifying

God together. Next week, Pastor Derek's gonna go through four, which is not really fair. I get to go two, he gets to have four.

That's just the way I guess that it works. But this week we're gonna be doing those two things. We're gonna be looking at the fact that we were made by an all -glorious

God to give God glory as the community of God. That's what we're gonna be doing today. And we're not gonna be going in one verse.

We're actually gonna have a lot of verses that we're gonna be going through. So if you'd like to follow along with me, it might be difficult.

I'm gonna be all over the Bible today. But if you want, I'll post the verses that I preached from today so you can look at them later.

They're beautiful and rich, and they're only about 1 ,100th of the verses that I could have included. So the first thing that we're gonna talk about is that we were made to glorify

God. The Westminster Confession of Faith, written about 400 and so years ago, starts out its confession or its catechism like this.

What is the chief end of man? Meaning, what is humanity's purpose? Why were we created?

What does God have for us to do? The answer to that question is to glorify

God and to enjoy Him forever. Meaning that our purpose is that we were created by God to glorify

Him. That's more natural to us than breathing. It's more necessary to us than eating.

That is why we were created, was to give glory and honor to God. Scripture confirms this, not just the

Westminster pastors that gather together. Scripture says this. Paul says, whether you eat or whether you drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.

That means that the sum total of our lives is meant to be about glorifying God. We're to give

Him glory when we awake or when we sleep. We're to give Him glory in the way that we eat or when we fast.

We're to give Him glory in the ways and the things that we put before our eyes, the things that we say with our lips.

We're to give glory to God in the way that we behave and the relationships that we enter into and steward.

We're to give glory to God in the way that we treat one another and the way that we're citizens of this country. We're to give

God glory in every conceivable realm of our life. Now, why do you think

Paul would say that? Who gives him the right to tell us what to do, right? It's because God is so unimaginably glorious that His person demands that He be glorified.

It's kind of like this. Why can't you and I leap to the moon? Because there's a force called gravity that's holding us in check.

Think about how much infinitely greater God is. And in His presence, we are restrained and we are defined and we are shaped into who we've been called to be.

And it's not just grounded to the earth, it's grounded to Him so that we can glorify

Him with everything that we do. By sheer nature of His existence,

He demands our deference, our respect, our honor. Now, I know we understand this, because when we're driving down the interstate and there's a cop pulled behind a tree, by sheer nature of their presence, our behavior changes quickly.

The foot moves from the accelerator to the brake. We start looking around, we start fumbling to see if he noticed that we're trying to put on our seatbelt.

By sheer nature of that cop's presence, our behavior begins to change. How much infinitely more, by the nature of God's presence in our life should our behavior then change?

Not to earn God's approval, but because of God's presence. For all of eternity,

God has been radiating His glory among the three members of the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

For eternity, God has been radiating His glory. At a certain point, God made space and time, land and sea, dark and light, beasts and kings, all for His glory.

He made them for His glory. Especially humanity was the crown jewel of God's creation.

He made humanity to give honor and glory to God, to be fruitful, multiply, spread out to the ends of the earth.

Why? So that the whole world will be filled with worshipers who glorify God. Humanity's purpose,

I think, was meant to echo the angelic angels in heaven. We read this earlier in Isaiah 6, where for all eternity, or sorry, for all of creation, the angels have been saying, holy, holy, holy is the

Lord God Almighty. They do not cease to give glory to God. What exactly is glory, though?

It's easy to throw around those terms. Yeah, we're supposed to glorify God. Well, what does that mean? I don't know.

Let's talk about that for a moment. What is glory? Glory is a Hebrew word. It comes, it's called kavod, kavod.

And it means weight, actually. It means something heavy, something that has significance.

It means burdensome significance. It means something that's deserved honor and fame, renowned awe, inspiring impressiveness.

If you were to define it more simply, you would just say that glory is the significant and the awe and the respect that is due someone who is weighty, who is significant.

Now, some of us in this room have various levels of significance. When I walk down the street, no one pays attention to me because I don't have much glory.

But yet, if a president or a king or someone were to walk down the street, they get noticed instantly because of their status.

It's almost like people flock to them and worship them because while glory is difficult to describe, it's not difficult to notice when it's happening.

For instance, when you're in the presence of someone who has a lot of glory as a human being, you notice it, you feel it.

And when I was 18 years old, I was in Iraq. I left Iraq and I came home for a two -week

R &R trip. It was like a vacation. We're the only country I know who you can be in war and you can send your soldiers away on vacation.

That makes no sense to me. But I said, yes, I'm gonna take it. And I flew from Iraq to Kuwait.

I flew from Kuwait to Ireland. I went from Ireland to Maine. I went from Maine to Atlanta. And in Atlanta, I got off the plane.

I met my mom and dad. And I was sitting there just, I was talking to them, hanging out with them. And out of the corner of my eye,

I saw an older gentleman walking towards me. And I did what all of us would do. I look over to see who it was.

And out of the corner of my eye, it became clear that the 41st president of the United States was walking up to me, George Herbert Walker Bush.

Now, when he came up to me, he said, are you Kendall Lankford? No, he didn't say that.

He asked me about Iraq. I told him that I was in a town called Balad. He said, you have a lot of mortar fire that's happening there.

I was like, yeah, how'd you know that? He's like, I'm the president, former president. I know everything. He was very nice.

He was very kind. But I was on my best behavior. Yes, sir. No, sir. I've never been more polite.

There was a certain decorum that came into talking to the president of the United States. I was in this man's presence, and it changed me, actually.

I tell you, the most natural thing for us is when we're in the presence of God, it should change us.

It should do something to us. I had the same experience in New York. A couple years back,

I went, Shannon, my wife, who is the kindest, sweetest, most incredible woman on earth.

I preface that because of what she did. She sent me down to see Mike Krzyzewski's Thousandth Victory, Duke Blue Devils.

That's my favorite team. And I wander around to the back of the auditorium, and there he is walking out, and he looks at me, and he says, you're

Kendall Lankford. No, I'm just kidding. But I didn't even get to say hello to him. He didn't make eye contact with me at all, but just being there in front of my favorite coach,

Thousandth Victory's most NCAA winning -est coach of all time, just being there, it did something to me.

How much more being in the presence of God should do something to me and change me? I think we know about soldiers in war.

There's a certain glory that comes to fighting on a battlefield. Americans give people who've been wounded in war purple hearts.

We award them for getting them. We award them for getting shot. That's the only time that anyone can ever get awarded for getting shot. Why? Because it was glorious that they fought for their country.

When they do something incredible beyond the realm of imagination, we give them something called the Medal of Honor. Why? Because it's glorious to do something heroic like that.

It's glorious to fight for your country and to defend your freedoms. What we've seen in these two examples is that glory is attributed to a person because of their status and who they are and because of their thing that they did, their heroic, significant, weighty thing that they did.

So either a person has significance in their status or they have significance in what they do. And by those two things, we as humans recognize that a person is weighty or that a person has status or a person has glory.

Now, why is God glorious? Because there is no one higher than God.

He's infinite in his personhood. There is no one who does more than God. He spoke universes into existence.

He's infinite in his actions. He's both infinite as person, infinite in his actions. Therefore, he has infinite glory.

He has all authority, all wisdom, all knowledge, all ability, all intelligence. There's nothing that he cannot do.

There's nothing that is beyond God's power. So if I felt a certain amount of weight being in the presence of George Herbert Walker Bush, how much more?

I keep asking myself this question this week. How much more significant should I view God and yet how thoughtless

I am sometimes when it comes to my relationship with him? I was in the presence of George Herbert Walker Bush for all of about five minutes.

The last thing he said to me was, I gotta go, Babs is in the car. That's a true story. That is what George Bush said to me.

Five minutes and it changed me. I'm in the presence of God every minute of every day.

There is no place on earth where God's presence does not dwell and how little it changes me.

The questions I think we need to ask ourselves is if we truly saw God for who he really is, wouldn't it change us?

Wouldn't it affect us? Wouldn't it cause us to bow down more frequently? Wouldn't it call us to not be silent when we walk out and there's people who are dying without Christ?

Wouldn't it cause us to sing his praises loud and proud? The obvious answer is that it would make you and I like the angels in heaven.

We could not cease speaking about our God. We would say with Paul in 1 Timothy 1 .17,

to the king eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, the honor and glory forever.

So remember, God is glorious because of who he is and God is glorious because of what he does and I want us to take a moment now to explore that a little more carefully.

I, as a pastor, enjoy preaching verse by verse through a book of the

Bible. I want to take a passage and dive into it. It's just harder for me to prepare a message like this where we're all over the

Bible, but I wanted to do it because we need to constantly be reminded about who God is. Because if we don't know this

God that we worship, then who are we worshiping? It's very possible that on Sunday mornings across this nation, many are worshiping a

God of their own imaginations because they do not know him. I want us to know God. I want us to have the knowledge of God.

So again, this is gonna be the tip of the iceberg today, but I want us to see who this God that we worship is and he is sovereign, first and foremost.

By sovereignty, I mean that he has the right and authority to do everything that he pleases to do. First Chronicles 29, 11 says, "'Yours,

O Lord, is the greatness and the power "'and the glory and the victory and the majesty "'for all that is in the heavens and on the earth is yours.'"

The chronicler is telling us that all honor and praise and worship is due to God because of who he is.

He rules over all. Everything in the heavens and on earth is his. Everything even beyond space is his because God cannot be contained in a physical universe.

As massive as it is, incomprehensibly big, God is still bigger, infinitely bigger because he cannot be contained.

He's omnipotent, Latin word coming from omni and potent, meaning he has all power.

2 Peter 1, 3 says, "'His divine power, his unlimited power "'has granted to us all things "'that pertain to life and godliness "'through the knowledge of him "'who called us into his own glory.'"

Do you see how that relates? This God who has all power is also a God who has all glory because his power demonstrates it.

John Piper said that God's glory is the manifold weight of the sum total of his character, meaning that if you take all of God's character together, you cannot help but see that he is infinitely glorious.

He is sovereign and he is omnipotent. Those are the first two things. He's also omniscient, omni -science.

He knows all things. Psalm 147, 5 says, "'Great is our Lord and abundant in power.

"'His understanding is beyond measure. "'Meaning you can't build a ruler long enough to measure it.

"'You can't build a scale big enough to weigh it. "'It's infinite, his knowledge.'"

He's omnipresent, meaning that he is all present. He is everywhere, all at once.

There is nowhere, not one square inch in the cosmos that God cannot be present in.

He invades all space. And as hard as this is to wrap our brains around, we live second by second.

Right now, we are in 2020. Next year, we'll be in 2021. God, in his infinitude, dwells not only in every conceivable inch of reality that exists right now, but he also pervades all space in the past and in the future.

So that if you were to lay out all of time, God is perfectly present even there too.

There's nothing that this God can't do. He transcends all space and time. David describes this in Psalm 113.

He says, "'The Lord is high above all the nations. "'His glory is above the heavens.

"'Who is like the Lord our God, "'who is enthroned on high, "'who humbles himself to behold "'the things that are in the earth?''

I love that passage. It's saying that God has to humble himself in order to come down and observe the things that we do here on earth.

Meaning that he is so infinitely large, big, he can't even be conceived of.

It is a humbling experience for him to be present in all aspects of the universe.

That's unbelievable when you try to wrap your head around it. He's transcendent.

He stands powerfully and mightily over creation. Unless he allowed himself to be known, he's so powerful that we would never know him.

Romans 11, 33 through 36 describes this. "'Oh, the depths of the riches "'and the wisdom of the knowledge of God!

"'How unsearchable are his judgments "'and how inscrutable his ways! "'For who has known the mind of the

Lord "'and who has been his counselor? "'Or who has given a gift to him "'that he might be repaid?

"'For from him and through him and to him "'are all things. "'To him be glory and honor forever.'"

Do you see how glory keeps showing up in these attributes? Every time

God is being described in his character, the word glory is showing up because God is glorious because of who he is.

Those two things work together. He's not just transcendent, he's also eminent. Transcendent means that he's high above.

Eminent means that he's near. Psalm 145, 18 says, "'The Lord is near to all who call on him.'"

He's not just a powerful dictator who exists somewhere in a reality that we cannot access.

He is a loving and kind father who is available to us. As big as he is, he also knows every hair on your head.

Psalm 34, 18, "'The Lord is near to the brokenhearted "'and saves the crushed in spirit.'"

Which means that he's not only big enough and powerful enough to create a universe, he also cares enough to know you.

He knows your struggles, he knows your pains, he knows your fears, he knows your brokenheartedness. It just blows my mind.

The more we talk about this, I'm overwhelmed by a sense of God's glory. That's what should happen to us right now.

You know, there's, I didn't write this down, there's sermons where the communicator, and I call them a communicator because I'm not gonna call them a pastor, but the communicator is attempting to make you feel something and make you feel good and give you practical applications so that you can go out and live your life.

The Bible itself, just being read over God's people should be enough to cause us to be in awe of who

God is. That's all we're doing today. We're just reading passages about who God is and it ought to blow our minds.

It ought to warm our hearts. It ought to make us sing with the angels in heaven.

He's immutable, meaning he's the same yesterday, today, and forever. Praise God for that. There's never gonna be a day when

God changes his mind about saving you. There's never gonna be a day when God changes his mind about loving you. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

He's infinite, which means he has no limits. He's eternal, which means he cannot be constricted by time. He's exclusive, which means that he will not share his glory with another.

He's a jealous God. Isaiah 42, eight says, I am the Lord, and in my name, or that is my name, my glory

I give to no other, nor my praise to carved idols. God is also spirit, says in John four.

God is spirit and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. First Timothy 6, 16 says,

God alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light. No one has seen him or can see him.

To him be honor and eternal dominion. That's another way of saying glory. So let's summarize who

God is for a second. Again, this is just the tip of the iceberg. He's exclusive, eternal, infinite, immutable, omnipresent, omnipotent, sovereign, and I'm sure

I forgot a few of those. That's just things that he is. It doesn't even yet describe things that he does.

For instance, God is personal, meaning he's relational. He can be known. Psalm 34, eight says, oh, taste and see that the

Lord is good, meaning that you can actually experience God because even in his infinitude, he allows us to experience him because he wants to be known.

Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him, meaning that praise God, we can relate with him.

He's good, he's morally perfect, unstained by error or sin, praise

God. We don't believe in Greek pantheon of deities that are just as immoral as humans but with superpowers.

We believe in a God who is perfect and holy and pure. Psalm 107, one says, oh, give thanks to the

Lord for he is good, his steadfast love endures forever. He's holy, which means that he's set apart.

First Samuel 2, two says there's none holy like the Lord. There's none beside you and there is no rock like our

God. Our God is also love. He's not just loving, he is love.

First John 4, eight says anyone who does not love God does not know God because God is love.

He's wise, merciful, truthful, angry at sin, filled with wrath over our rebellion. This God is perfectly and infinitely glorious.

The manifold perfections of his character, of who he is and what he has done testifies to the fact that he is glorious.

And what is owed to this glorious God is that we would forever praise him. It is actually an infinite crime that we would not praise

God. And I think, biblically speaking, the chiefest of all sins, there's a lot of sins in the

Bible, the chiefest of all of them is that we would not glorify God. It's not just that we've been angry.

It's not just that we've lied or bore false witness. It's not just that we've murdered someone in our hearts. It's not just that we've lusted or any other of the 10 commandments or any of the other sins.

The chief sin, the greatest act of treachery is that we have not glorified God. Romans 3, 23 describes it for all have sinned and what?

Fallen short of the glory of God. Meaning that our chief sin is we've not worshiped him as he deserves.

Our most profound sin is we've not found him as beautiful as he is. We've not respected him like he ought to be respected.

We've not praised him with the fervor that is due an infinite glorious God. We've not feared him.

How often have we sinned boldly with not an ounce of fear in our heart for this glorious, holy

God. We've not consistently and or perfectly given to God what he is due.

And because of this, our chief and most egregious sin is that we've fallen short of God's glory. And as Romans 6, 23 says, the wages of our sin is death.

Meaning that the paycheck for our actions is death. Not just physical death, eternal, unending death.

Jesus says this in Matthew 25, 41. Then he will say to those on his left, depart from me you who are cursed into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

Now many will ask, why is God so severe in his judgment? Why is

God relicating human beings, people who are basically good, why is he relicating them to eternal fires of damnation for all of eternity?

Why? That seems overboard. But when you understand who God is, and when you understand what his glory actually dictates for us,

I believe hell actually is gracious. As hard as that may be to understand,

I believe that hell is not as hot as it could have been. Hell is not as painful as it probably should have been. And to ignore such a beautiful and loving and holy

God does, it's righteous and it's just and it's fair that we would go to hell for our sins.

As hard as that is for our rebellious hearts to understand that and believe that. Now, it doesn't have to be that way.

This is where the Bible is such good news. It doesn't, we don't have to go to hell because of what

Jesus Christ has done. Those who go to hell, go to hell because they have not believed in Jesus Christ.

But for all of you here, who you've placed your faith and your hope and your trust in Jesus Christ, I want you to hear for a moment what's in store for you.

God knew that we were gonna fall short of his glory. God knew that we were gonna sin. So what does

God do? John 1 .1 says, in the beginning was the word. John 1 .14 says, and that word became flesh and he dwelt among us and we beheld his glory.

We beheld his glory. The glories of the only begotten of the Father full of grace and truth. Meaning that when

Jesus appeared in human flesh, it was the very first time that a human being ever had the kind of glory that has always been with the

Father. Because Jesus Christ is God. Philippians 2 states that when he came to earth, he came in the form of a slave, meaning that he laid down some of his nature, some of his divinity, some of his, he still had it, but he became a slave so that he could interact with us.

Hebrews 1 .3 says, he's the radiance of the glory of God, the exact imprint of his nature.

So what we're seeing is that Jesus came to inglorious creatures, rebellion, or people who were in rebellion against God.

He came as God in the flesh with all of God's glory, veiled as it was so that he could save us and rescue us.

At the end of his life, Jesus, who had done everything perfectly and was perfect.

Remember the two aspects of glory. It's who you are in your status and what you do in the flesh. Jesus, at the end of his life, prays, now,

Father, glorify me with yourself with the glory that I had with you before the world was. Jesus is asking

God to bestow on him his full glory once again because of what he had done.

And what had Jesus Christ done? Hebrews 1 .3 tells us, after making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high.

Philippians 2 .9 -11 says basically the same thing. Therefore, because of what Jesus had done,

God highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name so that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow.

In heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of the

Father. This means that God, the all -glorious God, the one that we have fallen short of his glory, gave us a way to know him once more, and that's through Jesus Christ.

Romans 5 .6 -9 says, for while we were still helpless, at just the right time,

Christ died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a righteous man, though perhaps for a good man, someone would even dare to die, but God demonstrates his love towards us in that while we were yet sinners,

Christ died for us. And when we place our faith and our hope and our trust in him, we get to be restored to our original created purpose.

It's not just about salvation, it's about that we would be able to be restored to God -glorifying creatures.

Hebrews 2 .10 says, for it is fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering.

What Hebrews is teaching us is that Jesus Christ, who suffered in the flesh for you and I, did that specifically so that he could bring us into glory, glorifying

God, bring us into the presence of a glorious God. That is why we are saved, at the heart of it.

The heart of it is not just that we're saved because God thought we were special and like kindergarten dodgeball,

I wanna pick Tommy but not Jesse, it wasn't like that. God restored us so that we could give him glory.

That's the ultimate end and purpose of our salvation, is so that we could give glory to God right now and so that we could give glory to God forever in eternity.

Romans 8 .1 says, there's now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, meaning that there's nothing standing between us and God.

So that Paul can say in 1 Corinthians 6 .20, you have been bought with a price, therefore glorify

God in your body. Now, that's a summary, a very, very 20 ,000, 100 ,000 foot summary of the glory of God.

We were created by a glorious God. We were created to give God glory. We fell short of God's glory.

Christ came to restore us so that we could give glory to God. That's kind of the four movements so far that we've talked about and that leads us to what's our responsibility?

Why do we say that the Shepherd's Church is a church that's gonna glorify God? Because when the

Bible talks about this, it doesn't talk about this as individuals. The Bible doesn't talk about each of us as individuals should give glory to God, that's true.

But the Bible talks about this actually as a community effort. You see, it's confusing for all of us who speak

English, unless you're from the South, because then you have y 'all. It's actually way smarter.

I know we're in the North, but it actually is way smarter. In English up here, there's you, that's all

I can say. If I look at Wanda and I say you, that's the word I would use. If I look at all of us and I say you, that's the word

I would use, it's confusing. In the Greek, it's not like that. There's a different word for the second person plural than the second person singular and that's important because when

Paul says in that wonderful verse, so whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God, Paul is saying a plural you.

So whatever you do, whether you eat or whether you drink, do all to the glory of God.

That is why the church, the collective body of Jesus Christ, that's why he calls us a body, that's why he calls us a bride, that's why he calls us a nation, that's why all these metaphors are corporate metaphors, collective metaphors because our purpose is to glorify

God. Our purpose is to look at this God, see who he is, look at his character and look at what he's done and let that fill our hearts so full of the love of God that all we're able to do is glory, give glory to God.

That is why the Shepherd's Church is not interested in being a great party. We're not interested in being the largest church.

We're not interested in being conference speakers or anything else that you can, writing books or any of that stuff.

We're interested in glorifying God. That is the chief end of man and that is the chief purpose of the Shepherd's Church and as long as we get to do this,

I pray to God that we stay firm on that because that is why we exist. We exist to glorify

God and now we're gonna get to practice that. Let's pray. Lord, thank you so much for the fact that you are so glorious that we can't even conceive of how glorious you are and you're so merciful that you would even welcome people like us into your presence and Lord, I know in contrast to the size of this great universe,

Tewksbury, Massachusetts is just a grain of sand upon 10 ,000 grains of sand and yet,

Lord, you are present with us and Lord, your heart is moved by our praise.

You are honored by our praise. So Lord, I pray right now that we who have just gotten a very limited but concentrated glimpse of who you are and your character, that Lord, we would stand up and firmly and resoundingly give back to you the glory that is due to you.

You are weighty. You are significant. You are holy, mighty, omnipotent, omniscient, eternal.

You are all of these things. Lord, let it overwhelm our hearts. Lord, I remember standing in front of the

Grand Canyon thinking how impressive that hole in the ground was. Lord, I pray that my heart would be flooded so much more for you.

Lord, I remember how impressive it was to be in the presence of my favorite basketball coach. Lord, that's pitiful.

Let my heart yearn for you, God. Let our hearts collectively yearn for you and let us right now as we close this service give back to you the praise that you are due.