Doxology

Well this morning, we complete what is the Lord's Prayer perhaps in a form most familiar to us.

Arguably, we completed the Lord's Prayer last week, as I'll explain in a moment. We come to these words here in verse 13 in our translation.

For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.

Amen. Now this of course is not a petition. This is what is often called the doxology.

This is the doxology of the Lord's Prayer. And for most of us, especially those of us who grew up attending a church that recited the

Lord's Prayer, at times growing up from season to season, as part of our church's liturgy, we would recite the

Lord's Prayer together. And it's the familiar form of the Lord's Prayer. In fact, as a young boy,

I couldn't put together a lot of the words, but I could always nail the doxology. For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.

Amen. Now some of you perhaps looking at your Bibles, even on your lap this morning, you're stumped.

Because I'm reading these words, and perhaps you have a translation where these words are not present.

Or perhaps you're looking at your Bible on your lap, and you're looking at Matthew 6 .13, and you have these words, but they're in big black brackets.

And most likely for all of us, if we look at Matthew 6 .13 and we look at these words, we'll at least have a note saying something like, the oldest manuscripts do not contain the following, or contain these words.

Or sometimes N -U comma M do not contain these words, which is a fancy way of saying some of the oldest manuscripts that have been collected and put forth.

Translations, of course, are governed by translation committees. And translation committees come across from time to time a passage like Matthew 6 .13,

where there are early and very prominent manuscripts that have variants, slight variations, or more significantly, have omissions.

Maybe you have old witnesses, old manuscripts that lack a certain verse, or old manuscripts that possess a verse that later manuscripts do not.

And this is what we call textual criticism. This is not something unique to Christian scripture.

This is what is true of all ancient documents. If we have ancient documents, we have copies of copies of copies.

One of the things that we believe as Christians is that God's Word is inspired by His Spirit. It is a perfect Word and an errant

Word that's given to the people of God by inspiration of God Himself. Therefore, it's a divine

Word. It's a Word that bears the authority of God upon it. Yet we recognize also that we rely on the providence of God, the providence of God that across millennia has preserved

His Word. One of the ways He's preserved His Word is through varieties of copies of manuscripts, a transmission of preserving

His Word from the very beginning that corroborate the faithfulness of God to preserve all that He has declared, all that He has inspired.

So again, translation committees and what we call textual criticism is something that is a challenge, but it should not be seen to be a threat.

Very important we establish that. And I'm going to take some pains to move through this quickly so that you don't have to take too many pains to endure it.

I don't want a sermon to devolve into a lecture. I simply want to explain why your Bibles may or may not possess the rest of Matthew 6 .13.

For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.

Amen. Is present in many old copies.

Scholars for centuries, long even before the Reformation, have collected and collated manuscripts and we have a way of ranking them or dating them that puts them within the earliest.

And generally speaking, the closer they are to the original writings, the more weight, the more authority they bear.

So you may have a thousand copies from the Middle Ages and only several dozen from the first few centuries, but those several dozen have a lot more weight and authority than the multitude that come from a much later time.

There are broad numbers of copies of manuscripts that contain these verses and some very ancient witnesses as well, it's important to say.

In fact, in weeks past, I've mentioned the Didache, a very early document that was circulated among the early

Christians. This is in a form contained within that. These words, for yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory, are possessed within the

Didache. However, it's a different form. And actually, when you look into this, you realize there's about six major variations on this verse.

So some witnesses don't have it at all. Some have power and glory. Some have glory and power. Some have kingdom and glory without power.

The versions diverge over time. By the time you get well into the later centuries, it seems to be a lot more unified and commonplace.

And the present form that we have it as we're looking at it this morning is really what's possessed throughout much of the later centuries of the church.

But the two most significant copies we have, the two most complete and earliest copies, that are almost the gold standard of what we hold to be the closest to the autographs, are called the

Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus. Again, bear with me. We're going to get through this. I'm ripping off the

Band -Aid as quick as I can. Neither of those manuscripts contain this verse.

It's very significant. Added to that, when we have early church fathers, the earliest church fathers, working through the

Lord's Prayer, if we think of Origen or Tertullian or Cyprian, they don't mention this at all.

They don't mention the doxology. They just have the verses that we were looking at. Now, later on, you do have it described by church fathers, like John Chrysostom, when he interacts with the

Lord's Prayer, he interacts with this doxology. A general principle of textual criticism, again, not unique to Christianity, but for anyone that deals with ancient documents, anywhere, anyhow.

A general principle is that a shorter reading is preferred over a longer reading. It's a lot easier to explain why something would be qualified or elaborated or enlarged than it is why something would be lopped off.

Now, if you have something of doctrinal consequence, a later scribe might say, eh, I'm just going to miss that.

Or maybe it was an accident and they skip over it. So that's a general principle, that a shorter reading is preferred over a longer reading.

And again, that's really stemming from the question, what would motivate a scribe to miss these words? It could be an accident, but the same accident wouldn't happen hundreds and hundreds of times.

What would cause a scribe to take away words? Or, on the other hand, they're not taking away anything, it was never there.

It was something later added by a scribe. And so you have to weigh the question, what would motivate the taking away or what would motivate the adding in?

Now, we call this a doxology for a reason, and to my mind, that is the key word. This is a doxology.

That is the key word to understand this issue. It seems that from the earliest times, the

Lord's Prayer was received by the church and employed in worship. So not only was this a prayer that was prayed privately by the

Lord's disciples, but corporately by the Lord's disciples. And in times of ancient worship, they would often come together and recite the

Lord's Prayer. And as was true of ancient worship, as was true of prayer in general, whether public prayer or private prayer, when you concluded a prayer, you included a doxology.

This would explain why there are so many variants to verse 13. Again, some having kingdom, some not having kingdom, some transposing power or glory.

And it seems perhaps the most likely explanation for why the ancient manuscripts do not possess this verse, but later manuscripts do, is later manuscripts are preserving a doxology that became commonplace for ancient worship.

In other words, when the church recited it, they recited what they received from the Lord, and they concluded as they would of all prayers, they would conclude with a doxology.

At some point, that doxology entered into the manuscript traditions. And so perhaps it was included, again, because it was being read by the church.

And so a scribe copying the Lord's Prayer, taking that common doxology, would have added it to it, just like we might take scripture and add a little doxology or a little prayer or a little exclamation at the end, and this gets presented to the church, so the church can have it in terms of its public worship, and that carries through the subsequent centuries.

Now, along these lines, it's generally agreed that probably this doxology was composed from a number of verses, but the key among them would be 1

Chronicles 29, where David is praying to the Lord, and he says these words beginning in verse 10.

Blessed are you, Lord God of Israel, our Father. Why would ancient Christians pick up on this prayer of David from 1

Chronicles 29? Well, what is the Lord's Prayer? What in Latin we call the paternoster, it's the

Our Father. And here is David praying in the Old Testament, Our Father.

And notice some of the language that's going to be repeated. Blessed are you, Lord God of Israel, our

Father, forever and ever. Yours, O Lord. Does that sound a lot like the doxology?

Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory. Yours, O Lord, is the greatness, the power, and the glory.

The victory and the majesty for all that is in heaven and in earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom,

O Lord. And you are exalted as head over all. So you can see why ancient Christians would have taken this, and we have many forms of doxologies that were used in the ancient church, and they often were comprised of various passages from the

Psalms or the Prophets or the Epistles, and they used these as liturgical forms of doxology.

So again, to be decidedly brief, and we're taking the plane in for a landing now, the internal and external evidence makes it very difficult to argue that the remainder of Matthew 6 .13

was originally part of the Lord's Prayer in the Sermon on the Mount. From the earliest times, they were, as with all ancient prayers, most likely a form of doxology.

It was added with the Amen when people prayed privately or publicly. Now, even

John Calvin himself, the great Geneva Reformer, recognized that Jerome had not included this doxology from the

Old Latin. And so he says, although this does not exist in the Latin copies, it accords so well with the whole of the prayer, we cannot think of omitting it.

And that's essentially my approach to you this morning. I recognize that there's a far likelier explanation of why it's not original but was included later.

And though the oldest witnesses do not contain it, it accords so well with the very heartbeat of the

Lord's Prayer that we should not omit it, not as we actually unpack what's contained in this doxology, because we find this doxology to be thoroughly biblical.

And of course, it's very fitting for us to take a doxology and sort of conclude our time in the

Lord's Prayer with the great doxology to God's glory. And that's all we're going to do together this morning.

So if you have all these burning questions, lay them aside. Don't be so distracted by Old Latin and Jerome and unciels and all that stuff.

Put that on the back burner. Talk to Ryan after the service. Don't come to me. I've dealt enough with it this week.

But let's talk about doxology. That's what we want to do this morning. Well, what is doxology?

The word doxa in Greek means glory. It's a word of glory, a word of glorification. That's what a doxology is.

And when you become sensitive to the fact that the ancient believers would often, not just conclude a prayer or the end of a letter with a doxology, but sometimes just almost mid -sentence would break into a word of glory.

We saw that on Sunday night, as Ian Hamilton reminded us at the end of Romans 11, which is essentially the conclusion of his whole argument spanning from chapter 1.

Paul takes a big step back, and he's just so amazed with the plan and purpose of God's salvation, he just has to break into a word of glory.

Oh, the depths and the riches and the wonders. That's essentially a word of glory.

And when you recognize that this is often something, not just in the Old Testament with the prayers or the prophets, but also in the

New Testament. So of course, Romans 11 .36, as I've mentioned, for of Him and through Him and to Him are all things to whom be glory forever.

Amen. And he's not done his letter yet. It's just a doxology. A word of glory.

Later in that same letter, Romans 16, for God alone, wise, be glory through Jesus Christ forever.

Amen. Galatians 1 .5, to whom be glory forever and ever.

Amen. Again, that's Galatians 1. So even sort of right at the beginning, when you hear amen and keep reading it, it's not done yet.

This is just a word of glory. This is saying amen. Ephesians 3 .21,

again, not Ephesians 6, but Ephesians 3 .21, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever.

Amen. Philippians 4 .20, again, now to our God and Father be glory forever and ever.

Amen. 1 Timothy 1 .17, not 5, not 6, 1. Now to the

King eternal, immortal, invisible, to God who alone is wise, be honor and glory forever and ever.

Amen. Not just Paul's writings, Peter. Both in chapter 4, verse 11, and in chapter 5, verse 11.

To Him, that is to God, be the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen. A very early letter from Jude.

To God, our Savior, who alone is wise, be glory and majesty, dominion and power both now and forever.

Amen. These are all just skating across the surface of biblical doxologies. Words of glorification that we can easily breeze past.

And when we breeze past these statements, when we view them as just nice little window dressings, nice little packaging, we miss the doctrinal heartbeat that they contain.

The problem with doxology is the problem of well -worn phrases. They're so well -worn, so often used, that they become devoid of meaning and substance.

And so it's good for us to spend some time unpacking doxology together this morning.

It's a danger with Christianese. We use the words so much that we don't know how to define them. People, some of you even this morning, are gathering in with us, and you're just cutting your teeth on the

Christian faith, and you're learning Christianese. You didn't know it, but you're learning Christianese. There's no

Duolingo app for Christianese yet, but every week you are learning Christianese.

You're using words you've never used in your life before you started coming to church. Words like faith and redemption.

And if you asked us to define those words, we might go, well, faith is faith.

Redemption is redemption. And so you don't even ask. You just go, yeah, redemption, faith.

And pretty soon we're all using the same words, the same phrases. We just don't really understand or articulate what they contain.

In other words, we've been singing hymns about God's glory this morning, doxological hymns, all glory, loud, and honor.

And perhaps we've sung hymns along these lines hundreds if not thousands of times, but do we actually understand what we're singing about?

Do you actually know what it means to bring glory to God? Well, the biblical writers did.

They possessed a conscious bent to the supremacy of God's glory. So first things first, we have to define terms.

What is the glory of God? Why was it fitting to conclude prayer, to conclude worship, to mid -sentence with something profound, break into a word of glorification to God?

What is this glory? Well, it's no easy task to understand the significance of glory, but boiling down all the various nuance, you get something like this.

Glory is weight and light. Weight and light. You shouldn't think it's so luminous that it doesn't have real crushing substance.

But you shouldn't think of it as something so dense and powerful whose gravitational pull is beyond even a black hole that it's not glorious in its almost ethereal luminance.

It's a glowing weight. It's a weighty light.

That's glory. That's kabod. We see this, for example, in 2

Corinthians 4 .17 for our light affliction, which is but for a moment is working in us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.

You could almost translate that, the weight which is glorious. Glory is weight. Weight is glory.

That's the significance. C .S. Lewis preached a tremendous sermon on this very idea. The weight of glory.

It's a good use of your time later this evening, if you have some time, to read C .S. Lewis on the weight of glory.

Of course, as a noun, glory implies honor, splendor, worthiness. The glory of God is not exactly a reducible attribute of God, but as all the attributes of God are true of the very essence of God, in a sense, all that God is and all that God does is glorious.

God is glorious. It's the brightness, the radiance of who He is.

That's glory. It's a demonstration of His power and His greatness unfolded in His acts of creation and providential reign.

You think of perhaps the transfiguration when the three disciples are brought up to the cleft of the rock and pressed into it as Moses was in the ancient days.

And here rather than the afterglow of the Lord passing by, the Lord Jesus is eclipsed before them in blinding light.

And they can hardly contain the sight. And that's just a spark of the glory of Jesus Christ.

An earthly spark that faded out as quickly as it burned. So what is the true unveiled glory of Jesus Christ?

Again, something so luminous that it burns everything in front of it. Something so weighty that nothing can withstand its crushing weight.

All of this brings us to really the first of three points this morning. And the first point is this.

God has a prerogative for His glory. God has a prerogative for His glory.

What's a prerogative? We don't use that word very often. A right. A privilege. An exclusive claim.

That's a prerogative. God's glory is not at the top of the chain that descends all the way down to our lesser glory.

God's glory is in a class all to itself. There is no glory like the glory of God.

There is no one who can lay claim to the glory of God but God. Now this will be balanced out by the third point we come to this morning is that God is pleased nevertheless to make us partakers of His glory.

We shouldn't begin there with participating or partaking of His glory. We should begin with the fact that His glory is exclusively

His own. And it's His prerogative. All that God does is to glorify Himself. How did we begin our time in the

Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6? We were essentially asking God to glorify Himself.

To bring honor to His name. To establish and advance His kingdom so that His will would be done on the earth just as it's done in heaven.

When you pray in that way, you're praying for God to glorify Himself. That is

God's prerogative to do so. You think of the mighty host of angels surrounding

God. You remember that just taking one of those angels if they so happen to be a destroying angel.

You think of the effect of an angel like that over say the mighty gathered army of the

Assyrians. And that's just one angel. One peerless being who's fit to be in the presence of God.

And in light of that, sheer power then multiplied as a countless house surrounding His throne.

And you realize with all of that power, unimaginable power and glory and light for these peerless, sinless beings who are fit to be in the very presence of the

Creator God. They don't add an ounce to the glory that He already possesses.

You see all the world leaders. Maybe you watch some of the live stream of the

Pope's funeral over the past several days. And you can tell who's receiving honor.

Who's receiving glory. And in a sense when you see say leaders from the G20 summit all flocking like obedient ducklings to the

President of the United States, you get a quick snapshot of who actually has the leverage in that situation.

Who's looking to shake the hand or catch the smile or can we please talk about tariffs?

Do you have a minute to spare? And you get a sense that for all of these world leaders, some on very ancient soil, some from nations who have antiquity stretching back for centuries.

You think of a place like Italy and the history possessed within that. And you get a sense that that retinue, that surrounding of all these worldly dominions as it were paying homage, giving deference to a world leader, that all adds to that world leader's glory, doesn't it?

The symbolic token of their honor adds to His honor. The way that they seek to show glory adds to His glory.

That's true of men. That's true of the kingdoms of men. That is not true of God.

God is glorious in and of Himself intrinsically, unchangingly, immeasurably, eternally glorious.

We don't add an iota to it, never could we. God is glorious.

Again, the biblical writers had a conscious bent to the supremacy of God's glory.

It causes the psalmist to cry out, who is like You, O Lord? Your glory is such that we rob

Your glory just to bring attention to it. Who are we to ascribe anything to Your name?

So glorious are You. To even speak to it is to veil it.

To even praise it is to, as it were, bring it to a low condescension. Who is glorious in this way?

God is glorious in this way. God makes all things unto Himself so that He would be glorified in all things.

If you read again the logic of Paul, and we're going to look at some passages from the beginning of 1 Corinthians. We probably don't have time to unpack 1

Corinthians 15. But there Paul is looking at God's prerogative to be all in all, that God in all things would be glorified.

That's the very heartbeat of Paul's theology. We recognize in this way in the whole logic of Romans that men are without excuse for not giving glory to God.

This is what is owed to God, not because of what God will do for you, but because of who

God is in and of Himself. Intrinsically, God has an exclusive right, an exclusive claim, a prerogative to glorify

Himself. That luminous weight, that heavy light, the fullness of His nature,

His attributes in and of themselves as He reveals them working out across time in creation.

God's glory is the full weight of His infinite fullness. How full, how weighty is

God? Infinitely so. Therefore, His glory is an infinite glory.

Trillions of years with all the expansive powers of a fully redeemed body will never allow you to somehow turn the very edge of where God's glory finally ends.

God's glory is as infinite as God is in Himself. God's glory is the fullness of His nature,

His attributes, His perfections. And again, when we're thinking about His prerogative,

He does not share this glory with another. Now again, the third point is He does. He makes us partakers of His glory, but we begin here with His exclusive claim,

His exclusive right to glorify Himself in all things. 1 Corinthians 1. You see your calling,

Paul writes, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called. God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise.

God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty. He's chosen the base things of the world and the things which are despised,

God has chosen. You almost, Paul's like, no offense. He's talking about you.

He's talking about me. The foolish, the base, the weak, the easily neglected, the fickle.

God has chosen to unload and fulfill all of His precious promises of redemption in and through them, why?

So that no flesh will glory in His presence. So even the fact that we are made partakers does not detract from this first point.

God has a prerogative to glorify Himself. He chose us in the marvel of election, in the marvel of sovereign grace,

He chose us so that no flesh could boast in His presence. That all knees, all tongues would confess,

He alone is glorious. And so it's written, He who glories, let him glory in the Lord.

Now when we understand and we begin to place this over on the sort of pages of Scripture, we realize that actually doxology is a wonderful way to understand the biblical story as a whole.

In other words, again, it's not just Christianese, it's not just a phrase that you can breeze past, it's not packaging.

It contains, as I've said, the very heartbeat of the biblical story. Because you realize, essentially, the biblical story is about the intention of God to glorify

Himself in creation and redemption. Redemption being made necessary by the fact that God's glory had been corrupted through the fall.

When we say God's glory has been corrupted through the fall, we mean the result of sin, the result of mankind's fall into sin, and what that meant for image bearers who were made to glorify

God and enjoy Him forever to now actually make idols and build a rival counterfeit kingdom and to rob

God the glory that belongs to Him and to Him alone. So you realize the biblical story can be understood just with this one word, doxology.

The glory that God intended, the glory that was corrupted through the fall, the glory that God restored.

The glory of all that He has promised when He brings that full redemption over all of the earth as far as the curse is found and our favorite phrase here at GRBC, at least for the time being, when grace restores nature.

So the second point is really this corruption of God's glory. Coming off the heels of God's desire to glorify

Himself, His own right, His own desire to do so, we have to ask, well, what does that have to do with us?

What does it have to do with a bunch of people sitting in a room in Berry on a Sunday morning in April 2025?

Well, at the most basic level, not just here, but of all times in all places, it has everything to do with us.

Again, the shorter catechism, question one of the Westminster variety. For many of us, it's the only catechism question and answer that we know.

What is the chief end of man? The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

It's the highest goal of humanity. This is what we were made for. Philosophers have spent millennia at the deep question of the meaning of life.

If you're an 8 -year -old paying attention to me this morning, you have solved the riddle that have kept philosophers sleepless for millennia.

What is the meaning of life? To glorify God. That is the meaning of life. And to glorify

God is to enjoy Him forever, as Piper famously has said. We're talking about the highest goal, the highest achievement, the highest attainment of human life.

The whole point of humanity, the image bearer, the heart of the matter, the constitution, the sine qua non, the why of existence is that God would be glorified by us, in us, and through us.

When God made us in this way, He determined our character, our ambitions, our motives, our relationships, our interactions, our use of time and possessions and every single aspect of our ordered lives would naturally, effortlessly, responsibly glorify

Him. The fall corrupted and distorted all of that.

Now those very same things, rather than ascribing glory and bringing joy and enjoyment to humanity, have the very opposite effect.

Don't take my word for it, take Paul's word for it. The beginning of Romans. Although they knew

God, they did not what? They did not glorify Him as God. You see, for Paul, understanding the story of the fall and redemption is understanding the issue of God's glory.

You begin with the chief end of man and then you can understand what the fall meant for humanity. The sinful condition of the world around us.

Sinners today, although they know God, repress that knowledge, they don't glorify Him.

That's the chief end of why they are. They became fools.

They changed what? They changed the glory of God into the likeness and imaginations of corruptible men.

So you see the corruption of God's glory as it was intended to be reflected in and through us.

Paul is saying that man now, corrupted by the fall, worships and serves the creature rather than the

Creator. In other words, man glorifies himself, glorifies the things that come from his hands, the things made in his own image, rather than recognizing he must glorify

God as one who's made in the image of God. Man without God worships himself.

And in trying to glory in what was never meant to be glorified, fallen man inevitably finds the world to be empty.

Idols never pay. The fig tree is always barren. That long, pleasurable, sweet taste of sin becomes a road rushed headlong toward destruction.

Of course, nothing in this life could ever satisfy those who are made to inhabit the very glory of God.

It is a fool's errand. And wise are those who are open to actually see the foolishness of trying to find your everything in a world whose form is passing.

Because nothing less in the glory of God is our fullness. We were made for the glory of God.

We were made to glorify Him and enjoy Him in His glory. Enjoy Him by glorifying

Him. What else in the world could satisfy us if we were made in this way? If you were made with the capacity to glorify

God, what in this life, what in this world, can you pile up to somehow be a substitute for that?

There's nothing, nothing. It's what

Augustine found in his famous prayer, you made me for yourself, my heart is restless until I rest in you.

If I'm made to finally find my all, to finally find that everlasting satisfaction and joy and fullness of meaning in your glory and in your glory alone, then

I'm restless and hopeless and helpless with anything less than that.

All have sinned, Paul says, Romans 3 .23. This is just how

Paul unpacks the biblical story in terms of doxology. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

Humanity falls short of what humanity was made to have.

Sinners fall perilously short of what they were made to possess forever.

This is the story of the fall. C .S. Lewis, again, I mentioned him.

He says, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong but too weak. We are half -hearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered to us.

And we're like ignorant children who want to go on making mud pies in a slum puddle because we can't imagine what it's like to take a vacation by the sea.

So that means, in part, when I sin, I'm not just doing something that God arbitrarily doesn't want me to do.

The librarian that slaps my wrist and says, I really don't like that for some strange reason that's unknowable to you.

No. When I sin, I'm missing the mark and falling short of,

I'm leaning into the corruption of what I was always made to possess and enjoy.

In other words, me as my own image -bearer becomes more and more fragmented and distorted. I'm settling for less.

I'm perverting the good design that God desired for my life. I was made to enjoy

His glory. When I give in to sin, I corrupt that glory. Therefore, I can never find joy that lasts.

Practically, and I'd encourage you to think of unbelievers in this way. Because practically, we have sayings like, hate the sin, love the sinner.

There's a lot of debate about how to unpack and understand a phrase like that. It would be a distraction to try to unpack it this morning.

But I think, however we feel about that phrase, just understand the concept. There's something about the sin that we must fight against.

We must resist. Something that we hate. That we're filled with contempt and disgust when we see what sin is and we see what sin does.

Then there's something very hopeful. It almost becomes a source of lament or mournfulness that we see the effects on that sinner.

And much like the Lord Jesus Himself, we are moved with compassion. We can recognize how God does not desire for sinners to perish in the way.

We long for them to actually turn lest they perish. We recognize these things, but think about it in terms of doxology.

When you don't begin with identifying a person, a human being, as one who's an image bearer of God that was made to enjoy

His glory, then you start to have a very warped perception of what their sin is and what their sin is doing in their life.

What I'm saying is we have to begin by looking at fellow human beings as those who are made in the very image of God for the glory of God.

So we don't just see a neighbor. We don't just see a sinner. We actually, because we're viewing them in this way, we actually somehow simultaneously find more contempt, more disgust about their sin and simultaneously have more compassion, more burning love for their soul.

When you put it in terms of God's glory, it's not picking one or the other.

It's turning the dial up on both. When I see what sin has brought about in this image bearer's life, knowing why he was made and what sin is corrupting, what he's in bondage with, it gives me more of a mournfulness and a longing for his soul, more of a compassion upon him and more of a disgust for the sin that he loves that he will not relent.

Again, I mentioned this sermon from Lewis. He says, the load, the weight, the burden of my neighbor's glory.

Image bearers meant to reflect the glory of God. When my neighbor is corrupting that glory, glorifying himself for the things of his vain imagination, that becomes a burden to me.

He's not only robbing the glory of God, he's somehow destroying himself. That becomes, as Lewis says, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it.

That's why Jesus was a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.

The Westboro Baptists, picketing soldiers' funerals, they know nothing of this. They think they have this vigilant, courageous stand, whatever the cost, to be all about God.

And they couldn't be further from Him. They've misunderstood, and in their own unique way, they corrupt the glory of God.

When you understand the glory of God and how that's to be reflected by those who are made in His image, it becomes a burden to you, as Lewis rightly says, that you can only carry with meekness and humility.

You too will be a man of sorrows if you're looking at other people in this way. You see someone actively destroying themselves, and you know why they were made.

And you see what they can't see, this path that they're on, that they refuse to be on any other path, they refuse to turn around, and they think they're somehow finding peace and hope when they're getting further and further from it.

The only way you can deal with that is humility. The wonder is that the story doesn't end there, though.

God's glory is not just in how we were made and what we are to reflect, or even the everlasting hope of what we will enjoy, but God uniquely made

His glory manifest through this whole drama of redemption. The story didn't end at Genesis 3, with mankind corrupting the glory of the

Creator God, turning inward in some perverse way, all that was meant to shine outward.

And the thread of redemption is God promising a people that would be gathered by His name, brought to a place where they would be composed as His own people, and He would be their

God, and their light would emanate to His glory until that glory covers the earth as the waters cover the sea.

That was the hope of the prophets, and that's what angels longed to look into, and God uniquely made that manifest when

He sent His own Son into this fallen, corrupt, and perverse world. And He was robbed and marred of all the glory that was due

His name. And as Paul says, in the fullness of time they crucified the

Lord of glory. And now, what was a shameful robbing of the glory that was due to the

Son of God is actually His greatest glory. That's why we sing hymns like, in the cross, in the cross, be my glory ever.

He took the foolish, shameful, base thing of the world and made it glorious, resplendent, majestic.

He made it the very centerpiece of an eternity of praise. We remember, as we saw some weeks back, that it was

Jesus' prerogative to glorify His Father. When He contemplated what it meant to be led to the cross, it was

Jesus' prayer in that garden to say, Father, now the hour has come. Glorify Yourself!

He too had a prerogative to glorify His God in all things. And that pursuit of the

Lord is now our pursuit. That prerogative of the Lord is now our prerogative. It's our desire that God would be glorified in all things.

This is not Christianese. This is not a throwaway phrase. This is not window dressing for the Christian life.

A doxology actually means something. When you conclude a prayer with, Father, glorify

Yourself. Why? Because Yours is the kingdom, Yours is the power, Yours is the glory forever.

That actually means something. It ought to mean something for you. It means that whether I eat or drink,

I glorify God. As we've seen throughout the prayer, the one who gives daily bread, everything

I experience in this life, I receive from His hand. I confess He's my faithful shepherd even to the end of my days.

I know that He is with me. He won't only take me to my last breath, but through the valley of the shadow of death into a place of blessedness where He'll plant me like a tree.

And my leaves will never wither. I recognize that He's the one who's given me work to do. I receive everything from His hand as a gift.

I recognize the work that He's called me to do is a work that He's begun in me. He's prepared good works to do beforehand that I'm to walk in.

He's actually doing a work in my life. It's His work and He'll continue it until that day. Every aspect of my life then has some bent, some conscious awareness that it is meant to glorify

Him. Not as an add -on now that I'm a Christian, but just coming back to what it means to be human.

It's a big mistake, brethren. That's why I say we need to start thinking about people in a different way. Don't think about redemption as this narrow tract you can pass out to someone on the sidewalk.

You can opt in to this way of looking at life. You can opt in to this additional story about humanity.

That's not Christianity. Christianity is the story. The Bible, the

Biblos, the book, it's the book. The story for everyone. It's not the

Christian story. It's not our little stripe of tradition. Our way of explaining life in the world.

It's the story. Every human being of whatever stripe and time and place is an image bearer of God.

They have corrupted God's glory. They must be saved by the crucified Lord of glory to become a partaker of that glory.

When you start to recognize it in this way, you realize every aspect of life then, it's not me opting in to some bonus level of the

Christian life when I'm trying to glorify God. It's me just getting back to what Adam and Eve were created to be.

This is just what it means to live. This is not some extra level of sanctification.

Well, you've got your Christians, and yeah, we're all growing, we're all struggling. Then you've got those really great

Christians that are actually trying to glorify God. Those second level Christians. No, it's not even a

Christian thing. It's a human thing. What do we see from Psalm 104? It's a creational thing.

Everything that is is to glorify His name. Our ancient brothers and sisters were gathering in huddles, sometimes in upper rooms, sometimes in hidden basements, back alleyways.

They were huddled together in their prayer meetings, often public in their preaching. And their prayer was,

Father, glorify Yourself, because Yours is the kingdom.

When they were doing that, there were statues of the Caesars all around them. Statues of the mighty conquering

Roman gods all around them. It took almost a century for the Roman elites to even know who

Christians were. Isn't this some weird sect of the Jews? We don't really care about this. We've got bigger fish to fry.

We could care less about this. It didn't really look like much of a kingdom. It didn't really look like much power.

It didn't really seem to have much glory. But they recognized our faith is in the One who came and was born not on some ivory palace in the middle of Jerusalem, but rather was born in some backwater town of Bethlehem, out of the sight of all but those that the angels sang to.

They recognized that He lived almost anonymously as far as a larger, broader empire was concerned throughout

His life. He was just one of many that was crucified, cast out of sight and out of memory.

And they recognized His own presence, His own power, the way He was transforming life, and they recognized this is just the beginning.

Yours is the kingdom that was not made with hands. Yours is the kingdom that knows no end. Yours is the kingdom.

You had power to take me out of my bondage to sin, my slavery and misery, my self -destruction.

You translated me out of that darkness into Your marvelous light. Yours is the power.

If you can do that to me, and you can raise your own son from the dead, what is there that you cannot do? Yours is the power.

And what we know from the very beginning is that you have this desire to glorify yourself in all things.

And we see how you glorify yourself. Through your Son in this shameful path of suffering, then being exalted so His name is above every name.

And we recognize that your kingdom will be a kingdom like that. And so though they did it decade after decade faithfully without any visible sign that somehow the world was about to be turned upside down in due time,

God showed His kingdom and His power and His glory. And He's doing that throughout the world to this day.

Of course, as Christians, we're always tempted to glorify ourselves, our efforts to baptize our ambitions, to magnify the things that we enjoy, that we would like to accomplish.

And this prayer, this doxology, is not a throwaway phrase.

It's a way of life. It's a way to actually examine my heart, my instincts, my comforts, and to be taught by the

Gospel day by day and year by year throughout all the seasons of my life. My richest gain

I count but loss. I pour contempt on all my pride. Because even in the things that I'm enjoying the most right now,

I will actually come to hate if you are not my chief joy and pleasure.

And even the things that I'm striving for most right now, I would be begging to be rid of if you are not the one in whom

I find my all. It's a way of life. We take our feeble efforts, we take our waffling hearts, we bring them to our

God, sprinkled with the blood of His Son, knowing that He accepts them. And again and again, we renew this confession.

Glorify Yourself in me. It's Your kingdom, not mine. It's Your power, not my efforts.

It's Your glory, not my own. Your glory, not my own. This is how we're made partakers of His glory.

We look to the man of sorrows and we see his humanity as our humanity. We see humanity as it must be in a broken and corrupted world.

But then we don't just look at the man of sorrows, we look at the Son risen and exalted. We look at the glorified

Son of Man. And we recognize there is my hope, my first fruits. Now I see not just humanity as it must be in a broken, sin -cursed world, but humanity as it will be.

When the end comes and I see Him and am made like Him, and I'm a partaker of His glory in ways that are veiled to myself and to everyone else.

When I am rendered glorious as He is glorious. When I can finally and fully enjoy in a way that Adam and Eve could only have dreamed, even without sin.

And so in this way we become partakers of His glory. So let me bring us to a close this morning. Glory is

God's prerogative, of course, but He desires for us to be partakers of His glory. We become partakers of His glory when we have the same view of His glory that Jesus had.

Jesus lived as we must live. No servant is greater than his Master. When we have an eye to the glory of our

Heavenly Father in the same way that Jesus is teaching His disciples with this Lord's Prayer, in the same way that every doxology of Scripture is brought to bear upon our minds and our worship, when we approach glorifying the

Father in that way, we will become partakers of His glory. You want to share in His glory?

Live for His glory. You want to enjoy His glory? Walk every day with an eye that He would be glorified in all things.

That's the best way to become a partaker of His glory. For all the promises of God, Paul writes, are yes and in Him amen to the glory of God through us.

God's accomplishing His promises through us. He's glorifying Himself through us. We're made partakers of that glory.

We speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, he says. The hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages for our glory, for our glory, which none of the rulers of this age knew.

If they had known, they wouldn't have crucified the Lord of glory. But as it's written, eyes not seen, ears not heard, nor has entered into the heart of man the things which

God has prepared for those who love Him. And so we come into this relationship with the

Lord God. We're brought into union with His Son by His Spirit. And God is working things in us and through us.

We are being prepared for His glory. That glory in a very real way is our glory. Our glory, our joy, our hope, is not something distinct or separate from the glory and joy and fullness of God.

It's the same thing in a different direction. Our glory as believers is the glory of God.

Our joy as His people is His joy. Our fullness and everlasting satisfaction is

His fullness, His everlasting fullness. Do you see? So the question that we come to, two questions this morning, simply this.

The first question is this. Do you long for the glory of God revealed in Christ Jesus?

Do you long for that glory? Are you more like the child that C .S.

Lewis described? He's too busy stacking up mud in a slum because you can't imagine what it's like to go to the

White Cliffs of Dover. Do you long for the glory of God as it's revealed in Jesus Christ?

Just like we want to do with doxologies. Oh, of course. Oh, that's a wonderful little saying. We don't actually stop and think about it.

I'm asking a searching question to myself, if no one else. Do I long for the glory of God revealed in Christ Jesus?

Do I long for that? If you looked at a large portion of my life, the answer would look like, probably not.

Probably not. Praise God, there's a lot of places in my life you could look at and say, yes, amen.

May it be. But I'm trying to be transparent as I hope you'll be. Listen, do you long for the glory of God?

Do you long for it? You find you can't even eat or drink to God's glory in the small ways, the last ways, because you can't even think in the big things of how to glorify

God. Would we have the faith of our

Savior to walk in places and in ways that were so undignified to who

He was? So perilous to what

He would have as just basic creature comforts. So challenging to that high cost of being holy.

And the only reason He bore His path faithfully was because He had an unflinching eye, an unwavering longing to glorify

God. It was the story of Henry Martin, the great missionary to the

Middle East of two centuries ago. And of course, in the Middle East, he was seeking to spread the

Gospel to Muslim teachers, Muslim scholars. And in one of these homes, of course,

Middle Eastern hospitality, once you're embraced, you're a friend even at the dishonor of the host.

You must be protected. And he's welcomed into the home of this Muslim scholar. And he said in it, there was this depiction of the prophet, of course.

They don't depict the prophet in that way, but sort of in a symbolic way there was a picture, and the idea was here is sort of the presence of Muhammad the prophet.

And then around him were all of the other prophets bowing to him, including what Muslims believe is the prophet

Jesus of Nazareth. And so he's looking at this painting of Jesus bowing down before Muhammad.

And he wrote in his letter, I was cut to the soul at such blasphemy. I cannot endure existence if Jesus is not glorified.

That's Henry Martin. I can't live if my

Lord is not glorified like this. I can live quite comfortably.

I can live quite comfortably to my shame without the Lord being glorified in much lesser ways than that.

Do you long for the glory of God revealed in Jesus Christ? Have you really understood what it means that we are ones who now know the glory of God in the

Gospel? We know it. We've received it. We participate in it. But do we long for it?

Does it actually extend the fingers of my life that are curled inward to my own comforts and ambitions?

Does it actually extend them outward in any meaningful sense? Do I long to see

God's name lifted up? That was the prayer of Samuel Rutherford as he would say in his letters when he saw so much of the

Scottish Reformation that had been channeled through the vigor and zeal of John Knox and some of his followers begin to turn back over the intervening decades.

And he saw even in Anwar sort of the effects of that, the effects of the church of Scotland beginning to wane, and he says, oh, that I could get the name of Christ lifted up off the floors of Scotland.

That was his desire. I want His name to be magnified. I want His kingdom to be advanced. I'm longing for that glory.

I'm not building my own kingdom and seeking to pad my own comforts and glory in my own enjoyments and then just opt into all of that glory and kingdom and praise at the end.

I want to be, as it were, on that trajectory so that the very things I'm living for and longing after are the things that I enter into on that day.

That was the heart of Henry Martin. That was the heart of Samuel Rutherford. Is that your heart as a

Christian this morning? Is it my heart?

As our brother's not here this morning, he's out in California, and we feel the weight of this.

He said, why do we have a church with so many promising young men and women and they all want to be off, self -sufficient, entrepreneurial, and we can't raise up a missionary?

Why is that? Why is that? I look at my own life and I look in the mirror and I say, that has a lot to do with me, perhaps, as much as anyone.

Am I longing for the kingdom and the power and the glory?

It's not just a prayer. It's not just a nice little doxology. When the ancient

Christians in Syria or the current Christians in Nigeria say, yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory, there's something weighty and meaningful about that to them that perhaps we can't even understand.

When an apostle wrote, to our God be glory forever and ever, that meant something in the daily walk of His life that perhaps it has never meant in the daily walk of our lives.

It's not just a cheap sentiment. It's a logic of life. It's fuel for life.

Do you long for it? And then coupled with that, the only other question I'll leave us with, will we walk worthy of it?

Will we walk worthy of it? Will we walk worthy of the glory of God?

That's the challenge of 1 Thessalonians 2. Paul says, listen, you know how we exhorted and comforted and charged every one of you as a father does his own children that you would walk worthy of God who calls you into His own kingdom and glory.

Paul says, listen, I've lived my whole life in front of you in this way. My whole life has been sacrificially given over to just walk in a worthy way of His kingdom and glory.

I used to persecute the church because I hated Christians. I didn't know the glory of God. I was denying even my own captivity into sin.

And I was the one that was taken into this kingdom when the Lord came to me on the road to Damascus and said,

Saul, why do you persecute me? And then I learned how to worship with the very people that I once persecuted.

And as I worshiped with them, I saw His presence and His power. I listened to their prayers and desire for His kingdom to expand.

And I've lived my whole life ever since that calling just to be worthy of it. Just to be worthy of it.

That's why in 1 Corinthians when he's rattling off his resume over against the resume of the super apostles, look all that we've accomplished.

Look at our oratory. Look at our prowess. Look at our demonstration of power. And Paul says, oh, we're comparing resumes.

Okay, here's mine. I've been beaten, stoned, shipwrecked, left for dead, often without food.

He's glorying in what's shameful. What is there to boast? And then he says, in fact, 1

Corinthians 9, I deprive myself of the things that I should have. Cephas, others, they have wives, don't they?

I don't. I'm patching together leather just to make ends meet.

Not because I have to. The sense is, not just I want to lay an example for you, but more this,

I want to give something to God. And so even the things that are rightfully mine,

I deny just to say, Lord, no, this is for you. This is for you.

And Paul is saying from that life and from that example to these Christians at Thessalonica, brothers, sisters, walk worthy of this kingdom.

Walk worthy. Isn't He glorious? Walk worthy of His glory.

Isn't He all -powerful? Walk worthy of His power. The devil took

Christ up on the high mountain and he showed Him what? All the kingdoms of the world and all of their glory.

Young men and young women sitting in this room this morning, if you're being honest with your hearts, there's a lot about this life that is equivalent to that.

There's a lot in this world that I want to be my kingdom and my glory. There's daydreams and red

Corvettes and fishing boats, and there's things that I want to be my kingdom and my glory in this life.

And what does the Lord's Prayer come to say? What does the Lord's Prayer come to teach us with this doxology? It's what

Jesus said to the devil. Essentially He said, no, it's not my kingdom.

It's not my glory. It's my Father's kingdom. It's my Father's glory. And so we say, not mine,

Lord. Yours is the kingdom. Not mine, Lord. Yours is the power. Not my glory,

Lord. Yours is the glory. And a Christian who lives worthy of that glory, a Christian who longs for that glory, is a

Christian who will not only partake of it, they will enjoy it forever. Amen. Blessed are

You, Lord God of Israel, our Father, forever and ever. Yours, O Lord, is the greatness, the power, and the glory, the victory, and the majesty for all that is in heaven and earth is

Yours. Yours is the kingdom, O Lord. And You are exalted as head over all.

And blessed be His glorious name forever. Let the whole earth be full of His glory.

Amen and amen. Let's pray. Father, You are glorious.

You dwell in unapproachable light. There is no one like You. And who do we have in heaven but You?

May it be on earth, Lord, that we desire no one but You. Lord, here this morning,

I sense in my own heart, as I trust others do, that our hearts are weak, are fleshly, and they fail.

We bless You, our triune God, that You are the strength of our hearts and our portion forever.

How we long to see Your kingdom in ways that are veiled all around us, in ways that are veiled even within us,

Lord. How I long for a heart that is whole, unwavering and pure, completely devoted to and resting in who

You are and what You've done. How I long to be as my

Savior is, in a body glorified in the fullness of the joy that we now long for and cry,

Maranatha. How I long to be like the faithful examples of old who didn't just say doxologies in some empty -handed way, but lived their whole life as a doxology to You.

As the great composers in the past, even like Johann Sebastian Bach, would finish his compositions with,

Soli Deo Gloria, Lord, that the whole composition of our lives would amount to that signature at the end.

Whether we eat and drink this day at our covenant feast, or whether you raise up one who's sold out to walk worthy of the calling of Your kingdom, glory, and power on the mission field,

Lord, that You would move mightily in this church, break those calcified knuckles that have for a long time only learned to retract and not extend.

In my own life, Lord, may I meaningfully seek Your kingdom, Your power, and Your glory through my life, into my family, into neighbors, and people that I pass by.

Lord, to our church, as You lead us, as You bring us to a place, may we not be a lampstand for our own sake, a comfortable dwelling under a basket, the failure of Israel who turned in on herself.

May we be a lampstand of Your glory, the weight of Your light, the glowing power of Your weight, a light to the nations, a clay vessel carrying the treasure of the gospel to the very ends of this land around us, as we join with our brothers and sisters to extend it to the very ends of the earth, from age to age, praising

Your name, glorifying You and Your kingdom of which there is no end. Lord, do this work in our midst.

Is there one present, Lord? Perhaps You're working in their mind and heart to show them their darkness.

Lord, bring them out of that darkness into Your light, for we know even Your conviction first comes from Your light.

And Lord, we pray that You would do that work in our midst. Bless us now, we pray, in Your Son's name, amen.