Not To Us, But To Your Name Give Glory
Looking Forward by Looking Back • Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 19:22
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· 11 viewsIn every season, situation, and circumstance our cry of victory is, “Not to us, but to Your Name give glory!”
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Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory, for the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness!
Once a year, my desire is for us to consider the year before.
One of the reasons is the Bible tells us we will gain a heart of wisdom to realize how short our lives really are.
You return man to dust and say, “Return, O children of man!”
For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night.
The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away.
Who considers the power of your anger, and your wrath according to the fear of you?
So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.
The context of Psalm 115 is difficult to nail down but it is appropriate to see it as a response to a military victory.
A response to a victory that the LORD gave Israel victory over other nations.
Notice in Psalm 115:2-3, where the nations are asking Israel, “Where is their God?”
It is in this context that the people of Israel are encouraged to trust the LORD.
We will consider this Psalm in further depth next week.
But this week I hope to bring to the surface one clear truth.
Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory, for the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness!
In every season, situation, and circumstance our cry of victory is, “Not to us, but to Your Name give glory!”
Humanity as Image Bearers
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
Humanity by design is an imaging people.
We are a people who reflect.
Like a mirror reflects a person, people reflect what they worship.
The Psalmist begins this Psalm by reminding the community of the LORD who is worthy of praise.
It’s not people who deserve glory.
We are those who are weak and frail before the LORD.
When David uses the repetition it is a reminder to us how difficult it is for sinful humans to reflect.
The fall has made you and I into glory thieves and glory hogs.
The fall makes it challenging for us to “diminish our own accomplishments and give praise to the One to whom it belongs” (Psalms, Hamilton)
Notice the reason the Psalmist gives for this centers upon the covenantal Lord’s faithfulness.
Not to us, Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory because of your faithful love, because of your truth.
It is God’s promises to His people that motivates the Psalmist to give glory to Him.
Psalms, Volumes 1 & 2 115:1, Glory to Yahweh’s Name
He loves in a way no sinner can, and he is true in ways no one who is not altogether righteous, holy, omniscient, and good could ever be.
The thing about glory is that mankind is a terrible receiver of glory.
We were never meant to receive glory.
But humanity was meant to be reflectors of glory.
In the garden of Eden, God placed humanity there and placed His image upon them.
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
Mankind has always been meant to image her creator.
This means that rather than being the object of glory, we are the reflectors of glory.
When it comes to glory, we are much more like the moon who would be dark without the bright shining glory of God.
We don’t posses glory on our own but we are exceptional at reflecting glory back to God.
We are like mirrors that reflect glory.
The problem of Genesis 3 is that all humanity’s mirrors are broken.
We reflect the wrong things.
We image things we were never supposed to.
Those who make them become like them; so do all who trust in them.
But the hope of the gospel is that Christ has come as the perfect image of God.
He restores the broken mirrors and orients them toward the One who is worthy.
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.
In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
Jesus has imaged the Father perfectly.
He has perfectly reflected to all humanity and all the world the image of the Father.
The good news for us then is that He promises to remake the mirrors that are ruined in this world.
In the work of conversion, God has powerfully recreated us by the Word of God through the Spirit of God.
He has powerfully remade our mirrors to reflect Him rightly.
He has remade our mirrors to image Him rightly by beholding the image of the Son from the Father.
1 John 3:1 (ESV)
See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.
We are currently God’s children because of the recreating power of the Spirit within us.
We are currently children of God because of the power of God within us.
Which is why John will go on to say…
1 John 3:1–3 (ESV)
The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him.
Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.
And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.
One day we hope and look forward to the day when we will be remade completely into the image of the Son.
When the Son of God appears again, we will see Him as He is.
We will be completely remade like Him.
But as we look forward to that day, what should we do?
We should glory.
We should glory in the gospel.
We should glory in the Son of God because the Father so delights in Him in the Spirit.
We should glory in the Father, through the Son, by the Holy Spirit.
We should boast in the greatest of God’s redemption.
I would argue that the cry of a reborn, remade, recreated child of God is reflecting the image correctly.
Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory, for the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness!
Not to us, but to Your Name in our Victories.
Not to us, but to Your Name in our Victories.
The Christian is the only person who can win and not win at the same time.
For example, if a Christian has a good year (or win) in business, it’s NOT their win.
Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”—
yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.
Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.”
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.
Not to us, but to Your Name in our Defeats.
Not to us, but to Your Name in our Defeats.
The inverse is true of our defeats.
We can lose and in reality win.
But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.
We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair;
persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed;
always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.
The Christian life is not about victory in this life.
We serve a Savior and Lord who was crucified, dead, buried, and resurrected.
Not to us, but to Your Name in our Life.
Not to us, but to Your Name in our Life.
For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.
If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell.
I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.
But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account.
Not to us, but to Your Name in our Death.
Not to us, but to Your Name in our Death.
Peggy Riden
JoEllen Nash
For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.
So death is at work in us, but life in you.
For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.
Not to us, but to Your Name in our Worship.
Not to us, but to Your Name in our Worship.
I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.
Not to us, but to Your Name in our Testimonies.
Not to us, but to Your Name in our Testimonies.
When we speak of what God has done in our lives, we declare who gets the glory.
And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.
We have to be careful though in doing this.
When we hear testimonies it can easily begin to slip into,
“Look at me! Look at how strong and powerful I am!”
But this would wholly miss the point of this text.
For the Psalmist, God’s faithfulness to love His people in spite of His people is the grounds for His glory.