THE STORY OF HIS GLORY

THE STORY OF HIS GLORY Psalm 29:1-2, Revelation 7:9-12 [with grateful credit extended to Stephen Hawthorne and his article in the "Perspectives" Handbook entitled, "The Story of His Glory, " from which the substance of this teaching is adapted.] March 12, 2000 Given by: Pastor Rich Bersett [Index of Past Messages] The second "value" in our Mission/Visions statement is about Worship. READ. A CHURCH WHERE PEOPLE WORSHIP THE LORD IN SPIRIT AND IN TRUTH. We are quite deliberate about growing in our love for God, so we are enthusiastic about every opportunity to worship Him and to "ascribe to the Lord the glory due His name" (Psalm 29:2). We strive to be a people who genuinely seek the Lord in worship, both public and private, corporate and personal. We believe we are to express our love, gratitude, and devotion to Him in a wide variety of appropriate forms, and under the leading of His Spirit. Introductory How would you respond to someone who asked you what the one over-arching purpose of history is? Many theologians say the unifying theme of God's history with humankind has to do with "covenant." Others insist it is the proclamation of the Good News to all people groups. Yet others think the important center of God's plan is to have a People who are faithful to Him. And there are millions of people in the world who would swear to you that there is NO purpose to history, that history is an endless circular participation in the same human series of events with different names and cultures each time around. Never mind that last contribution, but the previous three have much merit. That is, as you read the scriptures you can see these themes as outstanding and important in the plan of God. And you could make a good case out of the Bible for any of them. But let me suggest for our consideration this morning that theme which author Stephen Hawthorne recommends as the grand purpose of history in God's scheme: The story of God revealing Himself in order to draw to Himself obedient worship, or "glory," from the nations. Interesting perspective, isn't it? All of history and biblical revelation collected under this theme: The glory of God. I think he's on to something! Consider with me for a few moments the "Story of His glory." The Concept of Glory First, consider the concept of GLORY. The biblical words from which we translate our English word "glory" are primarily KABOD (Hebrew, meaning: heavy, substantive, important), and the Greek word, correlative to the Hebrew KABOD, DOXA (meaning "intrinsic worth" even "brilliance, radiance"). Glory, then, speaks of the value of a thing, or, in this case, a being--namely, God. To GLORIFY someone is to speak of her/his value or worth, or that which makes them memorable to others. To glorify someone is like complimenting them (to the tenth power). In strictly human terms, I might be inclined to speak of the good and attractive qualities of someone in the crowd here this morning. I could tell you all about their qualities, their personality, their love for people, their special characteristics, like how their eyes sparkle when they smile, or how they exude love and hospitality. I could share with you that person's life goal and how they are setting about to accomplish it, how hard-working, goal-oriented, dedicated a person he is. I could brag on what a good father or husband he is. In this process I am "magnifying" the person, bringing his qualities and admirable traits to your attention, so you, too, could notice and be impressed and say something like, "Wow, I'm impressed!" Or, maybe when you saw that person the next time you might even say to him, "I've heard wonderful things about you, and frankly, I think they are true." You could tell others what a nice person he is, and why you think so. Again, just humanly speaking, you would be "glorifying" that person. Although we tend to reserve the use of that word for the one who is truly great and worth glorifying--not some other human being, but God. When it comes to God we never run out of great things to say about Him. In fact, He is so great and beyond anything we are or can adequately speak of, that sometimes it is difficult to project His full character--human speech and language cannot do the trick for us, and we sing, "Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing my great Redeemer's praise, the glories of my God and King, the triumphs of His grace!" And we must reach out for other media, like singing, dancing, celebrating, shouting and meditating in order to come close to doing Him justice in our glorification of Him. We utter praising comments about Him, who he is, what he is like, what He has done for us and others, and what yet promises to do. This is "glorifying" God. We call that WORSHIP. Psalm 29:1-2 Ascribe to the Lord, O mighty ones, Ascribe to the Lord GLORY and strength. Ascribe to the Lord the GLORY that's due His Name; Worship the Lord in the splendor of His holiness! We even go past words and music and celebrative behaviors to try to express our thoughts about God, and we stretch into more comprehensive "lifestyle" behaviors to glorify Him. We bring Him offerings and gifts, we call our worship a "sacrifice of praise", we devote our lives and service to him. Paul describes it in Romans 12:1-2 as Making our lives a "living sacrifice" to the Lord, and that this is our "reasonable worship" (or, basically, the least that we owe Him). Furthermore, our worship of the Lord is always pictured as something done by God's faithful people--among the community of other faithful people, before the watching world, and even in front of the enemies of the Lord. The "Double-Direction" of GLORY If God's purpose is to bring glory to Himself from all of creation, but especially from the people He redeems and calls His own, then how does He get this done? God first reveals His glory TO the nations, thereby He stirs them to bring glory to Himself FROM the nations! How does He do that? In the same way He does it for you and me. He shows Himself faithful in saving us and healing and perfecting us (that's His GLORY at work in our lives), then He calls forth from us praise, GLORY, to Him. Psalm 19:1 - The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Romans 1:20 - Since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made... The witness of God's glory goes out through what he has created. But it also goes out through the testimony of the people he has chosen and redeemed. Psalm 96:2-3 admonishes God's people, as recipients of His blessings, to Sing to the Lord, praise his name; proclaim his salvation day after day. Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous deeds among all peoples. Matthew 5 teaches us that we are the light of the world to bring the glory of God forth by doing "good works" in his name, letting their light shine, then what will the onlookers do? They will praise your Father in heaven. So, the first half of the story of His glory is that He displays His glory by creating the world and recreating fallen people. The second half is that He receives glory from the nations. Preaching the gospel to all the nations (people groups) is the process of God revealing His glory TO the nations. And the purpose of reaching the world for Christ is that God would receive glory FROM the nations. Author John Piper goes so far as to suggest that world missions is not as important as worship. He says, "Missions exists because worship doesn't." Psalm 67 May God be gracious to us and bless us and make His face shine upon us that your ways may be known on earth, your salvation among all nations. may the people praise you, O God; may all the peoples praise you. May the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you rule the people justly, and guide the nations of the earth. May the peoples praise you, O God; may all the peoples praise you. Then the land will yield its harvest, and God, our God, will bless us. God will bless us, and all the ends of the earth will fear him. The grand and glorious purpose of God stands throughout all of history--He wants to have all peoples, all nations, stand before Him in worship. Consider the grand finale of history, inspired by the Holy Spirit of God and written through the apostle John. Revelation 7:9 -10 After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice: 'Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.' THERE IT IS--THE ULTIMATE GOAL OF THE CHURCH--WORSHIP! Here is the point--God saves people to make them worshipers of Him. As they faithfully worship Him (in what they say and do) they will draw others to Him. WORSHIP BEGETS MISSION. I've served the Lord in ministry now for just about 28 years. And in that span I have seen two kinds of churches: One kind is excited about worship and reaching the lost, the other is excited about neither. In some churches there is such a fight to get them to take part in evangelism and missions. Missions was obligatory. They usually have a missions committee who are loyal to the missionaries, and they keep putting the squeeze on the rest of the church to give more funds into worldwide evangelism. They always have some squared-jawed, stern-looking person saying things like, "MISSIONS is the real work of the church, and if we don't give, God won't honor our work here." They squeeze the leadership into hosting missionary speakers 6 times a year, because "these guys are out there doing the work for us!" From guilt to guile, there is no motive too dirty for getting missions into the church program and into the church budget. Incidentally, this kind of church is rarely much into worship and service. The other kind of church is focused on worship and devotion to Jesus--and missions and evangelism always happen naturally and generously. People love Jesus and they grow in their love for Him as they worship extravagantly. And, because they do, the naturally learn to love whatever is going to get more people to acknowledge and glorify Him. These are the churches where no one is badgered or cajoled into giving to missions--they see it as pure joy. In fact, they stand in line, not only to give, but to GO! Where people learn to love God and express it in pure, genuine worship, missions and evangelism just happen. I have five exhortations for us this morning: 1. Grow in worship and watch your love for missions grow. We church people tend to burn out quickly on the dramatized stories of unmet needs in the far reaches of the world. (How many of you turn on your TV, just hoping that you'll find Sally Struthers among a group of African children with distended bellies asking for donations?) I'm not ridiculing the need. It's just that we too quickly tire of the provocation's to give more, pray more, do more, be more, care more, love more, sacrifice more... In fact, a kind of addiction is often established in churches--when they realize they have not been active or generous enough toward missions they plead with the pastor to bring another sermon on meeting human needs. Or call in another missions speaker--and this time make it a good speaker, who can make us feel real bad... Kind of weird for an organization that is called to preach GOOD NEWS, isn't it? Here's how you increase your capacity for loving God's purpose in the world--grow in worship. Fall in love with Him more and learn to praise Him better, then HE will touch your heart and make it like His! Then you will learn to love what He loves. When you worship Him in Spirit and in Truth, it won't be long before you will ACHE to bring others into the worshiping community of believers. Worship gets us into the STORY OF HIS GLORY better than any lesser motivation 2. Grow in worship and watch your compassion for people grow. Do you have a hard time feeling compassion for lost people? Do you feel somewhat less than Christian when you hear of someone who weeps for the lost? I used to know a couple of well-meaning but misguided Christians who just didn't believe in sending missionary support to Muslims. With ugly generalizations they actually would say, "those murdering maniacs don't deserve the gospel! (And we do?) It is no secret how Ted Turner and wife Jane Fonda have acted in immoral and liberal ways, taunting and ridiculing Christians in the public arena. How do you greet the news that Jane Fonda has become a Christian? Let me suggest that a worshipper of God will never say anything like, "Yeah, well, good for her, but I don't want her in MY church!" or "Way to go, God, that's showing her!" Draw near to God in worship and His compassion will rub off on you, and your attitude toward lost people will change. If you want to better glorify God in your life and witness, learn to glorify him in worship first. 3. Grow in worship and move beyond this world's pettiness. Do you find yourself regularly getting caught up in the mundane things of this world and hating yourself for it? Do you fall victim to materialism and feel like you are not a very good Christian? Do you find it hard to think spiritually about things, to pray often and regularly during the day, to meditate on the Lord and His Word? There is one key area of growth that you need: you need to grow deeper in your worship, and all these other things will become less of a distracter to you. "When I look into Your holiness, when I gaze into Your loveliness, when all things that surround become shadows in the light of You, I worship You, Lord, I worship You. The reason I live is to worship You." Learn to glorify God and he will set you free to BE His glory among the nations! 4. Grow in worship and drop your burdens. There's a wonderful little verse in 1 Peter 5 that says, "Cast all your anxieties on Him, because He cares for You." That's a great truth isn't it? Well, if it is, then why do you carry so many anxieties? Let me suggest from experience of counseling good, well-meaning Christians, that we usually don't cast our anxieties on Him precisely because we don't believe He cares for us that much! I spoke with a woman not too long ago who needed to experience God's forgiveness, but she didn't feel comfortable getting forgiveness from God for this one sin. The fact is, she just didn't know how much God loved her. And she is a believer. if you will grow deeper in your worship of God, you will come to deeper appreciation of His love and grace toward you. "Draw near to God and he will draw near to you." When you learn to truly worship the Lord in spirit and in truth, to genuinely release yourself in praising Him, you will be able to bring all of your anxieties and problems to worship with you, set them down at the back door, and when you are finished worshipping, you will look for them, and they will be gone! This is the glory of God He wants to show you so you can glorify Him more. 5. Grow in worship and get delivered. You know, Paul admitted in Romans 7 that, even as a Christian, he was not immune to the sins and temptations of the flesh. We all bring our unique sets of baggage into our kingdom life. But the Lord's agenda is to rid us of all that stuff, one issue at a time. And I will tell you where it happens best--in the middle of worship. You've probably noticed it before. In the middle of worship you look over to someone in the congregation to find them weeping tears of release or even tears of joy as they have met the Lord at a whole new level in their worship. And it is there where we best hear the Lord telling us what He wants to do in us and for us. What is your particular burden today? Do you have fear? Loneliness? An unhealed hurt? An insistent sin against which you feel powerless? Maybe it's just a burden you can't even identify. The Lord wants to take it from you. But He needs you to let Him. Guess where the best place for that release is--worship. He's calling each of us to new levels of maturity in Him (one glory to another). Guess when the best time to encounter that step of growth is--worship. Conclusion Perhaps the most important thing we can learn from the Story of His Glory is this: that it is not about us--it's about Him. It's about Him effectively demonstrating His glory to us and through us; it's about Him receiving glory from us. Let's ask Him now to make us the kind of worshipers He wants us to be. It is His will that you worship Him in Spirit and Truth. Ask Him to meet you and make you what He wants you to be.     [Back to Top]