Sermon Tone Analysis

The Glory of God

If you’re new here, you may not know that Redeemer Church is a reformed church.

When other Christians ask us what we believe about God and the Gospel and the World and the Scriptures, we’ll throw out that term sometimes —“Reformed”— and it operates sort of like theological shorthand to explain concepts like God’s sovereign control over all things, God’s foreknowledge, predestination, and election of his people, man’s inability to turn to Christ in faith without the Spirit’s work.

But perhaps the most distinctive aspect of reformed theology is represented by the term, “GLORY.”

I want everyone to stop what they’re doing for a moment and turn around.

Take a look at the back wall.

What do you see?

Sola Scriptura • Sola Fide • Sola Gratia • Solus Christus • Soli Deo Gloria

Sola Fide

Sola Gratia

Solus Christus

Soli Deo Gloria

We call these the five “solas,” and they represent the rally cry of the protestant reformation more than 500 years ago.

The Scriptures Alone are our ultimate authority on matters of Faith and Practice, and they teach that we are saved by Faith Alone, by Grace Alone, in Christ Alone.

And look there, right there in the center —Soli Deo Gloria— God Alone gets the Glory for the rescue of his people.

Now, it’s beyond me why

Sola Fide: We are saved solely through faith in Jesus Christ.

Glory!

All of our doctrine revolves around the Glory of God.

It’s the heartbeat of reformed thought and practice.

It’s the foundation upon which we build our services, write our songs, preach our sermons, teach the scriptures.

And I would argue that the Glory of God as the centerpiece of our theology is the most striking distinctive of reformed faith and practice.

Sola Gratia:

But what is it?

Think about it.

What is the Glory of God?

Have you ever noticed that there are words that we use so often, words that are so fundamental to our worldview, so pervasive in our conversations, that we forget what they mean, or at least we can’t easily articulate what they mean.

And Glory is one of those words.

But you can’t not know what it means, because the passage we’re going to read this morning pivots on the concept of God’s glory.

So what is it?

There are few notable moments in the history of Israel that revolve around God’s glory, and they might help us answer that question.

When God visits his people on Mount Sinai, his glory falls upon Sinai, and his glory appeared to the people like a wildfire, devouring the face of the mountain.

And when he spoke, the people were so terrified that they literally asked Moses to ask God to stop speaking to them, lest they die.

One day Moses asks to see God’s glory.

And God has to cover Moses’ face with his hand so that he doesn’t die from glory exposure.

When they build the Temple, Solomon asks for God’s presence.

And God’s glory filled the temple such that the priests could not even enter it.

And the Bible uses the term, “glory,” often.

Glory is something that kings have in small measure, but God has in infinite measure.

Glory is the outward display of extraordinary beauty, extraordinary worth, extraordinary majesty.

It means that we don’t just stroll up to him, we don’t treat him casually.

It is something like the splendor and power we associate with throne rooms and scepters, except that God is not marginally above our station but infinitely beyond our station.

It’s not just “other than,” but “better than.”

And it’s not just “better than me,” it’s “unimaginably better than everything.”

And maybe the best way to fully grasp the weight of God’s glory is this.

The Glory of God caused Isaiah the prophet to cry out, “WOE IS ME!

For I am lost!”

That dynamic - Isaiah crying out in despair in the midst of God’s glory - that touches on as aspect that is, I think, supremely important to note about God’s glory.

If Glory is on one side of the spectrum, wicked is on the other.

And people are wicked.

And so it isn’t terribly inaccurate to say that fallen man is allergic to God’s glory, not in the physical sense, but in a spiritual sense.

We have rebelled against God, we are defined by, characterized by, infected by sin.

He is Holy and we are Wicked, and his Glory is therefore poison to wretched souls.

We can’t get near God’s glory, because it will kill us.

To the degree that I encounter God without a cover, without some sort of protection, I am undone, I am lost, I am ruined before the Glory of God.

In other words, for sinful and broken and

What I mean to communicate is that God’s glory is terrifying.

But not to nature, and not to angels God’s glory is horror to sinful man.

To the degree that I encounter God’s glory without a cover, I am undone, I am lost, I am ruined before the Glory of God.

So let me ask you a question.

Why is it that we sing “GLORY!” when we reflect on the birth of Jesus?

Today we’re going to read about the birth of the God-Man, the birth of Jesus, the Christ.

And when that happens — when the Word becomes flesh to dwell among us — the angels sing “GLORY TO GOD IN THE HIGHEST, AND PEACE ON EARTH!”

And my problem is, those two things seems mutually exclusive.

I mean, at every point in the history of Israel, when God’s Glory is on display, there is no peace among men.

When God’s glory is on display, men are running, falling on their face.

So how?

How can the angel’s sing “GLORY TO GOD!” and also sing “PEACE AMONG MEN!”

This passage will teach us the answer, and that answer is your only hope.

So let’s turn together to .

Start in verse 1.

When the people a

Okay, there’s just so much going on here that we’ll have to take it bit by bit.

Read that first paragraph again.

Luke 2:

It’s important to note at this point that Luke anchors the birth of Christ in the history of the world.

These lines are authenticate the story, and all of the ancient historians worth their salt do this sort of thing.

By situating the story in historical events connecting historical figures whose life and reign would be collaborated in major private and public documents, in tax registrations, in polling data, Luke means for you to know, without a doubt, that there really was a guy named Joseph who was betrothed to a woman named Mary, who gave birth to a boy in a barn and laid him down to rest in a feeding trough.

That’s why these lines exist.

He does the same thing in the next chapter.

Let me read it to you.

:1-

This is a historian at work.

And he’s choosing to reference moments in history, public decrees, public officials that everyone knows about, or that at the very least could be verified independently by anyone with access to public legal documents.

But here’s the thing.

He didn’t need to do it on such a global scale.

He could have settled with a reference to local governors, local tetrarchs, local mandates.

He doesn’t do that, though.

He begins his story of Christ’s birth with Caesar!

He begins with a decree by the leader of the Roman world, literally the guy in charge of nearly every known people group on the planet.

And that’s on purpose, because Luke is simultaneously demonstrating that God is working on a global scale to orchestrate the particular events that would lead to the rescue of his people AND that God is rescuing his people on a global scale.

Luke is implying what he’ll make explicit by Part Two of this story - he’s implying that this redemption is not just for a people, this redemption is for every people - every tribe and tongue and nation.

Don’t miss that.

This is the first paragraph of the story of the birth of the most important figure in all of human history.

This is singularly valuable landscape, and Luke isn’t wasting a word of it.

By beginning this story with a reference to the king of nearly every people group in the known world, Lukes telling us that while the rescue of God’s people may begin in Israel, it certainly doesn’t end there.

But we’ve got to keep moving.

So we’re told that Caesar has decreed that everyone must return to their hometown in order to be counted, for tax purposes.

And that isn’t merely an accident of history.

Luke’s teaching God’s people that all of God’s promises are fulfilled in Christ.

See, the prophecies of the coming Messiah were clear to all who searched carefully the words of God — the Christ would be called a Nazarene.