Would you turn your Bibles again to 1
Corinthians chapter 10.
While you're turning there, I want to just
read to you a couple of verses from
Romans chapter 1 to express my own heart
and my own appreciation for myself and for
my wife Jane.
The Apostle Paul in Romans chapter 1 verses
11 and 12 said, I long to see
you so that I may impart to you
some spiritual gift to make you strong.
That is, that you and I may be
mutually encouraged by each other's faith.
And this has been my prayer that as
we have been here this week with you,
that we might be mutually encouraged with each
other's faith.
And you have indeed encouraged us.
You have encouraged us by your music.
It's a joy to listen to you sing.
In fact, last night, I think it was
last night or night before last, I just
stopped singing and listened to you.
I thought I've been giving out and here's
my opportunity to take in.
And so you were ministering to me and
you have been through your singing this week
as you have been singing to the glory
of God.
And thank you so much for that.
And then these dear pastors who have ministered
the word each morning this week.
I want to just say to you that
those of you who are in the churches
from which these pastors have come are indeed
blessed.
And I hope you realize that I'm sure
you do, but just the opportunity to sit
under the ministry of their word.
And then so many of you have offered
words of encouragement to us.
You've had us in for meals or something
like that.
And so you have ministered to us.
We trust that we have ministered to you
and to him be all the glory.
With that in mind, 1 Corinthians chapter 10,
once again, the
key verse for the message this evening is
verse 31, where the apostle Paul says, so
whether you eat or drink or whatever you
do, do it all for the glory of
God.
Then he goes on and he says, do
not cause anyone to stumble, whether Jews, Greeks,
or the church of God, even as I
try to please everybody in every way, for
I'm not seeking my own good, but the
good of many so that they may be
saved.
We are to do everything for the glory
of God and for the good of others.
This, of course, parallels what Jesus says to
us as the first and second commandments that
we are to love God with all of
our heart and soul and mind.
And then we are to love our neighbor
as ourselves.
It has been well said that these two
commandments, these two principles, shall we say, to
do all to the glory of God and
to do all for the good of our
neighbor, give us all of the guidance that
we need in areas that are not specifically
addressed in scripture.
And that's the actual context that the apostle
Paul is stating these two principles here as
he dealt with the subject, whether or not
it was okay to eat meat that had
been sacrificed in the temples of the idols
and then brought next door into the meat
market and offered for sale.
And his answer was, yes, that's permissible, but
don't offend, don't cause your neighbor to stumble
who would have a scrupulous conscience and would
feel that if he or she did that,
that they would be sinning.
And so the apostle Paul, then in the
context of that very specific issue in which
guidance was asked, or maybe it wasn't asked,
but he was giving it because he thought
that they needed it, we find here the
two principles that should help us to decide
on issues that are not specifically addressed in
scripture.
So oftentimes we form personal convictions and that's
well and good.
The thing that we want to be careful
that we do not do is that we
do not elevate our personal convictions to the
level of scripture and begin to impose our
own convictions on other people.
And so we have these two principles, whatever
you do, do it all to the glory
of God and not to seek your own
good, but the good of many so that
they may be saved.
I've already mentioned earlier this week that the
Shorter Catechism's first question, what is the chief
end of man, is answered with that famous
quotation, man's chief end is to glorify God
and to enjoy him forever.
And I pointed out that the framers of
that answer did not say ends, that is
plural, as if there were two separate ends,
but they said the end, singular, the one
end of man is to glorify God and
to enjoy him forever.
There was a time in my early Christian
life when I not only thought that these
were two different ends, but I think that
I even sort of unconsciously assigned different time
frames to them.
I thought well in this life I'm to
struggle to glorify God.
And then I think because of that word
forever was tacked on, I thought and that
enjoy him forever, that's out into eternity.
So in this life I strive to glorify
God and then in eternity I get to
enjoy him forever.
But that is not the intent.
We are to glorify God and to enjoy
him in this life.
In fact our good friend John Piper down
in or over and down in Minneapolis, Minnesota
says that God is most glorified when we
are most satisfied in him.
And so he said if he were writing
that particular answer to the question what is
the chief end of man, he would have
written it man's chief end is to glorify
God by enjoying him forever.
The point is that that John Piper is
making and the point which is inferred in
the way that the framers of the catechism
put those two together in a singular aim
is that it is impossible to glorify God
unless you are in fact enjoying him.
Unless you have such a relationship with him
that you want to glorify him.
And at the same time of course it
follows that we cannot enjoy God unless our
aim is to glorify him in all that
we do.
In fact as the apostle Paul says whether
we eat or drink or whatever we do,
significant things in life, the mundane insignificant things,
what is more routine than eating and drinking.
And he says that even in these most
mundane, these most routine affairs of life, make
it your aim to glorify God.
We've been considering the last two nights and
this is the conclusion of three part series
on the characteristics of people who fear God.
And we began on Tuesday night by saying
that one of the fundamental characteristics of the
person who fears God is that he or
she lives under the authority of God, consequently
under the authority of his word, which means
that we seek to obey it and to
put it into practice.
And then that we live under the authority
of the institutions, the authority institutions which God
has ordained for the good of society and
the good of his church.
And then last night we saw that two
more characteristics of a person who fears God
is that he or she lives in conscious
awareness of God's presence and in conscious awareness
of our dependence upon him every moment of
life, for life and breath and everything else
in life.
The great early 20th century theologian John Murray
in his chapter on the fear of God
in one of his books said the fear
of God consists of awe, reverence, honor, and
worship, and all of these exercised on the
highest plane.
And we can see that if the fear
of God does consist of awe and reverence
and honor and worship, then it follows that
glorifying God and enjoying him has to be,
you might say, the ultimate in the series
of characteristics of people who fear God.
That is, the thing for which we are
striving, you might say, the goal for which
we seek is that in everything that we
do that we might enjoy God and glorify
him at the same time.
What is the glory of God?
Well, it depends on whose book you read,
because I have never yet come across two
definitions of the glory of God that were
exactly the same.
But all of them have some commonality, and
so it's not difficult for us to get
at least a general idea of what the
Bible means when it talks about the glory
of God.
And I would just offer this definition tonight,
or description, that the glory of God is
the sum of all of his infinite excellence
and praiseworthiness.
The glory of God is the sum of
all of his infinite excellence and praiseworthiness.
Now, all of you pastors, I'm sure, have
a different definition.
I hope, though, that we all have a
commonality in that.
We are seeking the praiseworthiness.
We're seeking to view the infinite excellence of
God.
And his excellence and his praiseworthiness is set
forth in display in his creation, in redemption,
in his word, and in his people.
And to glorify God, first of all, then,
is to respond properly to this display of
God's excellence and praiseworthiness by ascribing to him
the honor and the adoration that is due
to him because of his excellence.
If you'll turn with me in your Bibles,
keep your finger in 1 Corinthians, but turn
with me in your Bibles to Psalm 29,
verses 1 and 2.
David writes, Ascribe to the Lord, O mighty
ones.
Ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.
Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his
name.
Worship the Lord in the splendor of his
holiness.
This is the first way that we glorify
God, by responding to his glory as it
is set forth for us in all that
he's done.
We ascribe back to the Lord.
We render the honor and the praise back
to him, and we call this activity worship.
When we speak of worshiping God, this is
what we're seeking to do.
We're seeking to ascribe to the Lord the
glory and the strength that is due to
him to worship him in the splendor of
his holiness.
The second way that we glorify God, and
the way that is suggested to us in
1 Corinthians 10, verse 31, is by reflecting
his glory to those around us in the
way that we live in our daily lives.
Jesus addresses this in Matthew 5, verse 16,
when he said, Let your light so shine
before men that they may see your good
works and glorify your Father who is in
heaven.
So we glorify God by worshiping him, and
we glorify God by reflecting his glory to
those around us by the way we live
our daily lives.
As people see our good works, they would
give glory to God.
And that is the part that I want
us to focus on tonight.
And so I would ask you this question,
what is your aim in life?
What is your mission in life?
You know, in the military, we always had
a mission statement.
And then somewhere along the line, business and
industry and so forth have gotten into the
habit of adopting mission statements.
And it's not too bad an exercise for
each individually some time to sit down and
take some time to contemplate and to pray
and to see God's face and perhaps to
write out our own personal mission statement.
And I can think of no higher mission
statement than to glorify God and to enjoy
him forever.
Now, that's very simple.
And you might want to flesh that out
in certain things.
And this is some of what we're going
to be talking about tonight.
But I want to ask you, what is
your mission or what is your aim in
life?
Is it to be successful?
To pay the bills?
To arrive at the day sometime when the
mortgage is completely paid off?
And there's nothing wrong with being successful and
paying the bills and paying off the mortgage.
But this is not our mission.
This should not be our mission.
Perhaps your aim or your mission is to
be popular.
For those of you young people still in
school and this tremendous peer pressure that you
experience.
Thank you very much.
And there's certainly nothing wrong with wanting to
be accepted and approved by your peers.
But this is not to be your mission
in life.
And let me say to those of us
who are parents, sometimes we have our own
personal agenda or our own personal mission for
our children.
You know, if you've been an outstanding athlete
as you were coming up through school, then
your aim for your child is that he
or she will follow in your footsteps and
become an outstanding athlete or an outstanding musician
or outstanding academically.
Now, all of these things are good.
It is good to aim for academic excellence
and even athletic achievement if God has blessed
you with the physical talents.
It doesn't mean that we should not strive
to be good students or athletes or well
thought of, but it means that we should
do all of these things in the context
that God would be glorified.
This should be true of us who are
adults.
All of life's activities, our vocations, our professions,
our shopping, our selling, our driving, everything we
do should be done in such a way
to glorify God in the way that we
go about it.
I remember reading the testimony of a man,
and I think I'm going to have the
privilege of meeting this man later on in
the fall of this year, but he was
a university-level basketball player, and he trusted
Christ as his Savior, and he got involved
with a church basketball league, and he could
run circles around all of these people, and
he observed that everybody else was out there
just to have fun and to have fellowship
and to enjoy one another and the camaraderie
and so forth, but this had never been
part of his thinking.
I mean, when you are on a university
scholarship and you're out there on the basketball
court, you're driving as hard as you can,
and you know, he was really irritated at
these other men because they were just having
fun and glorifying God, and he wanted to
win the game, and then, you know, after
a few games, he finally realized that he
had the wrong aim as he was out
there on the basketball court, that his aim
was to glorify God, and in the context
of glorifying God, to establish a camaraderie and
a fellowship with his teammates and with the
players from the other teams.
You see, it affects everything we do in
life, and sometimes, you know, we can want
to glorify God in about 80 or 90
percent of our life, but we've got this
10 or 20 percent over here.
In his case, it would have been basketball,
but no, you know, I want to go
all out.
I want to win the game.
I want to be number one, but the
apostle Paul says, whatever you do, whether you
eat or you drink or you play basketball,
whatever you do, you do it for the
glory of God.
It was just about a year ago, in
fact, it was a year ago this month,
that my wife Jane and I were on
our way to visit the home of a
lady who was dying of cancer.
In fact, she died just a year ago
this week, and a few days before that,
my wife had come into possession of a
coupon from a local bakery, and you have
to understand this is one of these nutritional
bakeries, you know, where a loaf of bread
weighs three or four pounds, and you know,
it's a really good solid whole something or
other, and, you know, it's not like the
loaf of bread that I used to buy
down in the supermarket until I learned better,
that's kind of like a Nerf football, you
know, you can throw it up, and it
weighs just about that much.
You know, this was real bread, and she'd
receive this coupon, two for one.
Buy one, get one free.
You ladies, I'm sure, are familiar with that
kind of thing.
Now, it so happened that the occasion of
passing out these coupons was that this bakery
had opened a new outlet in our neighborhood,
about a mile or mile and a half
from our home, but it so happened that
we weren't going by this new outlet, we
were going by the original store on our
way to visit this family.
So Jane said to me, let's stop in
at the bakery, and let's get a couple
of loaves of bread, and we'll bring one
home, but we'll take one to this family
that we're going to visit.
And so we went into the store, and
it's a place where the clerks wait on
you, you just don't go in and pick
it off the shelf, and there's a counter
there, and you select your bread, and then
they get it, and they hand it over
to you, and you pay them the money.
And so my wife handed this lady some
money and this coupon, this two-for-one
coupon, and the young lady, probably about 19
or 20 years of age, said, oh, I'm
sorry, this coupon is only good at our
new store that's just been opened on the
centennial.
Now, the coupon did not say that, but
that was the way it was.
The coupon was to be good only at
the new store.
So Jane said, okay, I'll just take one
loaf, and she said to me, we'll just
take this loaf on over to our friends.
And so she paid for the loaf, and
as the young lady was entering the transaction
in her cash register, she said to us,
you people are so nice to me.
Well, I hadn't thought of ourselves as being
particularly nice, and so I said, what do
you mean?
And she said, well, you haven't gotten angry
at me.
And you can readily understand that all of
these people had been coming in all day
long with these two-for-one coupons, and
they weren't being honored.
Now, just as an aside, I think that
was a real goof on the part of
the bakery, and I think that they should
have.
I mean, I'm not just saying because we
should have gotten the bread.
I mean, you know, they lost a lot
of good public relations.
Any of you who are in business can
recognize that.
But they had made their choice, and they
were sticking with it.
And so people had been angry all day
long, and just the fact that we didn't
get angry, she said, you people have been
so nice to me.
Now, as we walked out of the store,
I said to Jane, how could we have
turned that into an opportunity to witness for
the Lord?
But the point I want to make, and
don't get sidetracked on that, because don't let
your mind get to working on that.
How could that have happened?
But listen to the point I want to
make.
The sobering realization that came to me was
this, that as a Christian, I am never
off duty.
There's never a holiday as a Christian.
There's never a time when I can sort
of close up shop as you please, and
go do my thing.
I am never off duty.
Even in such a simple thing as buying
a loaf of bread, I have an opportunity
to glorify God or to dishonor God by
the way I interact with a sales clerk.
And so do you.
You are never off duty.
Now, I'm not dealing in trivialities here when
I talk about buying a loaf of bread,
because life is largely made up of little
incidents like this, little routine events, everyday duties,
ordinary conversations.
This is the mosaic of life, and it
is the way we conduct ourselves in these
everyday life situations that determine whether we glorify
God or we dishonor Him by the way
we live.
When Jesus said, let your light so shine
before men that they may see your good
works and glorify your Father which was in
heaven, he wasn't thinking about tremendous heroic deeds
as kind of a once in a lifetime,
a once a year type of occasion, but
he was talking about the way we live
our everyday lives.
Several years ago, I decided I would do
just admittedly a short Bible study on how
we glorify God.
You know, it's so easy to let this
kind of language, glorify God and enjoy Him
forever, roll off of our tongues without really
stopping to think, what do we mean when
we say that?
And the conclusion I came to, there were
several ways in which we can glorify God,
but the thing that caught my attention was
how frequently our actions toward other people determine
whether we glorify God or dishonor Him.
Turn in your Bibles with me to Titus
chapter 2 verses 4 and 5.
Titus chapter 2 verses 4 and 5.
Actually, I'll begin with verse 3 because you
have to have verse 3 in order for
4 and 5 to really make sense.
Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent
in the way they live, not to be
slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to
teach what is good.
Then they can train the younger women, and
notice what they're to train the younger women
in, to love their husbands and children, to
be self-controlled and pure, to be busy
at home, to be kind, and to be
subject to their husbands so that no one
will malign the Word of God.
Now, this is a remarkable statement.
The Apostle Paul sets before these younger women
by way of telling the older women to
teach the younger women, he sets before them
a standard of conduct that we might say
is the bare minimum, very routine, very ordinary.
You don't have to be a hero, a
super Christian.
And then he says that by doing these
things, no one will malign the Word of
God, or to put in a positive way,
God then will be glorified because God is
always either maligned or glorified.
You see, it's again the very ordinary duties.
For you wives, the way you conduct yourselves
in the home is an opportunity for you
to glorify God in the most routine duties,
the most humdrum duties that you have.
It's an opportunity for you to glorify God.
Drop down to verses 9 and 10.
Teach slaves, and again, I would say we
could insert the word employees there, but teach
slaves to be subject to their masters or
their employers in everything, to try to please
them, not to talk back to them, and
not to steal from them, but to show
that they can be fully trusted so that
in every way they will make the teaching
about God our Savior attractive.
Here again, it is the way that they
conducted themselves in the ordinary course of their
duties as slaves, or in our contemporary setting,
as employees.
And he says by doing this, we make
the Word of God attractive.
And when we make the Word of God
attractive, we glorify God.
Have you ever thought about the fact that
the way you perform your duties at work
or if you're self-employed or a professional
person, that you perform your professional services can
make the teaching about God attractive?
I believe that one reason that the gospel
is not more attractive to unbelievers is that
in our ordinary lives, we are generally no
different from unbelievers.
They're careless, and so are we.
I used to say, you know, whatever you
are, you ought to be the best.
That is not good theology.
I don't say that anymore.
Whatever you are, you ought to be the
best that you can be.
There's a difference in those two.
God may not have given you the natural
abilities to be the best, the very best,
relative to everybody else.
And you should not try that.
In fact, in 2 Timothy 2.15, the
NIV renders it, do your best to present
yourself to God, a workman who does not
need to be ashamed.
Now, in the original, it's not do your
best.
It's just make every effort.
Be diligent to do it.
But there is this idea in Scripture of
doing your best.
In the parable of the talents, the one
man was given five talents and won two
and won one.
And you know the story very well.
The man that had received the five talents
went out and invested them and earned five
more.
The one who had received two went out
and invested them and earned two more.
The one who had received one went out
and put it into the ground and did
not earn anything.
And he was the one that was condemned.
The other two men received the commendation, well
done, good and faithful servant.
Now, if the man who had received the
one talent had gone out and earned one
talent, would he have received the same commendation?
Assuredly, yes.
Now let me ask you this.
Suppose the man who had received the five
talents had gone out and had earned three.
And the man who had received the two
had earned his two.
And let's suppose, for the sake of my
illustration, that the man who had received the
one talent had earned one.
So we have an earning of three talents,
two talents and one talent.
Now in that scenario, which one would have
received the condemnation?
The man who earned the three talents.
You say, but he earned more than the
other two.
Yes, but he did not earn up to
his potential.
Do your best.
Your best may not be as good as
the best of somebody working next to you
or playing next to you on the basketball
team or sitting next to you in the
classroom.
But you glorify God by doing your best.
Sometimes we think that we glorify God when
we don't get drunk and we don't commit
adultery and so forth.
And yes, that's true.
And we would certainly blaspheme God if we
did those things.
But here the Apostle Paul is saying to
us that we can blaspheme God by failing
to do the ordinary things, the things that
we should to the best of our ability.
In Romans chapter two, verses 23 and 24,
the Apostle Paul says, so God's name is
blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.
He's speaking to the Jews.
And he's saying, you've got the law and
you can teach the law and do all
of these things, but you're not living up
to its teaching.
And so God's name is blasphemed among the
Gentiles because of you.
Do Canadian Christians ever put the fish symbol,
the Christian fish symbol, on the back of
the cars?
Okay, you do.
Okay.
Suppose that here is a Christian who has
the Christian fish symbol on the back of
his car and he drives in a rude
and reckless manner.
Now does his fish symbol glorify God?
No.
It blasphemes God.
God's name would be blasphemed.
People will go along and say, look at
that guy.
He thinks he's a big Christian, got this
symbol on the back of his car and
look at the way he's driving.
God's name is blasphemed among society, among the
pagans out there, the unbelievers, because of the
way we often conduct ourselves just in the
little things of life.
There was a man who was at a
Christian college.
He was a senior at this college.
And on a particular day, the guest speaker
who was scheduled to be there could not
arrive because of weather difficulties.
And so somehow this senior was pressed into
an impromptu chapel message.
And after the chapel message, one of his
classmates came to him and he said, I
wish that I knew God like you do.
And it so happened that this classmate who
said that to this speaker was the son
of a very prominent minister.
Now, I do not know who this prominent
minister was.
The person who told the story did not
divulge that information.
But it was a very prominent minister, presumably
an evangelical minister.
And so he said, well, he said, I
sort of reached down into my bag of
tricks as I was talking to him.
And so he said, I said to him,
well, just think of God like your father,
because he assumed that this prominent evangelical minister
would be somebody that he could say, oh,
if God is like my father, yeah, I
can understand that.
But he said this young man stiffened and
his fist clenched and his jaws got tight.
And he said, if God is like my
father, I want nothing to do with him.
There was a prominent minister who thought that
he was glorifying God in the pulpit, but
he was blaspheming him in the home.
And parents, we need to be very, very
careful that we do not blaspheme God by
the way that we relate to our children.
Simon Kistemacher, one of the contemporary New Testament
commentators in his comments, in his First Corinthians
commentary, wrote these words in First Corinthians 1031.
He said, nothing in our conduct should obstruct
God's glory from being reflected in us.
Notice the way he put it, nothing in
our conduct should obstruct God's glory from being
reflected in us.
That is, in everything we do and say,
no matter how insignificant, the world should be
able to see that we are God's people.
Exalting God's glory ought to be our chief
purpose in this earthly life.
Notice he said, no matter how insignificant.
Exalting God's purpose, God's glory ought to be
our chief purpose.
What is your chief purpose in life?
You and I have many activities.
We have many responsibilities.
We have many things we have to do
just to make it through life.
But our mission in life ought to be
to glorify God, and all of these things
that we have to do just to make
it through life ought to serve that ultimate
aim, to glorify Him.
Now for many of us, there are some
recurring activities that pose a special challenge.
I don't know if any of you have
the morning commute.
If any of you live in the Toronto
area or someplace like that, and you have
that morning commute, it's not unusual in the
United States for people to have anywhere from
a half hour to an hour commute, driving
on these freeways, so-called freeways, or oftentimes
called the world's largest parking lots.
And that morning commute or that evening commute
can pose a special challenge, because you get
in that car and your mission becomes to
get there, to get home on time, or
to get to work on time.
And you're focused on that, and you begin
to drive like a maniac.
And if that's a special recurring challenge for
you, every time you get in your car
you ought to say, my chief aim is
to glorify God in the way I drive.
Some of you may have a tough work
environment.
Perhaps you work amongst people who are complainers
and whiners, and it's so easy in that
kind of a situation to join in that.
And your aim in that situation ought to
be to glorify God by not participating in
that complaining and whining and negative attitudes.
Some may have a difficult home situation, or
a difficult housing situation, maybe a difficult neighbor
next door to you.
I recall hearing a man talk about when
he and his wife were first married and
they lived in an apartment, and the landlord
lived in the apartment next to them, and
gave them such a hard time.
And he talked about how, this man is
a minister by the way, and he talked
about how that his first initial reaction was
to, you know, give back in kind.
You give me a hard time, I'll figure
out some way to give you a hard
time.
And his wife, bless her, and this is
often true, isn't it, men had a better
idea, and she said, let me bake some
bread and take it to them.
And they just began to do good deeds
one after another.
Finally, it was really, it wasn't the landlord
himself, but it was his adult daughter.
She came with tears in her eyes, and
she wanted to know how to be saved.
You see, you can glorify God, or you
can dishonor God, just in the way you
relate to your landlord.
The point I want to make, and I
hope you get it, is that no matter
what the activity, no matter what the situation,
every situation in life gives us the challenge
to either glorify God or to blaspheme Him
by our conduct, by the way that we
respond to that.
My personal one, this is my confession, my
personal recurring situation is flying.
I make probably about 25 trips a year,
and Colorado Springs, where we live, has very
few direct flights.
You know, you can't just go from Colorado
Springs to Point A, you've got to go
from Colorado Springs to Denver to Point A,
or Colorado Springs to Chicago to Point A,
or something like that.
Coming up to Detroit last weekend, Colorado Springs
to Chicago, Chicago to Detroit, and the same
way going home.
So, each trip involves about four airplane boardings,
two going out, two returning.
25 times a year, that's about a hundred
airplane boardings a year.
Now, any of you who do any flying
know that boarding airplanes these days poses a
special challenge.
I mean, you know, there's just so much
space in those overhead compartments, and there are
always these people that are bringing on more
baggage than they should be, and, you know,
you want to get on that airplane first
so you can get there ahead of that
greedy guy.
I have about a hundred times a year
where I have an opportunity to glorify God
or to dishonor Him by the way I
board that airplane.
I'm not talking about just the way I
walk down the jetway, but I'm talking about
the way I relate to my fellow passengers.
The point I want to make is it's
these routine things, it's these ordinary things of
life that determine the way that we glorify
God.
Now, there's another factor here.
Our conduct does not glorify God unless it
is empowered and enabled by Jesus Christ.
In Philippians chapter 1 and verse 11, we
read the following words.
Philippians 1 verse 11.
Actually here I think again I need to
go back to verse 9 to get the
beginning of Paul's lengthy sentence here.
And this is my prayer that your love
may abound more and more in knowledge and
depth of insight so that you may be
able to discern what is best and may
be pure and blameless until the day of
Christ filled with the fruit of righteousness.
And notice this phrase, that comes through Jesus
Christ to the glory and praise of God.
Now there's a lot of truth here that
we could get at, but one truth that
I want to extract from this is that
the fruit of righteousness that results in God
being glorified only comes through Jesus Christ.
That is, it only comes from his power
as his power is administered to us by
his Holy Spirit.
Or to put it simply, we cannot glorify
God by depending on our own innate goodness,
our own self-discipline, our own determination.
We glorify God as we do so in
dependence upon Jesus Christ to enable us through
his Holy Spirit.
We all know people who would put most
Christians to shame by their kindness and their
generosity and their gentle conduct.
And they're not even believers, and they do
not obviously glorify God in this.
If anything, they would glorify themselves.
That might not be their particular intent, but
we say, oh, isn't she a nice neighbor?
Oh, isn't he a wonderful person?
Oh, isn't he a diligent worker?
We don't want people to say that.
They might say that, but what we really
want them to say is, doesn't he have
a great God?
We want them to say, oh, if that's
the difference that Jesus Christ makes in a
person's life, then I want to be a
Christian.
And this happens, dear friends, only as we
depend upon Jesus Christ to give us his
power through his Holy Spirit.
It is only as we intend to glorify
God and depend on him in his enabling
power that he is indeed glorified in our
lives.
Now, let me say one final word, and
this, in a sense, is not a final
word to this message, but it's a final
word to this entire series.
And it's not just a PS, an addendum
that's added on.
It's a very necessary part of all that
I've had to say these evenings.
Two things.
First of all, in the application sections that
I have put before you, particularly the last
three nights, you cannot accomplish this on your
own, by your own willpower.
Jesus put it very clearly when he said,
without me, you can do nothing.
The second thing I want to say is
that we could hang around all of our
necks a highway sign that says, Work in
Progress.
Under construction, we are being conformed into the
likeness of Jesus Christ.
We are not there yet, and we will
never be there until the day we die.
It's only when we go to be with
him that we become righteous men made perfect.
And so, if you see a few spiritual
potholes in your life as a result of
the messages this week in the morning or
the evening, remember that that sign is hung
around your neck, Work in Progress.
The third thing I want to say is
this, and this is perhaps the most important
of all.
Your acceptance with God the Father is not
based upon how well you apply the challenges
that I have presented to you this week.
Your acceptance is based upon the performance of
Jesus Christ 2,000 years ago.
I used to, sometimes in a message I
would say, you know, we live in a
performance-oriented society.
And I would go through, you know, examples
of this, school, athletics, work.
You know, I remember in the military getting
a fitness report, which means a job appraisal,
and so forth.
And even sometimes, oftentimes, far too frequently in
the home, the acceptance of a child is
based upon that child's performance academically or athletically
or in music or something.
And the child feels that he or she
never quite measures up to the parent's expectation.
It's a horrible thing.
But the fact is, we live in that
kind of a performance-oriented society.
And I used to say to people, but
in the Christian life, when you turn and
contemplate your relationship with God, you've got to
set all of that aside, because you do
not relate to God in a performance way.
I concluded that that was bad theology and
bad psychology.
Bad psychology, because it's impossible for a person,
or not impossible, it's very difficult for a
person who is embroiled in a performance-oriented
society in every other aspect to turn to
God and then say, oh, okay, God accepts
me apart from my performance.
Bad psychology.
Bad theology, because this, listen carefully, God is
a performance-oriented God.
Cursed is everyone that continues not to do
everything that is written in the book of
the law.
That's performance, dear friends.
But the good news is this, listen carefully,
Jesus Christ performed in your place.
He lived a perfect life, and he lived
it as your representative and in your place.
And he died on a cross, and he
died as your representative and in your place.
And if you are united to Jesus Christ
tonight through faith, by the power of the
Holy Spirit, if you are in union with
him, when he died on that cross, it's
just as if you died on that cross.
When he lived a perfect life, it's just
as if you lived a perfect life.
God accepts you tonight, not on the basis
of your performance, but on the basis of
the perfect performance of his glorious Son.
This obviously doesn't mean then that we should
go out and live as we please.
It means that in gratitude to him and
in joy of the relationship that we have
with him through Christ that we do seek,
we earnestly desire, and we make it our
sincere effort to do those things that are
pleasing to him, knowing that even our best
deeds are still stained with sin.
And so as you leave this conference tomorrow
or tonight, do not leave thinking, well, if
I could just get my act together.
Jerry Bridges has given us one, two, three,
four, five applications to make, and let's see
if I can remember them and, you know,
improve in all of these, then God will
love me.
No, dear friends, that's not the way it
works.
God loved you from before the foundation of
the world.
God loved you when he saw all of
your imperfection, all of your sin.
He loves you through Christ and in gratitude
to him for that unconditional love.
And I sort of shy away from that
term unconditional love because it's been abused, and
some people have taken that to mean go
out and live the way you please, you
know, God loves everybody unconditionally.
No, that's not it.
If you're in Christ, God loves you unconditionally
and in gratitude to him for that.
And in the joy of the acceptance that
you have through Christ, you go out and
you seek to live all life to his
glory.
Whether you eat or whether you drink, you
do it all to the glory of God.
Amen.