Let's pray together.
Let him who speaks, speak as one who
speaks the words of God.
Peter taught us.
Lord, I call upon you now to perform
that miracle of speaking as I speak because
it's your word and yours alone that has
power to transform the affections of our hearts
and return them to you.
So be it.
Amen.
I have to preface what I have planned
to say with a thank you and an
admonition.
The thank you is to several people who
this week have made my week very bright
by calling me on the phone or coming
to my office and just telling me good
news about things that are happening in their
lives.
I won't mention any names because then somebody
might feel bad if I forget somebody, but
people are being won to Christ.
I know of two in the past week
and there was excitement about that.
And people are eager to serve.
They just come and say, what can I
do?
And I wish I knew more about the
church so that I could say, here's where
there's a need and here's where there's a
need.
And I thank you for that.
And I urge that you bring me criticisms
and you bring me good news about what's
happening in our church family because both of
them are important for any pastor.
Years ago, I attended a Billy Graham crusade
in Anaheim, California.
I don't remember the date.
I think it was when I was in
seminary out there.
And I sat out in the left field
bleachers.
There were 50,000 people there that night
and I could see from where I was
as the 50,000 people wrapped around the
infield.
And when Cliff Barrows, who's a good friend
of mine because I grew up in the
same town he did and like him tremendously,
when he led How Great Thou Art, as
he always does, I got about two bars
out and couldn't sing anymore because I had
never heard 50,000 people sing praises to
God.
And my heart was so stunned with that
event that I've never forgotten it and what
it did to me.
Nothing had ever before or since seemed so
right and so beautiful and so joyful as
50,000 creatures singing praise to their creator.
It was an experience unforgettable.
And I really believe that that night I
got a little teeny glimpse into heaven because
according to the revelation of John, which Jesus
gave to him in chapter 5 verses 11
to 13, which you don't need to look
up, it's not my text, heaven is going
to look like this.
And I beheld and I heard a voice
of many angels around the throne and the
beasts and the elders and the number of
them was 10,000 times 10,000 and
thousands of thousands saying with a loud voice
worthy is the lamb that was slain to
receive power and riches and wisdom and glory
and honor and blessing.
Of course, you all hear the tune, don't
you?
From the Messiah.
And every creature which is in heaven and
on the earth and under the earth and
such as are in the sea and all
that are in them, I heard saying blessing
and honor and glory and power be unto
him that sitteth on the throne and unto
the lamb forever and ever.
The goal of God is to create a
people and bring them to himself and receive
unbounded praise from their hearts with all their
might.
And those of us who've tasted the worthiness
of the lamb, we wouldn't miss it for
the world.
The lamb is worthy.
The father is worthy.
They ought to be praised and they will
be praised.
We will praise them in this church and
in the age to come.
But for two weeks now, we've seen from
scripture on Sunday morning that God has not
merely been acting so that praise is resulting
from men.
God has been acting and taking the initiative
to get praise from men.
Everything God does from the earliest act of
predestination in eternity down to the end is
motivated by his desire to get praise.
Isaiah 48, 11 is like a banner over
every divine act.
For my own sake, for my own sake
I do it.
My glory I will not give to another.
Or as Jeremiah states it in 13, 11
of his prophecy.
For as the waste cloth clings to the
loins of a man, so I made the
whole house of Israel and the whole house
of Judah cling to me, says the Lord,
that they might be for me a people
and a name and a praise and a
glory.
God's goal in all that he does is
to receive praise and glory from men.
And now, lest we think that this is
just an Old Testament emphasis, because that's where
we've been emphasizing, you will perhaps want to
look at the text of the morning with
me in Ephesians chapter 1.
Ephesians is an amazing book with sentences that
extend to 11 verses and extend as well
into the halls of heaven.
It's an exalted book.
Paul was not anywhere else any higher.
In this first chapter, which Pastor Carlson read,
there is a phrase that's repeated three times.
And the repetition of this phrase shows us
what Paul believes is the goal of God
in saving us for himself.
I'll point them out.
Verses 5 and 6.
He predestined us in love to be his
sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose
of his will to the praise of the
glory of his grace.
Verse 12.
We who first hoped in Christ have been
predestined and appointed to live for the praise
of his glory.
Verse 14.
The Holy Spirit is the guarantee of our
inheritance until we acquire possession of it to
the praise of his glory.
There's no doubt, is there, what Paul's concern
in those 11 verses is.
Paul wants us to know that from eternity,
in the decrees of predestination, to the end
of our enjoyment of his inheritance in the
age to come, everything along the way has
been aimed at the purpose of getting praise
for God's glory.
So God is praiseworthy.
In that he is praiseworthy.
In that we ought to praise him.
In that we will praise him.
Nobody who is in the church doubts.
And we affirm that truth gladly.
But, less often do we hear the emphasis
that it was not just the result of
God's activity, but the goal of God's activity,
that people are to praise him.
He governs the world precisely to the end
that he might be admired and marveled at
and exalted and praised.
Paul says in 2 Thessalonians 1, verse 10,
that Jesus Christ is going to return at
the end of the age, notice the purpose,
to be glorified by his saints and to
be marveled at by all who believe.
Jesus is coming in order to be marveled
at.
Now, it's been my experience, however, over the
past years that this truth, this emphasis, is
received with somewhat less gusto than the statement
that we ought to praise Jesus.
It's alright for God to be praised.
It's not quite right for God to seek
praise for himself.
Didn't Jesus say, whoever exalts himself will be
abased and whoever humbles himself will be exalted?
Yet, God's clear purpose from Scripture is to
exalt himself in the eyes of men.
Now, my aim in this message this morning
is to try to show as best I
can that this aim of God is wholly
good and with no fault whatsoever and radically
different from human self-exaltation primarily because it
is a supreme act of love.
And therefore, I want us to be able
to walk out of here affirming gladly with
all our hearts that God, in fact, has
made it his ultimate goal in history to
be praised and to join him in that
ultimate goal.
Now, there are two reasons that stand in
the way of our affirming with full hearts
and zealous minds that God is, in fact,
seeking his own praise in history.
The two reasons, I think, are these.
We don't like humans who do that.
And the second reason is from the Bible
more explicitly.
The Bible teaches, as we've already seen, that
it's wrong to exalt yourself.
Jesus said it was wrong.
So people take offense at this teaching that
we've been stressing for the last two weeks
because it contradicts their experience and it contradicts
some of the teachings they have in the
Bible as far as they can see.
We just don't like people who are all
enamored by their own skill or their own
power or their own gifts or their own
savvy and talk about it.
We don't like scholars who go out of
their way to make sure we know that
they know more than we know.
We don't like them when they recite for
us all their recent publications and lectureships.
We don't like businessmen who are always chattering
about their terrific investments, how they've stayed on
top of the market and managed to get
in low and out high and they're just
sitting pretty all the time and talk it
up because there's power in investments.
We don't like children who hour after hour
play one-upmanship with each other.
I know that we don't like that.
And unless we're one of them, we don't
like women and men who instead of dressing
simply, modestly, inoffensively, make it their aim always
to be in the most current style so
that people will think they're in or punky
or laid back or whatever the world says
you're supposed to look like this week.
Why don't we like that?
You know why?
It's because we don't like inauthentic people.
People that are after praise are inauthentic people.
I and Rand, who wrote Atlas Shrugged, who's
an atheist, hit the nail on the head
when she called them second-handers.
They live not first-hand by the joy
that comes from achieving what you value.
They live second-hand by the praise and
the compliment that come in after you've done
a little bit.
That's what gives their life significance.
And we don't like second-handers.
We don't want to be second-handers deep
down.
We admire people who are composed and secure
enough so that they don't always have to
be shoring up their weaknesses or compensating for
their deficiencies by trying to win as many
compliments as they possibly can.
Therefore, it stands to reason that any teaching
that would tend to put God in the
category of a second-hander is going to
be rejected.
And that's what, in fact, this teaching that
he is after his own praise, wanting to
be admired, seeking his own glory, seems to
make him a second-hander.
But should it?
Must it?
One thing we can say for sure.
God is not weak.
And we can say, secondly, He has no
deficiencies.
Paul says, all things are from Him and
through Him and to Him.
He always was.
He always will be.
He is not becoming.
He is changelessly perfect.
Whatever is that is not God has its
existence from Him and cannot make any contribution
to God's perfection except what God has already
contributed to Him.
That's simply what it means to be God
and not a creature.
Therefore, God's zeal to seek praise from men
and going after glory and the honor of
His own name cannot be motivated by weakness,
a desire to shore it up, or a
desire to compensate for some deficiency that He
has.
He may seem at a superficial glance to
be in the category of a second-hander,
but He cannot be.
Something must be wrong, or there must be
a motive different than the motive of the
second-hander to account for God seeking His
own praise.
Now, there's another reason from experience, just briefly,
why we don't like second-handers or why
we don't like people who are always seeking
their own glory.
It's not merely that they are inauthentic people
who deep down have weaknesses they're trying to
hide.
It's because they're unloving.
They are so caught up with their own
affairs, they've got no time to care for
anybody else and they will just step on
people on the way to their glory.
They are unloving, and we don't like unloving
people.
But now that leads into what I said
was a biblical argument for why we don't
like this sort of person.
1 Corinthians 13.5 puts a tremendous boulder
in the way of God's self-exaltation.
It says, Love seeks not its own.
Now, that creates a crisis, doesn't it?
For God.
If we've understood God's goal.
Because He is seeking His own glory.
According to Isaiah 48.11. But, how can
He then be loving if love seeks not
its own?
For three weeks we've argued that God is
for Himself.
And now we hear that in order to
be loving, He must be for us.
Is then God for Himself?
Or is He for us?
Now, the answer I want to try to
persuade you is the true answer.
It could be summed up like this.
Because God is unique, as the most glorious
of all beings, and is totally self-sufficient,
He must be for Himself in order to
be for us.
If He were to abandon His goal of
self-exaltation, we would be the losers.
Not merely God.
His aim to bring praise to Himself and
His aim to bring pleasure to His people
are one aim.
And they stand and they fall together.
That's what I want us to see.
Now, in view of God's infinitely admirable beauty,
this is the question we have to ask,
which I think will lead us to the
solution that brings the two together, His love
and His self-exaltation.
What is it that God must give us
in order to be perfectly loving to us?
How will the perfect love of the infinitely
beautiful God be manifested?
What gift can He give us?
And there is only one answer.
He must give us Himself and nothing else.
That's what God aims to give.
His perfection for our contemplation and fellowship.
And that's precisely what God was aiming to
do in sending Jesus into the world, wasn't
He?
Ephesians 2.18, it says, Christ came that
we might have access in one Spirit to
the Father.
1 Peter 3.18, Christ died for sins
once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous,
to bring us to God.
The whole aim of God in His redemptive
activity is to bring people to Himself so
that they might see Him and enjoy Him
and fellowship with Him.
Now, usually we don't stop to think what
that implies.
That is very vain of God.
Isn't it?
Only vain is a bad word.
It has bad connotations.
God must have a very high regard for
Himself to think that the death of His
Son is worth it to bring people into
His presence.
If I were to do that, you would
think I was very, very arrogant.
But that's the gift God wants to give
us precisely because the psalmist says, in your
presence there is fullness of joy, at your
right hand there are pleasures forevermore.
So God's goal for His people is not
prestige, it's not wealth, it's not even health,
it's the contemplation of and the fellowship with
Himself.
And now we're on the brink of what
for me was a tremendous discovery which I
made about...
well, I made half of it about 1968
and the other half 1974.
And let me take you into this discovery
with me.
To be supremely loving, God must give us
what is best for us, what is going
to bring us most delight.
Namely, He must give us Himself.
But what do we do when we get
what is best, when we get something that
brings us terrific delight?
We praise it.
When a little baby comes into the world,
especially if it comes in easy and doesn't
get all bent out of shape like a
banana, you'll look at it and you'll say,
Oh, look at that head, it's so round.
And his little nose is so out there.
No, not like this.
And his little hands are so big.
And look at all that hair.
And you just try to think of ways
to praise this little baby because we love
to praise what we delight in.
We praise our lovers when they've been gone
a long time and we think of all
kinds of creative ways to say, Your eyes
are like the sky and your hair is
like silk and you are beautiful to me.
And if we couldn't say it, we'd be
really frustrated.
And for those of you who are sportsmen,
you just tell me what you do when
your team is down by three runs in
the bottom of the ninth and somebody hits
a grand slam.
You're off your seat and we call that
cheering, but another word for it when you're
in church is praise.
Or to use one other example, I think
there's another group here that might take more
to this.
How many have taken a boat ride down
the St. Croix in the autumn and praised
the colors of the trees and groped for
words to give expression to the delight that
flows through the eye into the heart because
of that scenery.
But my great discovery was this.
Not so much that we praise what we
enjoy.
That was discovery enough.
But that the joy is not complete until
the praise is part of it.
Praise is not merely tacked on like a
duty or a compliment.
It is the joy in consummation.
You would be frustrated if you were not
allowed to speak of the joy you have
in whatever it is that you delight in.
Now I'm going to read a section from
the book of Psalms that C.S. Lewis
wrote called Reflection on the Psalms because this
embodies the solution as I found it to
my dilemma.
Listen to what he says and see if
it doesn't help you as much.
He says, The most obvious fact about praise,
whether of God or anything, strangely escaped me.
I thought of it in terms of compliment,
approval or the giving honor.
I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously
overflows into praise unless something like shyness or
the fear of boring others is deliberately brought
in to check it.
The world rings with praise.
Lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favorite poet,
walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favorite
games, praise of weather, wines, dishes, actors, horses,
colleges, countries, historical personages, children, flowers, mountains, rare
stamps, rare beetles, even sometimes politicians and scholars.
My whole more general difficulty about the praise
of God depended on my absurdly denying to
us as regards the supremely valuable what we
delight to do, what we indeed cannot help
doing about everything else we value.
I think we delight to praise what we
enjoy because the praise not only merely expresses,
but completes the enjoyment.
It is its appointed consummation.
It's not out of compliment that lovers keep
on telling one another how beautiful they are.
The delight is incomplete until it is expressed.
And that's the key.
We praise what we enjoy because the delight
in God is incomplete until it is expressed
in praise or in witness.
If we were not allowed to speak of
what we value or celebrate what we delight
in, we would not have full joy.
Therefore, if God truly loves us and aims
to bring us full and complete joy in
the age to come and a foretaste in
this age, He must make it His aim
not only to do us good, but to
bring Himself praise.
Not because He needs to shore up any
weakness or compensate for some deficiency, but because
He loves us and He wants to complete
our joy.
And that can only happen in praising Him,
the most beautiful of all beings.
So, in conclusion, God is the one being
in all the universe for whom seeking His
own praise is the most loving act.
No man can say that.
If you make it your aim to seek
your praise, you will wind up being unloving.
But God, precisely in making His goal the
seeking of His own praise, is loving.
For Him, self-exaltation is the highest virtue.
When He does all things, as Ephesians 1
says, for the praise of His glory, He
is preserving for us and offering to us
the one thing which will provide ultimate satisfaction
for our deepest longings.
Praise the Lord.
Let everyone who has breath praise the Lord.