As we continue in our journey, it seems cliche to me sometimes
when I'm told to rejoice. I thought of the text yesterday
that this is the day that the Lord has made. I will rejoice
and be glad in it. Isn't that strange? Isn't that strange? That that
has become cliche. What do I mean? It's just normal
dialogue, everyday niceties. We have come to a place in our
culture where even unbelievers, unconverted, unregenerate people
have a sense of spirituality. Yes, this is the Lord's day.
Like the Lord is good all the time and all the time. The Lord is good. Now, beloved,
I think if we're honest, I think we must say to ourselves, I'm
not glad. I'm not rejoicing. And when we
do, oftentimes we're in a temporary state of happiness because somebody
has said something that maybe gave us a smile, made us laugh,
given us some good news. But if we're really honest, we're
gonna back out of that emotionally, psychologically, and we're gonna
go, I'm not really rejoicing. I'm not really glad. Because
rejoicing and glad is not the status quo. Rejoicing and gladness
is not par. And it's certainly not subpar.
Rejoicing is akin to what happens when we're watching a sporting
event and our team scores, and our team wins, when our children
earn an award, when we see a great, amazing act of heroism, and we feel excited about it.
That's what we've come to think rejoicing is. Rejoicing is greater
than that. I think that's par. I think that's
the mundane, that's the normal. In the secular way and in the
fleshly way and in the worldly way in which we find joy and
excitement and gladness and we express that, that's rejoicing.
Rejoicing is to express our gladness. Rejoicing is to be grateful.
Rejoicing is to be settled. Rejoicing is to have a soul that
smiles no matter what. So who's rejoicing? Are you? Am I? Well, beloved, I'll be honest
with you. I don't think the world rejoices.
I don't think the church really rejoices as a norm. Because when we come together
and we come from the weak, that we've just had. Now, this is
day one of a new week. You realize that? Now, this is
not the weekend. This is the beginning of a new week. This is Sunday.
Every calendar in the world, this is day one. The first day
of the week. We all come together from the
week we've just had, and it could have been pleasant, it could
have been fun, we could have had great experiences, we could have had
some hard times, we could have been tired, we could have had
energy, we could have been healthy, we could have been sick, we could
have had all sorts of things going on, but beloved, I promise
you, there's been good, bad, and ugly. There's been times
of joy, times of pain, there's been things, it depends on what
we look at too. Sometimes our life is perfect, but we tend
to want to feed our hearts and minds garbage. It's hard to watch the news right
now, even spell the word joy. It's hard to pump gas and not
kick and curse. It's hard to look around and
go, wow. Why? Because this world is not
good. Yet we are in it. We are in a place where we're
told to be glad We're told to rejoice so that
when we come together and we have the music leader, you know,
singing songs of joy and gladness, all I have is Christ! Woo-hoo! And a mortgage and bills and
back pain and frustration and kids that don't listen and oh,
you know. Why don't we add that stanza?
Why don't we add that stanza? All I have is Christ and a whole
bunch of crap on top. That's the honesty of it all,
right? I shouldn't have said that word, I'm sorry. All you
parents are going, now I'm gonna wash your mouth out. Sorry. But that's what it is, it's just
a bunch of junk. We got a lot of junk, so how
is it that all we have is Christ? How is it that it feels normal
to come in after a week like we've had good, bad, or indifferent,
and then have somebody stand up here and go, rejoice! Ain't
it great to be joyful in the house of the Lord? And it just
excites us, and then, you know, we're like, yeah, we're faking
it. Or we feel a little bit of something, and we call that the
spirit. It's not. If you're feeling something,
it's not the spirit. The spirit's gonna teach you
something. God is in the business of teaching us something. then we might feel something.
But the feeling is not our foundation. I'm not denying that we can feel
joy. So what do we do with that? We're
told to be glad. We're commanded to rejoice. Yet as Baptists, we're sort of
stodgy. And some people say, well, you're
not rejoicing at all. The louder the organ, the more depressing
the music, right? That's what some people think.
It's not about that. It's about the truth. Rejoicing
is something that God settles. Rejoicing is the outflow and
the work of God, the Holy Spirit, as he teaches us. And some of
us think, well, I already know these things. Well, yeah, we
might know things, but are we intimately involved in that knowledge?
Are we with Christ every day? Are we in his word every day?
No, we're not. We're not. And you may think that I am in
the Word so much that I don't have time to bathe and eat. But
as you can see, I'm not nasty or malnourished. Because we do other things. And
we're not in the Word nearly enough. And then we wonder where
our joy is, we wonder where our intimacy is, we wonder we're
on a supernatural work of God, but yet the word of God is where
we find that intimacy. And friends, just like I said
this last week, we can watch a movie with a character that
we enjoy who acts out a false narrative that never existed,
even if it's based on true events. It's never accurate. And we lose
ourselves in that. I was watching a movie this past
week and It was a movie about an inner city impoverished area
and this young girl was being harassed and almost attacked
and somebody saved her. And I thanked God that she was
okay. And then immediately I went,
I just thanked God for this plot. Isn't that ridiculous? But that's
what we do. We just sort of escape. Friends, I think we do the same
thing in our faith. I think we come to church sometimes to try
to pretend that we're not in the world. I think we come to
church sometimes and we're trying to figure out how to act the
part. I think we come to church sometimes where we're stubbornly
thinking That everybody else is where
we want to be, but we're going to have to pretend to be where
everybody else is. And the truth is none of us are
anywhere near where we ought to be, but we're absolutely positively
where God has us. And so our rejoicing is in spite
of who we are. Our rejoicing is in spite of
how we feel. Our rejoicing is in spite of
what's true in the world. Our rejoicing is in spite of
anything that we are experiencing. Our rejoicing is in spite of
our own joy. Our rejoicing, as Peter would
say, is often inexpressible. I mean, think about it for a
second. Inexpressible. And filled with joy. Our joy
is often inexpressible. That's what he says in 1 Peter
1. Though we have to deal with these things, we have to suffer
the way we do, we are lamenting, we are weeping, we are wasting
away, as Paul would say to the Corinthians, 2 Corinthians 3
and 4. But yet we're not destroyed. We're not abandoned. And though
we are on a hellacious experience of life in the ship that doesn't
seem to be a cruise for enjoyment, our joy is complete in the knowledge
of Christ given by the power of God. Our faith is powerless,
but the one to whom it points is powerful. And the reason I start out with
that is because In 1 Timothy 1, Paul, as we get into next
week, is going to say about how thankful he is for who he is
in Christ. And most importantly, he's thankful
to Christ for what he's done for Paul. And then he's also
thankful that he has been called to suffer and pour himself out
for the sake of the Gentiles, that they may know this same
joy. But you don't find any practical teaching in Paul or Peter or
James on how to get out of trouble and how to stay out of pain and
how to avoid suffering. As a matter of fact, you get
the exact opposite. You get the exact opposite. You are told
in this instruction as we glean from it and are taught by it
that these apostles told these people in the first century,
these saints as we call them, to endure. I mean, you don't
have to endure bliss. Oh, somebody just gave me a million
dollars. I guess I'll have to accept that. You know. A new car. Oh, gosh,
now I've got to wash and change the tires. I mean, no, that's
not what we do. We jump up and down. We fall
and break our leg, and then we, you know, when our leg heals,
we drive our new car. Somebody gives us a free car.
We don't endure joy. We endure suffering. We endure
hardships. We endure pain. We endure burdens. We endure heaviness. We're not
picking up marshmallows and we're working out. Might be growing
out, but we're not working out. We're not enduring heaviness.
So the whole idea of endurance is to hold fast, to maintain
course, to not fall under the pressure. So this is the teaching
of the apostles to the first century Christians who, in most
of their lives, saw Jesus. Did you imagine being able to
say, yeah, I saw Jesus live one time? Week after I watched the
Eagles in concert, you know? I mean, he was out there teaching.
I didn't even have to have tickets, they just let me in. I mean,
this was the context of the first century church. A lot of those
people would be able to say to their children and grandchildren,
I was there at the Passover when Jesus fed 5,000 people. I knew
Paul. I knew Barnabas. Paul was horrible,
man. He had Timothy killed. You remember
Timothy? Cousin of them and all down the street. Yeah, man. I
mean, he killed that guy. because he just quoted the Old
Testament. He stoned him to death. I mean, that's had some clout,
right? Here's a guy talking about Jesus.
Here's a guy learning from the guy talking about Jesus. Here's
the guy that knew Jesus. Who you gonna listen to? Well, beloved, the 12 walked with Jesus, and
they were miserable. So what are we looking for? Are
we living a fool's errand? Are we lying to ourselves and
thinking we come and we're gonna rejoice and be glad? Are we pretending
to be glad? Don't pretend to be glad. Don't hide the truth
of what you're experiencing in life. And anyone who can't accept
the truth that you are a downtrodden soul in need of ministry and
most of all mercy, they're not your friends anyway. And they're
not gonna give you anything but a hard time. And you're under
no obligation to that. So there's some practical illustrations
of what the Bible would teach. But press into the pain and press
into the suffering not in your own strength and your ability.
We don't train to be able to endure. We rest. And that resting
is what God permits and what God produces and what God provides
in the gospel of Christ. And so here we're told to be
glad and to rejoice and we're looking for that, right? You
know, the cults will knock on your door and they'll say, hey,
I want to talk to you a little bit about peace. That's their
stick. What do you think? Would it be
nice to have peace? Now see, this is a good time.
Somebody knock on your door and say, wouldn't you like to have peace?
So whether there's a war going on or an economic problem or
a pandemic, if you're a parent, you're thinking, yes, In the
best of times, would you like to have peace? Yes, I'd like
to have peace. You're taking my children, okay. Are you taking my neighbor? Are you
taking my spouse? Get them out of here, I want peace. Now then, what do they do? Well,
I wanna talk to you about peace. And everybody likes to hear about
peace. I mean, every beauty pageant in the world, every star that
ever got a crown, we're gonna talk, I wanna see world peace.
Every politician will bring priests, but what do they do? He brings
a sword. Because when we rest in the peace and the grace that
comes through Christ alone, it offends the world at large, especially
the religious world. To rest in Christ is offensive
to the masses. It's offensive to the religious.
It's offensive to the self-righteous. It's offensive to the heady.
It's offensive to the professional. Timothy wasn't a professional,
Paul wasn't a professional. And last week we ended up in
verse 11 there. And Paul was saying in 1 Timothy
chapter 1 that the law should be understood and used lawfully
and good. And that it was laid down for
the disobedient, for the guilty, for those who deserve death. And those who do anything else
that's contrary to sound doctrine in accordance, listen to this
verse 11, in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the
blessed God. Now we've already talked about
stewardship several times. We know that Paul is a steward
of the gospel. We are a steward of the gospel.
We're a steward of the law of God. We're a steward of the righteousness
of God. We're a steward of the message of Christ. We're a steward
of one another. We're a steward of our own lives.
This does not belong to us. Our lives are not our own. We've
been purchased. So now we see in the Bible this
little phrase that I think as it turned in Timothy's mind,
it made clear sense to him. So when Paul said, are those
who live and act in any means, in any way, or any activities
or whatever, that's contrary to sound doctrine, to sound teaching,
in their lifestyle, and he's already talked about those who
teach things that are contrary to sound teaching, doctrinally,
and I can't stand the fact that we use that word to mean theology,
but theologically, the teaching about who Christ is and the teaching
about how we ought to live. It's doctrine. The word doctrine
literally means teaching. That's all it means. And then
we can turn it into something else and build it. There's the
doctrine of economics, okay, for those of us who are into
that stuff. It's not found in the Bible, though we can find
about the economy in the Bible and see how we are stewards of
that, which God has granted us and so on and so forth. The point
is, When Paul said the word in accordance with the gospel, and
here's what I want you to focus on this morning, the gospel,
what is that? The good report. That's what that means, and a
literal translation would be the good report of the glory
of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted. Now for those of you who have
gone through John with us, we're gonna restart John in a couple
of months. We're gonna just keep going through John for the rest
of our lives. I'm joking, we're not gonna do that, but I would
love to preach out of John again. So I just do it to myself every
day. But glory. We're looking for joy, we're
looking for rejoicing, we come together, we have a reason to
rejoice, and the reason we are able to rejoice is because we
have a blessed God who is glorious. I mean, We use that word now,
what? We use the word glory all the
time, don't we? Glory! Have you ever had anybody
say that to you in public? Just out in the market? Glory,
I do too. I'm like, what you talking about?
It scares you, doesn't it? Because these aren't, people
don't say, it's not like, glory. You know, people don't say stuff
like, they don't use that word like that. It's like, yeah, like
Trey's like, it's good, glory! You know, he put his hands up
stretching, I'm like, yeah, there you go. That's what they do, and they're
so excited, they get out of the gas pumps, and they're doing
a little moonwalk. Glory, glory! You've seen them. You've not
seen that guy? Okay, we'll have to get you out more. Levi, you
know what I'm talking about. I mean, you know, and everywhere
you go, every town you go to, there's always gonna be somebody.
If you stay long enough, I've been in Short Pump, Virginia,
at a gas pump, and some dude saw a sticker on my car that
had reference to something biblical, and he said, glory! I'm like,
no, it's James. But we use it. Or we'll say glory
be to God. What does that mean? Do we even
know what it means? Do we comprehend what God, through
Paul, was teaching Timothy? Or is that turning in our mind
in the same way? What does it mean? Beloved, I
think that we will find the settledness of our soul and the rejoicing
and the gladness of our heart when we comprehend the terms
that are necessary for us to embrace what scripture is teaching
us. And so for the sake of our own
joy, we need to arrest these words. We need to understand
the gospel of glory is not just a cool way of talking about the
message of Christ. It's an emphasis. And I do, I'm
glad we have the word gospel, but it is a transliteration of
a very strange archaic language that doesn't even translate into
our vernacular at all. Godspell. G-O-D-S-P-E-L-L. Godspell. And that's how you'd
say that. What does it mean? The good speak. God. G-O-D. Good. That's what it means. Gospel. So we have gospel because
that's the closest thing we have in our language as they continue
to change the term. The Greek word is evangelum. Or as we say in English, evangel.
It's gospel. We have the word gospel, but
we don't know what it means. We're just thinking, oh, that's,
you know, 1 Corinthians, this, that, the other, this is that,
the gospel. All that God has revealed concerning
Christ is the good report. All that God has revealed concerning
himself is the good report. When God and when Jesus preaches
to the multitudes in Matthew's gospel, we see Even the term for gospel, evangel,
we see it used when Jesus is preaching wrath. So there's the
gospel of wrath and the gospel of grace. The good report of
God's redemption and the good report of God's justice and the
good report of God's wrath and the good report of God's mercy.
Because everything that God reveals is a good report. But when we
talk about the gospel of Jesus Christ, it's specifically dealing
with the good report of God redeeming His people alone in the person
and through the person and through the work of Jesus Christ for
His own glory. So we've got two words there
that are discombobulated in our own vernacular. They're discombobulated. What does that mean? Exactly. Completely Out of sorts. We don't grasp it because we're
so used to the terms and our own understanding of the terms
that we've never really defined them. Glory. What is glory? So if it's the good report of
the glory of God, what does it mean? We just, didn't we sing
it a couple of weeks ago? I will glory in my redeemer.
And so there's a lot there. But what is the glory of God?
See, the Bible alone will give us what we need in order for
our minds to be pressed into the truth of what God has revealed.
And we will understand things theologically as we read the
Bible a lot easier than trying to learn theological things then
go to the Bible to prove them. We were talking this morning
about how, you know, with all the experts on YouTube, we can
do a lot of things on our own, right? Brain surgery. A lot of stuff like that. It's
a joke. But it doesn't mean that we know
what we're doing. We're just following the example. I mean,
if I'm taking out this and taking out this and I'm going step by
step, oh no, they didn't put it back together. I have to watch
it backward. You got a piece or two left over, just throw
it away. Try to crank it up. I don't know anything about certain
types of electrical things. I don't even have the equipment
to test certain radio things, but I can take apart certain
radios and get them working according to the one, two, threes. I don't
know anything about how it works or what it's doing. I just know
I followed the path and I got to where we are. There's the
Christian life for most of us. There's our doctrine for most
of us. There's our theology for most of us. So you listen to
me, and you go, yep, that's right, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, I'm
gonna remember that, and it's ditto, ditto, ditto, or you read
something else. But are you learning? Are you learning where our gladness
and our joy come from? Are you learning about the glory
of God? So there are a lot of things,
but we need to make some distinctions in this idea that God simply
has revealed himself in his word, in the scriptures, and alone
in the scriptures, we find sufficient hope, sufficient understanding
of God, sufficient promises there, sufficient. And not only is it
sufficient, it's authoritative. so that when I can go back with
any idea or philosophy or any conclusion whatsoever or any
application in any way for the life of the believer and I can
come back to the Bible in its context and show it, then we
have authoritatively come to the right conclusion. But don't
we go backward? Don't we fix a couple of things
that we've seen on YouTube and then we become the guy that can
fix it? And then we start a website, hey, I'll fix your radios. $9.95,
send them to me. And it works for a while until
we get that one radio that there's something else wrong. Wait a
minute, the doohickey and the shroomadiggy is not the problem.
It's the thingamabob. I don't have a video on the thingamabob.
Sorry, I'll take this to somebody else. Can you imagine going to
your doctor and you had a sore throat and you had an earache
in your right ear? And he could help you. And then
the next week you had a runny nose and an earache in your left
ear. And he goes, I don't do left ears. Sorry. There's our theology. There's
our understanding of glory. There's our understanding of
the word of God, the gospel of the glory of the blessed God,
Jesus Christ, the Lord of heaven, God almighty, the father and
the spirit. Glory. What does it mean? Let's
make some distinctions for a moment. Let's talk about glory, if you
will. If we go to John chapter 1, we're
going to flip through some things. You can turn there if you want
or you know it, you can listen. John chapter 1, it tells us,
the scripture tells us what? The scripture says that in the
beginning, was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word
was God. The Word became flesh and lived
among us, tabernacled, took up camp, and we have seen His glory. So if we want to understand the
glory of God, the first thing we need to understand as New
Testament believers, as the Church of Jesus Christ gathered together,
then we need to understand that what the Bible teaches is that
God's glory is completely visible to us. And it became flesh. We have
seen the glory of God as of the only Son from the Father,
And this is the namesake of our assembly, full of grace and truth. This is it. The glory. No one has ever seen God. As
a matter of fact, ironically, no, it's not even a coincidence,
John would say, for from his fullness we all received grace
upon grace. This is verse 16 of John 1. And in verse 17, for
the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through
Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, the
one and only God, who is at the Father's side. He, the one and
only God, at the Father's side has made God known. That's what
it says. And if you want some deeper understanding
of that, or you want an hour and 20 minutes of that, you can
go look at our sermons from several years ago in John chapter one.
But we see the glory of God revealed in Jesus Christ. Some of my favorite
passages, 2 Corinthians chapter four verse six. And we can talk
about that one. For God who said, let light shine
out of darkness, What is that God? That's the God of creation,
the God that separates things, the God that reveals himself
through creation and his power to put things where he wants
them and call them good. The one who said, let light shine
out of darkness has what? Has shown in our hearts to give
us the light and the knowledge of the what? The glory of God.
So we know about the glory of God, we know what it is, but
what's the next phrase? What's the qualifier? What's
the explanation? The glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
Now think about that for a second. The glory of God in the face
of Jesus Christ. So if we've seen, Jesus says, if you've seen
me, you've seen the Father. If you've seen me, I am the one
that comes down from heaven. I am the bread of life. I am the living water. I am. And then they picked up
stones to kill him. because he made himself out to
be equal with I Am. Not just saying he was God or
a God, but the one and only God. The God that came from heaven.
The one that was sent in the image of the Father, doing the
work of the Father, preaching the words of the Father, knowing
all that the Father knows and doing all that the Father does.
That that I see the Father do, I do. This is the glory of God. So what does it mean? It means
revealed. Glory means, very simply, to see something as it is. Now think about that for a second. Where do you see that in Scripture? Many, many places, but there's
a lot of things where you see. The psalmist would say, what,
the heavens? declare you as you are. All right,
so let's use that definition. We can see God for who he is
in the heavens. We can see the stars and the
planets and the earth and all the creation. The creation declares
who you are. Is that true? Yeah, it's true.
What does it declare about God? What part of his glory are we
seeing? We're seeing him as powerful,
creator, sovereign, ruler, king, authority, life. See, John won,
and him was the light of life. All things were created. by Him,
nothing that was created He did not create. And Colossians is
the same thing. He created all things. So we see God and something
about God revealed as He is in creation. But the Bible never
says that creation, Romans chapter one doesn't say that we see that
there is God, God is, look at Him, I see Him, look at that
bush out there, look at that bird out there, and I do a lot
of that. Guys, I'm a freak about just looking at stuff. and enjoying
knowing that my God created it. Just being in awe of what he
made. Birds, and cats, and dogs, and butterflies, and fire ants. I like to watch fire ants. I'm
just weird like that. Look at that. I used to know
if I'm outside and I've got some food, let's drop a hot dog, see
how long it takes him to get that thing. Not long at all, okay.
Wonder if that was my foot, you know? No, no, I've never done
that, but I thought about it. that creates an image of who
God is in our mind and we know something about Him. But Paul
says in Romans 1 that that understanding of God, that revelation, that
exposure, let's use that word for a minute, that God exposing
Himself as Creator, it just adds to our guilt. Because we know
that we know that there is God and God is, and that he has done
the work of creating things. We're not silly, but what we
do is we know that, but we suppress it through any other means. And
what is the means of suppressing that? We try to find a deeper
understanding of things. We go to the texture of things. We go to the root of things.
We begin to cross-pollinate and deal with things in a way that's,
you know, maybe I'm like God. I can change this plant. Or maybe
we get to the deeper study of stuff and we start looking at
cells. I mean, could you imagine 500 years ago, 1,000 years ago,
telling somebody about cells? You know, you're made up of a
lot of little things. They'd have burned you at the stake. And they did, a lot
of good scientists. And then we got to the sailor
level and that wasn't good enough. Now we're getting to the level
of, and it's old news, this is old science, but DNA, the very
building blocks of the cell, the very building blocks, the
road map of what makes it, it. Wow, creation's amazing, there
is no God. You see, that's what we do. Or worse, creation's amazing,
I know there is a God, I'm safe, He's a God. And he loves me and
all me and every me and only me. I mean, and my God does this
and my God says that and my God believed this. Well, where'd
you get that at? Well, you know, mama said. Grandma always told
me. I don't think your grandma was
Paul. And if she was, she didn't write that down. So God's glory,
even though it can be seen in creation, is not salvific, is
it? That revelation of God, that exposure of Him is not sufficient
for us to go, there is a God, I believe. What do you believe?
You believe what's obvious. I can believe I'm Superman, but
I'm not gonna survive a jump off the building. Our belief
is not going to do anything. It's not gonna muster some supernatural
work. It's not gonna make the creator
of the heavens change things. No, it's not enough. So if God is exposed, he's seen
as he is, we know how to esteem him. This is all about what glory.
Glory is about God's reputation, showing who he is and what he's
done. I like to use the word essence. The glory of God is
the epitome of his essence. It's seeing him for everything
that he is always and has been. And it always reminds me of the
time on Sinai when Moses was told to take by the power of
God manifested in Egypt, the people of God to get them out
of imprisonment. This is a picture of God's sovereign
election and His sovereign grace to create a people who were not
a people, make them a people, call them His own, establish
a promise and a contract with them that He would meet and then
put them in the midst of the world and let them go into slavery
as a rod of correction because they can't meet their end of
the covenant. And the point is not to show
that men are unable, though it does, the point is to show that
only He is able. So God is revealed in the shadows
of the Old Testament. And so God's glory is revealed.
Romans 9, right? It alludes to the reality of
what we learned during this time of Pharaoh and Egypt. where God
says, I will raise Pharaoh up, and I'm gonna change some words
to point out the issue here, so that I may reveal my glory
in him, my power in him, my essence in him, that my reputation may
be poured out through my working with Pharaoh. Okay? Another way of looking at glory
is fame. What are you? Renowned, to be
renowned, to be known. So God is renowned for creation,
but it won't save us. God is renowned for isolating
the people out of the world and calling them his own. But then
what happened? They sinned and then God put
them in captivity. And then God promised to take
them out of captivity, to separate them again, to move them into
a place of promise, a place of life, a place of prosperity,
a place where they would live. And by His power, He revealed
His glory in His destruction of these plagues of destruction
and punishment. And eventually, when God would
take away the final, or put the final plague in, the Pharaoh
relented and said, let them go. And then he changed his mind,
right? So then God, in His power, revealed His glory for 40 years
in the wilderness, providing bread that came from where? Heaven. And it wasn't a bread that we
could store up in our storehouses. It perished. You ate it, or it
perished. You had to depend upon God's
promise of providing your sustenance as an Israelite in the wilderness
every single day. No water, you had to wait on
the Lord. Moses would speak or hit a rock,
you see, when you needed water. And there was this waiting, there
was this resting, there was this wilderness experience of God
revealing his glory and his promises and his power, exposing himself
for who he is. and all these happenings. And they get to Sinai shortly
after this exodus. And they've remembered what they've
seen, they've remembered what they've heard, and they see the
tempest. I mean, just think about this for a second. of Sinai, the essence of God's
glory, it being exposed for who he is at Sinai was a horrifying
thing. And we really see what the scripture
teaches us, right, in Exodus, and then we see what the scripture
teaches us in Paul's writing to the Hebrews in that letter
there by name where he talks about that we're not there. That
it was such a horrible sight that the instruction came down
from the mountain that people did not want to hear anymore.
They couldn't bear it. The instruction. What was the
instruction? The commandment that if an animal touches the mountain,
kill it. If anything touches this mountain, it should be stoned.
Kill it. Because I'm God and nobody approaches
me until I let them. Nobody approaches me until I
expose my righteousness. It must die. Anybody approaching
God without his righteousness dies. So Moses goes up on the
mountain and what happens, you know, he goes back down and they've
not only abandoned God, they've mocked him. Worshipping a golden
calf. They didn't have supply chain
issues back then. Didn't take long. But that's not the point I wanna
make. The point I wanna make is God's glory was revealed in
that. But what does Moses ask for? Moses asked for something
that comes to the glory. The gospel, the glory of the
blessed God. Moses wants to see that. Moses
wants to see God for all that He is. And what does God say? You can't. I can't show you what
I am. Because if I reveal what I am
to you, I've got to kill you. Because I'm not like you. I'm
not like anything. I am only like me. That's what
holy, holy, holy means, by the way. And there's nothing that you
can see with the eyes you have that won't cause you to die according
to the law that I just gave you. So God's glory is revealed in
the law. And so God says, Moses is like,
please, I want to see your glory. So God says, well, I'll tell
you what I'll do. I'll walk by. And as I walk by, you can see
the breeze and the shadow and the wind of the train of my robe. Now this is an expression. God's
not up there getting dressed. Matter of fact, he doesn't have,
he's just saying, when I walk by, I'll let you glimpse at where
I've been. That's basically what it is.
I'll let you see where I just came from, and you can look at
the place in which I was, and you get a little glimpse. And
it overwhelmed him. It overcame him. So much so that
his face physically shone. And he came down and he was bright. Like me. Pale. He was shining. And they said, cover your face.
We can't stand it that you've looked where God has been and
you are reflecting something we can't look at! I mean, think
about that for a second. You can't look at it. See, we're
so endowed with the arrogance of our culture that we think
we can just, hey God, hey big man, hey old man in the upstairs,
I need something. Yeah, I know you're busy, but
come on down here, I got a problem. I mean, that's the attitude.
Never me, yes me. Yes me, yes you, we. In our culture, we have this
attitude that God is on the hook for us, that he's a 911 call
away and he gets paid well, so he better answer. That's not
the point. And the people didn't want to
look at Moses who reflected the glory of God. What did it look like? I don't
want to assume or speculate. But I think that the whole fullness
of what Moses peered into was a reflection of what the cross
accomplished. Now think about it for a second.
God's glory is revealed in the prophets. God's glory is revealed
in righteousness, in justice, in creation, in power. All these
things. None of them will save you. None
of them will save His people. So God has said the very core
of my essence, the very nature of my nature. I'm going to expose
the most incredible aspect of who I am and what I am through
Jesus Christ, who was an ordinary, ugly, Palestinian man. I think all men are ugly, so
I'm not being sexist, or racist in any way. Some of you ladies,
I'm not all men. Yeah, we're all ugly, okay? To
each other, I guess. This Jesus, he didn't come out
like an Adonis. He didn't come out shining with
the, you know, he's not the Uncle Billy that we often see depicted,
the pale skin and beautiful flowing permed hair and blue eyes and
knocking on the door because he's trying to ask you if you're
interested in learning about peace. No, that's not him. This Bible says he was not much
to look at. He was just a normal, average Joe in the flesh. but
he was God. So it's not about how pretty
Jesus was, or how masculine he was, or how tough he was, or
how good-looking he was, or how in shape he was. It wasn't the
fact that his voice sounded different. Oh, we know that's God. Every
time he talks, lightning strikes. Hello. Something different about
you. I know. What do you want to eat? Oh,
this is my son. I mean, you know, I mean, we're
trying to go to McDonald's. Eat unto my glory. Can you see
it? It's not like that. The fullness
and the essence of everything that God says was most important
about him was what? Who the person of Jesus Christ
was and what he was about to accomplish and for whom. So the
good news, the gospel, of the exposure of who God really
is. This is what really matters.
I mean, it's good that we know all these other things about
who God is, but God has said the highest of all His glorification,
all His glorified person, and I may not be saying that correctly,
His essence that He wants to reveal specifically and particularly
to His people alone is redemption. Is reconciliation. is salvation. This special revelation is the
glory of God in redemption. And this is what God has deemed
as His ultimate revealed purpose. He alone separates. He alone
saves. In accordance with the gospel
of the glory of the blessed God. And not everybody is going to
see it, beloved. A lot of us have a lot of information that
we know about God, but only those who have been shown by the power
of the Spirit of God are able to see God for who He really
is and to know Him intimately because He first loved us. And so this working of grace,
this working of mercy, this working of love, all these are synonyms,
is what God has done that reveals Himself most preciously, most
perfectly. Which includes His wrath, His
justice and reprobation and all these other things because by
design, when we talk about God's mercy, these things are on the
hook. Why would He need to redeem a
people? Because we're sinful. We deserve to die. Why doesn't He just redeem everybody?
Because He chose the payment for our sins and He established
that payment and it has been paid. I want you to understand
that about the glory of God in Christ Jesus. It is a finished
revelation. It is a completed exposure. The Son of God exposed in His
humanity to shame, and to hatred, and to death, and to abuse, and
to ridicule, and to blaspheme. And that's not even the bad part. The bad part is that He was exposed
to the righteous justice of God's wrath. And that God poured His
wrath upon His Son so that the sins of His people would be paid
for forevermore. So as we've always said, the
gospel of the glory of God is the finished work of Christ who
substituted himself in righteousness for our unrighteousness, in death
for our life, and it's finished. Faith knows it's finished. That's
what God does when He grants us faith. Our hope and our resting
is in what God has accomplished, not what God is trying to do.
God is not trying to do anything. God has done it all. God is not hoping for anything. God has decreed all that is and
will ever be. So we talk about sovereignty.
We talked about that a couple of weeks ago, even a little bit
last week. We have to, it was actually a video, we have to
remember God is not like us. He is set apart and so far away,
standard, that we are His creation. And nothing we can do can bring
us to Him, can bridge the gap. He has done everything and the
only thing that can bridge the two of us without death. And that is by killing His Son
Jesus Christ for us. For His people. For the elect
of God. Now sometimes it's hard for us
to grasp that but we teach it and we really talk about it a
lot. I referred to 2 Corinthians 4
earlier. Paul talks about this ministry
that he has been given. This is the last thing I'm going
to say, I promise. He says, therefore, having this ministry by the grace
of God, we do not lose heart. But what do we do? We renounce. We disavow. We put away disgraceful
things. We put away underhanded ways.
We refuse to practice cunning ways of getting people to hear
about God. Or subverted ways or incomplete
ways of revealing God. Because everybody can see God
in power, God in creation. Read the stories. We refuse to
tamper with God's Word. But what we do, is by open statement,
and we're going to launch pad into this as we continue into
Timothy's letter, Paul's letter to Timothy. Open statement of
the truth. We would commend ourselves to
everyone's conscience in the sight of God. And some people
say, well, if we don't say this, or we don't do that, or we don't
have this, or we don't go here, or we don't understand these
things, then we can't always communicate effectively. It's
not about our communication. It's about proclaiming the glory
of God in the good report of Himself as Redeemer of His people
through His Son, period, and then God supernaturally works
in that hearing of that story in the lives and the ears of
His people only, and gives them ears to hear when He's ready
and they believe. And they're settled. And the argument would be then,
well, what about people who don't see and don't hear? It's not
our concern. It's not our responsibility.
We don't give hearing. We don't argue people into faith. We don't debate. We don't debate. And when we win the debate, people
go, I never thought about that. By golly, I think I'll come to
Jesus. You don't come to Jesus. He comes
to you. How? Through the proclamation
of the gospel. It's completely backward. It's completely backward. The
way the culture has abused the truth. And this isn't new. I've been preaching this my whole
life, I guess. You know what I mean by that.
As long as we've been together. So if our gospel is veiled, It
is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case, and I'll leave
this alone contextually, and let's just take it for what it
says, in their case, the God of this world has blinded the
minds of unbelievers to keep them from seeing His
glory. The light of the gospel of the
glory of Christ. Who is the image of God? Now,
if I were the God of this world, who is the God of this world?
In that text, it gives credit to God the Father. He sends delusional spirits. He sends blindness. He sends
the devil. Do his bidding. Folks, don't get it wrong. The
devil's not running around destroying the work of God. He's doing the
work of God according to his purposes. I say, oh, that sounds
like a cult there. It's not, it's biblical. Oh, God gives him permission,
he's got free reign. He does not have free reign.
Nothing, listen to me, nothing happens outside the power and
the decree of God, nothing, nothing. What about nothing? But, no,
no but, nothing. If a gnat gets in my eye, so
the Lord wills. That's it. So we rest in the
will of the Lord, His provision, His power, His creation, which
points to the gospel, or we fight against Him. We kick against
the goats. We kick against the pricks. What
are those? The spikes that make the ox move,
sticks in there, hurts. Don't fight against them, just
go with it. But you can't do that unless
God's given you the eyes to see, the heart to rest, the knowledge
of His glory, which is revealed in Jesus Christ, and whom we
have life because of the shedding of His blood for the forgiveness
of our sins. Let's pray. We thank you, Lord, for your
ultimate revelation for your beautiful, good news in the face
of extreme, ugly circumstances. Lord, how is it that our joy
comes from such a macabre story that the perfect man, your son
in the flesh, was crushed and destroyed because of our guilt. Because Lord, you are wiser than
all. And your purposes shall reign. And so, Father, help us
to be settled. Even when we're shaken, help
us to be at peace, even when we are upside down. and feeling hopeless. Remind
us of your power and of your glory in Christ that even in
the worst of deaths, the worst of imprisonments, as your elect
beloved children, Father, we are able to be glad even when
we can't express it with our human faculties. So Lord, help
us to find that subtle difference. and help us to rest in the eternal
hope that we have in Christ. In His name we pray, amen. Let's take the Lord's table together.