Don't you love that phrase? In
him alone complete. Isn't it lovely when we're singing,
singing the gospel, singing the declaration of who the Lord Jesus
Christ is, singing God's words back to him. He says, this is where that word
comes from, you are complete in him, which is head of all
principality and power. How complete are we in him? According
to God, that word complete is exactly the same word that's
used in the previous verse for in him. the fullness of the God. How
full is the Lord Jesus Christ God? I and my Father are one, he says.
If you've seen me, you have seen God. How complete are we? It's a glorious, glorious declaration,
isn't it? The Gospel is declaring what
God has done and what God has finished, not what man has to
do to make it happen. And here, if you turn with me
in your Bible to John chapter 13, we have this most remarkable
night and this most remarkable statement of the Lord Jesus Christ.
John chapter 13 verse 31. And you know the context. They'd
had the last supper. The disciples' feet had been
washed, including Judas. And then it says in verse 21,
after Jesus has identified Judas as the betrayer, Satan entered
into him and the Lord says to Judas, you go out and do what
you're doing and do it quickly. The disciples didn't have a clue
what was going on. It's a remarkable testimony to
the way our God deals with fallen sinners in this world. that they
don't know, and neither do believers know. So we need to hold our
hand over our mouth when we stand, when we hear others stand in
judgment of other people. But here on this remarkable night,
he said in verse 30, having received the sop, the sop was just like
a little roll, spring roll that was dropped and dipped in a sauce
and you passed it around the table, and that's all the sop
is. After having received the sop, Judas went out immediately
and it was night. And the picture in John's Gospel,
of course, is that he had left the light and gone out into darkness. And what a dark, dark night it
was. When Judas had gone out, Satan
had entered into him. In John 8, the Lord Jesus spoke
of the people that Judas went to meet that night. This is where
he went to that night. He says in verse 44 of these
people, these religious leaders, these religious Christian denominational
leaders, the heads of Bible colleges and the rulers of the church
in that day, he says, Your origin is of your father, the devil,
John 8.44, and the lust of your father you will do. That's exactly
what Judas was doing that night, and that's exactly what the other
men were doing that night. They were doing exactly what
they wanted to do. They had planned this for three and a half years,
this particular night. And it speaks of Satan, he was
a murderer from the beginning and an abode not in the truth,
because there is no truth in him when he speaketh a lie, he
speaketh of his own, for he is a liar and the father of it. And then the Lord Jesus Christ,
having spoken to these people, makes the most remarkable statement,
doesn't he? And because I tell you the truth, And because I tell you the truth,
you believe me not." We just have to leave the Lord's Word
sometimes and say, Amen. That's what he said, isn't it?
What's Satan's activities in this world? Satan's activities
is that of a liar. And a murderer, how does he kill
people and take them to hell with him? The first thing he
does is he comes along and he lies to them. And that's what
he did to the Eve in the Garden, and that's what he does to all
of us, we are all fallen. How dark that night was. how deep the fall of man is. They are in the very presence
of God Almighty. They have had three and a half
years of the most extraordinary miracles, the most extraordinary
teaching, and the most extraordinary life. He was the only person
who ever lived in perfect holiness and in perfect love. for three
and a half years and was perfectly examined all of that time. He at the very beginning of his
ministry was declared to be God and declared himself to be God
Almighty and he says, you now have three and a half years.
And at the end of the three and a half years, you'll have someone
who was with me and heard every private conversation I had and
saw every private act that I did. And you'll examine me. As you're
examining me, in Jerusalem at that time they were examining
the lambs for the Passover sacrifice and the Lord Jesus Christ was
examined. Judas had gone out. He'd gone
out to complete the betrayal of the Lord Jesus Christ. He'd
gone out to earn his reward, 30 pieces of silver. 30 pieces
of silver, the price of a slave. I'll sell God Almighty for 30
pieces of silver and have him murdered by you people. He'd
gone out to reveal his hatred of the Lord. He'd gone out to
reveal and to expose publicly his hypocrisy. He'd gone out
to fulfill exactly what God had ordained. And he's 100% responsible
and God is 100% God all the time. But in this extraordinary context,
in this hour of darkness. Now the Lord Jesus Christ is
God Almighty. So when those leaders of the
Sanhedrin were gathering down there in Jerusalem and they were
plotting and planning how they were going to get rid of the
Lord Jesus Christ and have him crucified in the way that maligned
his character the most. Let's strip him naked. Let's
have him flogged within an inch of his life. Let's have him hung
on a cross. But not just hung on a cross,
let's nail him to a cross so that when we prepare our sermons
for justifying ourselves as having done the work of God, we can
say, cursed is anyone that hangs on a tree. They plotted and planned
and schemed all of that. And who was there? Who heard
every word and who was a witness to every thought? The Lord Jesus
Christ. On that night when he knew what
Judas was going to do, he knew what was going to happen later
on in that evening in the garden and Judas would come along and
he'd betray the Son of God with a kiss. how dark and deep the darkness
of humanity is. You just need to go to the cross
and you need to go to the events around the cross. That's where
we see what sin is. That's where we see who God is.
But listen to what our Lord says at that moment. So he knew where
Judas was going. He knew every footstep he was
going to make all the way down there to meet with the Sanhedrin.
and plot a way that he can gather a little army together that night
and he can have the Lord Jesus Christ put to death so that they
can fulfil their religious obligations of maintaining the Passover and
maintaining their religious righteousness while they murdered someone and
broke every law that they had, broke every sense of moral justice Such is the wickedness of humanity.
But listen to what our Lord says in response to that in verse
31 and 32. We won't have much time to look
at it tonight, but today I'm sorry. But I want us to think
about this night and think about these events and I want us to
consider who we're talking about and consider what it is for Him
to be our God and for Him, I pray, to be our Saviour. Listen to
what he says in that hour of the deepest, deepest darkness.
He says, now, right now, at this moment, now, now is the Son of
Man glorified. Now is God glorified in him? The two are linked together,
aren't they? The glory of God and the glory
of the Lord Jesus Christ are linked together. God's glory
and the glory of Christ. are bound, inseparably bound. And then he goes on to say, if,
and he's not raising any possibility of a doubt there, this is one
of the ifs in the Bible and there are many of them, if and it is
so, is what it's saying. If God be glorified in him, God
shall also glorify him in himself, and shall straightway glorify
him." What a remarkable response to what he knew was happening,
and all that was happening was according to the foreordained
purpose of our God. I have said on many occasions
as you get closer to the cross you actually have more and more
references to glory in your Bible. Glory. You turn back over the
page to John chapter 12. He says when he knows that this
hour has finally come, he says in verse 27, now is my sole trouble
and what shall I say? Father save me from this hour. But for this cause, here we have
the cause of the Lord Jesus Christ coming into this world, but for
this cause came I unto this hour. And this is just the most wonderful,
wonderful response to troubled souls, isn't it? Isn't it wonderful
when your soul is troubled, you could say, as our Lord said,
Father, glorify your name. And I want to remind you that
the word name in the scriptures is the description of the character
of God Almighty. It's not just God. It's not just
Jesus. It is all of the very character
of God Almighty. Glory, the glory of our God. Listen to how he prayed in John
chapter 17, just turn over there briefly with me. He says in John
chapter 17 verse 1, he says, he lifted up his eyes to heaven
and said, The hour is come. He's speaking of this same hour
that he's speaking of in John 13. The hour is come, glorify
thy son that thy son also may glorify thee. The other thing that we need
as believers to be rejoicing in is that the glory of God in
the face of the Lord Jesus Christ is our comfort. The more glorious
he is, the more at peace God's children are with him. The higher
he is lifted up, the more we see him in his glory, the more
comforted we are. knowing that this glorious sovereign
God is the God who loved me, the God who gave himself for
me, the God who keeps me, the God who preserves me, the God
who brings his gospel to me. I'll just read it to you in 2
Thessalonians 1. Paul prayed for these people
in Greece in his day. He says, he prays always for
you that our God would count you worthy of this calling. He calls his people into his
glory and grace, doesn't he? He calls his people into a knowledge
of him and into fellowship and into relationship with him and
with each other as believers. He'd count you worthy and fulfill
all the good pleasure of his goodness and the work of faith
with power. 2 Thessalonians 1.11.12 This
is the reason, this is his prayer, this is what he sees as the evidence
and the result of this prayer. That the name of our Lord Jesus
Christ may be glorified in you, That's remarkable, isn't it?
If you ponder that for a little while, it'll burst your little
tiny brains to get that sorted, really. That the name of our
Lord Jesus, the character, the very being of our Lord Jesus
may be glorified in you. Sinner. In you. Listen to what else he goes
on to say. And you in him. according to the grace of our
God and the Lord Jesus Christ. I don't understand that. I'm
so pleased that God says just believe it because there is infinitely
more in that statement than we can possibly imagine. But it's
glorious, isn't it? And so throughout the New Testament
letters there's a continual reference to the glory of God and our gospel
is a gospel of the glory of God. It's a glorious gospel of the
glorious God. And I want us just to ponder
for a few minutes before we have the Lord's Supper, what is the
glory of God? What is the glory of God? He's
praying this, isn't he? He's declaring this, that in
this moment, he will be glorified all around this world at the
next, how many weeks? Another three or four weeks,
everyone will be singing, won't they? They'll be sending cards
to each other with the words of, Luke chapter 2 verse 14,
glory to God in the highest. That was the song of the angels
from heaven when the Lord Jesus Christ was born. Glory to God
in the highest and on earth peace and goodwill to men. And those
shepherds had the glory of God shine around them and they were
afraid. The very first thing that you
encounter in all the scriptures is when people are in the very
presence of the glory of aware of their creatureness, they are
aware of their frailty, because they've been made to be aware
of who they're in the very presence of. That's what Isaiah said,
didn't he? John chapter 12, Isaiah saw the
glory of God in the temple and the Lord Jesus Christ, His glory
filled the temple. And Isaiah heard those angels,
those cherubim singing, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. And what was the immediate response
of Isaiah? I'm undone. I'm a sinful man. I'm a sinful man. It literally means to be unraveled. Isaiah was a priest in the temple
of God, privileged beyond imagining. And he was just unraveled. All
of his righteousness was unraveled. All of his supposed knowledge
of God was completely unraveled. And exactly the same thing happened
to Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus. He was just dissolved,
as it were, as what he thought himself to be as a human being. He says, who are you? Who are
you, Lord? And then he immediately says,
what would you have me to do? He'd gone from being a king in
his own mind and ruling in his own life to meeting God. And that's what it is to meet
God in glory. And the glory of God shines so
brightly in the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we
know why he came. We know exactly why he came.
He says, for this cause came out of the world. He's come into
this world for his people as a sacrifice to bear their sins
before a holy God. The glory of God is the revelation
of the God of all glory and is only ever revealed to people
in the Lord Jesus Christ. God reveals himself to his people
and he only ever reveals himself to his people in the preaching
of the gospel. He will never reveal himself to people by lies
that are told about him. One of the things that I love
about that word glory is that it means in the Old Testament
it carried the notion of heaviness, of weight, that's the words that
sort of stand behind it, of worthiness, of honour. And so when God reveals himself
to people, they see the glory of God. They see the glory of
God as he shines upon his people. And the glory is a bit like the
word holiness, isn't it? Holiness is a glorious attribute
of God and all of the attributes of God shine over and on. Holiness shines over all of his
attributes. What sort of love does he have?
Holy love. What sort of that love does he
have? Glorious love. What sort of a being is he? What sort of a being is he? He's
a glorious being. And you think of every attribute,
his sovereignty, his absolute rule over all things is glorious
and holy. His wisdom could ever imagine a way where
God, the triune God, could take people like us and bring us into
his presence and embrace us and say that he's glorified in us
and we're glorified in him. What wisdom, what holy wisdom,
what What glorious wisdom. His justice
is holy. Everything about him. You can
add those as adjectives to all of the attributes of God and
you won't go wrong at all. It means weightiness. He's a
glorious person. He's the God who appears to people. And this night of all nights,
the night before the crucifixion, shows us that the Lord Jesus
Christ's glory and God's glory is going to be most clearly exhibited
in the death of his son on the cross. All of his attributes are most
clearly revealed. So our God appears in glory,
in great glory to his people and I just want us to consider
something of the weightiness of him and what it is for people
like us to be in his presence. In the Old Testament, the glory
of God appeared in the temple and the glory of God filled the
temple. In Isaiah's day, the glory of
God filled the temple. When Solomon made, the glory
of God filled the tabernacle that Moses made in the wilderness.
And the glory of God was shown in the most remarkable ways.
I just want to read a few verses so that we can get some idea
of what it is to come into the presence of God. And this is
the God. Simon and I lost a dear friend
some little time ago. A number of us have lost someone
that we were very close to just this last week. And when people
close their eyes here, they open them in the presence of this
God. And you don't change his character
by what you think about him. And God's people love his character
as he's revealed. But this is the night of sacrifice.
This is the night of Passover in John's Gospel. This is the
night when the Lord Jesus Christ reveals what it is to be God
and how God saves sinners in himself and by him bearing the
infinite wrath of Almighty God upon them. In Leviticus chapter
9, I'll just read the verses to you. I'd love for you to go
back and contemplate them further. But Aaron, having made these
first offerings and made an offering for himself, he goes into Verse
22, Aaron lifted up his hand toward the people and blessed
them and came down from offering the sin offering, which is a
picture of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the burnt offering, which
is a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the peace offerings,
which is a picture of what the Lord Jesus Christ achieved by
him being the sin offering and the burnt offering. And Moses
and Aaron went into the tabernacle of the congregation and came
out and blessed the people and the glory of the Lord appeared
unto all the people." Isn't that remarkable? The glory of the
Lord. And listen to what the glory is. And this is exactly
what was going to happen. These are Old Testament pictures
of what was going to happen on the cross this next morning.
And there came fire out from before the Lord in heaven. and
consumed upon the altar the burnt offering and the fat, which when
all the people saw, they shouted and fell on their faces." It's
a glorious picture, isn't it? Where did the fire come from?
Where did the fire? Which is a picture of God's expression
of His holy wrath against sin. It comes from heaven, doesn't
it? The altar in the temple was lit by a fire from heaven. And
when Solomon built a stone building and erected an altar, exactly
the same thing happened. The fire from God lit that. And I want us to read on because
now we need to see who God is and how holy he is. And two of
these people, these are, if you go back to Exodus 25 and 24,
you'll read that these people are the fourth The third and fourth most privileged
people in all of Israel, the sons of Levi, they are ordained
to be the priests of God, Nadab and Abihu. They had the most
remarkable privileges that they'd heard and seen and witnessed.
They'd seen God destroy a superpower with a man, with a stick, and
the presence of God with him. They had walked through the Red
Sea. They had seen a superpower's
army destroyed and buried. They had seen this fire that
we just read about come down from heaven. And then it says
that Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took either of them
his censer and put fire therein and put incense thereon and offered
strange fire before the Lord. You know what strange fire is? It's really simple. It's fire
that God didn't light. It's fire that doesn't come from
the very altar of God. they were told exactly what they
were to do, and they were told exactly by God what the consequences
would be. Which he commanded them not,
and there went out fire from the Lord, and devoured them,
and they died before the Lord. Then Moses said to Aaron, This
is that the Lord spake, saying, I will be sanctified, I will
be set apart as a holy God in them that come near to me. We're
claiming to come near to God. We're claiming to come near to
this God, and so is the rest of this world that is meeting
around the world today. I'll be sanctified in them that
come nigh me, and before all the people I will be glorified. He will be glorified. His holiness,
his name will be glorified. And Aaron held his peace, and
Moses called Mishael and Elzaphan, the sons of Uzziel, the uncle
of Aaron, and said to them, come near and carry out your brethren
before the sanctuary to the camp. They were burnt bodies. So they
went near and carried them in their coats out of the camp,
as Moses had said. And it goes on, if you read the
next few verses, Moses and Aaron are told, don't you dare weep. I want us, as we ponder that,
to think of what it is for that God to love us. for that God to call us his own. For that God, that God is the
same God. That God is the Lord Jesus Christ. Isn't it? The same yesterday,
today, and forever. I want us And I want for God to teach us
into whose presence we're coming. And I want for this God to cause
us to see how offensive our sin is to him and how it The only
possible way that God can have you in his presence is that he
must take all of the sin that you are and all of the sin that
you commit, and the first is worse than the second. All of
the sin that you are and all of the sin that you commit and
unite it to the Lord Jesus Christ in an indissolvable union. And that fire from that God comes
down from heaven on the sacrifice. And our sacrifice consumes the
fire. consumes the fire. He's buried
in a tomb and three days later he rises glorious and victorious
and he says to every one of his children, in me. There is no sin. Your sin is gone. We're not talking,
and God is never talking about what man must do to get right
with God. The gospel is what God has done
to his son to make everyone who's in his son perfectly holy. And
that fire burnt all of my sins away. And God says they don't
exist. God says His Son has come to
take a people like me and bring them into the very presence of
His glory, to see His glory. And the Lord Jesus Christ came
for a cause, didn't he? To take a people like us, and
to present us to the Father in his sight, holy, unblameable,
and unreprovable in his sight. Did he do it? Or did he try? This God never tries. This God
cannot fail. This God has done it. And everything
that God does, He does forever. And it never can be changed.
He did it all long, long ago. Precious Saviour. Precious intermediary
between me and God. Precious sacrifice. Precious
substitute. Precious blood. Glorious, glorious
Saviour. Let's pray. Heavenly Father,
we pray that You would open our eyes again and again and again
to see Your glory in Your Son and to see the glory of Him crucified
Bearing the sins of all of his bride in his own body on the
tree and bearing them away such that they don't exist. Bearing
them away so perfectly completely that the Blessed Holy Spirit
can come and cause those Redeem sinners to have life, life of
faith, life that sees the Lord Jesus Christ in His glory. Please
be merciful to us and to those that we love and cause us to
be compassionate and kind to those around us, Heavenly Father.
Cause us to be ornaments and cause us to live as trophies
of your love and your grace.