“The GOD-GLORIFIED GOSPEL”
John 13:31-35
Jesus spends his last hours before His suffering, giving His disciples masterful last minute instructions. As they are celebrating the Passover in the Upper Room, Jesus identifies His betrayer in John 13:25: “Leaning back against Jesus, he asked him, "Lord, who is it?" 26 Jesus answered, "It is the one to whom I will give this piece of bread when I have dipped it in the dish." Then, dipping the piece of bread, he gave it to Judas Iscariot, son of Simon. 27 As soon as Judas took the bread, Satan entered into him. "What you are about to do, do quickly," Jesus told him, 28 but no one at the meal understood why Jesus said this to him. 29 Since Judas had charge of the money, some thought Jesus was telling him to buy what was needed for the Feast, or to give something to the poor. 30 As soon as Judas had taken the bread, he went out. And it was night. 31 When he was gone, Jesus said, "Now is the Son of Man glorified and God is glorified in him. 32 If God is glorified in him, God will glorify the Son in himself, and will glorify him at once. (immediately, right now.)
Here we have a most extraordinary example of the ONENESS in Deity of the Father and the Son: Jesus is glorified, God is glorified in Him, God WILL glorify the Son in Him, and will do it NOW! HOW WILL God DO THIS? God in the FLESH will die on the cross to absorb the penalty for sin upon Himself, instead of applying it to you and me, His substitutionary atonement! That’s the Best News in all of the Universe. It is the message of the Gospel of God’s Grace to sinners condemned to an eternity of God’s wrath: God being glorified in the humiliation of Christ on the Cross to rescue sinners. They are unable to rescue themselves and He saves them.
What does it mean that God and the Son are “GLORIFIED”? To “glorify” is to impart “glory”, so what is “Glory”? Ex. 15:11 speaks of God’s Glory: “Who is like you--majestic in holiness, awesome in glory, working wonders? Listen to the definition of “glory” (“doxa” GR): “opinion, estimate, a good opinion concerning one, resulting in praise, honour, splendour, brightness, magnificence, excellence, preeminence, dignity, grace, majesty, a thing belonging to God, the kingly majesty which belongs to him as supreme ruler, absolute perfection, the absolutely perfect inward or personal excellency of Christ.”
In the Old Testament, the word for “Glory” means weightiness and heaviness. God’s Glory is too heavy for us to bear! It is crushing! No one can see God and His Glory and Live.
I. God’s Glory is everything He IS:
God is Holy, omnipotent, onmipresent; He is invisible, eternal, He is Spirit, creator, sustainer, provider, redeemer He is loving, just, compassionate, merciful, patient, absolutely radiant: He is absolute truth and perfect in all His ways. He is from everlasting to everlasting, the ONLY God Forever. The foundation of God’s glory is in His name “I AM THAT I AM” (Yahweh, “Jehovah” if you wish). His name is the verb for ‘BEING”, self- sustaining and self-existing.
God never had a beginning (HE NEVER CAME INTO “BEING”- He always was!) and He will never have an end. (He will never cease to BE and never cease to BE God and God ALONE!) God is absolute reality: no reality exists outside of him unless He wills it and makes it happen. He is simply there as absolute reality. He is all that was eternally. No space, no universe, no emptiness. Only God. He is utterly and entirely INDEPENDENT…ALWAYS. He depends on no one. ALL that IS NOT God is secondary, and totally dependent on HIM and Him Alone. “Who is like you--majestic in holiness, awesome in glory.” (How many times do people use the word “God” as if it is just another three letter word?)
“All the nations are as nothing before him, they are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness” (Isaiah 40:17). The CREATED is accounted as LESS THAN NOTHING compared to God and HIS GLORY-less than a speck of dust-‘What is man or the son of man that you should visit Him?” God is CONSTANT, has always BEEN, is always the SAME, will always BE the same: NEVER CHANGING, never weakening.
God is absolute TRUTH and so He will always do what pleases HIM because He is perfectly righteous and just in ALL OF HIS WAYS: He has the supreme right to BE God. He IS GOD alone. He is the ONLY BEING who is worthy of everyone’s interest and attention, their devoted admiration and enjoyment, in all the entire universe. (We’ll expand on this in a moment.)
THREE THINGS QUICKLY: And so, on account of HIS GLORY, His supremacy in all things, 1. God’s Glory is fundamental to every blessing we possess as Christians. God’s Glory is inseparably linked to our faith, our hope, and our love…our lives. We have nothing without Him and we ARE NOTHING without Him.
2. God’s Glory causes us to behold things other than those which are seen. This is the difference between the unbeliever and one who has faith in God. The believer can see God’s glory because God reveals the UNSEEN to him. They acknowledge (by the work of the Holy Spirit’s revelation) who IS THE TRUE God. The unbeliever is blind, deaf, and clueless, hard-hearted toward the truth because they have not been given a new nature.
3. God’s glory is made visible through His Creation, His Christ, His Church (His Holy Ones). A painting tells us there is a painter. A building tells us that there was a builder. The Creation speaks clearly to the reality of the CREATOR, but it does not speak of man’s need for a Savior. Christ speaks clearly to God as SAVIOR. Jesus speaks of our need to be saved and His Church declares in action and with words the transformation of the GOSPEL in the lives of sinners. This is why the Body of Christ is so important! We are HERE declaring what God has done. Can you be saved without going to church? Most definitely: You ARE saved without going to Church. You are SAVED by Christ alone, but the Church is the visible evidence that Jesus Saves! We are called to proclaim His glory TOGETHER in the Old and New Testament. RIGHT HERE is one excellent way of doing that.
"Now is the Son of Man glorified and God is glorified in him. 32 If God is glorified in him, God will glorify the Son in himself, and will glorify him at once. In John 12:23, Jesus had said, "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” Vs. 28” “Father, glorify your name!" Then a voice came from heaven, "I have glorified it, and will glorify it again." 29 The crowd that was there and heard it said it had thundered; others said an angel had spoken to him. 30 Jesus said, "This voice was for your benefit, not mine. 31 Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out. 32 But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself."
II. The God-Glorifying Gospel in Jesus
The God-Glorifying Gospel is revealed in Jesus as Jesus faces the cross, TOTALLY absorbed with God’s glory as His motive and purpose. Jesus came to earth as a visible form of God, Himself, taking on flesh, temporarily giving up Heaven for 33 earthly years. He takes on humility and servanthood (last week), puts aside the splendor, brightness, magnificence, excellence, preeminence, dignity, and majesty of His Godhead, in order to die for sin. He subjects himself to humiliation for 33 years, which climaxes …ON A CROSS!
JESUS will place God’s amazing Love on display on the CROSS, and when He is lifted up, he will draw all men who will believe to HIMSELF, so that God would be glorified in Him, and He in God. HERE IS God AS SAVIOR. Yahweh is the all-sufficient, self-sufficient one, and Jesus means YAHWEH SAVES. BEHOLD YOUR SAVIOR! THE GLORY of God’s Grace is revealed on the CROSS. The invisible God is VERY VISIBLE! 1Peter 4:11, Peter defined it; "That God in all things may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom be praise and dominion forever and ever." Paul did. Jude did, saying, "To the only wise God, our Savior, be glory and majesty, dominion and power both now and ever, amen." They had it right!
III. God alone is WORTHY of all Glory
God alone is WORTHY of all Glory because of His Gospel, the Good News of the Lord Jesus Christ. God alone is worthy to be GLORIFIED! “Glorify” or “Glorified” means to praise, extol, magnify, celebrate, to honor, to hold God in honor, proclaiming HIS character and the acts of God. Our lives should give evidence of the all-surpassing supremacy and value of God, evidence that HE ALONE is God and Savior. THAT HE WOULD RECEIVE GLORY is WHY He created us and it is WHY He saved us. The “ME-MODE” will kill you. This life is NOT ABOUT what YOU, “will eat or what you will drink ; nor for your body, as to what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?”
Isa. 48:9-11: “For my own name's sake I delay my wrath; for the sake of my praise I hold it back from you, so as not to cut you off. 10 See, I have refined you, though not as silver; I have tested you in the furnace of affliction. 11 For my own sake, for my own sake, I do this. How can I let myself be defamed? I will not yield my glory to another.” God deserves the total devotion of our lives in every aspect because of WHO HE IS and WHAT HE HAS DONE. God WILL NOT share His glory with anyone. Isa. 42: 8 "I am the LORD; that is my name! I will not give my glory to another or my praise to idols.
NOW on this earth, GLORIFYING GOD is the most important theme in the universe: In the ages to come, in the new Heavens and Earth GLORIFYING GOD will be THE ONLY THEME. The reason YOU should glorify God in everything is that God glorifies God in everything. God WILL BE GLORIFIED in everything that He does-we glorify Him in everything we do.
Many times “believers” will ask: Is it wrong for Christians to do “this or that?” Is it “wrong” for Christians not to worship together? Is it “wrong” for Christians to work on Sunday? Is it “wrong” to avoid Bible Study together as the body of Christ? YOU ARE ASKING THE “WRONG” questions! You should be asking: HOW CAN I BEST SERVE YOU, Lord God? How can I BEST bring glory to YOUR NAME! NOT, what can I get away with to bring myself more pleasure, more time off, more recreation doing the things I enjoy. That is futile and foolish thinking and does not consider what is the BEST THING I can do to bring glory to the God who saved me by His Grace.
One of the ways we can do that NOW is mentioned in John 13:33-35: "My children, I will be with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and just as I told the Jews, so I tell you now: Where I am going, you cannot come. A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."
This is talking about the God-Glorifying Gospel in US: IN LOVE, Jesus faced the cross to bring to us the God-Glorifying, SAVING, work of the Gospel. If we have received that LOVE, Jesus tells us that we no longer love our neighbors as ourselves, but we love each other in the same way that Jesus has loved us, with SELF-SACRIFICING LOVE TOWARD EACH OTHER, not SELF-ABSORBING LOVE! Loving like Christ is a clear indication that we understand and have received the Gospel of HIS LOVE. We face each other absorbed, saturated, brimming and flowing over with God’s Love shown to us at the cross: We demonstrate it to each other as a small part of our gratitude to the Savior, but an integral part of His Body.
If you were instructed to SHOW MORE LOVE to your wife, would you do it by avoiding her? See how that would work out for you. You would start by spending more time with her- you start with the basics. If we are instructed TO LOVE EACH OTHER (fellow disciples) with the same type of love that Jesus showed you, it would not be by spending as little time with each other as possible.
Here is the desire of God for His body in 1 Peter 1: “May grace and peace be yours in the fullest measure. 3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, 5 who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. 6 In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials, 7 so that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ ; 8 and though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, 9 obtaining as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls.”
This week, would you: “Glorify the LORD with me; let us exalt his name together.” (Psalm 34:3) Would you "Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.” (Matt. 5:16)
MAKE MUCH of God in your life! Demonstrate evidence of the supreme greatness of ALL his attributes and the all-satisfying perfections of Christ, in YOU, the Hope of Glory.
Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do — in everything you do — do all to the glory of our GREAT God! (1 Corinthians 10:31).
OUTLINE
GLORY: “opinion, estimate, a good opinion concerning one, resulting in praise, honor, splendor, brightness, magnificence, excellence, preeminence, dignity, grace, majesty, a thing belonging to God, the kingly majesty which belongs to Him as supreme ruler, absolute perfection, a thing belonging to Christ, the absolutely perfect inward or personal excellency of Christ, of that condition with God the Father in heaven to which Christ was raised after he had achieved his work on earth.
I. God’s Glory is everything He IS… AND:
1. God’s Glory is fundamental to every blessing we POSSESS.
2. God’s Glory causes us to behold things other than those which are SEEN.
3. God’s glory is made visible through His Creation, His CHRIST, His CHURCH(His Holy Ones).
II. The God-Glorifying Gospel in JESUS: JESUS faces the cross, ABSORBED with God’s glory.
III. God alone is WORTHY of all Glory: GLORIFY: to praise, extol, magnify, celebrate, to honor, proclaiming the character and acts of God.
1.God deserves the total devotion of our lives in every aspect because of WHO HE IS.
2. The reason you should glorify God in everything is that God glorifies God in everything.
3. The God-Glorifying Gospel in US!
4. We should face each other, ABSORBED with God’s Love.
