The Glory of God in the Face of Jesus Christ
Hebrews 1:1-3
Sermon by Rick Crandall
McClendon Baptist Church - January 31, 2010
Series: Exploring the Glory of God in 2010
*This month we have been exploring the glory of God. God’s glory is so important to Him that He speaks about it some 300 times in His Word! And since God’s glory is important to Him, it should be very important to us.
*But what is God’s glory? Remember that the main Old Testament word picture for “glory” is a weight -- something heavy, something to be taken very seriously.
-The main New Testament word picture for “glory” is magnificence, splendor and brightness like we see in the sun, moon and stars.
*John Piper said that the glory of God refers to His infinite and overflowing fullness of all that is good. -- Walter Kimbrough said God’s “Glory is best defined as the outward shining of God’s inner-being.” (1)
*And God’s glory is so important to Him that He has a plan to reveal His glory. Habakkuk 2:14 tells us that “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.”
*But how does God reveal His glory? Psalm 19:1 tells us that: “The heavens declare the glory of God.” In Exodus 24, Moses went up on Mount Sinai to meet with God for 40 days and 40 nights. And here God’s Word says:
16. The glory of the Lord rested on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it six days. And on the seventh day He called to Moses out of the midst of the cloud.
17. The sight of the glory of the Lord was like a raging, consuming, devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the eyes of the children of Israel.
*In 2 Chron 7, when Solomon was dedicating the Temple, the Bible says:
1. Now when Solomon had finished praying, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices; and the glory of the Lord filled the temple.
2. And the priests could not enter the house of the Lord, because the glory of the Lord had filled the Lord’s house.
3. When all the children of Israel saw how the fire came down, and the glory of the Lord on the temple, they bowed their faces to the ground on the pavement, and worshiped and praised the Lord, saying: "For He is good, for His mercy endures forever.’’
*God has revealed His glory through the star-lit vastness of the universe.
-God has revealed His glory through consuming fire and blinding light. But the best way that God has ever revealed His glory is through His Son Jesus Christ!
*This is the message in our kick-off Scripture today. It’s Hebrews 1:1-3:
1. God, who at various times and in different ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets.
2. has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds;
3. who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,
*The best place to see the glory of God is in the face of Jesus Christ!
-Jesus is the unsurpassed expression of God’s glory!
-But how did Jesus reveal the glory of God? This morning we will explore 4 ways.
1. First: Jesus revealed the glory of God through His magnificent speech.
*One good place to see this is in John 3:31-34. Listen to these verses from the New Living Translation:
31. “He (Jesus) has come from above and is greater than anyone else. I am of the earth, and my understanding is limited to the things of earth, but he has come from heaven.
32. He tells what he has seen and heard, but how few believe what he tells them!
33. Those who believe him discover that God is true.
34. For he is sent by God. He speaks God’s words, for God’s Spirit is upon him without measure or limit.
*Jesus Christ always speaks the words of God the Father, because He is God the Son, completely filled with God the Holy Spirit.
-No wonder Jesus revealed God’s glory in the things that He said!
*In the beginning of the Lord’s ministry, Luke tells us that Jesus went all over Galilee, “and He taught in their synagogues, being glorified by all.” (Luke 4:15)
*After recording Jesus’ great Sermon on the Mount Matthew closed by writing:
-“So it was, when Jesus had ended these sayings, that the people were astonished at His teaching, for He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.” (Matt 7:28-29)
*About six months before the cross, the religious leaders in Jerusalem had already plotted to kill Jesus. During the Feast of the Tabernacles they sent officers to arrest Jesus, but the soldiers came back empty-handed. And John 7:45-46 tells us: “Then the officers came to the chief priests and Pharisees, who said to them, ‘Why have you not brought Him?’ The officers answered, ‘No man ever spoke like this Man!’”
*No man ever spoke like Jesus, because He spoke the words of God! Jesus revealed the glory of God in the things He said.
*That’s why His words are so important for us to hear. In John 6:63 Jesus said, “The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life.”
*Speaking to unbelievers in John 8, Jesus said:
45. “Because I tell the truth, you do not believe Me.
46. Which of you convicts Me of sin? And if I tell the truth, why do you not believe Me?
47. He who is of God hears God’s words; therefore you do not hear, because you are not of God.’’
*But if you will hear the Lord, and receive His words by faith, you will hear Him say wonderful, comforting things, like “Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you” (John 14:1-2)
-And “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand.” (John 10:27-28)
*If you will listen to Jesus, you will hear Him say, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16)
*Have you ever plugged your name into that verse? You can do it. You should do it! “For God so loved YOU that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” You can hear God Himself say, “I love you.”
*Howard Parnell tells about a little girl with two brothers. One day, somebody asked her, “Who does your mommy love most?”
-Without missing a beat, the little girl said: “She loves Johnny most because he’s the oldest. She loves Billy most because he’s the youngest. And she loves me most because I’m the only girl.” (2)
*That was a wise mother! She had plenty enough love to go around. And God has an infinite supply of love for you! Jesus Christ wants you to hear that for the glory of God.
2. How did Jesus reveal God’s glory? -- Through His magnificent speech, and through His miraculous signs.
*When it comes to miracles, let me start by saying that our God is a miracle working God! He is still the almighty God He always has been. And as Jesus told His disciples in Matt 19:26, “with God all things are possible.”
*I like to think of it this way: If a miracle is a one in a million thing, then there could still be 7,000 miracles in the world every day, because there are almost 7,000 million people in our world.
*One of my favorite miracle stories was from Bro. Savoie. It happened when he was a little boy. There was some kind of big storage container for rice near their house in south Louisiana. It was like a big metal box with a hole on top.
*One hot summer day Bro. Savoie got curious about it, and he dropped into the hole. It only took a few seconds to realize there was no way out. The hole was too high to reach and he was trapped. No one knew where he was. He was scared to death and tried to jump up, but it was no use. And it was unbearably hot. It was probably 140 degrees in there as the sun beat down on that oven.
*Bro. Savoie began to grow weak and faint. And he most likely would have died in that container. But just as he was about to black out, something or someone mysteriously, miraculously lifted him out of that box. He had no idea how it happened. He only knew that God had saved him.
*Our God is a miracle working God! The New Testament is filled with the miracles of Christ. And John’s Gospel connects the Lord’s miracles with the glory of God.
*John 2 tells us about Jesus’ first miracle. The Lord performed this miracle at a wedding. He turned ordinary water into wine, and John 2:11 says: “This beginning of signs Jesus did in Cana of Galilee, and manifested His glory; and His disciples believed in Him.”
*The Greek word for “miracle” here is “sign.” God’s Word is telling us that this miracle wasn’t just a magic act. It had a two-fold purpose: To reveal the glory of God and to help people believe in Jesus.
*Turning water into wine symbolizes turning the old life without Jesus into a new life, making a radical, miraculous change that only God can make, making the change that could only come through the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
*Changing water into wine was a piece of cake for Jesus.
-Changing us into children of God cost Him everything on the Cross. But that’s how much He loves us. And God wants us to know it, for His glory.
*The last miracle in John’s Gospel is found in John 11. There Jesus heard that His friend Lazarus was sick. The Lord knew ahead of time that Lazarus was going to die. He knew that He would raise Lazarus from the dead four days later. And He knew that this would be done for the glory of God. So in John 11:4, Jesus said, “This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”
*Later at the graveside Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of him who was dead, said to Him, “Lord, by this time there is a stench, for he has been dead four days.” Jesus said to her, “Did I not say to you that if you would believe you would see the glory of God?” (John 11:39-40)
*John Phillips talked about both of these miracles and said, “The first sign was at a wedding, one of life’s gladdest hours. And the last sign was at a funeral, one of life’s saddest hours.” (3)
*So these signs remind us that we can trust in the Lord in good times and bad. Happy or sad, the Lord will be with you for His glory. There is no telling how many other miracles Jesus performed to reveal the glory of God. In John 20, the Apostle said:
30. Truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book;
31. but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.
3. How did Jesus reveal God’s glory? -- Through His miraculous signs, and through His most important sacrifice.
*John 12 connects the glory of God with the cross of Christ. Please look at vs. 27-33. Here, just a few days before the cross, Jesus said:
27. “Now My soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save Me from this hour’? But for this purpose I came to this hour.
28. Father, glorify Your name.” Then a voice came from heaven, saying, “I have both glorified it and will glorify it again.”
29. Therefore the people who stood by and heard it said that it had thundered. Others said, “An angel has spoken to Him.”
30. Jesus answered and said, “This voice did not come because of Me, but for your sake.
31. Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out.
32. And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to Myself.”
33. This He said, signifying by what death He would die.
*William Barclay said that the cross was the “gateway to glory” for Jesus. “The Cross was the glory of Jesus because he was never more majestic than in his death. The Cross was his glory because its magnet drew men to him in a way that even his life had never done and it is so yet. Further, the Cross was the glory of Jesus because it was the completion of his work. By going to the Cross Jesus showed that there was nothing that the love of God was not prepared to do and suffer for men, that there was literally no limit to it.” (4)
*Michael Milton gave this great testimony to the glory of the cross:
-“My father died when I was a child. At the end of his funeral service, in a small chapel in South Louisiana, we all sang ‘The Old Rugged Cross.’ That was then and remains to be a beautiful song. However, if you think about it, what is so pretty and moving to the heart about an old piece of wood? The answer is that the old rugged cross represents the very plan of God for saving my father whose life could not have even gotten close to perfection, -- far from it.
*The cross is the altar on which the sinless Lamb of God, who would provide the righteousness my father needed, would be slaughtered as a sacrifice to pay for the sins that my father needed to have removed. This is the gospel: Christ must suffer, He must die, but He will rise again on the third day. Before He became our Savior, He became our servant, and He became our sacrifice.
*So we glory in the cross of Christ for it is the very pinnacle of salvation. My father is now in heaven because of Jesus’ death on the cross. If any here will make it to Heaven, it will be because of trust in that old rugged cross.” (5)
*This is why Paul would write: “God forbid that I should glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” (Gal 6:14)
4. How did Jesus reveal God’s glory? -- Through His most important sacrifice, and through His merciful salvation.
*Ephesians 1 connects the glory of God with the grace of His salvation.
-Writing to believers in vs. 2-6, Paul said:
2. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
3. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ,
4. just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love,
5. having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will,
6. to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He has made us accepted in the Beloved.
*Grace!
-In vs. 5, it puts us in the Family of God.
-Also in vs. 5, it’s God’s good pleasure.
-In vs. 6, grace makes us accepted. We are “accepted in the beloved.”
-And in vs. 6, grace is revealed as part of the glory of God.
*But it never could have happened without vs. 7: “In Him (in Jesus) we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace.”
*Our forgiveness, our salvation comes only through the blood of Jesus Christ.
-And it is through the riches of His grace, "to the praise of the glory of His grace!"
*Pastor James Moore saw a great example of grace in a friend of his named Roy. Roy and his wife were going through a tough time. Their daughter, Debbie, had become rebellious and arrogant. She was constantly in trouble. But Roy and his wife kept on loving her, forgiving her and praying for her.
*When Debbie was 16, she ran away from home. All kinds of terrible reports came back about the lifestyle she was living. But nobody could pinpoint exactly where she was. Finally, Roy got word that somebody had seen her in Memphis. So Roy and James went to look for her.
*Pastor James said, “I’ll never forget that experience or the look on Roy’s face as we searched all day and into the night for his prodigal daughter. Written large on his face was this look of intense urgency and deep love, as we went into one dive after another, one bar after another, one teenage hangout after another.
*And everywhere we went, Roy would do the same thing. He would show people the picture of his daughter and ask if anyone had seen her. -- No luck! They either hadn’t seen her or they weren’t talking.
*And everywhere we went that day, Roy stuck a picture of him and his wife near the door. With it was a note that read: ‘Debbie, all is forgiven! We love you! Please come home!’ (And it was signed) Mom and Dad
*They didn’t find Debbie that day, but two weeks later she did come home, -- dirty and hungry, but O.K. Debbie said: “I couldn’t believe my eyes. I walked into this bar one night and saw my mom and dad’s picture and that note. And then, I went to another place and another and another. Everywhere I went there was my mom and dad’s picture. And that note forgiving me and pleading with me to come home. And for the first time in my life, I realized that night how much my mom and dad love me! I have hurt them so many times. I have broken their hearts so many times. And still they came looking for me. Still they love me.”
*Pastor James asks: “Where did Roy and his wife learn to love like that, to reach out like that, to forgive like that? You know, don’t you? They learned it from Jesus.” (6)
*This is the love that led Jesus to the cross for us, “to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He has made us accepted in the Beloved.”
*How I hope you can see more of the glory of God today! -- Because the best place to see the glory of God is in the face of Jesus Christ! Do you know Him? Have you trusted in Him? Put your trust in Jesus and be transformed by the glory of His grace.
1. Piper definition from SermonCentral sermon “GOD CREATED US FOR HIS GLORY” by John Piper - Isaiah 43:1-7 - July 27, 1980 - Kimbrough definition from ChristianGlobe.com sermon “Revealed Glory” by WALTER L. KIMBROUGH - Exo 16:1-36
2. SermonCentral illustration contributed by Howard Parnell
3. “Exploring the Gospels -- John” by John Phillips - p. 208
4. Adapted from “THE GLORY OF THE CROSS - Jn.17:1-5 (continued)” - BARCLAY’S DAILY BIBLE STUDY SERIES (NT) by William Barclay, Revised Edition (C) Copyright 1975 William Barclay. - First published by the Saint Andrew Press, Edinburgh, Scotland. - The Westminster Press, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
5. ChristianGlobe.com sermon “In the Cross of Christ We Glory” by Michael A. Milton - Mark 8:31-9:1
6. Adapted from ChristianGlobe.com sermon “Encounters with Christ IV” by James Moore - John 4:7-15
