Soli Deo Gloria - To God be the Glory!
I Corinthians 1:30-31
Pastor Jefferson M. Williams
Chenoa Baptist Church
11-03-19
Jesus is King
This past week, rapper, producer, designer Kanye West released his new album entitled, “Jesus is King.” Now remember, Kanye used to call himself, “Yesus,” but in the last year he has gone through what he describes as a Christian conversion. He’s been meeting with a pastor weekly and holding church services in different cities attended by thousands.
He was asked by Jimmy Kimmel if he know considered himself a Christian artist. Kanye responded, “I consider myself a Christian everything.”
He said, “I’ve told you what fame did for me. I’ve told you what alcohol did for me. I’ve told you a lot of things. But now, I want to live to tell what Jesus did for me!”
This week, as an advertisement for the new project, an entire building front in Time Square displayed the title, “Jesus is King!”
I saw a picture on Twitter of a comment card from a church in which a mom wrote, “My teenage son was with me in church today because of the new Kanye album. I am one happy mom.”
Regardless of whether you believe his salvation is authentic, I know one thing for sure. God is going to get the glory for all of this.
And that brings us to our fifth and final Sola for this series, Foundations of our Faith, Soli Deo Gloria - to God be the Glory Alone.
A Short Review
502 years ago this week, Martin nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Wittenberg Church and sparked what we now call the Protestant Reformation. Over the past five weeks, we’ve been studying the five Solas of the Protestant Reformation. What is it that we believe that makes us distinctly Protestants?
We discovered that all three major branches of Christianity, Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant all would affirm that grace and faith and Christ are important to our salvation. But what separates is that little Latin word, “Sola.”
We believe that the equation for salvation is Jesus + Nothing = Everything!
As Protestants, we believe that the inspired, sufficient, inerrant, infallible, immutable, invincible Bible alone (Sola Scriptura) is our foundation and norm for Christian faith and practice, not councils or popes.
It is in the Bible we learned that we are justified before God, saved by grace alone (sola gratis) - the unmerited favor of God alone. Why did He save us? Simply because He chose to out of love.
We are saved through faith alone (sola fide), not by any good works we have done. Even our faith is a gift. We don’t have faith in faith but in a Person - Jesus Christ.
We are saved by Christ alone. Christ is our only hope, our only Savior, (not Mary or the saints), our only mediator between God and man. From Ephesians we learned that we were dead in our sins, defiant in our souls, and were doomed to hell. His death on the cross, in my place, to pay the penalty for me sins, opens the way back to a relationship with God. His perfect life allowed him to make the great exchange - our sins for His righteousness.
“God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 For 5:21)
He was the last prophet, the last high priest, and and the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
But why? Why did He do this? Why did He save us by grace, through faith, in Christ alone?
So He would get the glory alone!
See, if we believe that somehow we can contribute to our salvation, it robs God of His glory.
Jonathan Edwards said it bluntly: “The only thing we contribute to our salvation is the sin that made it necessary.”
Think of these five as a structure. Sola Scriptura is the foundation. Sola Gratia, Sola Fide, and Solus Christus are the pillars. And Soli Deo Gloria is what covers the whole building.
David Vandrunen has written that Soli Deo Gloria is the glue that holds the other four together.
We are going to spend our time together today in I Corinthians 1:30-31.
Prayer
That’s Heavy, Man
Before we turn there, let me try to define God’s glory. The Greek word is “doxa,” and that’s where we get our term doxology that we sang just a few minutes ago.
It carries the idea of being weighty or heavy, having importance, significance, and dignity.
I love the line in Back to The Future when Marty says, “Whoa, that’s heavy doc,” and Doc Brown responds, “There’s that word heavy again. Why are things so heavy in the future. Is there a problem with earth’s gravitational pull?”
Or maybe you have felt like someone treated you “lightly,” they didn’t give you the proper respect or attention.
Someone who tries to relive a time in their lives when they were important is said to be trying to relive their “glory days.”
To give God glory means to give him the centrality that He deserves. It is ascribing weightiness to Him in our lives.
In Isaiah 6, when Isaiah stands before God the angels sing,
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.” (Isaiah 6:3)
John Piper defines God’s glory as the “outward radiance of the intrinsic worth and beauty and greatest of His manifold perfections.”
God is like a diamond that never runs out of facets. Every one of His attributes is glorious.
The creation shouts His glory:
“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” (Psalm 19:1)
By the way, I’ve heard people ask why did God great all these universes and galaxies but only put man on one little planet. The answer: So we could catch a glimpse of how absolutely mind-boggling awesome God is!
John Calvin said that the whole universe is “God’s glory theater.”
He created us for his glory:
I will say to the north, ‘Give them up!’ and to the south, ‘Do not hold them back.’ Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth - everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.” (Isaiah 43:6)
Human beings have dignity because God gives us dignity - each and every person has dignity before God.
And His glory ultimately is beyond knowing. The Apostle Paul, one of the greatest minds of his generation wrote even this mystery should lead our hearts to praise:
“Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!
“Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?” “Who has ever given to God, that God should repay them? For from him and through him and for him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.” (Romans 11:36)
A Church in Need of Some Humility
The Corinthian church was a mess. There was fighting and gossip and sexual immorality that was tolerated and even celebrated.
Paul wrote them two letters to try to sort out their issues. We will be looking at verse 30-31 of chapter one of his first letter to Corinth:
“It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written: “Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.” ( I Cor 1:30-31)
God Chose you for His Glory
“It is because of Him that you are in Christ Jesus…”
God is Sovereign in his calling of us. It is because of God the Father. This could be translated “by His doing.” It denotes origin or source. Our salvation is completely initiated by God to display His glory.
Chapter one is full of evidence of this calling:
Verse 1: “Paul was called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus.”
Verse 2: “The church in Corinth were called to be saints together with all those who call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Verse 9: “God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Verse 26-28: “For consider your calling brothers, not many were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many of you were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not to bring to nothing the things that are so that no human being may boast in the presence of the Lord.
I love these verses because they give us so much hope. Steven Lawson says that God chose the leftovers to become first round lottery picks!
What was the basis of God choosing Israel?
The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers. (Deuteronomy 7:6–8)
Peter wrote these words to the New Testament believers:
“You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession” (1 Peter 2:9).
He did choose you because you were worthy of being chosen. He didn’t choose you because He saw some potential in you. You were dead, defiant, and doomed.
Some people picture a row boat. You grab an oar and God grabs an oar. But dead people can’t grab anything. If we are to be saved, it has to be initiated from outside of us.
God chose us, before the foundation of the world, simply because of love and grace:
“For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.” (Ephesians 1:4-6)
As we learned in Jonah, “Salvation is from the Lord.” (Jonah 2:9).
B. God is glorified through Jesus on the cross
“…who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption.” (v. 30)
Paul writes that Jesus has “become for us wisdom from God.”
In Corinthians, the wisdom of God is manifested most beautifully in the cross of Christ.
“For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, and stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but those who are called, but Jew and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” (I Cor 1:21-25)
This is the Gospel - God gets the glory through the salvation of sinners through Jesus sacrificial death on the cross.
Paul then uses three words to describe this wisdom - righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.
righteousness: This is the language of the law court. Because of Jesus perfect life and sacrificial death, He was the only one ever who didn’t deserve to go to hell. But, in what Martin Luther called “the great exchange,” Jesus’ righteousness was imputed or transferred or deposited in our account and He took our sins.
Paul wrote to the believers in Philippi:
“What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith.” (Phil 3:8-9)
If you are in Christ, then when God looks at you He sees Christ! In Christ, we can stand before God. We have no righteousness of our own. None. But in Christ, we are called righteous.
sanctification: This the language of the Temple. To be sanctified means to be set apart, to be made holy. That was done at the Temple through the shedding of the blood of an animal. But Jesus was the Lamb of God whose blood cleanses us from the defilement of sin.
“Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” (I Corinthians 6:9-11)
If you are in Christ, you are washed clean!
Isaiah wrote these amazing words:
“Come now, let us settle the matter,” says the Lord. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.” (Isaiah 1:18)
redemption: This is the language of the slave market. Jesus went into the slave market and paid the price to redeem us, to rescue us, to ransom us.
“For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.” (I Peter 1:18-19)
His blood on the cross purchased our salvation. We are no longer slaves to sin. We have a new Master - Jesus.
C. God gets all the glory
“Therefore, as it is written: “Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.” (v. 30)
Whenever you see a therefore in the Bible, you need to ask “what’s it there for?”
Since God is Sovereign and chose us to be saved, apart from anything we had done, and since Jesus secured our salvation on the cross, then…
“Let him who boast boast in the Lord.”
This is a quote from the prophet Jeremiah:
“This is what the Lord says: “Let not the wise boast of their wisdom or the strong boast of their strength or the rich boast of their riches, but let the one who boasts boast about this: that they have the understanding to know me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight,” declares the Lord.” (Jeremiah 9:23-24)
The word boast means to brag or to give praise. Paul has shown clearly that the Corinthians have nothing to brag about before God. Their praise had been self-focused and Paul is calling them to give God the glory due His name.
In Isaiah 42, God says,
“I am the LORD; that is my name! I will not give my glory to anyone else, nor share my praise with carved idols.” (Isaiah 42:8)
Whatever…
When Maxine was younger and then when I was seminary, we had to memorize the Westminster Shorter Catechism. The first question is, “What is the chief end/purpose of man?”
The answer? “To glorify God and enjoy Him forever.”
Johann Sebastian Bach was a church musician and a prolific composer. He began each composition with the letters JJ at the top of an empty page. This meant “Jesus help me” in Latin. When he finished the composition, he would sign it SDG - Soli Deo Gloria - to God be the Glory Alone.
What if we looked at each day like a Bach composition? What if we began each day with the words, “Jesus help me” and ended each day by saying Soli Deo Gloria - God gets the glory the alone.
This is what Paul tells the Corinthians later in this letter:
“So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.” (I Corinthians 10:31)
“Do what honors God. Don’t do what dishonors God.”
Sounds easy enough, right? But our hearts seek it’s own glory. That’s part of sin.
Owen Strachan writes: “the glory battle is not just out there - it’s in here in our hearts and minds where we continue to die to self and live for Christ.”
James Montgomery Boice wrote this little poem for his congregation:
“Creation, life, salvation too,
All thing else, both good and true,
Come from and through our God always,
All fill our hearts with grateful praise
Come lift your voice to heaven’s high throne,
And glory give to God alone!”
God gets the glory when we acknowledge His grace, love, kindness, and majesty. He gets all the glory when we live our lives to reflect His glory to a lost and dying world.
Eric Liddell, the famous Olympian who refused to run on Sunday and the subject of the film Chariots of Fire, could have done anything he wanted after capturing the hearts of England at the games.
Instead of capitalizing on his fame, he moved to China to be a missionary. He died there in 1945 caring for the poor and sick.
He lived out what John Piper has said for nearly forty years of his ministry:
“God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.”
But you don’t have to go to China and be a missionary to bring glory to God.
Remember that Paul wrote, “whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.”
Sometimes the best question is not whether a certain activity is a good or bad idea but can I do this to the glory of God?
Can I do this job to the glory of God?
Can I go to this place and do these things to the glory of God?
Can I date or marry this person to the glory of God?
How do we give God all the glory?
By acknowledging that He alone is worthy of all the glory.
We sang at the beginning of this service, and will sing again at the end,
“Take my life and let be / all for You and for Your glory / Take my life and let it be Yours.”
In the Old Testament, God exhibited His glory by a visible radiance - the cloud by day/fire by night. When Moses stood in His glory, His face would glow afterwards.
In the New Testament, God exhibited His glory in the Person of Jesus Christ. The writer of Hebrews described Him this way:
“The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.” (Hebrews 1:3)
Peter, James, and John witnessed this glory on the Mount of Transfiguration when Jesus unzipped His humanity to display the glory of His deity.
John, Jesus’ best friend here on earth, wrote:
“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14)
He has chosen to show His glory by redeeming us for the praise of His glory. That’s what this table represents.
Communion
