Alba 3-10-2023
GLORIFY THE NAME OF THE LORD
II Thessalonians 1:11-12
In a book titled “Mornings With Jesus” Katie Jones wrote, "One morning I overslept. Then, while rushing around the kitchen, I spilled a glass of orange juice all over the counter. After that, I got stuck behind a slow driver and was late for work.
"When I got to work, it was hectic. The phone was ringing. The computer kept crashing. Customers were waiting. And there was a stack of orders to be filled. I was anxious. So I took a deep breath and said a quick prayer. 'Dear Jesus, please calm me, and help me adjust my attitude.'
"I started ringing up customers in the pharmacy. 'That will be $3.16.' Hmm - $3.16. John 3:16 popped into my mind. Later, I picked up a bottle of medicine. The number 316 was in the stock number. It couldn't be a coincidence. That afternoon, I looked at the clock. It was 3:16. Again, I whispered John 3:16 and thanked Jesus for His grace.
"That crazy morning at the pharmacy changed me. When I asked Jesus to change my attitude, He reminded me that He loved me enough to die for me so that I could have eternal life. I don’t ever want to forget that.
"Now I set my phone alarm for 3:16 p.m. every afternoon. When I see the number 316, I thank Jesus for His love.
"Jesus constantly reminds us to focus on Him. He wants our thoughts anchored in His mercy and grace. He etches His words upon our hearts because He wants us to remember just how much He loves us.." (From "Mornings With Jesus" March/April 2020, March 24)
When we take time to pray, it makes a difference. The apostle Paul was a man of prayer and he prayed regularly for the churches he had started. One was the church in Thessalonica. It was a young church that needed encouragement because they experienced persecution while waiting for Jesus to come again.
Based on what Paul had just told them in the first chapter of his second letter that God would give them rest from their troubles, and that the ones who had troubled them would be judged, Paul prays for them to live in such a way as to give glory to the name of the Lord.
His prayer is recorded in II Thessalonians 1:11-12 where he says, “Therefore we also pray always for you that our God would count you worthy of this calling, and fulfill all the good pleasure of His goodness and the work of faith with power, that the name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified in you, and you in Him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.
That is a prayer that we should pray for ourselves and for each other. It should be our goal to glorify the name of the Lord as we live on this earth and wait for His return. So lets look more closely at this prayer. And notice that Paul did not ask for God to have the testing cease, or for the persecution to end. The lesson here is that instead of asking God to remove problems and hardships, we should pray that He will make us the kind of children He want us to be.
In whatever situation we find ourselves, there is a higher aim for us as Christians. The first item in this list is that we should pray for each other that we may glorify the name of the Lord in our:
1. Dedication: To Be Counted Worthy of His Calling
God wants us to be dedicated, totally sold out, to Him. So we should pray that He will make us worthy to walk with Him.
In our hymn book there are two songs directly across from each other. The first is “Jesus is Calling”. The verses start with the words “Jesus is tenderly calling thee home”, Jesus is calling the weary to rest”, “Jesus is waiting”, and “Jesus is pleading”.
The song across the page is “Jesus, I Come”. The words are “Out of my bondage, sorrow and night, Jesus I come, Jesus, I come. Into Thy freedom, gladness and light, Jesus, I come to Thee”. “Jesus is Calling” is answered by “Jesus I Come”.
When we hear the gospel message, the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ, it is a call to come to Him. Our proper, and wise, response is to answer, “Jesus, I Come”.
Consider how God calls us to Himself. He calls us by the Gospel of Jesus Christ. So when we let Jesus come into our heart, we are called to live a holy life according to Christ’s example. A life of purity. A life of sacrifice. A life of righteousness.
And here is the greatest characteristic and blessing of God’s call, that it not only calls us to holiness and to heaven, but reaches out a helping hand to get us there! We have a God who not only tells us to be good, and watches to see if we will obey, but He also brings us the help we need to keep His commandments. He makes us worthy.
Ultimately we are not worthy. We possess no real righteousness of our own. But God accounts us as righteous because we come to Him by faith in His Son, Jesus Christ; the One who took our sins upon Himself when He went to the cross. Knowing that should cause us to want to represent Him well in this world.
The reputation of our Lord is in our hands. People will judge Him by us. If we are worthy of our calling, people will be drawn to our Master by the faithfulness of our discipleship. We are the best evidence of the power of the Gospel. If it can change you and me, it can change anyone.
Let us pray that we fully live out of our faith in the midst of all circumstances in a worthy manner so that the name of our Lord Jesus Christ be glorified in us.
The second item in this list is to pray for each other that we may glorify the name of the Lord in our:
2. Desire: To Fulfill the Good Pleasure of His Goodness
God cannot make us better if we do not desire to be better.
Richard Holland, who was a minister in Ohio, told a story about people who cut in traffic with their car, nearly causing accidents, and how others respond inspired to yell out a few unfavorable descriptions of the offending driver.
His own story is quite interesting. He said, “I have some very good friends who own a shop called Busy Bee Florist back in Florida. At times in years past, on Mother’s Day and other holidays, they would get very busy and they would ask me to help them by making deliveries. Of course, on such occasions, I would drive one of the company vans.
“One particular Mother’s day, I had just left the shop with the van loaded to the brim with beautiful flower arrangements and planters - all intended for eager mothers.
“When suddenly a car shot around the corner right in front of me! I slammed on the brakes, barely missing the car --- and you could almost hear the cry of disappointed mothers as their flower arrangements and planters crashed to the floor of the van.
“Well - I’ll tell you- right then an unfavorable description of that driver and every one of his ancestors formed in my mind. I opened my mouth --- and I caught myself! And didn’t say anything!
“You see, I was in my friend’s van. On the side in bright, tall letters it said BUSY BEE FLORIST. If I had yelled out and told that fellow what I thought of him - people would have heard me -- but they would have seen BUSY BEE FLORIST.
“At that moment I was representing the florist shop and my friends. My actions and words would reflect on the image people had of my friend’s business and on them. So I had to be careful.”
And then he said this, “When we call ourselves "Christian" we represent Jesus Christ in the eyes of the world. When I say I am a Christian all my actions and words affect the image other people have of Christ, whether for the good or for the bad.”
He practiced what we should learn. We are scarcely deserving of being called good if we do not desire to be BETTER! We must long for righteousness. God will fulfill every desire that longs for goodness. That desire needs to precede any action we take as we grow in our Christian life.
Our desire should be to let our light so shine before men that they may see our good works and glorify our Heavenly Father. (Matthew 5:16)
The third item in this list is to pray for each other that we may glorify the name of the Lord in our:
3. Deeds: The Work of Faith with Power
A Christian’s calling has duty attached to it, “the work of faith.” Paul was put into prison because of his faith and his preaching of the gospel. But when writing to the Ephesians he said, “Therefore I, a prisoner for serving the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of your calling, for you have been called by God.” (Ephesians 4:1)
In I Peter 1:15 it commands, “but as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct.” And how can we be holy in our conduct if we are not doing what a Christian should do, even if we suffer persecution as the Thessalonians did as they lived out their faith in their community? Well, we have an example to follow.
I Peter 2:21 says, “For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow His steps.” Our deeds should reflect His Holiness and glorify Him no matter what.
Paul has been informing us, and his friends at Thessalonica, of the prospect of deliverance and rest at the coming of our Lord Jesus. But he is aware that we and they still must live out a life of faith in a world of people who oppose the things of God. Neither we nor they could do this in our own strength, but only in the strength that God supplies.
This part of Paul's prayer is for God to fulfill any deed of faith with His power. This prayer is offered because we cannot live a life worthy of His calling without the help of God and the power of the Holy Spirit within us.
Paul in his letter to the Corinthians said that in sharing the gospel; he planted, Apollos watered, but it was God who gave the increase. That's the way it works. We are to serve, but behind the work we do, the source of power to affect this sinful world comes from God.
Verse twelve says that the Lord will be glorified in us “according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.” There is transformative power with God's grace, which empowers us to live in obedience, overcome challenges, and to grow in spiritual maturity.
Experiencing the grace of God and the Lord Jesus Christ is the main motive for serving Him, for doing the things we should do. We serve Him because He graciously made us worthy through Jesus’ blood and righteousness.
Notice: All of the things in this prayer are "so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified." Our actions and our words either are bringing, or failing to bring, glory to Jesus. That surely means not to use His name as a swear word.
We live in a time when there is godless corruption that is evident all around us. We see it culturally, politically and socially. It is ingrained in the hearts of all who have not surrendered to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
So what are we to do? Peter writes in I Peter 2:12 “Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.” (NIV)
Our business is to live in this world humbly before Almighty God, and in loving obedience deliver the good news of salvation in word and in deed. Jesus said in John 15:8 that His Father is glorified when we bear much fruit.
Jesus Christ represented us on the cross, and now we who represent His name on this earth, must be busy with what He would be doing if were He here. We must be about His work.
When Jesus went to the cross, it didn't end there. He rose from the dead and He ascended up to heaven. Even now He represents each of us with the Father in heaven. Sitting at the right hand of the Father, Jesus speaks for each of us.
While this prayer is not asking God to remove suffering, it doesn’t mean we should never be concerned about our difficulties and those of other Christians. Its just that, no matter what, we need to live to glorify our Lord.
To “glorify” Him means to make Him look as good as He really is. And we should be doing our part to represent Him well in the eyes of this world.
To glorify His name means we will be demonstrating to the world what the person and work of Jesus Christ is like, so that He will be held in great honor and esteem because of who He is and all He has accomplished and will accomplish.
Our part to make this happen will take
dedication,
desire
and deeds
designed to give Him glory.
CLOSE:
At the 2009 Kansas high school state track championship, an unusual thing happened. The team that won the girls 3200 meter relay race was disqualified. But what happened next was even more unusual. The team that was awarded the state championship by default turned right around and gave their medals to the team that had been disqualified.
The first school, St. Mary’s Colgan, lost first place because judges ruled that a runner had stepped out of her lane as she handed off the baton. That meant the second team, Maranatha Academy, moved up to first. After receiving their medals, the girls from Maranatha saw the downtrodden looks on the faces of the St. Mary’s girls, so they gave them their individual medals.
Why did they do this? As Maranatha’s coach Bernie Zarda put it: “Our theme for the year was to run not for our glory, but for God’s glory.” As a result of the girls’ action, their story was told throughout Kansas, and God’s name was lifted up.
When we set aside our own interests and accomplishments to recognize that it’s better to care for the interests of others (Phil. 2:4), we see God’s name glorified. Acting with grace and kindness toward others is one of the best ways to glorify the name of the Lord and point people to God.
