Heller, John: The Glory Of God 04 ~ Review

I know I'm laying found- foundational work, and I thank you for bearing, uh, with me, but this is so critical to what we want to share the rest of the week. These messages are designed on purpose to be a unit, so everything we start tonight I can't complete until the end of the week, so, um, there are going to be some, I trust, uh, real encouragement for you as we get on through the week in this. When we think about God's glory, I just wanted to kind of come back to the, the theme that we were considering. Uh, the danger that all, uh, quickly hangs us is the tremendous struggle that we have with being preoccupied, uh, with self. Uh, and I, you know, it's, it's the, the wonderful thing about it is, is that, uh, aren't you thankful this doesn't turn the Lord off with respect to working with us? I mean, that doesn't run him away from us. He knows that about us, and he knows we're weak in that area. And it's just marvelous the way that he continues to present himself to us, not as a condemning, harsh, mean, tight-fisted, stingy, cranky. Uh, you know, we have all these stereotypes in our minds about how we picture the Lord as, you know, I don't know how you have, sometimes we have these distorted views in our minds about God, as though he's up there in heaven just wringing his hands, you know, like this. Oh, oh, oh. But, you know, when you read Hebrews chapter one, you read the statement, he has anointed his son with the oil of gladness above his fellows. What does that tell you about the Lord? Joyful. May I say this very respectfully, he's the happiest person in the universe. Isn't that wonderful? Ponder that for a moment. He's not up there wringing his hands, pulling his hair out, fretting, biting his nails, gnashing his teeth. It's certainly not inconsistent with the Lord that there are times when there are righteous, holy expressions of his dissatisfaction, but it's not a statement that he's out of control or lost it. It's not inconsistent with who he is. You know, folks, as we, and I know you know this, but it's just good to come back to the understanding of this and to be refreshed in it. When we read portions like that in Hebrews chapter one, verses eight and nine, and we recognize that he is anointed with the oil of gladness above his fellows, we recognize that it is a God who is in absolute, complete, perfect control. And it is to this that God is delivering us to. He's delivering us to the security of knowing that it's not out of control. And that gives you and me tremendous encouragement for our everyday circumstances, even though they look perilous at times, and sometimes they can look for the long term just well nigh hopeless. We go in the good of the knowledge that, you know what, it may all come to ashes here, but I know that's not the end of the story. And this is one of the great lessons that we learn when we think about these things and we give consideration to the working of God's glory in the lives of his people. And again, I want to use this statement. I don't want to beat it in the ground and overuse it, but you know, one of the great joys of the glory of God being revealed to mankind is, is that we, we, we joyfully express it's not all about me, it's all about him. It's all about focusing upon the beauty of his worth and who he really is. So when we think about these things, we think about the practical work of it. I'd like to take next in our mind, if we could please, an examination of the life of Moses. Not all of it, but I'd just like to take a quick view of sometimes some of the things that we look at when we think about Moses, and we think about the way that we look at God's working in the life of Moses. And I think of it in the sense of when we see that God used Moses to be the great deliverer of the children of Israel, and he brought them up out of the land of Egypt. We look at Moses as the great figure, and in our minds and our mentalities, we focus on the man Moses, and we say, boy, there's good lessons there to learn, and there are, but the lessons are much more broader. The lessons have greater impact for us in our consideration. And you know what I'd like to really focus on? I'd like to focus on the nine generations prior to the time of Moses delivering the children out of bondage from Egypt. And I'd like for you to think with me for a moment. Now, there were nine generations in the land of Egypt. You think about those nine generations. I don't know when the baton passed from them being favored guests and to the time that they were slaves. But somewhere along the line, they were in bondage to that place and couldn't get out. And I'll just say this for the sake of saying it, and I- I'll ask upon your goodness just to bear with me in this. There were nine generations who were born a slave, they lived as slaves, and they died as slaves. Nine generations. What about now? Were they any less valuable to the heart of God? Were they any less important in the overall plan of God? All those thousands and thousands of individuals, many of them having hope in the promises of God, but they died as slaves in Egypt. When you get to Deuteronomy chapter seventeen, you'll learn that one of the great lessons that God taught the children of Israel in their bondage is that when God brought them into the land, you'll see this as you go through that chapter and you think about it. You'll see one of the great lessons that God gave to the children of Israel was is that whenever strangers and foreigners would come into their land, they would remember that they were bondage and in slavery in Egypt, and God called upon them to show kindness to the strangers in the land. And you and I would say to ourselves, now, wait a second, you mean nine generations? Well, that wasn't the only lesson God was teaching, and that wasn't the only aspect of God's glory that was being revealed and brought out, but there was one concrete thing that we could look to among others and say, you know, God was saying, I want you to be hospitable. You know why I want you to be hospitable? Because I am hospitable. I am hospitable. I know this is a very simple statement, but you know something? God loves people. He loves to have people around. Because I guarantee you, if he didn't like people, you and I wouldn't be here. And he wants us to enjoy his presence. And he wants us to be looking forward to that. And you see, whenever we get off of his glory and we start getting onto our glory or our fame or what we've done or what's great about us or all of whatever it might be that we can look to as, as human beings and, and take too much confidence in, then really, in a, in an indirect sort of way, God's glory is being detracted from. Now, I'm not saying God's glory in its essence, in his intrinsic value, is ever taken away from, but the opportunity that we have to give him that glory so that it's not only something that he receives from us, but in the giving of glory to the Lord and giving that acknowledge of his greatness and of his being and who he is, our hearts are refreshed, and he knows that about us. He knows there's a dynamic in the heart and the life of his people that cannot be matched when they are focusing upon the glory and the beauty of the Lord himself. So we think about these things, and we think about the great, tremendous, uh, beauty that there is, even in thinking about the children of Israel as they were in bondage. And the lesson there, obviously, is, is that God is working in all avenues of his people's lives for glory, so that people understand the beauty of God. They understand his justice, they understand his holiness, they understand everything about him, and that's the beauty of what God is doing. He doesn't want to hold back anything from his people that they should have. Now we also think of, and I'd like for you to turn, please, to this particular portion. I believe this one's in two Samuel chapter twenty four. We're going to begin reading in verse one. And again, the anger of the Lord was aroused against Israel, and he moved David against them to say, go number Israel and Judah. And we'll know the rest of the story, and I want to just ponder this a little bit with you. Think about it with me. One of the first things that we see in this particular passage of scripture that we would say is a little bit problematic, even though it's not, is just that we read the scriptures, and the Lord, the again, the anger of the Lord was aroused against Israel, and he moved David. And we know from First Chronicles chapter twenty one and verse one, the scriptures say that Satan moved David's heart. Pricking is the actual Hebrew word, prick or to stir. And we know that in this particular portion of scripture, that the reality of it is, is that God knew the heart of David, and he knew what was going on in David's heart, as well as he knew the heart of the children of Israel. And David's heart had grown cold to the Lord. And when we read that the anger of the Lord is aroused in scripture, we are also able to understand that there's a principle of his jealousy that's involved here. God's anger is not like the anger of a man, and God's anger is never the type that has retribution for the sake of uncontrolled, unmitigated, reckless wrath of just I'm going to annihilate and rip to pieces, I'm out of control. Well, I want to make that obvious as we consider this particular passage of scripture. God's anger in this sense is always primarily going to be that it is an attack upon the glory of God, and the attack is, is that his people are not viewing his glory, and it is the viewing of the glory of God that brings the greatest amount of security for the people of God, and whenever the people of God move away from that, the people of God injure themselves spiritually. And the anger here is just anger, but it is also embracing his zeal, his holy jealousy. It's actually a wonderful expression of the character of God. It demonstrates divine care for his own. And so when we think about the character of God, and we think about him moving in our lives, and we think about these terms, the anger of the Lord is expressed, is not the kind of shriveling anger that we ought to be, uh, cowering under and, and being debilitated by and, and afraid to look at the Lord in the debilitating sense. There ought to be a healthy holiness in the heart of, of, of God's people, but that holiness, that healthy, holy fear of the Lord is, is that, you know what? I've moved away from something that the Lord wants to bless me from. I- I- I've done something in this sense of taking myself away from that which God knows will be to my benefit. And there are times when it is healthy, and the Lord alone knows when that is expressed to us so that it ministers to us. It teaches us in a holy, healthy way. You know what? Lord, I belong to you, and you are very, very precise about the way you're working in our lives, and you're teaching us that it's a dangerous thing to move away from your glory and the expression of it. It's dangerous in the sense that we harm ourselves, and God is moving. Now, in this, we see two expressed principles, two things that are being brought out that are very important for us as his people, just to embrace and to ponder and to meditate. Number one, we look at the, the aspect of God knew what David's heart was all about, and he knew that he had, had drifted away, and so it isn't that God made David sin, it's just God permitted the attack to come to David because David had removed himself from obeying the Lord, from following the Lord, from looking to the Lord. And this wasn't retributive with, without purpose in- involved. There was the obvious reality that God's desire was to restore David to a place of blessing. We also see it with respect to the children of Israel. They had moved away. I don't know what it was. I think we can put the facts together from the biblical record that we have, that they prospered under David's leadership. They were doing very well. They became very, very satisfied. They became very, very comfortable. But the danger in all of that is, is that we begin to, to rest in the comfort of it and in the satisfaction of it, and not in the presence of the Lord. And they had began to sin, and they began to get cold hearts. They began to get drifty in their allegiance to the Lord, and they began to scatter themselves away from his beauty and, and were doing things they shouldn't do. So the Lord was accomplishing, not only in the life of David, but also in the life of his people, a very valuable lesson. Now, you and I look at it, and we look at it, and we say, boy, this was severe. We say, oh boy. A- and, and again, the mentality of the winter circle, we tend to go strictly to David, and we focus on the, the lesson that God was teaching David, and we should. There's a, there's, there's application there. But again, there are other lessons in this that God would focus our attention on, and that is, is that you know what happened. Seventy thousand men of Israel died. And I thought recently, what about those seventy thousand families that were involved? What were they thinking? What was going through their mind? What thoughts about God did they have? You can be sure that the spectrum was wide. You can be sure again that in the sovereign purposes of God, nothing was caught off guard, nothing out of balance, and even through the sin of David, and obviously through the sin of the people of Israel, God was speaking. This wasn't harshness, this wasn't meanness. We, we will, we will stand gazing at the goodness of God when we get home to heaven, and we will find that all of those seventy thousand who had believed and put their confidence in the Lord were thrilled to get home. But when we look at what was left behind, and we look about the families and what they had to learn, we'll just have to wait and see what the Lord had in mind for the lessons of all those 70,000 families. But I'll tell you one thing, you'll know this to be sure, that the glory of God was supreme in that whole thing. And what they learned was this, was is that human lives were expendable in reference to the glory of God. Now, I want to be careful here. We're not saying that our lives are expendable in the sense that we go out and do foolish acts. It isn't that we go out with martyr mentalities. But the lesson is this, that God would have us learn the value that our lives mean nothing if they are lived for self. And that when a person's life is taken, it will always be in the sense for the glory of God, one way or the other. And that for those who are believers, and they listen and they learn, they understand that God's greater glory is the issue at hand here. But we don't have all the answers this side of heaven, and we don't understand all the things that God sees. I so appreciate what this one brother said to me one time. He said, if you were God, you would answer prayers the same way that he does now. If you knew what God knew, you would answer prayers exactly the same way they're being answered now. And that again causes the people of God to come to a point of resting in the overall sovereignty of his plan. And this is what brings peace, it brings praise, it brings purpose to life. It doesn't bring arbitrary, boy, he's a tough guy. We'll see that he's weaving and working, and he's putting it all together, and God is doing for mankind the very best. Otherwise, he wouldn't record these things. Otherwise, we wouldn't know him as we know him today. We wouldn't have things to say about him that are good. And so, when we talk about the value of the glory of God, and we talk about what it is that God lives for, we have to go again to a great portion, and I'd like for us to go there, to Isaiah chapter forty eight and verse eleven. and we come into a very wonderful understanding about God's glory in this sense. And that is this, verse eleven, for my own sake, for my own sake I will do it, for how should my name be profaned, and I will not give my glory to another. And in this sense, what God is expressing to us is the very purpose for which he lives. I know that may sound kind of, of, uh, backwards, it may sound a bit redundant, but pause with me for a moment and just contemplate this moment. What is it that he lives for? Now, I wouldn't say this in the sense of demeaning the responsibility or ever even beginning to come close to saying we don't understand the ways in which he cares, but you know what? He is a marvelous provider. He's a great caretaker. He's a great upholder, and everything he does, he does right. There's never a question about what he does, but when we ask the question, what is it that God lives for, we have to really think a little bit about that tonight, and we have to say to ourselves, yeah, what is it that he really lives for? Now we could say, well, he, uh, he lives for the creation, and he's a, he is, as I mentioned earlier, he's a great steward of creation. He upholds it, he maintains it. There's no one who will do a better job at it. It's great. But, you know, creation is full of the curse. Think about this for a moment. It's full of the curse. It's the result of what happened to the heart of men and women who turned against him. And then you could think of it from the perspective, well, then he lives for mankind, but you see the fallen nature of mankind. And I say this in the human sense of approaching this subject. I know it's weak in our humanness, but you look at it and say, well, does he live for mankind? But mankind has no heart for him, naturally. Then you say, well, he lives for the angelic hosts. A third of them turned. What does he live for? He lives for his glory. He lives for his glory because he knows, as no one else outside of the Trinity, he knows there is no greater purpose to live for than for the glory of God. Why? The glory of God is pure. The glory of God does not sin. The glory of God is always to be counted upon. The glory of God will never be stripped from him. It will never be called into question. It will never harm. The glory of God will always do that which is right, and it's not that it's the glory in and of itself, but it is the essence of that glory. It is the character of him. It is who he is and his being, and God will not, cannot, has never entered his mind to deny himself. And that's the security of the believer, is the unmovable, unshakable, the everlasting beauty of the rock solid, eternal, unshakable beauty of the Lord himself. And this is what is upheld in his glory. That's why he won't cheapen it. He won't allow it to be profaned because it is not his nature to do something like that. He doesn't have to. And that's why when we think about the glory of God and we think about what it is that the Lord lives for, he lives for that which is holy and right. And it's not something that he lives for in the sense of attainment. He doesn't work himself up to live for it. It is who he is. He doesn't have, there's no effort in it. It beams out of him because it's him, and he's holy. And that's your guarantee, beloved. That's my guarantee, is who he is in essence, who he is in character, and that's why in our hearts and in our lives as his children, we want to make much of him. We want to see him. We want to be filled with him. We want to enjoy what he's given us to enjoy, and thereby it begins to filter into every nook and cranny of our lives. We learn as his children that he is not a hardened person. He doesn't play mean games with his people. He loves his people. He loves you, and he is committed eternally to your well-being. And he's forming and shaping and changing and moving us along in such a way that we will learn to see that, as Paul would say, whatever you do, you do to the glory of God. I don't know about you, that used to frighten the britches inside out off of me. I don't know how that happens, but anyway, maybe it communicates something of, wow, boy, that was something to ponder, but this is the reality of it. That our whole being as his people, as we grow, we begin to understand it's not a freak thing for a believer to speak often of God's glory, and what he does, he does out of and through and to the glory of God. We're the happiest when that's going on. I don't understand how people like to fish. At least I didn't until last fall. And it's like anything else. You know, Satan's a master artist at taking one aspect of the goodness of God, and then he comes in and he twists the thing and he expands it beyond what it ought to be, to where then that thing becomes the thing that absorbs us. It's not right. This certainly doesn't mean we can't enjoy doing the things that are obvious and fun. All within a balance, all within a perspective that we can enjoy it. I don't know about you, when I get out there on that boat and I, I get excited, I think maybe today I'll fool the little slippery thing, and he'll bite my hoof. I had one of those days this last fall. You know, you hear these guys that are anglers, you know, fisher people, they, they just, they can just slay the fish right. Yeah, I went out last week and I filled up the cooler. They were flopping out of the boat. They were flopping in the boat and out of the boat. I've never had one of those days. You ever had one of those days? I hear these guys talking about them, some of, some of these ladies, they're, they're just great at catching fish. I never had one of those days. Until last fall. And I had one of those days. And it was a lot of fun. Yeah, I'm serious. The, the fellow that I go with once a f- once a year in the fall, he's a great bro. He just, he likes to take a couple of us old worn out preachers and get us on the lake and fish, and he says, you just get away from it all and fish, and we did, and we drove by a certain little area, and he saw some things going on, he said, well, let's try this area. I mean, no sooner had we thrown a little rooster tail on the water, kaboom! And it wasn't just me, it was all three of us, just kaboom, kaboom, kaboom. We thought, wow, how long will this last? Four hours. I mean, my wrist was worn out. You're going, yeah, right. That's one of them stories, right? Big old fish stories about this big. But God gets glory in it when we turn to him and we say, Lord, thank you for letting me enjoy that. As much as he gets glory when we're busted on our knees and we say, oh God, I need you. Work in me. I'm weak, I'm barren, I'm dry, I don't know where to go. I'm out of gas spiritually, and everything in between. That's why Paul said, whatever you do, do to the glory of God. And folks, when God's glory is permitted to have impact in our lives, it renovates us. It renovates us. We don't have to project spirituality. We don't have to go, you know, I'm spiritual. See that? We don't have to do that. There's a sweetness about the Lord that flows through us, and we're not even aware of it sometimes, and people will come along and say, man, you touched my life. I love you guys, and I'm looking forward to the rest of this week. I tell you what, this is key for us. This is key, always has been for his people. And I hope we'll be able to go away this week understanding that, yeah, the glory of God is immense and vast, and sometimes it frightens us or it intimidates us. I hope we go away understanding he's adorned us with the beauty of his glory. Isn't that wonderful? You, dear child of God, you are going to be seated right next to his son, on the son's throne. That's what he has in mind for all of you, and he will complete it. He will do it. Father, we thank you for your mercies to us. We just want to say that we don't understand, still as human beings, how it is that a high and holy and righteous God loves such creatures that it just seems like sometimes we hear something out of the word of God and our little souls jump for joy, and we say, yeah, that's it, and then we walk out of here, and sometimes it isn't two minutes before we're back slugging it out again with the flesh, and we wonder, wow, what happened? Father, thank you that you continually work with us. You do not stop. And we thank you that your joy is to take us to the glory of your beauty, of who you are in essence, and to reveal yourself to us, each of us. And Father, we pray that we would see this this week. We really do. We want to come, we want to understand, and we want to understand it from the perspective of it really gripping us, and of it having an impact for your sake, our privilege and joy and the benefit of others. We ask in our Savior's precious name. Amen.