SPEAKER_01: This morning, the psalm that we are looking at, Psalm 150, is a magnificent Psalm.
SPEAKER_01: I'd like to begin our time by reading Psalm 150 in its entirety.
SPEAKER_01: So if you would look down at your copy of God's word and follow with me as I read from the scriptures, Psalm 150, beginning in verse 1, God's word says this.
SPEAKER_01: Praise God in his sanctuary.
SPEAKER_01: Praise him in his mighty heavens.
SPEAKER_01: Praise him for his mighty deeds.
SPEAKER_01: Praise him according to his excellent greatness.
SPEAKER_01: Praise him with trumpet sound.
SPEAKER_01: Praise him with lute and harp.
SPEAKER_01: Praise him with tambourine and dance.
SPEAKER_01: Praise him with strings and pipe.
SPEAKER_01: Praise him with sounding cymbals.
SPEAKER_01: Praise him with loud, clashing cymbals.
SPEAKER_01: Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Praise the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: This is the word of God.
SPEAKER_01: The Potomac River begins as a small stream in the Appalachian Mountains, and it slowly gathers strength, as it winds through rugged valleys, cuts across the Blue Ridge Mountains, tumbles over Great Falls, sweeps by Washington, D.C., and finally broadens and empties into the Chesapeake Bay and ultimately the Atlantic Ocean.
SPEAKER_01: And if we were to ask ourselves, why does the river have to pass through such a long, torturous journey over rugged mountains, steep falls, jagged rocks, and polluted cities?
SPEAKER_01: The answer is very simple.
SPEAKER_01: It has to go to the ocean.
SPEAKER_01: The river's end, and this is what endings do.
SPEAKER_01: The river's end guides and gives meaning to its journey.
SPEAKER_01: Psalm 150 is the final psalm.
SPEAKER_01: It's intentionally placed at the end of the Psalter because it is a psalm whose content teaches us the end of the believer's life.
SPEAKER_01: It is a psalm that is here to guide and give meaning to our journey.
SPEAKER_01: The book of Psalms, the Psalter, all 150 are intentionally gathered and collected in order to teach God's people how to live a whole life holy in worship to God.
SPEAKER_01: And the way the Psalm is structured is that the first two Psalms serve as a kind of double-doored entrance into this life of worship.
SPEAKER_01: The first Psalm teaches us that there are only two ways that you can live your life.
SPEAKER_01: There's the way of the wicked that ends in destruction, and there's the way of the righteous that is blessed.
SPEAKER_01: And what is the linchpin, the key that makes the difference between the way of the wicked and the way of the righteous is the righteous delight in the law of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: They submit to and love God's word.
SPEAKER_01: Psalm 2 then comes along and adds to this perspective God's perspective on the whole of human history.
SPEAKER_01: And Psalm 2 asserts that God is and will reign over the world, save his people, and judge the world in righteousness.
SPEAKER_01: The person who will be blessed in this world is the person who takes refuge in his appointed king.
SPEAKER_01: This is the double-doored entrance we have to pass through in order to enter into a life of worship.
SPEAKER_01: If we are to live blessed lives, we have to submit to and love God's word and surrender to and take refuge in God's king.
SPEAKER_01: And as we pass through that entrance into a life of worship, the whole Psalter is arranged to teach us how to orient our entire life in worship to God, in the mountains and in the valleys, and all the twists and turns that our journeys will take.
SPEAKER_01: For he is good, and his steadfast love endures forever.
SPEAKER_01: And that's the way most of the summons to praise work.
SPEAKER_01: A summons to praise followed by because of this specific attribute, something specific about who God is, something specific about what he has done.
SPEAKER_01: But we actually don't have that in Psalm 150.
SPEAKER_01: The whole Psalm is swallowed up by an emphatic and unceasing summons to praise.
SPEAKER_01: And the reason that it's structured this way is that this psalm, as the fitting conclusion to the whole Psalter, assumes that we have read, lived, and imbibed the previous 149 Psalms and have learned who our God is.
SPEAKER_01: And we know who he is, what he has done, and we're overflowing with specific reasons to praise him.
SPEAKER_01: And Psalm 150 guides and orients our entire response to God, namely to glorify him in all that we are.
SPEAKER_01: So I would like this morning to walk through Psalm 150 together, and we'll do that according to the structure in the Psalms.
SPEAKER_01: Psalm 140 gives us a fourfold call to glorify God, a fourfold call to glorify God.
SPEAKER_01: And the first is in verse one, where the Psalm summons us to glorify God everywhere.
SPEAKER_01: Look at verse one.
SPEAKER_01: The text reads, Praise the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Praise God in his sanctuary.
SPEAKER_01: And we could ask the question, well, which sanctuary?
SPEAKER_01: Because this is kind of a multivalent, uh, kind of ambiguous term.
SPEAKER_01: There are multiple sanctuaries in the scripture.
SPEAKER_01: In the Old Covenant, the Old Testament, we know there was an earthly physical sanctuary, both the one that Moses built and then it's superseded by the one that Solomon builds, the temple of God in Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_01: In 1 Kings chapter 8, after Solomon builds and dedicates the temple, the text says that the glory of God filled the sanctuary.
SPEAKER_01: But we also know that the earthly temples or sanctuaries that the people of Israel built at God's instructions, the book of Hebrews tells us are mere copies or replicas of the true heaven, excuse me, the true sanctuary which is in heaven.
SPEAKER_01: So, among other scriptures, Revelation 11, verse 19 speaks of the temple of God which is in heaven.
SPEAKER_01: So we have a sanctuary on earth, we have a sanctuary in heaven, but this concept is also personalized in the New Covenant, because the scripture says every believer in the Lord Jesus Christ is the sanctuary of God.
SPEAKER_01: The Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians chapter 6, verse 19, says, Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you?
SPEAKER_01: So we have this threefold understanding of the sanctuary in the scriptures, on earth, in heaven, and in the believer.
SPEAKER_01: And so which is it?
SPEAKER_01: And I think the answer to that is yes.
SPEAKER_01: Everywhere.
SPEAKER_01: We are to worship God everywhere.
SPEAKER_01: And the reason that I say yes is I think it's backed up by the parallel line at the end of verse 1.
SPEAKER_01: Look at the second half of verse 1.
SPEAKER_01: Praise God in his sanctuary, praise him in his mighty heavens.
SPEAKER_01: And the language here, the specific term that's used for heavens, is recalls God's creation of the heavens, a physical universe in Genesis chapter 1.
SPEAKER_01: And so the notion that the Psalm is getting at here is that on the earth, in the heavens, in your individual life, everywhere, God's people are to praise him, to glorify God.
SPEAKER_01: We are summoned to glorify God absolutely everywhere.
SPEAKER_01: But the Psalm keeps going.
SPEAKER_01: Not only are we summoned to glorify God everywhere, but to glorify him for all that he is and all that he does.
SPEAKER_01: Notice this in verse 2.
SPEAKER_01: The first half of verse 2 says, Praise Him for His mighty deeds.
SPEAKER_01: Praise Him for His mighty deeds.
SPEAKER_01: And as I said a moment ago, there are no specific mighty deeds that are listed here.
SPEAKER_01: And so we could ask the question, which ones are we supposed to glorify him for?
SPEAKER_01: And again, the answer is yes.
SPEAKER_01: We are supposed to be coming increasingly acquainted with the acts of God in redemption and in creation.
SPEAKER_01: So we could just think for a moment, what are some of the acts of God?
SPEAKER_01: What are some of his mighty deeds for which he deserves glory?
SPEAKER_01: Well, God created everything that exists, everything that has life and breath and existence, you and me and everything, has its existence as a gift from God.
SPEAKER_01: We exist by an act of God.
SPEAKER_01: And so we can glorify God and give thanks to God for the gift of life.
SPEAKER_01: But even more than that, God has acted in the world for recreation, to redeem a people for himself.
SPEAKER_01: So we can glorify God that he has condescended to take on a human nature and to suffer death in our place and redeem us from the judgment we deserve from our sins, to bring us into the world to come where we will reign with him forever and ever.
SPEAKER_01: God indeed has acted in history to redeem us, and for that he deserves glory.
SPEAKER_01: But we could also make it even more personalized, and we could say every step along your journey in which God has comforted you, strengthened you, given you peace and fresh waves of the knowledge of his grace and love for you, have you not tasted and seen that the Lord is good?
SPEAKER_01: All of his mighty deeds in creation, recreation, and in guiding you, he deserves glory.
SPEAKER_01: But the text also says not just what he does, but who he is.
SPEAKER_01: That's the second half of verse 2, if you notice that.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 2 says, Praise him for his mighty deeds, and praise him according to his excellent greatness.
SPEAKER_01: Praise him according to his excellent greatness.
SPEAKER_01: That line is getting at the essence of who God is.
SPEAKER_01: That is, praise God for who he is in himself.
SPEAKER_01: Of course, all of God's acts reveal who he is in his own nature, who he is as a person.
SPEAKER_01: And he creates, Romans tells us that he reveals his power and wisdom and beauty.
SPEAKER_01: As he redeems, he reveals his justice, his patience, his kindness, his mercy, and his love.
SPEAKER_01: And as you increasingly become acquainted with the great works of God, you increasingly are filled with the knowledge of who God is in his essence, and that is what we are summoned to praise.
SPEAKER_01: Praise him for what he does, praise him for what he is, but the psalm just keeps rolling and gives us a third summons to praise him with all that you have, and that's in verse 3.
SPEAKER_01: Look down at the scriptures in verse 3, and the psalm says, Praise Him with trumpet sound, praise him with lute and harp, praise him with tambourine and dance, praise him with strings and pipe, praise him with sounding cymbals, praise him with loud clashing cymbals.
SPEAKER_01: You see what the psalm is doing is he's reaching through the whole of the orchestra and grabbing every single piece of equipment saying, Use everything that is at your disposal to praise the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: There's actually a development in this list.
SPEAKER_01: It's not just a haphazard list of instruments.
SPEAKER_01: The first instrument, the trumpet sound, is an instrument that would be someone speci used specifically by the priests in worship.
SPEAKER_01: The next one, the lute and the harps, would be used specifically by the Levites.
SPEAKER_01: And then we're getting a kind of expanding group of people worshiping the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: In verse 4, tambourine and dance are typically the women in praise.
SPEAKER_01: Think of Miriam leading the women to praise God after the deliverance from Egypt.
SPEAKER_01: Then we have strings and pipe and sounding symbols and loud clashing symbols.
SPEAKER_01: That's everyone is included, using everything that's at your disposal, whatever you have available to you, with whatever abilities you have, praise the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Or you could say, you could principalize this by saying, everything that is at your disposal, all of your resources, all of your time, all of your skills, all your relationships, absolutely all you are and all you have is to be employed in praising the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: This is the end for which we're created.
SPEAKER_01: This is what guides and governs everything about us, is we use everything we have to praise the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: That's what the Psalm is summoning us to.
SPEAKER_01: And just in case we haven't got the picture yet, there's a final summons in verse six, and that is everyone is to praise to glorify the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Look at verse six.
SPEAKER_01: Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Praise the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: If it's breathing, it will worship God.
SPEAKER_01: By the way, this isn't just a summons or an invitation.
SPEAKER_01: This is objectively the ultimate end of all creation, is that all creation will glorify God.
SPEAKER_01: Revelation chapter five gives us a vision into the throne room of heaven, where the author says, I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea and all that is in them, saying, To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever.
SPEAKER_01: Everything will glorify God.
SPEAKER_01: Everywhere, all the time, with all that they have, for all he is and all that he does.
SPEAKER_01: This is the summons, this is the end that governs, that guides, and gives meaning to all of human life is to glorify God.
SPEAKER_01: But I have titled this sermon, God's Glory and Your Good.
SPEAKER_01: The Psalm very explicitly and emphatically summons us to orient our entire life, all that we are, the decisions we make, and everything that we do around glorifying God.
SPEAKER_01: The Psalm doesn't explicitly say that this is your good, but the Psalm assumes that you have read everything else in the Psalter and expensively in the whole scriptures, and that you would be well acquainted that glorifying God is indeed your highest good.
SPEAKER_01: So before we finish this morning, I think it would be worth tracing some of the scriptures that teach us that indeed glorifying God is your highest good.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe this is just my youth pastor way of sneaking in a second sermon on Sunday morning.
SPEAKER_01: But I have three points to argue that the scriptures teach us that God's glory is your greatest good.
SPEAKER_01: And it starts here.
SPEAKER_01: It starts with God.
SPEAKER_01: The scriptures reveal that what God is always doing is glorifying himself.
SPEAKER_01: God's chief ambition, his highest priority is to glorify himself.
SPEAKER_01: God always glorifies himself.
SPEAKER_01: And you see this on every page of Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: If you were to search through your scriptures and try to find references of God speaking of my name, my glory, you would find nearly a hundred texts.
SPEAKER_01: It's on every page of scripture.
SPEAKER_01: God is constantly, ultimately, and always seeking his own glory.
SPEAKER_01: I'll give you a series of scripture texts to just walk through some of his acts that aim at his own glory.
SPEAKER_01: For example, Malachi chapter one, the Lord says, From the rising of the sun to its setting, my name will be great among the nations.
SPEAKER_01: And in every place, incense will be offered to my name, and a pure offering for my name will be great among the nations, says the Lord of hosts.
SPEAKER_01: This is God's highest aim, his own glory.
SPEAKER_01: So all that he does aims at glorifying himself.
SPEAKER_01: His acts of creation, creating the physical world, is aimed at bringing himself glory.
SPEAKER_01: Psalm 19.1 says, the heavens declare the glory of God.
SPEAKER_01: What's the aim of physical creation, of canyons and stars and rivers?
SPEAKER_01: The aim of it is to reveal the glory of God.
SPEAKER_01: And by the way, this Psalm really helps us, it implicitly helps us to understand what we're talking about when we speak of the glory of God.
SPEAKER_01: The glory of God is God's own intrinsic perfection, beauty, value made public.
SPEAKER_01: God is in himself, intrinsically valuable, perfect, absolutely wonderful and majestic.
SPEAKER_01: And when his own intrinsic value goes public, that is his glory.
SPEAKER_01: Think of the famous throne room vision in Isaiah chapter 6, where the prophet Isaiah is given a vision of God, and he sees angels around God crying out, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.
SPEAKER_01: The whole earth is filled with his glory.
SPEAKER_01: The glory of God is his own intrinsic, inherent value made public for his creatures to enjoy.
SPEAKER_01: That's why the universe exists.
SPEAKER_01: Specifically here, it's why the created universe exists, is to reveal, to display God's own intrinsic perfection.
SPEAKER_01: But it's also all of God's specific acts in his creation.
SPEAKER_01: For example, predestination and the acts of salvation.
SPEAKER_01: The Apostle Paul writes in Ephesians 1, in love, he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Why did he predestine people?
SPEAKER_01: Why did he choose before time to redeem a people for himself?
SPEAKER_01: It's for the purpose of his will to the praise of his glorious grace.
SPEAKER_01: He acts in creation, he plans redemption for his own glory.
SPEAKER_01: He goes on in Isaiah chapter 48, the Lord says that he saves his people for his own glory.
SPEAKER_01: For my name's sake, I defer my anger.
SPEAKER_01: For the sake of my praise, I restrain it, so that I may not cut you off.
SPEAKER_01: For my own sake, for my own sake I do it.
SPEAKER_01: For how should my name be profaned?
SPEAKER_01: My glory I will not give to another.
SPEAKER_01: God saves his people for his own glory.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, the scriptures explicitly say that all that God does in the work of Christ is for his own glory.
SPEAKER_01: In Ephesians, excuse me, Philippians in chapter two, this famous text that speaks of God's magnificent work in salvation, where God, in his son, does not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but humbles himself by taking on the form of a servant, and then becomes obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
SPEAKER_01: And so the Apostle Paul writes in verse 9, therefore, for this reason God has highly exalted him, that's Christ, and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
SPEAKER_01: The ultimate aim of all of God's works, the ultimate aim of all the work of Christ is God glorifying himself.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, the new world that Jesus procures for his people has as its aim the glory of God.
SPEAKER_01: Habakkuk chapter 2 says, the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.
SPEAKER_01: This is the purpose of all of God's acts.
SPEAKER_01: Or if you want one verse to summarize all of this truth, we could look to the very words of Jesus in John chapter 12, as Jesus is speaking in front of his disciples to the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus prays, Father, glorify your name.
SPEAKER_01: This is Jesus' aim.
SPEAKER_01: He wants God to glorify himself.
SPEAKER_01: Then a voice came from heaven, I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.
SPEAKER_01: This is all that God does.
SPEAKER_01: He is always glorifying himself.
SPEAKER_01: God always glorifies himself.
SPEAKER_01: So when God in Psalm 150, through the psalmist, summons his people to orient their entire life around glorifying him, he's summoning us to do the very same thing that he has been doing in his own nature, by his own essence, and in all of his acts for all of eternity.
SPEAKER_01: He's summoning his creatures to participate in the very act that defines who God is, glorifying God.
SPEAKER_01: But as creatures, it often strikes us as radically counterintuitive, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01: We are not supposed to glorify ourselves as creatures.
SPEAKER_01: So for God to say that he always glorifies himself strikes us as radically counterintuitive.
SPEAKER_01: But my second point here, I want to argue from the scriptures, is that it is right for God to glorify himself.
SPEAKER_01: And there are a whole list of reasons that theologians through the agents have teased out from the scriptures.
SPEAKER_01: I want to give you just a couple very simple ones.
SPEAKER_01: Here's one the kind of reason that I can use to explain to my children.
SPEAKER_01: God always glorifies himself because if God were to glorify someone else, that would make him an idolater.
SPEAKER_01: And God is not an idolater.
SPEAKER_01: We know the Ten Commandments.
SPEAKER_01: We use finger motions to teach the Ten Commandments in my home.
SPEAKER_01: And we always teach our kids that our commandment, the commandments of God, reveal his own character.
SPEAKER_01: So for example, the seventh commandment.
SPEAKER_01: Do you know the seventh commandment?
SPEAKER_01: Do not commit adultery.
SPEAKER_01: How do you explain that to like a six-year-old, though?
SPEAKER_01: So what we do is mommy and daddy love each other, stay together.
SPEAKER_01: Now, does God keep this commandment?
SPEAKER_01: Or what does this commandment reveal about God?
SPEAKER_01: Well, God does keep this commandment.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, he is absolutely loyal to his bride, the church.
SPEAKER_01: At the cost of his own life, he is absolutely, entirely faithful to his bride.
SPEAKER_01: And his fidelity reveals something about his character.
SPEAKER_01: God is faithful.
SPEAKER_01: Well, what about the first and second commandments?
SPEAKER_01: First commandment, there's only one God.
SPEAKER_01: Second commandment, don't bow down to idols, or little kid sign language, don't bow down to idols.
SPEAKER_01: Does God keep this commandment?
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01: God is not an idolater.
SPEAKER_01: The command not to bow down to idols is not to make a false god, and God has no false gods.
SPEAKER_01: He is always glorifying himself.
SPEAKER_01: This gets to the nature of the distinction between creator and creature.
SPEAKER_01: God, as self-existent creator, can and must do things that creatures cannot and must not try to do.
SPEAKER_01: God creates the universe and we can't create anything.
SPEAKER_01: God cre judges the universe and it's not our position, nor should we try to judge the universe.
SPEAKER_01: And God always glorifies himself, and we should not, must not glorify ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: We find our highest good in glorifying God.
SPEAKER_01: It is right for God to glorify himself.
SPEAKER_01: And I want to give perhaps one more reason why it is right for God to glorify himself.
SPEAKER_01: The scripture reveals that the God who created the universe is one God in three persons.
SPEAKER_01: He's a unity and plurality in his essence, in his nature.
SPEAKER_01: He is unity in plurality.
SPEAKER_01: So what it means for God to glorify himself is that the members of the Trinity are perpetually glorified.
SPEAKER_01: Glorifying one another.
SPEAKER_01: And I take this specifically from the scriptures.
SPEAKER_01: In John chapter 17, as Jesus is praying to the Father, he says, I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do.
SPEAKER_01: Now we read that, and out of context, it might sound like maybe Jesus is speaking about specifically his humanity, because Jesus, the eternal Son of God, condescended to take on human nature and to become a human, truly a human being, as a human being and as a sinless human being.
SPEAKER_01: In his human nature, he always live for God's glory, which is what all human beings are supposed to do.
SPEAKER_01: But when you read the rest of the text in context, what you see is that he's not just talking about his human mission, but he's also talking about his own deity.
SPEAKER_01: The nature of what it means for him to be the eternal Son of God is that he has always been glorifying the Father.
SPEAKER_01: And we get this in the next verse, where he goes on to say, And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.
SPEAKER_01: What has God always been doing for eternity, before there was a universe?
SPEAKER_01: He's been glorifying himself.
SPEAKER_01: Well, how is he doing that?
SPEAKER_01: Because it's not like there are creatures that he can reveal his glory to.
SPEAKER_01: What he's been doing is revealing his glory to himself.
SPEAKER_01: The Father glorifying the Son, and the Son glorifying the Father, and the exchange of their mutual love and joy is so full, it is God, it is the Spirit, the magnificent mediation of explosive, infinite, divine glory between the Father and the Son in God's own essence for all of eternity.
SPEAKER_01: God always glorifies himself.
SPEAKER_01: Even before there was a universe to which God could externally reveal his glory, he was always glorifying himself because he is a Trinity.
SPEAKER_01: What it means to be God is he is absolute sheer essence.
SPEAKER_01: He is eternal act, and his eternal act is an act of self-giving love.
SPEAKER_01: God is an eternal act of self-giving love.
SPEAKER_01: This is the basis of all of reality.
SPEAKER_01: Everything that exists, you and the pew that you sit on, the voice that you hear, is all contingent reality composed of time and space and matter.
SPEAKER_01: It's all contingent reality.
SPEAKER_01: God is self-existent reality, the basis of everything else.
SPEAKER_01: And the basis of all reality is this sheer act of self-giving, self-glorifying love, the Father sharing all of himself with the Son, and the Son sharing all of himself with the Father, giving glory and honor eternally, perpetually, unceasingly.
SPEAKER_01: God is an eternal act of self-giving love.
SPEAKER_01: And what he's doing in summoning you to orient your whole life around glorifying him is summoning you to the highest good.
SPEAKER_01: That is, God's glory is your greatest good.
SPEAKER_01: Now there's a number of ways that we could argue this, but one of the ways that I think is helpful is to think about kind of a human analogy.
SPEAKER_01: One of my favorite illustrations for this is to tell a story of my oldest daughter.
SPEAKER_01: When she was maybe one year old, she's like probably all firstborn, she's very rambunctious, but she also was really good at entertaining herself.
SPEAKER_01: And so when my wife and I would want to go to dinner and have a moment's peace to be able to chat at the table, we would take her to dinner, put her in her high chair, and we would give her, you know, one of the little plastic cups that you get at a restaurant and hand it to her.
SPEAKER_01: And because she's a self-entertaining oldest child, she'd just go crazy playing with the cup, and she would just be totally content the whole dinner, and we could have a lovely evening together.
SPEAKER_01: It was wonderful.
SPEAKER_01: Well, she's a little older now.
SPEAKER_01: And I have tried on occasion when we go to a restaurant to hand her a plastic cup and say, knock yourself out, kid.
SPEAKER_01: And as you'd imagine, she's less than entertained by this.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Well, she's grown.
SPEAKER_01: She's almost a teenager now.
SPEAKER_01: She needs a bigger object than a plastic cup to impress her.
SPEAKER_01: And this is the nature of every human heart.
SPEAKER_01: As you grow relationally, socially, intellectually, in your experience, in your breadth and understanding of the world, you need bigger and newer objects to satisfy and bring you contentment.
SPEAKER_01: What is big enough to satisfy God from all of eternity?
SPEAKER_01: Himself.
SPEAKER_01: He has been eternally glorifying and satisfying himself within the relationship of the Trinity forever.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus explicitly says this in John chapter 17, verse 24, but he explicitly adds that the goal of redemption is that we would share in God's own self-glory.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus prays, Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am to see my glory.
SPEAKER_01: Glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.
SPEAKER_01: God, as an eternal act of self-giving love, has been perpetually glorifying himself, and the Father and the Son and the Spirit have been overflowing infinite joy and gladness in their self-giving love, in their self-giving glorious love.
SPEAKER_01: And what Jesus aims at in his redemption is to repair your heart and to open your eyes to the beauty of God and to bring you into the tidal wave of overflowing divine self-giving love.
SPEAKER_01: He invites you to be satisfied in the same object that has satisfied God for all of eternity and nothing less.
SPEAKER_01: He holds nothing back from you.
SPEAKER_01: He gives his whole self and brings you into Trinitarian love.
SPEAKER_01: This is the glory of God, and this is why he redeems you.
SPEAKER_01: So when Psalm 150 summons us to glorify God and points us to this as the end of humanity, the end of our life, the goal that gives meaning to all of our life, to orient everything in us, everything around us towards glorifying God, it is summoning us to enjoy the very thing that God has been enjoying eternally and nothing less.
SPEAKER_01: You know, if God, in his act of redemption, had done something less, it would have been enough, wouldn't it?
SPEAKER_01: Scripture reveals that this glorious God created us in his image for the purpose of knowing and enjoying him forever, and we turned our back on him, and we did make idols of his creation, and we deserve to be separated from his glory forever.
SPEAKER_01: God, in his overflowing kindness, condescends to take on human nature, to stand in our place and endure the judgment we deserve, to make us righteous, to restore our hearts, to purify us, and to bring us into the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_01: And when he brings us, he doesn't throw us in cupboards, lock the door, and say, Well, just sit there and I don't want to hear a peep from you forever.
SPEAKER_01: If he did, that would be more than enough.
SPEAKER_01: But 1 Peter chapter 3 says that Christ died, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.
SPEAKER_01: The goal of your salvation, the goal of your existence is to sweep you up and bring you into the ever-flowing wave of God's act of self-giving love.
SPEAKER_01: That is, shorthand, the shorthand for that is He made you for His glory.
SPEAKER_01: Nothing less.
SPEAKER_01: Living for anything less would be a fool's errand.
SPEAKER_01: This is why you exist.
SPEAKER_01: So indeed, the psalmist right in calling us to live for God's glory, because it is God's glory that is our greatest good.
SPEAKER_01: What a gift that the scripture pulls back the curtain of heaven and reveals a God of self-giving love and summons us to know him, to taste and see that he is good and satisfy our hearts in him.
SPEAKER_01: Father, we thank you that you have given yourself for us.
SPEAKER_01: We thank you that you held nothing back in giving your son.
SPEAKER_01: We thank you that you will share yourself with us forever.
SPEAKER_01: God, we want our hearts to be repaired.
SPEAKER_01: We want to be stripped away from lesser things that we are prone to cling to.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, we know our hearts are prone to wander.
SPEAKER_01: So we pray that you would bind us to yourself, open our eyes to more of your love, open our eyes to more of your glory, and cause us to live lives of purity and holiness, because we want to see you, the only true God in Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.
SPEAKER_01: We pray now that as we sing that you would strengthen our hearts by faith and you would cause us to orient all of our life around your glory.
SPEAKER_01: And we pray this in the name of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: And now, for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.
SPEAKER_00: If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, iBC.church.
SPEAKER_00: If you want more information about the Master Seminary or our location here in Washington, D.C., please go to tms.edu.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel.
SPEAKER_00: I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service.
SPEAKER_00: But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.
SPEAKER_00: Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.