This time of year many Christians make New Year’s resolutions that often include spiritual disciplines like reading our Bibles every day, praying more, or sinning less. And perhaps, the biggest resolutions many Christians make is that they want have more faith.
And regardless of having the best intentions most of us at some point have ended up dropping the ball on those resolutions sometimes when we’re not even too far into the new year. When it comes to having the desire to read our Bible more, pray more, sin less, and especially, have more faith, we can't approach it as a check list of things we need to do. Its all about what we do. It's not about us "upping" our game.
RC Sproul said everything begins and ends with our view of God. So the way we do pray more, sin less, increase our faith, isn’t by striving in our strength, but by upping the object of those things. We need to elevate our view of God. We need to see Him as He truly is.
Thanks for tuning in! Be sure to check out everything Proverbs 9:10 on our website, www.proverbs910ministries.com! You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Rumble, YouTube, Twitter, Truth Social, and Gettr!
This time of year many Christians make New Year’s resolutions that often include spiritual disciplines like reading our Bibles every day, praying more, or sinning less. And perhaps, the biggest resolutions many Christians make is that they want have more faith.
And regardless of having the best intentions most of us at some point have ended up dropping the ball on those resolutions sometimes when we’re not even too far into the new year. When it comes to having the desire to read our Bible more, pray more, sin less, and especially, have more faith, we can't approach it as a check list of things we need to do. Its all about what we do. It's not about us "upping" our game.
RC Sproul said everything begins and ends with our view of God. So the way we do pray more, sin less, increase our faith, isn’t by striving in our strength, but by upping the object of those things. We need to elevate our view of God. We need to see Him as He truly is.
Thanks for tuning in! Be sure to check out everything Proverbs 9:10 on our website, www.proverbs910ministries.com! You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Rumble, YouTube, Twitter, Truth Social, and Gettr!
EPISODE 121 - Transformed to Bring Glory
Welcome back as we continue in our series “Be Transformed!” We started out last week with an intro to this series saying the top three New Year’s resolutions were exercise more, lose weight and get organized. This time of year most of us do make those types of New Year’s resolutions and for a Christian, resolutions often include spiritual disciplines like reading our Bibles every day, praying more, or sinning less. And perhaps, the biggest resolutions many Christians have is that they want have more faith.
And regardless of having the best intentions most of us at some point have ended up dropping the ball on those resolutions sometimes when we’re not even too far into the new year. And that’s because we are approaching it as a check list of things we need to do. Its all about what we do. But that’s not how we should approach any of these things.
RC Sproul said everything begins and ends with our view of God. So the way we do pray more, sin less, increase our faith, isn’t by striving in our strength, but by upping the object of those things. We need to elevate our view of God. We need to see Him as He truly is.
For the Christian, our salvation brought about an initial change – we were made a “new creation” as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:17. But as we said in the last episode, true transformation only comes with the help of the Holy Spirit and with hard work. The Spirit is helping us transform, but we should be cooperating with the Spirit in our transformation! And that’s where the hard work comes in.
It’s not easy. Our “theme verse” for this series is Romans 12: 2, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” We suggest you memorize that verse. In fact, we’re going to suggest a verse or two to memorize each episode, and we’ll post the memory verses on the Home page of the Proverbs 9:10 Ministries website.
Our theme verse comes on the heels of Romans Chapter 11 that ends with a doxology, “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgement, 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.” This doxology is a great reminder of how great God is and how insignificant we are.
That’s an important concept to grasp. That doxology also gives us our overarching purpose in life – glorifying God. That doesn’t mean that we are making Him glorious – He IS glorious. We are supposed to reflect that glory to show to others just how glorious He is. It’s something that should be forefront in our mind; not on the back burner where we only think about it (and do it) once in a while.
1 Corinthians 10:31 says, “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” If it was Jesus’ aim to glorify the Father (as we see when He prayed, “Father, glorify thy name” in John 12:28), then that should be our aim too. And you’re right that we shouldn’t put it on the back burner. But the truth is most of us do. So, what can help us ignite that passion?
Well, Rose, we’re going to take a lesson from the angels for that! 1 Peter 1:10-12 tells us that the prophets who prophesied about our salvation “searched and inquired,” trying to find out more about God’s salvation plan. The verse goes on to say that the angels long to look into those things. If the prophets wanted to look into the salvation God was making known through them, and the angels actually long to do that, what might happen if we started spending time looking deeply at Gods saving us – a wretched bunch of sinners - and meditating on that on a regular basis? We all know the sin we’ve been forgiven of! It’s humbling to think about it! Paul Washer said in a recent sermon, if you look at the cross, you’ll see God’s attributes all in that one place You’ll see that God is holy, just, merciful, righteous, that God is love – all of God’s attributes. So we’re going to start transforming this year by looking at some of God’s attributes and ways we can (and may already be) glorifying Him and ways we don’t glorify Him, according to His attributes.
The first attribute is that God is Eternal. God has no beginning or end. How can we glorify God in light of His eternity? By showing that we have complete faith and trust in Him. Do we question what we see happening in the world? If so, do we say things like “I can’t believe that God allowed …. (whatever)!” For some of us it’s habit to say things like that, but we really should stop. Those are opportunities (especially in front of nonbelievers) to show our faith and trust in God regardless of anything.
Since God is eternal, who are we to question Him at all? When Job was questioning God, God humbled him with a bunch of rhetorical questions asking where was he [Job] at creation. And when God was finished talking, all Job could say was, ““Behold, I am of small account; what shall I answer you? I lay my hand on my mouth. I have spoken once, and I will not answer; twice, but I will proceed no further.”
And that goes for even times when we’re being afflicted. Even then, we need to remember what Paul said to the Corinthians, “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”
The next attribute we’re looking at is that God is Sovereign. In light of thinking deeply about our salvation, we glorify God when we acknowledge that we come totally empty handed and respond with total thankfulness. If you are someone who’s put their faith and trust in Jesus as Lord and Savior, you did it because God chose you to be saved “before the foundation of the world” (as it says in Ephesians 1:4)! Yes – a wretch like you was predestined for adoption by God.
That’s a key truth to grasp and meditate on and one that should spur us on to glorify God. We don’t do anything at all to deserve our salvation. All glory goes to God for saving us. That’s why the Arminian idea that we’re all free to choose God falls woefully short of producing thankfulness and glory to God. If you think you did one little thing to help save yourself, like “made the decision” or “grabbed the life preserver” or God did 99% of the saving, now all you have to do is your 1%, then you’re taking some of the credit for it. In his book “None Else” Joel Beeke quotes Martin Luther who debated many people, one of who was Erasmus, who held to that Arminian belief. Luther told Erasmus, “Your thoughts concerning God are too human.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself! It was 100% Him and zero percent us. When I think about that, I think it’s no wonder the angels (and the prophets) longed to look into God’s plan saving sinners! I’m sure it seems above and beyond amazing that God saves any of us!
God’s attribute of sovereignty is displayed in His eternal decrees, like His electing some to salvation, but it’s also displayed in the day-to-day providences, described in the Westminster Shorter Catechism as “his most holy, wise, and powerful preserving and governing all his creatures and all their actions.” So, another way we glorify God is when we don’t try to explain away how things work out, but instead give Him the glory for working out the details! When we say that we “had good luck” or “the universe smiled upon us” or “by chance this or that happened,” we sound like the world! Proverbs 16:33 says, “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord.”
And there’s one other way some Christians are not glorifying God in relation to His Sovereignty and Providence. That is when they “declare” things. Only God declares what’s going to happen. He’s ordained and decreed what’s going to happen. He’s God – and we’re not! Think of it this way … do you let your children run your household? If your three-year-old stood up on a chair tonight and declared that they were no longer going to bed until they decided it was time for bed, what would you do? And what if you had two children that declared exact opposite things? Proverbs 16:9 says, “The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps.” Not only is decreeing and declaring foolish, it’s sin.
Next, God is Omnipotent. We worship an Omnipotent, Powerful, Mighty God. We glorify Him when we act like we know that! When we’re under pressure how do we react? Do we have a peaceful and quiet spirit? When everyone is freaking out around us, how is our demeanor? Psalm 121:1-2 says, I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth.” And the rest of that Psalm builds on that. And there are countless other verses like those. So let’s remember Who we belong to, and how powerful He is, especially when the unbelieving world is falling to pieces. Don’t be like them. We worship a powerful God who can even raise the dead! So let’s be calm amidst the storm.
God is Omnipresent. How do we glorify God in his omnipresence? By knowing and trusting that God is near at all times, everywhere, in all circumstances. Psalm 46:1 says God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. It doesn’t matter where we’re at or what we’re going through, God is right there with us. When I think about glorifying Him, I think about the martyrs going to their deaths. Talk about glorifying God! They must have felt His presence as they were being killed. But there’s another aspect of God’s omnipresence and our glorifying Him that we need to mention. Do we act like He is everywhere (even at home) when we’re alone? Or do we act like that just at church and when we’re with our Christian friends? Psalm 139:2 says God knows when we sit down and rise up, He discerns our thoughts from afar. And Proverbs 5:21 says, “a man’s ways are before the eyes of the Lord, and he ponders all his paths.”
God is Wise. Romans 11:33 says, “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” How do we glorify God’s wisdom? By obeying Him. By trusting that God’s ways are the best because He knows best. All we have to do is read through the book of Proverbs to see that there are two ways to live: the wise way and the foolish way. Follow Lady Wisdom or follow Lady Folly. So we glorify God when we obey His precepts and don’t lean on our own understanding. If we find ourselves saying “I know the Bible says not to do this, but times are hard. God will understand. He knows my heart.” Well, we can be sure He DOES know our hearts, and the words He gave to the prophet Jeremiah about them was that our hearts are deceitful and desperately sick.
That’s a good reason to be God-glorifying by seeking His wisdom in the Bible and through prayer before we make decisions. And to let others know we care about what God says regarding a matter. Titus 2:7-8 says, “in all things show yourself to be an example of good deeds, with purity in doctrine, dignified, sound in speech which is beyond reproach, so that the opponent will be put to shame, having nothing bad to say about us.” The outside world is watching! 1 Peter 2:12 says, “Continue to live such upright lives among the gentiles that, when they slander you as practicers of evil, they may see your good actions and glorify God when he visits them.” So by living according to God’s wisdom, we’re glorifying him, and someday unbelievers will glorify Him too.
God is True. We glorify God when we are hungry for truth. When we want to hear His Word taught. When we delve into the Bible to read and study. We also glorify Him when we stand against false teaching in the Church. We glorify God when we can answer unbelievers who disparaged His Word. Unbelievers doing that is an afront to God. How do we react to that? If they question how it was put together or they ask with disdain why the Bible doesn’t talk about dinosaurs, are we prepared to answer? Paul told the Corinthian church in 1 Corinthians 16:13 to, “Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love.” When the world tries to subvert what God says so they can live however they want, but still try to call themselves “Christian” do we lovingly point them to the truth? It’s God-glorifying if we do, even though we’ll be called judgmental and all sorts of other things, unless they’re convicted and repent.
Speaking of love …God is Love. He is loving, and good and kind. Think about that! Don’t you enjoy spending time with people who are loving and good and kind? We glorify God when we show that we enjoy Him! But how do we do that? Here’s some questions to answer in the negative: How do we talk about going to church? When others want us to do something else on a Sunday morning, what’s our response? I don’t want to be legalistic about this, but I think it’s good to check ourselves on how easily we blow off going to church in favor of doing other things. How often we do it.
And the reasons. Is it our kids sports team? When unbelievers plan an event, do we say “I’ll be there after church”? When we have visitors staying at your house, do you still go to church and ask them to go with you, even if they’re unbelievers? And here’s a thing to consider: When we say to someone that it’s “Sunday morning and we have church” how do we make that statement? Do we sound “o woe…. I have church!” like the donkey Eore in Whinny the Poo? Or do we say it like it’s something extremely important to us and something we would hate to miss out on? How would we respond if it meant missing out on hanging with our best friends? Like you said, Chris, we don’t want to be legalistic but it’s a good checkup to think through those things.
God is Merciful and Longsuffering. If we’re believers, we’ve realized that we are sinners who needed to be reconciled to our perfectly holy God, and we’ve repented and confessed Jesus as our Lord and Savior. Confessing Jesus as Savior and Lord is glorifying God according to Paul in 2 Corinthians 1:20 … Jesus is the “fulfillment of God’s promises, and through Christ, our “Amen” (which means “Yes”) ascends to God for his glory.” (NLT).
We glorify God when we confess Him to others too. Philippians 2:10-11 says that God “has highly exalted him (Jesus) 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.”
It’s honoring of God when we confess our faith so that others hear and believe because then they bring glory to God by coming under His rule and authority. That’s an important aspect of sharing the Gospel that we sometimes don’t think about. We also glorify God’s longsuffering patience with sinners when we have patience with them also, especially if they have treated us badly. We only need to look to the cross to be reminded about life before we were saved and how much we’ve been forgiven. When we continue to pray for the Holy Spirit to regenerate the hearts of our family and friends, desiring that they come to faith and repent, we glorify God too.
God is merciful and longsuffering, but He is also Just. We give glory to God when we respond in faith and repentance. Our life should be lived in a state of repentance. When we sin, acknowledge it and ask forgiveness for it and trust in faith that we are forgiven. That’s God-glorifying. Sin has to be punished. And if you are a believer, your debt’s been paid for already by Jesus. But Jesus said in Luke 10:16, “Whoever rejects Me rejects the One who sent Me.” (meaning God the Father). Likewise, John 5:23 says, “Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.” And 1 John 2:23 says, “Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father, but whoever confesses the Son has the Father as well.” You cannot give glory to God without having faith in Jesus. Lots of religions claim they worship God – Muslims, Jews, and others too. But Muslims don’t worship Jesus. Jews do not worship Jesus. Without worshiping Jesus, they aren’t honoring and glorifying God and they are not saved!
Only believers glorify God. Unbelievers do not. Not even when they are doing “good deeds.” Paul makes it clear in Romans 1 that everyone knows about God. Romans 1:19-20 says, “what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.” They know about God, but “by their unrighteousness” they suppress the truth.
When we proclaim the Gospel message God is glorified. But it’s going to open us up to reproach! John MacArthur said, “We live in a day when everybody wants to make Christianity easy. The Bible always makes it hard. We live in a day when everybody wants to make Christians loveable. God wants to make Christians reproachable. Why? Because they are confronted because they confront the system. They fight the system. They antagonize the system. You see, Christianity must be so distinct that it points out SIN before it brings the remedy.”
The world wants to say that Jesus said, “Judge not, and you will not be judged.” And He DID say that in Luke 6:37. But Jesus is our ultimate example of being God-glorifying, and He pointed out sin. As John MacArthur said, we have to point out sin before we an bring the remedy. Are we going to keep beating around the bush? Are we deceiving ourselves because they’re nice? We have to tell them. It doesn’t matter how good they seem from a human standpoint. It’s God-glorifying to spread the Gospel to everybody.
Betty White died a few weeks ago. She looked like someone’s kindly old grandmother. She had a beautiful smile, she made a lot of us laugh, she was diligent in the pursuit of animal rights. And we never want to presume anyone’s salvation status because God can do anything even in the last nanoseconds of someone’s life, if He desires. But based on her stated beliefs and association with the “Unity Church” during the last part of her life, she wasn’t a believer. It’s God glorifying to proclaim the name of the Lord to everyone. Like the quote from John MacArthur said, we need to tell them about God’s holiness and His justice so that they see they need a remedy for their sin dilemma.
And that leads us to our last attribute you just mentioned: God is Holy. The best way to glorify God in His Holiness, is to imitate him. God tells us in several verses to, “Be holy.” He said, “Be holy for I am holy” three times in Leviticus 20 alone. Holiness is hatred of sin and separation from sin. How much do we hate the sin of others? How much do we hate our own sin? Are we willing to do whatever it takes to cooperate with the Holy Spirit to mortify it?
According to John 14:31, Jesus said He did what the Father commanded, “so that the world may know that I love the Father.” Believers need to do likewise. This isn’t going to be easy.
Long to look at the cross. Long to look at your salvation. Let it spur you on to glorifying God – the One Who sent His Son, Jesus, the Second Person of the Trinity, to earth to die for us. Jesus humbled Himself and came to earth as a baby to take our punishment. And the Holy Spirit regenerated our dead, stony, God-hating hearts, so that everyone who the Father chose to save before the world was even created, would believe and trust in what Jesus did. And the Spirit lives in us today, as we walk through life – however we’re living at the moment. Stop and think the cross deeply and often. Our memory verse this week is going to be 1 Cor. 10:31, “Whether you eat or drink, whatever you do, do it to the glory of God.
So we challenge you this week as we continue in our transformation journey to think on the attributes of God. Make an intentional effort to glorify Him in those attributes. Put the work into making sure your view of God is a Biblical view. And as always, to God be the Glory!
Amen. Have a blessed day, everyone!