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Sunday, 31 May 2015

'TO GOD BE THE GLORY'

Rev. Juliet Schimpf
By Rev. Juliet Schimpf   


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Broadcast Notes

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LINK to CFRA broadcast of Sunday, April 5th, 2015) 

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  EASTER SERMON: 
 
'To God be the Glory'



Lord Alfred Tennyson [1809-1892, British Poet]  “There's no glory like those who save their country.”
Napoleon Bonaparte:  “Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.”
1 Peter 1:24  “All men are like grass, and their glory is like the flowers of the field.”

1.       God with us
2.      God for us                                                                                    
3.     God in us
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1.  God With Us

John Stott:  “In a word, our glory is our obsession.  It dominates our minds, fills our horizons, and engrosses our attention.  For the apostle Paul this was the cross.  The cross of Christ was the center of his faith, of his life, and of his ministry; and it should be the center of ours.  Let other people be obsessed with fame, power, sex, and money; we who claim to follow Jesus should be obsessed with the cross like the apostle Paul.  This was not a peculiarity of Paul’s, however.  I think we might say that the cross was central to the mind of Paul only because it had been central to the mind of Christ.”
Isaiah 6:1  ”In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. 3And they were calling to one another:  “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.”
John 1:14   14 “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

2.  God For US

JOHN PIPER:  ”God is uppermost in His own affections:  The chief end of God is to glorify God and enjoy Himself forever.  The reason this may sound strange is that we are more accustomed to think about our duty than God’s design.  And when we do ask about God’s design, we are too prone to describe it with ourselves at the center of God’s affections.  We may say, for example, that His design is to redeem the world.  Or to save sinners.  Or to restore creation…But God’s saving designs are penultimate, not ultimate.”

AND SO GOD SENT HIS SON…

PIPER:  “Ever since the incarnate, redeeming work of Jesus, God is gladly glorified by sinners only through the glorification of the risen God-Man, Jesus Christ.  His bloody death is the blazing center of the glory of God….The “face of Jesus Christ” is the beauty of Christ reaching its climax in the cross.  The bloody face of Christ crucified (and triumphant!) is the countenance of the glory of God…..living for the glory of God must mean living for the glory of Christ crucified.  Christ is the image of God.  He is the sum of God’s glory in human form.   And his beauty shines most brightly at
his darkest hour.”

PIPER:  “The glory of Christ reaches its highest point in the obedient sacrifice of the cross where Jesus triumphed over the devil.  Jesus said in that final hour of his own sacrifice, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him.”  (John 13:31)

PAUL:  GALATIANS 6:14 “God forbid that I should glory in anything except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified unto me and I have been crucified unto the world.”

3.     God in Us

Colossians 1:27:  “Christ in YOU, the hope of glory….”
God created us for his own glory.  God did not need to create man, yet he created us for his own glory. 

  • Isaiah 43:7  “everyone who is called by my name,
    whom I created for my glory”

  • Eph. 1:4-6  4 “For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love 5he[c] predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— 6to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.”

  • EPHESIANS 1:11-12   11“In him we were also chosen,[e] having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, 12in order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory.”

WAYNE GRUDEM:  “The fact that God created us for his own glory determines the correct answer to the question, ‘What is our purpose in life?’  Our purpose must be to fulfill the reason that God created us:  to glorify him.  When we are speaking with respect to God himself, that is a good summary of our purpose.”
THIS EXPLAINS THE WESTMINSTER CATECHISM:    Q. 1. What is the chief end of man? A. Man's chief end is to glorify God, [b] and to enjoy him for ever.
"The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul." - Johann Sebastian Bach
1 CORINTHIANS 10:31   “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.”
The Lord’s Prayer:  “For Thine is the Kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever, amen.”

Let us pray, together:

Our Heavenly Father, We thank You , that You have displayed your glory in creation, and that You then gave us your only Son, Christ, full of your glory. We want to learn to live for Your glory. We thank You Lord, that You died for us and that we can see the light of Your glory in the face of Christ, (as second Corinthians, four, explains it). The light of the knowledge of Your glory is displayed in the face of Christ. Father, help us to live for Your glory, not our own.
Would you live through us? We pray that your lights shine for You.
We conclude by saying the Lord’s Prayer, which says, “Thine is the Kingdom, the power and the GLORY, for ever and ever, AMEN.

Rev. Juliet Schimpf
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To listen to the above broadcast, click on the following link:

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