Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] How's everyone doing?
[00:00:03] Good to see you.
[00:00:05] I am happy to be here.
[00:00:08] My name is Lex, if you don't know me. And we are in part two of our sermon series. We started two weeks ago and it's called why Do I Exist?
[00:00:20] And last time we were together, we looked at man's chief end, man's ultimate purpose. I think we have a slide about it. Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.
[00:00:38] And I believe we were created for this purpose.
[00:00:43] I believe that this is our chief end.
[00:00:49] And so I want to define, what does glorify mean?
[00:00:54] Like, if this is what we were created for, if this is why we exist, what does it mean to glorify? What does it mean to glorify God?
[00:01:05] And so I want to start our framework with Glorify. I'm going to throw up a few things on how I want to define that tonight.
[00:01:16] And so I wanted to find Glorify this way. It's to shine light on, to magnify.
[00:01:26] And when I say magnify, I don't mean like taking something small and looking at it in a microscope and making it big.
[00:01:37] I mean taking something so big, something so unfathomable, something so incomprehensible, and taking a telescope to it and zooming in so that we can see just a little bit, so that we can behold something, the shining attribute of God to lift up, to honor, to set highest in our thought.
[00:02:07] So that's kind of the framework I want to start with when we're talking about Glorify. Tonight, we're going to use some of these things interchangeably.
[00:02:17] And I believe we were mated for this. We were made to glorify God.
[00:02:22] But like a lot of things, I think mankind has distorted it a little bit.
[00:02:33] I think we were made to glorify, but I think that at some point what should be glorifying God, we turn into glorifying man.
[00:02:48] And I think we see it everywhere, whether you're a believer or not a believer, because we were made for it, because it's in our DNA for what we're supposed to do.
[00:02:58] We do it.
[00:03:01] But I think we've distorted it.
[00:03:05] I think our culture has lifted man to the highest platform that we've placed man at center stage.
[00:03:13] And we promote individualism and we put our own desires and our own needs and our own wishes above everything else.
[00:03:25] We have social media platforms which are like little stages for all of us.
[00:03:34] And it's fostering self promotion that we're trying to promote ourselves to the world and curate things that we can show the very best parts of ourselves.
[00:03:51] And there's an interesting study done for adolescent girls who use social media and it says that 78%, nearly 80% of 17 year old girls report being unhappy with the way their body looks.
[00:04:10] And so we use these platforms to try to elevate ourselves, to try to shine light on ourselves, to try to glorify ourselves. But really what happens is it just makes us feel worse about ourselves.
[00:04:26] And when we're putting ourself on a platform, we get blinders and we become self focused and that's all we can see.
[00:04:36] And maybe for you it's not body image, but maybe it's acceptance.
[00:04:42] You want to be accepted. You want to be the best.
[00:04:46] You want to be the best at your job.
[00:04:48] You want to outperform everybody. You want to be known as the most efficient.
[00:04:52] You don't want your weakness exposed.
[00:04:55] And so you want to elevate yourself. You want to lift yourself up and you're not left feeling better about yourself. You're left feeling immense pressure.
[00:05:07] And I can relate to this one a lot. I shared with you last time that I like to be perfect and I want to be the very best at my job and I want people to think that I'm a good mom and I want people to think that I'm a good wife. And what happens is when I try to elevate myself, when I try to lift myself up, I don't feel better about myself. I end up feeling a lot worse.
[00:05:32] I end up feeling the crushing pressure and stress and anxiety.
[00:05:41] We try to elevate ourselves in this world and what happens is we're left with distorted views about our bodies, alarming rates of anxiety and depression, alarming rates of increased self harm. And it's not working.
[00:05:58] Shining light on ourself is not working.
[00:06:06] We were not made to promote ourself.
[00:06:09] We were not made to elevate ourselves. We were not made to glorify man. We were made to glorify God.
[00:06:18] I want to look at First Corinthians 10:31.
[00:06:22] It says, so whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of the Lord.
[00:06:33] All we do should be in pursuit of glorifying God.
[00:06:39] And there is a puritan theologian, his name is Thomas Watson, and he put this idea into four categories for us. And so this is kind of how I'm going to start my framework for the next chunk of the sermon.
[00:06:54] And I want to look at the four ways we can do this, because if we were made to do this. If we were made to glorify and elevate and lift and shine light on, I want to know how.
[00:07:05] So that's what we're going to dig into tonight. The. How does that sound? Good. I'm excited for it. All right.
[00:07:10] We can glorify God in our heart, our mind, our words and our actions.
[00:07:18] And I want to break each one of these down.
[00:07:21] I want to look at number one. We can glorify God in our heart.
[00:07:26] I think that when we look at what it means to glorify God in our heart, it is deeply connected to humility, when we prefer his glory above all other things.
[00:07:41] Because our heart for things matters.
[00:07:45] Our intention matters.
[00:07:50] There's a story in the Gospels about two sisters.
[00:07:57] And one sister is named Mary, and one sister is named Martha.
[00:08:02] And they're hosting a dinner for Jesus and his disciples.
[00:08:07] And the one sister, Martha, she's concerned with serving. And so she wants to set up the table, and she wants to make sure the food is prepared, and she wants to make sure the home is clean. And she has her highest thoughts set on how do I serve? Well, she's like the type A mom at Thanksgiving dinner. Like everything has to be in order.
[00:08:29] And then the other sister, Martha, her concern is sitting at the feet of Jesus.
[00:08:42] When Jesus is there, she's concerned with being next to her Savior.
[00:08:52] There's a moment where she goes and grabs an expensive bottle of perfume.
[00:09:02] She takes it over to him and she dumps it on his feet.
[00:09:07] And in humility and in sacrifice, and as an act of worship, she kneels and she takes her hair and she washes his feet with it.
[00:09:20] This story, it inspires me every time I read it. It makes me want to love him better. It makes me want to serve him better. It makes me want to sacrifice, to give him my very best.
[00:09:33] And one of Jesus disciples sees her do this.
[00:09:38] Judas.
[00:09:42] And this is what he says.
[00:09:43] He says, why wasn't this perfume sold for 300 denarii and given to the poor?
[00:09:51] And then it goes on to say that he didn't say this because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief.
[00:10:00] He was in charge of the money bag and would steal part of what was put in it.
[00:10:06] You see, Judas wanted people to think that he was glorifying God.
[00:10:13] He wanted people to think, hey, if we took all this money from this expensive perfume and gave it to the poor, wouldn't that be glorifying to God?
[00:10:22] He said the right things. But in his heart, his intention was wrong, he was deceptive and he was self seeking.
[00:10:34] We have to be careful about the intentions of our heart.
[00:10:38] We have to examine why we're doing things.
[00:10:41] We have to remain steadfast in our humility. I have to do this every single week.
[00:10:48] Every single week when I step up here, I have to completely empty myself. I have to examine my heart.
[00:10:56] I often pray.
[00:10:58] Not often. Every single time before we come on stage, my team and I, we pray right behind that door. We get in a circle and we encourage each other and we pray over each other.
[00:11:07] And most weeks I pray, lord, help us to become less so you can become great.
[00:11:16] Because if I don't keep myself in check, if I don't make sure that I'm postured towards humility, then my selfish desires can creep in really easily.
[00:11:30] I never want to elevate myself above him. I never want to shine light on myself instead of him. If I tell my team, if we're doing our job right up here, then eyes are not on us, they are on the king.
[00:11:45] It's so important that we keep our heart in check. We have to look inwardly. We have to make ourselves low.
[00:11:53] Because what I've noticed is when I glorify God in this way, when I say, lord, my heart, I want you to purify it. Please remove any impure thing from it. I want to be and sacrifice for you. I've noticed when I honor him and when I glorify him and when I lift him up in that way, the pressure is taken off me.
[00:12:15] And I don't have to focus and worry about perfection, but I can focus on exaltation.
[00:12:22] I don't have to worry about getting praise, but I can focus on giving praise. Because when God gets the glory, when we all do it together in this beautiful public display of worship, it is so pleasing to him.
[00:12:39] So I want to talk to the people serving this church. If you're online, if you're in the room and you're serving in this church, make sure you're doing heart checks.
[00:12:51] Make sure that you're asking yourself, why am I serving here?
[00:12:57] What's my intention?
[00:13:01] Am I trying to get something out of this or am I trying to give myself away in this?
[00:13:06] Am I trying to be seen and heard or am I trying to see and hear from God in my group? Am I trying to bring life in my group? Am I trying to call the best out in the people around me? Am I trying to point people to Jesus? Am I trying to be a part of the mission that we have here? At this church?
[00:13:27] Or am I caught up in a bad attitude and gossip?
[00:13:34] Because we have to make sure that our heart is in the right spot.
[00:13:40] The same goes for your family. If you're a spouse, if you're a husband or you're a wife, what are your intentions in serving your spouse?
[00:13:50] Are you transactional with it?
[00:13:53] Do you say things like, I'll do this for you if you do this for me, or in your heart, are you feeling, I'm not gonna do that for them because they didn't do this for me. And I asked them 5,000 times to do that.
[00:14:07] There's nothing more beautiful than serving your spouse with humility because it glorifies God.
[00:14:14] Especially if your spouse is not strong in their faith. You are their example. You are their representation of Christ.
[00:14:23] And so when you serve them and you're kind to them and you sacrifice for them and you give God the glory in it all, it shines something beautiful on Christ. It shines something beautiful on the work that he's doing in you.
[00:14:36] When we glorify God in our heart, it sounds something like this. My intention is to give God glory in this.
[00:14:43] It doesn't matter what the other person does. It doesn't matter how the other person reacts. It doesn't matter how they respond. My intention is not to receive, but to give.
[00:14:52] Your heart matters.
[00:14:55] The second one, our mind.
[00:14:59] We glorify God when we set him highest in our thoughts.
[00:15:06] Doc has been reminding us for a few weeks. If you have been attending on Sunday mornings, you know that we are in the sermon series. And Doc is so beautifully sharing with us the moral attributes of God. And he has been walking us through week by week that we glorify God when we think about him first.
[00:15:26] When we look at our life and we look at the struggles and we look at the pains and we look at the challenges.
[00:15:33] Instead of focusing on those things first and then seeing how God fits in all of that, we focus first on who God is.
[00:15:42] My husband has been open about being a recovering addict.
[00:15:47] And this is something. This is a journey that started before I met him. And it's a journey that I've walked alongside of him with.
[00:15:55] And he's almost five years sober, but he likes to measure it in days. So he is 1,710 days sober.
[00:16:09] But there have been seasons in our marriage that felt really hard.
[00:16:17] There have been seasons in our marriage that felt like I didn't really know how we were going to get through it.
[00:16:25] I couldn't really understand how this was going to get better.
[00:16:30] And it would have been easy for me to question God and to say, lord, I was faithful to you. I waited for him. I prayed for him. Before we met.
[00:16:41] I made sure that I was right with you. I made sure that I was doing the right things. I made sure that I was reading my Bible every day. I was in Bible studies. Like, I tried to make my life all together so that when this happened, we could be easier.
[00:16:55] I thought this would be better.
[00:16:58] I didn't know it would be this hard.
[00:17:01] I thought my faithfulness to you would mean that I wouldn't have to suffer.
[00:17:08] But the problem with that thinking is I start first with myself.
[00:17:12] I start first with my struggle and my pain and my feelings and the injustice that I feel. Instead of starting first with God, when we start first with God, we say things like, lord, in you there is freedom.
[00:17:30] In you there is salvation.
[00:17:33] I know in your goodness, our family can be restored, our family can be renewed. Our family can be healed. Would you glorify your name in my family?
[00:17:44] Would you glorify your name in healing what is broken? Can I appeal to your righteousness? What feels messy, what feels chaotic? What feels broken, Lord, would you restore it back to order?
[00:17:57] We glorify God when we think about him correctly first.
[00:18:03] We don't allow ourselves to think about him poorly or incorrectly.
[00:18:08] When we start thinking about who he is, our hope shifts and our confidence grows and our strength is renewed.
[00:18:18] When you're in the middle of affliction and you're experiencing the crushing weight of loss or suffering, think first about who God is.
[00:18:29] Glorify him in your thinking. Appeal to his attributes. Cling to his goodness and his mercy and his forgiveness and his love, and set him highest in your thought first.
[00:18:43] Because I don't know what your suffering looks like right now, but I know what your thinking can look like.
[00:18:51] If you're struggling with your finances, appeal to the Lord who is our provider.
[00:18:57] Say, lord, I'm going to be faithful to you with what you have given me. Would you please be faithful to me? Lord, would you please provide?
[00:19:04] Can I trust you with this?
[00:19:07] I don't know what it's going to look like. I don't know how I'm going to come out on the other side. But Lord, I know you are my provider. I know you are trustworthy. And so I'm going to be faithful with what you've given me. And Lord, I appeal to your provision.
[00:19:22] If you're struggling in your work and you're in a spot that you're not happy and Every day is just a struggle to wake up. It's a struggle to move on.
[00:19:32] You appeal to his plans for your life.
[00:19:35] You say, lord, I know that you have a plan for me, and it's a plan to prosper and not perish. And so I'm seeking your will above mine today.
[00:19:46] Today feels hard for me. Today feels like I don't want to do it. But I trust that you have a better plan. I trust that you have something beautiful for my future. So I'm going to be faithful to you today.
[00:19:57] If your spouse or your kids are struggling, you say, lord, you are a good father and I know you love them more than I do, and so I trust you with them. I ask that you would glorify your name in restoring what is broken.
[00:20:11] It matters how we think about him.
[00:20:15] It matters that we choose to think about who he is first.
[00:20:19] And we appeal to his attributes and we ask for his healing in them, in our pain and our suffering.
[00:20:28] And I believe that how we think about God affects how we talk about Him.
[00:20:34] So I want to look at number three. We can glorify God in our words.
[00:20:38] We glorify God when we speak well of him.
[00:20:43] We bless God when we. When we speak well of Him.
[00:20:50] It lifts his name in this world.
[00:20:53] It magnifies him in the eyes of others.
[00:20:59] It matters how you talk about God to your kids.
[00:21:05] It matters how you talk about God to your co workers. It matters how you talk about God to your spouse and your family and your friends.
[00:21:13] If your kids are struggling, if they're stuck in an addiction or they're trapped in a sin or they're just struggling.
[00:21:23] It matters how you talk about God.
[00:21:27] You can say, I've been there.
[00:21:32] I know what it feels like to struggle with this.
[00:21:37] But you know what? You can appeal to the Lord in this.
[00:21:40] When I was there, I would memorize Bible verses. I would say, I am more than a conqueror through Christ who loves me.
[00:21:51] And you speak life into them.
[00:21:55] When your spouse is struggling, you say, I know today is hard.
[00:22:01] I know that you're hurting today.
[00:22:03] But God has a plan for our family and he's faithful. And we are in this storm together right now. But you know who else is with us? God. God's right here next to us. He did not leave us or forsake us. We can do this together. We can go through this storm together. We can go through this battle together. It matters how you talk about God to your spouse. It matters how you talk about God to your friends who are suffering, who have lost Somebody who have given up on the idea that God is good.
[00:22:37] You say, I know that right now, today we are in sorrow. But I also know there is a joy that comes in the morning.
[00:22:50] Life brings pain and suffering.
[00:22:55] But this life and our death, it's not the end.
[00:23:01] There is such a peace when we lift our eyes to eternity.
[00:23:05] You say, today might hurt, but God's faithful love endures forever. And we may be in the boat and the storm right now. We might be shattered by the hail and the wind and the waves. And it hurts and we're tossed and we're turned. But there is a day where the Lord paddles us safely to the shores of heaven, where there is no pain, there is no suffering, there is no hurt. It matters how we talk about God.
[00:23:33] We glorify God when we speak well of him.
[00:23:38] The fourth one.
[00:23:39] We glorify God in our actions.
[00:23:44] Christ tells us in his Sermon on the Mount, you are the light of the world.
[00:23:53] A city situated on a hill cannot be hidden.
[00:23:57] No one lights a lamp and puts it under a basket, but rather a lampstand and it gives light for all who are in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in Heaven.
[00:24:14] Church. You are the light of the world.
[00:24:18] You are an image bearer of the Almighty God and you are representing him in this world.
[00:24:26] The people around you may know nothing about Christ, but they know you and they know that you follow him.
[00:24:33] So light this world, at the root of what glory means, it means to shine, to shine the light of who God is into this broken and dark world. Don't tuck yourself away under the basket. Don't let the fear in the opinions of others and the anxiety and take away your light.
[00:24:56] Jesus tells us that others will see our good works and give glory to God.
[00:25:01] When we glorify God, when people see what we're doing and giving all the glory back to God, it makes them want to glorify Him.
[00:25:15] I want to connect this light metaphor a little bit.
[00:25:19] So I'm gonna ask Tom to turn the lights off. Don't be scared. I'm not gonna do anything. Tom, can you turn the lights off?
[00:25:27] This is what it looks like when we're walking in darkness.
[00:25:31] This is what it looks like when we aren't shining our light into this world, when we're not letting the light and the glory of Jesus Christ shine bright into our lives.
[00:25:43] We can't see what's in front of us. We can't See our next step. And so we're so focused on ourself, we're so focused on our own path, we can't see the person in front of us. So we make judgments about them. We misrepresent them because we can't see their face.
[00:26:01] We're walking in darkness.
[00:26:05] But what happens when someone is the light of Jesus Christ into a room?
[00:26:14] What happens when someone walks into a room and reflects the glory of God?
[00:26:23] When we walk into a room and people can see that we're suffering, they know what we're going through. They know the pain that we've endured, they know the struggles that we have endured, but that we have remained faithful to the Lord, that we have clung to him in our hardest times, that we look to his glory, that we set him highest in our thoughts, that we set our hearts intentions right, that we speak well of Him.
[00:26:50] We walk into a room and we are the light.
[00:26:56] Then it makes that person say, hey, you know what, I'm going through that too.
[00:27:04] I need something.
[00:27:06] I'm going to give God a try. And so then they decide that they are going to light the world too.
[00:27:13] And then someone else is attracted to that. Someone else in the room sees, wow, they're shining the light of the glory of God. And so then the next person, they start to shine the light. And what happens is we all can see better around ourselves and the people in the room can see better too. And so then someone else sees that person's light shining and they decide to shine their light. And then the next person sees somebody else shining and they decide to shine their light. And what happens is that we are the light of the world. And when we shine the light of Jesus Christ into this world, it helps us see better and it helps the people in the room see better too.
[00:27:55] And what I've found is that when I take the attention off of myself and I place it onto God, there's something that nourishes my soul.
[00:28:11] You see, any other person in the whole universe who glorifies themself ends up hurting everyone else around them.
[00:28:22] When anybody else decides to elevate themselves, to lift themself to shine light on themselves, it is to the detriment of those around Him.
[00:28:32] But when the Lord God Almighty glorifies himself, there is something that is nourishing to all of us.
[00:28:40] There is something that is to our great benefit.
[00:28:45] Because what was once low self esteem turns into high confidence.
[00:28:51] Because my identity is no longer found in myself, but it's found in Christ.
[00:28:57] I am made in the image of God. And so the more time I spend focusing on him, the less time I spend focusing on myself, the healthier I get.
[00:29:08] I have found this to be so true. Church.
[00:29:11] I've spent the last five weeks really, really deep in study, really deep in trying to understand him better, trying to look at him in better ways, trying to behold his glory.
[00:29:26] And the more time I spend looking at him, the more time I spend elevating him, shining light on him, the less time I spend thinking about myself.
[00:29:35] This past month, I haven't thought about the way I look once. I don't really care.
[00:29:40] I'm not focused on it.
[00:29:43] My anxiety has decreased. My sadness has decreased. There's something so nourishing when I glorify the Lord, When I take the focus off of myself and I put it onto him, it is nourishing to my soul.
[00:30:03] There's something that happens when you shift the focus onto God and you're no longer comparing yourself to other people. Am I as funny as them?
[00:30:12] Am I as financially stable as them? Is my relationship as good as theirs? Are my kids as good as theirs? Is their house nicer than mine? Is their job better than mine? Instead of doing all that, you spend time thinking about God and you think about his kindness and his goodness and his mercy and his forgiveness and his love and his compassion, and you start to look more like Him.
[00:30:33] You start to reflect. You start to be the light.
[00:30:42] When we place our focus on glorifying him in all that we do, what we get in return is nourishment and health.
[00:30:55] It's a deep transformation of character.
[00:30:58] It's a freedom from the brutal chains of this world, a freedom from addiction, a freedom from anxiety, a freedom from depression. And this idea, this whole thing, it's changed my life. It's changed every single aspect of it.
[00:31:13] It's changed that. Instead of just trying to focus on glorifying God in my work, or glorifying God at church, or glorifying God in my life groups, I'm trying to glorify God everywhere I go.
[00:31:24] When I'm rocking my baby to sleep and she's fighting sleep so hard, she hates sleeping. She literally hates it. And it's the hardest time of my day. And my patience is thin, and I'm sitting, my back hurts so bad. And I'm just thinking about everything that I could have been doing for this hour and 15 minutes instead of rocking her. And so instead of getting angry, instead of getting losing my patience, I think, how can I glorify God in this moment?
[00:31:51] If this is what I'm made to do, how do I glorify him here? Because this is really hard.
[00:31:56] And when we think about our life and we think about our job, and you think, I'm just working this transition job right now. I'm working at Starbucks or Chipotle. I don't really know how I'm supposed to glorify God there. When you start thinking about this, glorifying God in all that you do, you start to shift how you go about your day.
[00:32:15] And you try to find ways to elevate him. You try to find ways to sneak him into a conversation, say something nice about him, say something good about him. When we focus on how to glorify God in all that we do, it just. It's changed my life.
[00:32:31] It's changed how I look at everything. Every action, everything, every thought, every word.
[00:32:40] We were created for this.
[00:32:42] And when we glorify God in all that we do, we are operating inside of our purpose.
[00:32:50] And what enjoyment we get when we behold the glory of the Lord.
[00:32:57] Let's pray.
[00:32:59] Dear Lord, thank you for this night.
[00:33:03] Thank you for your shining attributes that we get to call upon.
[00:33:10] Thank you that you glorify your name forgiving us.
[00:33:15] Thank you that you glorify your name in restoring what is broken. Thank you that you glorify your name.
[00:33:21] And when you do, we get nourished.
[00:33:26] Thank you that you created us for this end. Lord, I pray that you would give us all that we need to pursue it.
[00:33:35] I pray that we could keep our eyes on you, that we would cast our mind to you that. That we would speak well of you, that we would not be.
[00:33:45] We would not be tripped up by the fear of other people's opinions, Lord, but we can stand firm in our faith and our trust in who you are.
[00:33:56] I love you. I thank you. I praise you. In your good son's name, I pray. Amen.
