Live Out: The Glory of God (Part 1)
Sermon Notes for June 15, 2008
Gary Brandenburg, Senior Pastor
On a dangerous seacoast where shipwrecks often occur there was once a crude little lifesaving station. The building was just a hut, and there was only one boat, but the few devoted members kept a constant watch over the sea, and with no thought for their own lives, went out day and night tirelessly searching for the lost. Some of those who were saved along with others who lived in the area, wanted to become associated with the station and give of their time, money and effort to support its work. New boats were bought and new crews formed. The little lifesaving station grew.
Eventually some of the newer members of the lifesaving station were unhappy that the building was so crude and poorly equipped. They felt that a more comfortable place should be provided as the first refuge of those saved from the sea. They replaced the emergency cots with beds and put better furniture in the enlarged building. Now the lifesaving station became a popular gathering place for its members. They decorated it beautifully and furnished it exquisitely, because they used it as a sort of club. Fewer members were now interested in going to sea on lifesaving missions. Lifeboat crews were hired to do this work. The lifesaving motif still prevailed in the club’s decorations. In fact, there was a liturgical lifeboat in the room where the club initiations were held.
One night a large ship ran aground off the coast and the hired crews brought in boatloads of cold, wet, and half-drowned people. They were covered in grease and oil and none of them spoke English. The beautiful new club was in chaos. After the ordeal was over the property committee immediately had a shower house built outside the club where victims of shipwrecks could be cleaned up before corning inside.
At the next meeting, there was a split in the membership. Most of the members wanted to stop the club’s lifesaving activities. They said it was unpleasant and a hindrance to the normal social life of the club. Some members insisted upon lifesaving as their primary purpose and pointed out that they were, after all, still called a lifesaving station. But they were finally voted down and told that if they wanted to save lives of all the various kinds of people who were shipwrecked in those waters, they could build their own lifesaving station down the coast. So they did.
As the years went by, the new station experienced the same changes that had occurred in the old. It evolved into yet another lifesaving station club. History continued to repeat itself, and if you visit that seacoast today, you will find a number of exclusive clubs along that shore. Shipwrecks are frequent in those waters, but most of the people drown.
You don’t have to have a very active imagination to recognize that the lifesaving station is a church. God so loved the world that He sent His only Son to rescue mankind by establishing life saving stations called churches. Before He went to the cross to pay the penalty for our sin, Jesus said, “I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.” The church became the greatest force for saving and transforming lives the world has ever known.
It is estimated that at the end of the first century there were approximately 25,000 Christians on the planet. By the year 310 A.D. estimates put the number at close to 20 million. How did this small group grow into the most significant force in the Roman Empire in a couple of centuries? Especially in light of the fact that for two hundred years they were an illegal religion, owned no church property, didn’t have Bibles, had no professional leadership, no worship bands, youth groups, seminaries, commentaries, or free coffee! They even made it difficult to join the church yet they grew from 25,000 to 20 million adherents. And if you are tempted to write this off as a first century phenomenon, consider what has happened in China last century.
When Mao Tse-tung rose to power in the late ‘40’s he systematically purged Chinese society of Christianity. He expelled missionaries, killed or imprisoned church leaders, and outlawed all public gatherings of Christians. Many observers worried about what would happen to the church in China which numbered about 2 million people at the time. When Mao’s reign came to an end and the Bamboo Curtain was lifted one generation later in the 1980’s, many expected to find the church decimated. The church in China is thriving. David Aikman, former Beijing bureau chief for Time magazine, estimated that Christians in China numbered as many as 80 million!
How did this happen? What forces contributed to the rapid growth of the church in these two places and times? Can this experience be duplicated or were these simply the random acts of a sovereign God? Is it possible that we have lost sight of the very things that made the early Christians and the Chinese Christians so contagious? We are going to explore these questions over the next few weeks because it appears that not many are being plucked from the sea and rescued these days, at least not in America. The church is not growing. Consider these statistics:
The Barna Research Group estimates that “the number of adults in the USA no longer attending church has almost doubled since 1991. (Hirsch, p. 70, footnote 30) George Barna himself suggests that “by 2025 the local church (as we know it now) will lose roughtly half of its current ‘market share’ and...alternative forms of faith experience and expression will pick up the slack.” (Hirsch, p. 36) It is estimated that only about 9% of the population in America are even interested in attending a church like ours (evangelical). When you consider the number of churches in our city you realize that the majority of churches are trying to cut up a very small slice of pie. Rather than reaching the lost we end up redistributing the found.
We cannot lose sight of our mission and succumb to the “missional drift” that occurs in churches and individual Christians. The church that Jesus established has never been perfect but in the beginning it was a community that defined and organized itself around its real purpose, being an agent of God’s mission to the world. The only true organizing principle of the church is mission. The mission is primary, the organization is secondary. In the first century people with a mission in mind established churches. Today people with a church in mind are trying to figure out the mission. If we lose sight of our mission we are just another lifesaving club. What does it look like to be a "missional" church?
A missional church is marked by four characteristics that we are going to look at over the next four weeks. First, the missional church is obsessed with the glory of God. God’s glory is our “one pure and holy passion,” our highest priority. Secondly, the missional church reflects the image of God. We were made in the image of God to act on behalf of God. Third, the missional church pursues the mission of God. Nothing is more important than “the summing up of all things in Christ.” Any hindrance to pursuing the mission of God must be eliminated. Finally, the missional church employs the people of God. This great work we are engaged in is to be done together, in community, capitalizing on the God-given gifts and abilities of all of God’s people.
So let’s begin with the glory of God because that’s where our mission begins. The reason so many are so miserable is because we think life is about us. Ultimately, the meaning of life begins and ends with God’s glory. Glory is a word that literally means, “heavy.” When God shows up He makes His presence known. We use the term “heavyweight” to refer to someone with great influence. “Tim Russert was a real heavyweight in the broadcasting industry.” God is heavy, He is a very important person and He doesn’t like being taken for granted. Yet because of our sin (active rebellion/passive indifference), we take God “lightly.”
“It is one of the defining marks of Our Time that God is now weightless. I do not mean by this that he is ethereal but rather that he has become unimportant. He rests upon the world so inconsequentially as not to be noticeable. He has lost his saliency for human life. Those who assure the pollsters of their belief in God’s existence may nonetheless consider him less interesting than television, his commands less authoritative than their appetites for affluence and influence, his judgments no more awe-inspiring than the evening news, and his truth less compelling than the advertiser’s sweet fog of flattery and lies. That is weightlessness. It is a condition that we have assigned him after having nudged him out to the periphery of our secularized life. His truth is not longer welcome in our public discourse. The engine of modernity rumbles on, and he is but a speck in its path.” David Wells, Wasteland, p. 88
Still, God reveals His glory in many ways. Through nature…Ps. 19:1, “The heavens are declaring the glory of God.”
Through saving acts…Exodus 14:17, "As for Me, behold, I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians so that they will go in after them; and I will be honored (glorified – Hb. kabed) through Pharaoh and all his army, through his chariots and his horsemen.”
Through the scriptures…2 Corinthians 3:7-18 8 But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.
Jesus is the ultimate revelation of God’s glory. John 1:14, “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
Hebrews 1:3 says,“He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power. When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.”
Even Jesus’ miracles revealed God’s glory… John 2:11, “This beginning of His signs Jesus did in Cana of Galilee, and manifested His glory, and His disciples believed in Him.”
God wants to be known and He is not silent. He speaks through nature, through Jesus, through the scriptures, and through His people. Just as the disciples believed when they saw His glory, people today will believe if they see the glory of God. Unfortunately however…
The problem is that we, as sinful human beings, “fall short of God’s glory.” “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Ro. 3:23. Because we are born alienated from God and His purposes we look at all the evidence of God’s glory and seek to exploit God’s goodness for our own benefit. One author gets at this tendency by contrasting cats and dogs. (Sjogren & Robison) A dog says, 'You pet me, you feed me, you shelter me, you love me, you must be God.' A cat says, 'You pet me, you feed me, you shelter me, you love me, I must be God.'
The shift from dog to cat theology can even be found among theologians. “At one time theologians argued that the chief purpose of humankind was to glorify God. Now it would seem that the logic has been reversed: the chief purpose of God is to glorify humankind. Spirituality no longer is true or good because it meets absolute standards of truth or goodness, but because it helps me get along. I am the judge of its worth. If it helps me find a vacant parking space, I know my spirituality is on the right track. If it leads me into the wilderness, calling me to face dangers I would rather not deal with at all, then it is a form of spirituality I am unlikely to choose.” [Robert Wuthnow, “Small Groups Forge New Notions of Community and the Sacred,” Christian Century, Dec. 8, 1993, pp.1239-1240.].
The Bible has a simple word for “Cat Theology.” It is called idolatry. When we replace the glory of God for the worship of a more manageable deity we commit idolatry. And idolatry, in any form, is an affront to the glory of God.
Isaiah 42:8 8 "I am the LORD, that is My name; I will not give My glory to another, Nor My praise to graven images.
“Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures…they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator.” Rom. 1:22-23, 25
When the glory departs the chaos starts. The opening pp. of 1 Samuel present a graphic account of the importance of the glory of God. When our goal is not God’s glory we reap the bitter fruit of idolatry…Eli, Hophni, Phineas. 1 Samuel 2:12, “Now the sons of Eli were worthless men; they did not know the LORD.” When Eli heard of their deaths he fell over backwards and died. Phineas’ wife, already in morbid labor, received the news on her death bed just before she gave birth. She lived just long enough to name the baby, Ichabod which means, “Where is the glory?” The glory had departed. And when the glory departs the chaos starts. What can we do about it?
1. Acknowledge the problem. My “misplaced loyalty” is actually idolatry. I find myself too attached to the things of this world. I am way too at home here. Charles Dutton, a man who spent years in prison for manslaughter, went on to be a successful Broadway star. He was once asked how he had made such a remarkable transition. Dutton replied, “Unlike the other prisoners, I never decorated my cell.” When we get too attached to the things of this world we lose our grip on heaven.
2. Give God the “weight” He deserves. Worship Him, learn from Him, obey Him, follow Him. Jesus said it this way, “Seek FIRST the kingdom of heaven and all these things will be added unto you.” Worship on the first morning of the first day of the week. Let the first conversation of the day be with God. Let the first payment of the month be to the Lord’s work. When we do these things in sincerity and truth we give glory to God.