Gospel Prism

Before I begin today’s message, I need to set the stage for the series we’re about to embark on called, “The 5 Solas: To God’s Glory for Our Joy.” You’re probably wondering, “What in the world is a sola?” Sola is the Latin word for “alone,” and it describes 5 principles that reformers of the church believed the Bible emphasized. The five are Soli Deo Gloria (“for the glory of God alone”), Sola Scriptura (“Scripture alone”), Sola Fide (“Faith alone”), Sola Gratia (“Grace alone”), and Solo Christo (“Christ alone”). These 5 principles really do sum up much of the critical parts of our lives of believers. Sadly, many have dismissed these principles as nothing but sheer theological mumbo jumbo. But for those who held these principles, believing them to be nothing short of the Gospel itself, these were worth dying for, and many of them did.

For the next several weeks, we will look at five texts from the Bible, and many supplemental texts that teach us that these principles are not man made, but the very essence of the Gospel itself. But we will also take note that these principles apply to our very Christian lives and lived out, they will cause a greater joy and delight to our souls than anything else this world has to offer us. So let me begin with the first Sola which is Soli Deo Gloria which is so fundamental, that we’ll take two weeks to study this principle. This week we’ll examine how does God’s glory become our joy and next week, how do we live for God’s glory and our joy.

For those of you who are married or who aspire to be married, let me ask you this question, “What would your marriage look like if you were forced to love your spouse?” If the pastor said, “You may now kiss your bride,” and men, you kissed your wife thinking, “Well, I guess I have to do this,” you’d probably be looking forward to quite a difficult marriage. If a love relationship is founded on obligation and duty, one might question whether there truly was any love at all. Furthermore, I would venture to guess that a relationship founded solely on obligation and duty would be lacking joy. And so many married couples who stay together “for the kids,” usually at best “put up with one another” and at worst “can’t stand each other.” Joy is far from one’s life in such scenarios.

But joy is most experienced when our hearts are drawn to another because of true affection. And since we know from God’s Word in 1 John 4:8 that God is love, there really is no greater joy than to know, love, worship, and enjoy God. After all, God created us very good (Gen 1:31) and in His image (Gen 1:27). In fact God loves His people so much that Zephaniah 3:17 metaphorically says, “He will quiet you by his love, he will exult over you with loud singing.” I can only imagine what God quieting me with His love would be like. This past week I visited Chuck and Sun and baby Naomi, and I saw Chuck walking Naomi around as she lay in his arms. Though she is adapting to this new world filled with all sorts of new experiences and perhaps new terrors, she felt secure and even quiet in her daddy’s arms. She was safe. This is our God, whom David calls his rock, fortress, and deliverer. But God is also the God that actually sings over you with a joyful song. Can you imagine God’s singing voice? Pavarotti’s voice would sound tone deaf relative to God’s singing. But He’s not singing any song, He is exulting over you with this song. This is a song that proclaims His love for you and He is shouting this song, this beautiful song. God’s delight in you is beyond compare.

God longs for you to know that this joy far surpasses any momentary happiness you will experience in this world. And the only way you will ever know such joy is to live for God’s glory alone. Which leads to this important question: “How does God’s glory lead to our joy?”

Our Joy Was Purchased by God’s Glorious Son

To answer this question, we need to first understand that the best representation of God’s glory is in His Son, Jesus Christ. Listen to what Jesus says in John 17:5: “And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.” Paul explains Jesus’ statement in Colossians 1:19, “For in him (Christ) all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.” When you trust in God’s Son who was God who became a man to dwell amongst sinners, you see God’s glory. And to see God’s glory in Christ is beyond imagination.

John Owen in his spectacular book The Glory of Christ likens seeing Jesus’ glory on earth to the sun under a total eclipse. When it’s hidden behind the moon, the sun doesn’t lose its radiance and brilliance. It still remains the same but for us who look at it, it seems dark and useless. But when that light is freed from the moon’s hindrance, the light is blinding, no one can even glimpse at it without injury. Owen notes that the same holds true of the glory of Christ and the impact this glory makes on one’s soul is indescribable. Owen notes:

And when those who beheld him here as a poor, sorrowful, persecuted man, dying on a cross, came to see him in all infinite, untreated glories of the divine nature, manifesting themselves in his person, it could not but fill their souls with transcendent joy and admiration. And this is one reason of his prayer for them whilst he was on the earth, that they might be where he is to behold his glory; for he knew what ineffable satisfaction it would be to them for evermore. (John Owen, The Glory of Christ 123.)

What Owen is saying to us is that there is nothing more soul satisfying, more truly joyous, than to see Christ in all of His glory. We were made to worship Him, created in His image. We belong to Him, and so to be with Him fully is the perfect remedy for our hearts that will always be restless, as Augustine puts it until we find our rest with Him. When my son Jack cries, I pick him up to hold him. And when he’s in my arms, he’ll say, “Mommy!” And when he does that, I always ask him, “What about daddy?” And his answer to that question is, “Mommy!” That’s when I hand him off to Shua and say, “Here’s your son.” Jack’s hurting heart is comforted most by the one who is most compassionate and caring to him, the one who has brought him into this world. And there is no joy, no peace, no rest, until the one who provides that rest is there.

When talking about God’s glory and our joy, there is probably no in our current day who has a handle on this subject than John Piper. In writing about this connection between God’s glory and our joy, he notes:

God’s quest to be glorified and our quest to be satisfied reach their goal in one experience: our delight in God overflows in praise. For God, praise is the sweet echo of his own excellence in the hearts of his people. For us, praise is the summit of satisfaction that comes from living in fellowship with God. (Quoted from John Ensor, The Great Work of the Gospel, 124

But should we praise about God. We must praise Him for creating us, for making us in His image. For allowing us to live and breathe since He sustains us (Acts 17:28). But we must remember that we must praise Him for the finished work of Christ. For this, Owen calls ‘ineffable (unspeakable) satisfaction’ or what C. S. Lewis calls ‘joy unspeakable.’ This refers to Jesus, God’s beloved and only Son, who “made himself nothing, taking the form of servant…He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” (Phil 2:7-8) For us to be able to view God’s glory, His Son’s glory would be ridiculed, spat upon, mocked, cursed at, slapped, rejected. Jesus had to bear the punishment that was due sinners, all sinners. Isaiah 53:5 says, “He was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities.”

You might say to yourself however, “But I’m not a bad person. Don’t blame me for Jesus’ death.” For you my friend, I’d like to recommend you read Romans 1-2 and then Jerry Bridges book Respectable Sins. We all fall short of his glory and there are just far too many ways we sin. At the retreat, I found myself struggling with pride (what a good job I did), anxiety (what’s wrong with the sound system), idolatry (great music is critical to great worship), laziness (I’m bushed, I’ll spend time with the Lord in the evening, God understands, I’m only human), etc., and this was at a retreat! When Paul says no one is righteous in Romans 3 and he’s the chief sinner, I understand oh so well.

And for this reason, Jesus had to purchase our salvation with His own shed blood. If we were to ever have the opportunity to see the full glory of God, it would take Christ’s glory being trampled upon and Christ Himself to be crucified to ever have the joy that would satisfy us eternally.

Our Joy Will Never End Because of Christ

But there’s more. When Jesus purchased our joy, and it was for an eternity. Listen to what Paul writes in 2 Cor. 4:17-18: “For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, 18 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.” From verses 7-16, Paul recounts the many ways that he and the apostles have suffered because of Christ. If you read this text, you’d probably be wondering, “This sure doesn’t sound like joy.” If joy is about momentary, earthly pleasures, then yes, it wouldn’t fit your definition of joy. One thing I know about earthly joys is that they come to an end. The happily wedded couple all googly-eyed over one another on the wedding day will one day be simmering with anger toward one another. The dream vacation is eventually a faded memory. Friends move away. Loved ones will eventually die. Even memories will eventually be no more. Joy is painfully fleeting in this world. But Paul tells us something about joy in 2 Cor 4:17-18. Even suffering cannot rob us of the joy that Christ’s glory brings to us. In fact, the more you bask in the glory of Christ, the more you understand the joy that will never end. Look at what Paul writes in verse 6: “For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” Jesus Christ, the one whose very glory was eclipsed by the sinfulness of all, now shines brightly in the darkness, and is a manifestation of God’s very glory. In other words, the person and work of Jesus Christ guarantees the promise of verses 17-18, that the joy of His glory will be experienced eternally! And if this is true eternally, then this joy can begin to be experienced even here on this earth, despite the circumstances that come our way.

Our Joy and His Glory are Worth Living for (and Dying for)

Therefore, our joy and His glory are worth living for, and even dying for because such joy is not rooted on our circumstances.

Imagine if you could only be joyous when you emotionally felt happy. For some, that might mean we rarely experience joy. For those being persecuted, does that mean the blood of Christ is insufficient for those who are facing the greatest trials of their lives? 2 Cor 4 is a stark reminder that your joy is not proportionate to your emotions. No, your joy is tethered to a biblical truth that never wavers, Christ died for you while you were a sinner and even if you don’t ‘feel happy’ at the moment, you will never be forsaken or let go (Heb 13:5). Because of His shed blood, because He paid the price for your sin, you will experience joy eternally.

Also, our joy and His glory are worth living for, and even dying for because obedience is never payback or drudgery, but a delight. If we understand that our joy was purchased with the blood of God’s own Son, the full manifestation of His glory, then we should be awestruck with this reality, and realize that nothing, absolutely nothing can pay Him back for this deed. But it is inherent within us to pay him back. So many of us cannot stand the fact that we are helpless to achieve our own joy. Rather than feeling so very grateful, we feel utterly helpless and maybe even a bit hopeless. When a person offers to pay for lunch, I must admit that I never feel good about it at the moment. Despite that person’s genuine heart to serve me, I feel the ever-present need to pay him back. I tell him, “I’ll get the next one,” because I don’t want to accept the gift. It makes me feel dependent and weak. But what if that brother was to get into a car accident and was laid up in the hospital. And what if I went to that hospital to pray for him thinking, “Great, here is my opportunity to pay him back for that lunch.” How would he feel as the giver of that gift of a free meal out of his joy? I think he’d be offended. He might say to me, “Sam, I don’t want you to pray for me.” And yet, we often approach God the same way. We serve God’s people because somehow we think we become righteous by our deeds. We might think we owe God for sending His Son and so we try to pay Him back. But as Isaiah 64:6 tells us, “And all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.” Go to a men’s locker room and smell a shirt after it has been sweated in, stuffed in a hot locker, and left in there for weeks. God tells us our righteous deeds are like that to him.

No our obedience must be a result of our delight in our relationship with Him. At the core of all that we do for Him, we know that it is NEVER to pay him back, and it is NEVER because we have to do it. Instead, we are so much in wonder with what Christ has done for us, by purchasing us, by having His great glory eclipsed for our sake so that we might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor 5:21), that our obedience, our serving, our giving, our forgiving of others, our extension of grace, our humility, our love of others is a delight and a joy. And so we agree with Paul in saying: “So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him.” (2 Cor 5:9)

Think of the best thing you have ever done for the Lord. Place that into your mind. And now listen again to Isaiah 64:6: “And all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.” Your best deed for God in itself is never good enough to make you whole, or free, or joyous. No, it took God’s precious Son’s blood spilt in our place to give us such joy. Hence, Edward Mote writes in his hymn Solid Rock:

My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness
No merit of my own I claim
But wholly lean on Jesus’ name.

Now think of the worst sin you think you have ever committed. And now listen again to 2 Cor. 5:21: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Jesus paid the punishment of that sin as if He had sinned that sin so that now we are righteous before the holy God. So if God loved us that much that we are no longer bound to our righteous deeds or to our worst of sins, shouldn’t we delight in Him? Should our obedience and our worship and our works just flow from this bountiful joy that we have in light of what Christ has done? Shouldn’t our character, our desire to read and cherish God’s Word, our longing to rise early to pray, never be because we are obligated to to look good, but rather because He has become our righteousness?

Also, our joy and His glory are worth living for, and even dying for because we will be most happy when we do this, and everything else will disappoint and frustrate us.

There are so many things that we can think of in this world that seem to make us happy. Like many guys, sports make me happy. It makes me happy when I am on a winning team of a sport. It makes me happy when the Yankees win the World Series. In fact, as Shua can attest to, I have jumped and hollered at Yankee World Series victories, perhaps even more than I did at the birth of my first child. It used to make me happy to play sports. But the happiness fades, it really does. The luster of playing sports, watching sports, even watching the Yankees, seem strangely disappointing to my soul. Sure it is still enjoyable. But when I think of the amount of time and energy spent in my time with sports, I really wonder if it makes me happy. This is just one example of faded happiness. In place of sports, you can put in whatever you think makes you most happy: a grand vacation, a boyfriend/girlfriend, a clean and organized home, a dream car, the ‘perfect job’, peace and quiet, hanging out with good friends. Everything fades in its glory, in its beauty. Even on grand vacation, there can be so much frustration. On my honeymoon, Shua and I had an argument that affected our first few days of marriage. Suddenly, we were wondering, “What have we gotten ourselves into?” The clean home gets quickly dirty and disrupted, especially when you have a little T-Rex named Jack. You work so hard to keep your dream car clean until that first rock falls off the dump truck and onto your hood. Best friends slowly begin to bother each other the longer they hang out with each other because sinners sin.

But the joy that God gives us because of His Son and as we seek His glory never fades because God never fades and His Son’s work never fails. Peter sums up for us this reality when he says: “Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory” (1 Peter 1:8-9). Our faith in Christ gives us inexpressible joy that is wrapped up with God’s glory. We were made to worship Him, so that we would be forever happy in Him. I love how Jonathan Edwards puts this:

God in seeking his glory seeks the good of his creatures, because the emanation of his glory . . . implies the . . . happiness of his creatures. And in communicating his fullness for them, he does it for himself, because their good, which he seeks, is so much in union and communion with himself. God is their good. Their excellency and happiness is nothing but the emanation and expression of God’s glory. God, in seeking their glory and happiness, seeks himself, and in seeking himself, i.e. himself diffused . . . he seeks their glory and happiness.

Our happiness is intertwined with God’s glory and His happiness. Can you believe that God actually wants you to be happy, to be eternally happy? In fact, it makes God happy to make you happy. Is this so unbelievable after all? Dads, do you love giving your kids gifts? Don’t you love it on Christmas day when they are so excited to open their gifts? Doesn’t it make you smile? Also, why do you think so many parents like going to Disneyland? So they can ride Dumbo and fulfill some childhood dream as an adult? So they can get cotton candy? I hate the lines, the hot weather, the crowds. What a burden. But I love going to Disneyland because my kids love going, and I love seeing their faces, their happiness there. It makes me happy to see them happy. Can we expect anything less from God? God loves to see His children happy and God knows that the most happy a child of His can be in this world, will be if that child knows Him fully. And for this happiness to be a possibility, His only Son had to die to allow such happiness to be a reality.

Thus, it is God’s nature to give us joy and Peter tells us this is made possible because Christ has purchased that joy! So how should we respond to this joy? We should enjoy Christ. But how do we enjoy Christ in light of God’s glory? We’ll answer that question next week.