Prayer:

Holy Father, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we resonate with these words of the Apostle Paul as he describes the greatness of our salvation in Jesus Christ. We stand in awe and are overwhelmed by your working in Christ and then in our lives. We see that our salvation is brought about only by your sovereign and gracious work because of the person and work of your Son. We could not save ourselves, you had to save us. Teach us today, O Lord, of your great saving work in rescuing sinners such as us. We pray in Christ’s wonderful name. Amen.

A 2023 public research survey by the Pew Research Center asked the question, What makes for a fulfilling life?

[BY KIM PARKER ANDRACHEL MINKIN]

The survey revealed that “…the public [in America] prioritizes job satisfaction and friendship over marriage and parenthood. Some 71% of all adults say having a job or career they enjoy is extremely or very important in order for people to live a fulfilling life. And 61% say having close friends is equally important.” https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2023/09/14/what-makes-for-a-fulfilling-life/

That’s what many Americans say. But let’s look at a more reliable source than the whims and changing interests of the American public. Let’s look at the Word of God. What does the Bible say is the key to leading a fulfilling life? Let’s go back to the OT first for a moment.

Psalm 115:1 says,  Not to us, O LORD, not to us, but to your name give glory,    for the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness!

In this verse we see the essence of Biblical religion. It doesn’t focus on humans’ personal satisfaction or what they may conceive to be fulfilling in life. But the focus is in another direction – it is on God. “Not to us, O LORD, but to your name give glory.”  The focus here is on God’s name, God’s glory.  Two aspects of God’s character and being are stated here:  his steadfast love and faithfulness. If there are two supreme attributes or characteristics that we would want in the God of the universe, it is that his love is steadfast and his faithfulness can be depended on at all times.

The psalmist here says “to your name give glory.” This word “glory” is a special word and in the bible, it usually refers to something in God, something that only he has, something that merits all our worship and awe.

The word “glory” in the Hebrew language, which most of the OT was written in, is “kabod”. “Kabod” carries the basic meaning of heavy or weighty – like gold is heavy and valuable. So God’s glory is heavy, it’s weighty, it’s valuable beyond description.

In the NT the word “kabod,” holy, is translated from the Hebrew to the Greek, using the word, “doxa,” meaning “glory.” It is used some 165 times in the NT. The “glory of God” 165 times. God is trying to tell us something. His glory is important. In fact, his glory is the most important thing there is.

All other things in our lives are less important. If God is getting glory from our lives, no matter what the circumstances are that he has ordained for us, then the most important thing is taking place. For example, “David Brainerd was a Presbyterian missionary to the American Indians in the mid-18th century, who ministered to tribes like the Delaware and Seneca in what are now New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Though his life was cut short by tuberculosis at age 29 in 1747, his fervent diaries, published posthumously by Jonathan Edwards, profoundly influenced later missionaries. Despite battling chronic illness, Brainerd is remembered for his dedication, his revival of spiritual fervor among his congregation in Crossweek sung, New Jersey, and for inspiring generations of Christian leaders.” [from Wikipedia] This brother, though his life was cut short, glorified God in the time God gave him to live. That is our calling, too, is in not? To glorify God to the best of our ability as he would so choose to use us in his service.

If we stopped and asked people on the street in downtown Dallas, “What is the most important thing in life?” I doubt many, if any, would answer, “The glory of God.”

But that is the answer, that is the correct answer, that is the answer a Christian who knows his Bible should give. “The most important thing in life is bringing glory to God.” [congregation repeats]

Our theme and focus today is the glory of God, seen primarily in the salvation of sinners by the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. 

The glory of God, that is, heaviness, his weight, his value, is seen in other places besides the salvation of sinners.  Psalm 19:1 says,

The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.

Psalm 104:24 says,

O Lord, how manifold are your works!    In wisdom have you made them all;    the earth is full of your creatures.

We read in Romans 1:20, ²⁰ For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world,^[g] in the things that have been made.

So, all around us we see the glory and wisdom of God manifested in the things he has made. Who is this God who spoke the universe into existence by the word of his command, when there was nothing before?  He commanded it, and it was done. There is no God beside him. To him be glory and praise for his creative power.

But there is another work of God, which is just as great, in fact, it would submit, is even greater, than his work of creation. It is work of saving helpless, lost sinners who cannot save themselves.

When God created the universe, there was nothing in existence, no material substance, only emptiness.  But when he saves sinners, there is another dynamic going on. He is dealing with evil and wickedness and rebellion and enslavery by Satan in people’s lives. So I think we could say there is even more glory to God because he has not only created something, he has created faith, but he has overcome evil, overcome sin and Satan and death. It is one thing to create a universe, but another thing to combat and destroy sin and evil and obliterate it and replace it with faith and love and truth. But this is what God does when he saves sinners. When he saves you and me. So we say with Paul in Ephesians 3:21,  to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

All human beings are made in the image of God, and to think that a creature made in the image of the holy God, would reject that God and turn away from him is the greatest sin that we could imagine.

But this is exactly what happened with the first man, Adam. He was made perfect and innocent and placed in a perfect environment and yet he sinned against the good and loving God by disobeying that one command to not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But Adam turned away from God and ate from it and when he did, he brought guilt and death upon himself and all the descendants of the human race after him.

He and his wife, Eve, desperately tried to hide their nakedness and their sin from God by covering themselves with fig leaves but it did not help them. God had to step in and save them by killing an innocent animal and clothing the with the skin of that animal. Blood was shed. The Bible says that without the shedding of blood there is no remission, no forgiveness of sin.

So, we see here the first light breaking through of the grace and glory of God to sinners who cannot save themselves. In Gen. 3:15 we read, “And then God spoke to the serpent and said,

I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring^[e] and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”

This prophecy of the coming Redeemer was fulfilled in the sending of Jesus Christ who by his death on the cross and resurrection from the dead defeated Satan, sin, and death. Here the glory of God in the work of Christ was revealed at the dawn of human history.

Those of us who know the Redeemer have seen and experienced the glory of God. Paul wrote in 2 Cor. 4:6 - 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.

What is Paul saying? He is saying that Yahweh God who spoke the universe into existence, who created light from darkness, is the same One who has shone the light of revelation in our hearts by granting us the knowledge, the personal experience of the glory of God, by coming to know the Lord Jesus Christ face to face.

Can you imagine that? The glory of God given to us in the face of Jesus Christ! What more could sinners ask for? Hallelujah! Lord, why have you been so kind to us? We cannot explain it, we do not deserve it, but we glory in God for his mercy to us.

Now the reason we are focusing today on the glory of God seen in the salvation of sinners which is his alone is because this is Reformation Sunday and one of the key truths that the Reformation brought out in the 16^th century was that the salvation of sinners is due to and abounds to the glory of God alone.

In the 16^th century the principal church organization that existed in Europe was the RC church. Over the preceding centuries it had adopted teachings and traditions that obscured, that hid, much of the Word of God from the people. The institution of the RC church had replaced the focus on Jesus Christ with focus on itself and its own traditions and its own rules for how a person should relate to God. 

This church had pushed Jesus Christ aside and put itself in Jesus’ place.  That is very serious business. It lines right up with Paul’s words in 1 Thess 2:15-16 when he spoke of those who “ displease God and ^(O)oppose all mankind ^16 (P)by hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles that they might be saved.”

Under the RC system it was extremely difficult for a person to trust in Jesus alone to save them from their sins when they were taught they had to follow the rules and policies of the RC church to have any hope of salvation and eternal life. Church tradition took precedence over the Word and authority of the Word of God. The final and complete sacrifice of Jesus was replaced by a so-called unbloody sacrifice of Christ that happened every time the RC mass was performed – Jesus’ once, perfect, once for all sacrifice was ignored and overridden by this practice. People had no assurance of their salvation; they were continually chained to the requirements of the RC church. And their doctrine has not changed in the 500 years since the Reformation.

This kind of man-made religion did not bring glory to God. It focused on the power and authority of the RC church and its priesthood who had the power to grant forgiveness of sins. It shifted the glory that belongs only to Jesus to the Virgin Mary and her worship and to the so-called saints who could intercede for their devotees. Men and women were wandering around, spiritually lost and confused,  bound to the traditions of the RC church, and they had no alternative to turn to.

But the Lord was merciful to his church. After centuries of growing spiritual darkness, the light began to break forth as original Greek manuscripts were rediscovered and translated into the languages of the people, such as German and French, instead of being hidden from them in the Latin language, which most did not understand.

The early Reformers, such as Martin Luther and John Calvin, began to expose the errors of Roman Catholicism, and preach Jesus Christ alone as humanity’s only means of salvation from sin.

The pure Word of God, not the traditions of the Church, once more shone forth and exerted its pure truth and authority over God’s people. the charge to return to the supreme authority of the Word of God alone for the church its beliefs and practices, was led by such Reformers as Martin Luther and John Calvin. As someone [John Piper] has observed, “…the fundamental issue [for John Calvin and the reason for the need of the Reformation] was whether the glory of God was shining in its fullness, or was somehow being diminished. From the beginning of his ministry to the end of his life, his guiding star in vision was the centrality and supremacy and majesty of the glory of God.”

John Calvin was by no means a perfect man, but he had a vision for the glory of God and its supreme importance in our understanding and worship of God.

Your and my salvation from sin and the reception of eternal life is extremely important – it is important to us – but there’s even an importance that goes beyond our individual salvation – our salvation brings glory to God. It brings joy and happiness to us but more than that, it brings glory to God. God is the eternal perfect being, perfect in every aspect and attribute of his being. If he is praised, if he is glorified, then the person of the most supreme importance and value is magnified and exalted – there can be no higher good and blessing than this. God must require that he be glorified and praised above all other creatures because he is worthy of such glorification. Not to glorify him above all other things and creatures would be to denigrate, that is, to bring down or disparage him, to lessen him from the high and exalted position he has, and he is worthy of.

After all, what is God like, what is his nature? The London Bap. Conf. 1689, Art. 2, God and the Holy Trinity, Paragraph 2, states that…

2. God has all life,¹⁷ glory,¹⁸ goodness,¹⁹ and blessedness in and of himself; he alone is all-sufficient in himself. He does not need any creature he has made nor does he derive any glory from them.²⁰  Instead, he demonstrates his own glory in them, by them, to them, and upon them. He alone is the source of all being, and everything is from him, through him, and to him.²¹ 

This sounds like Paul in Rom. 11:36 - ³⁶ For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.

The reason the salvation of sinners brings glory to God is because we humans are so lost in our sins, so captivated by them, so content in them, that we would never leave them. We have no power or will to leave them unless God intervenes and rescues us from them. This is exactly what happens every time a person comes to repent of their sin and place their faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. God reaches down by his invisible hand and snatches them from their captivity to evil and to themselves. To turn from sin is not an ability a human is capable of, but God is well capable of turning a sinner, and in his sovereign grace it does this time and time again when the heavenly Father draws a sinner to faith in his Son Jesus Christ. But if the Father doesn’t draw him, he will never come.

Those fishermen on the Sea of Galilee, those disciples of Jesus, Peter, and James, and John, could not get those fish to come into their boat unless they threw out a net and caught them and drew them in to the boat. Otherwise, the fish would never have come. Nor would we have come into the lifeboat of salvation, had not the Father drawn us by his Holy Spirit to believe in Christ.

Jesus’ friend Lazarus had been dead four days, and he had begun to stink and he could not raise himself from the dead. He was paralyzed and incapacitated in death. Only the sovereign and almighty voice of the Lord Jesus Christ had the power to quicken him, to bring life back into his cold body. But Jesus shouted, “Lazarus, come forth.” And Lazarus rose up in his grave clothes and shuffled out of the tomb.

Those of us who have come to faith in Jesus Christ were dead longer than four days; we had been spiritually dead all our lives. Only the living God by the power of his Spirit could raise us out of our spiritual death and create within us spiritual life. There is an order in the way God works within his people to save them. They do not repent and believe and then afterwards God places his Holy Spirit within them, but it is the other way around: he first of all places his Spirit within them, in their hearts and minds, and the Holy Spirit creates spiritual life within them and gives them the ability to repent and believe which they had no capability of doing beforehand.

That is why we pray for people to be saved. We know they will never repent and believe on their own. God must move on them first. If he doesn’t move, they never will repent and believe. We pray for the enlightenment of the Spirit to come to them. If they don’t receive that internal enlightenment, they will not be able to see their sin or see their Savior with the eyes of saving faith.

To God be the glory alone for saving lost sinners!  They cannot, they will not save themselves. God must save them in his sovereign mercy and grace.

Who can boast that they have become a Christian? Who can say, “I was smarter and wiser than my neighbor who has never become a Christian.” No, the only difference between you and him is that God had mercy on you and he did not on the other man.

All this is by the grace of God, the unmerited favor of God. Verse 6 of Ephesians 1 says it was his glorious grace that saved his people.

Grace is a gift from God. We cannot earn it; we cannot work for it. We just have to receive it from God, with the open “hand of faith.”

Our passage today, Ephesians 1:3-14 focuses on the glory of God seen in the salvation of sinners.

To see God glorified in our lives, in the lives of we who are sinful men and women, is no light concept and no casual matter. For one thing, it goes against our natural grain, our natural tendency. We have a built-in urge or tendency and even strong desire to get glory for ourselves. We want recognition and respect and honor from our fellow human beings. We want them to praise us. Many of us don’t care too much if they don’t praise the eternal God, just so they praise and honor us!

Perhaps you have prayed before now, a prayer dedicating your life for the glory of God alone, or perhaps you haven’t but you are more ready now than before. Why else were we created, but to bring glory to God, to be saved from our sins, to be brought into fellowship with him? As the Westminster Shorter Catechism says. What is the chief end of man? It is to glorify him and enjoy him forever.

It also says in…

Q7. What are the decrees of God? The decrees of God are his eternal plan, based on the purpose of His will, by which, for His own glory, He has foreordained everything that happens.

This is what this passage in Ephesians 1 is explaining: the salvation of sinners is the sovereign and gracious work of God. God is to be blessed for the work he did in his Son in saving sinners from their sin and bringing them to himself. This was his will, his purpose. All our salvation is bound up in the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And what is the end purpose or result of this saving work of God in Christ? as verse 12 says, it is to the praise of his glory. We Christians are to praise God for the way he receives glory in saving us sinners. Verse 14 says the same thing, “to the praise of his glory.”

How is a person saved from their sin? On this Reformation Sunday let us remember and celebrate that under the authority of the Scriptures alone we are saved only by faith alone in the grace of God alone through faith in Jesus Christ alone and for the glory of God alone. These great Reformation truths were desperately needed in the 16^th century and they are no less desperately needed in our day and time.

Let us join the church in ages past and the church around the world in giving glory to God alone for his work in saving sinners such as us. Hallelujah! Amen.

Prayer:

Gracious God, and we have to call you gracious, for you have done what we could never do for ourselves: you have saved us from our wicked sins and cleansed us and justified us and restored us so that we can know you and worship you and fellowship with you, as well as fellowship with one another. We give you all the glory for saving us and all your people. It is your work, O Lord, and your purpose and your will. To you we give thanks and glory now and forever, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.