There are a few weeks now before the celebration
of the fortieth year here and it seems to me that those 40 years have passed very rapidly
since that second Sunday in February of 1969 when I came here in my twenties. And I really only had one qualification to
be the pastor of this church and it was this, the two prior pastors had died of a heart
attack and the church was supporting both widows. And they said, "Get a young one." They really didn't want another widow to support
or another pastor to die, so they just wanted somebody who would last a while. Little did they know that I would last this
long. But in those early years when I came to Grace
Church, that first Sunday was very unforgettable to me, over in the chapel. There was only the chapel and that small building
and I have lived, as many of you have, through the years of seeing the hand of God on this
church. And I just want you to know, I need to do
a peremptory strike before we get to the first Sunday of February and you get confused about
the reason this church is what it is, and it's not me. I will accept the gratitude and the love and
affection that comes that day, but before you ever get there, I want to tell you the
real reason why this church is what it is, and it is not because of me. It is because of truth...it is because of
truth and some particular truths that have been the guideposts, the fixed points, the
landing lights that have never moved and never changed to which all of us have directed our
ministries and our lives for these 40 years. You know, I came out of seminary, I would
confess to you that I was somewhat confused about what ministry should look like. It wasn't that I was confused about the Trinity,
or the deity of Christ, or any of the great doctrines of Scripture, or about the authority
of Scripture itself. I was absolutely not confused about that. But as to what was crucial to ministry, I
really wasn't very sure. I had struggled to find foundational truths
for the Christian life as opposed to some things that are marginal or peripheral. I had struggled to grasp what I thought must
be the core understandings. I had struggled to understand what the church
should be and how the church should operate. I had been exposed to so much and none of
it seemed to me to be distinctively biblical, even that which I studied in my education
as well as what I experienced in growing up in a pastor's house and seeing church after
church after church. When I came out of seminary, the Lord knew
I wasn't yet ready to begin a ministry because I was unformed, even though I had the tools
to get the answers, I didn't have the answers. And I really didn't want from the Lord's viewpoint
be pressed upon a church not knowing what direction to take that church. That's probably why when I came out of seminary
I candidated a couple of churches and they turned me down. They thought that I was too young and too
inexperienced and they were right. So, it was five years after I finished seminary
before the Lord brought me here to Grace Church. And during those five years, I worked and
I struggled with the Word of God to come up with the foundational things that I felt you
had to have in place if you're going to go in the right direction as a church. It had to do with spiritual life, personal,
individual, spiritual life. I had to know what God required of my life
so that it could be a pattern and an example for others. I had to understand the gospel and the truth
of the gospel and the glory of the gospel because I was convinced churches were full
of people who weren't saved and that the gospel was preached in a superficial way. And I had to understand what the church was
to be and what the Holy Spirit had revealed that a church had to be. So those were the things that I was grappling
with. And by the time that February, 1969 arrived,
I showed up here and those things had taken a seminal form in my mind and the first sermon
I preached here was on the Lordship of Christ. And that has been a benchmark for my ministry
for all these 40 years. I've written probably a half a dozen books
on that subject alone. But that first sermon was Matthew 7, "Many
will say to me, 'Lord, Lord,' and then will I say to them, 'Depart from me, you workers
of iniquity, I never knew you.'" And the first sermon I ever preached here
was a sermon on the fact that if you have not truly acknowledged Jesus Christ as Lord,
you're going to be rejected at the judgment. Not exactly a warm and fuzzy welcome sermon,
I might add. The second Sunday I was here I preached a
sermon called, "The Ideal Church." I don't suppose when I came out of seminary
I had any idea what an ideal church looked like. So it was in those years that I was struggling
to understand New Testament ecclesiology, what the Holy Spirit said the church should
be and what the church that the Holy Spirit moved through looked like that all of that
took shape. Before that first year was over, I did a series
on, "The Glory of God." And after I did that series, out of that came
the first book I ever wrote, and it opened with a section on the glory of God, Keys to
Spiritual Growth it became known as. And I remember saying to Patricia and to others
around me that I could go to heaven because I had discharged my soul on the most important
subject I would ever speak on, or write on...the glory of God. And so, as I have thought about coming up
to this event, and I'm sure I'm going to be very embarrassed. In fact, I told Rick I may not come. I just need to do a peremptory strike and
let you know that I will never be the explanation for this church. The explanation for this church is its commitment
to these truths that are foundational and from which we have never wavered and you have
never wavered, that's why you're here. And this is my three weeks to thank you and
to thank the leaders of this church, the elders of this church, shepherds and pastors of this
church past and present for their love for these truths. And since I have three weeks, it kind of boils
down to this, "The Glory of God, the Lordship of Christ and the Holy Spirit's design for
the church," those were the three things the Lord allowed me to have in my mind and to
put in place when I came that had never changed, fixed points that have never been altered. It is to these that I have directed all my
efforts and all my focus and all my teaching. They are far-reaching. And I thought it might be interesting for
me to go back and look at how I viewed those things in the beginning. And so, I'm going to talk to you today about
the glory of God from the perspective that I had 40 years ago. And then next week I'm going to talk about
the Lordship of Christ from the perspective I had 40 years ago. A lot has filled up that rather limited understanding
and some of that is going to come out. And then the third Sunday I'm going to talk
to you about how I understood the Holy Spirit's design for the church 40 years ago. And you will see that these things are still
our priorities. You hear them in your Sunday-School classes,
they weave their way into the curriculum in the children's division, the youth ministry. They are the fixed points. Now in order to have some integrity with the
past, I was digging through this week my old notebooks and I found some old notes on glorifying
God. I don't know when I wrote these, long ago
in that first year. I wrote them on the front side of stationery
that I took out of the drawer of the Holiday Inn in Cascade Plaza, Akron, Ohio. I don't remember being in Akron, Ohio. But then I don't remember a lot of things. But apparently at that time when God was shaping
these things in my mind, I was in Akron, Ohio. And I was thinking about the ultimate end
of everything being to glorify God. I understand what the catechisms have always
said, the chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. And I'm well aware of 1 Corinthians 10:31,
"Whatever you do, do all to the glory of God, including the most mundane thing, the most
routine thing of eating and drinking." I did understand that the sweeping purpose
of everything was that God would be glorified, as I read in Ephesians 1, that everything
is to the praise of His glory. And so, I began to write down what that meant. How could I live my life to His glory? How could I teach others to live their lives
to His glory. What did that look like? It wasn't complicated. I just went through the Bible from the front
to the back and found everything the Bible said about how we glorify God. I started with the word "glory" and the word
"glorify" and I just chased them everywhere in Scripture. And I began to write down many things. My understanding was somewhat limited, that's
why it's just this. If I were to do it again, it would be a five-month
series, as you well know. But I will spare you that. The reason for our existence is to know and
glorify God. The reason for creation is that God may be
glorified. The purpose of the universe is to create a
theater in which God can redeem a humanity who will be drawn into His presence to glorify
Him forever and ever. Everything is about glorifying God. The heavens declare the glory of God. Isaiah 43:20, "The beast of the field gives
Me glory." The only rebel in the universe is man and
the indictment on man is in Romans 1:21, "When they knew God they glorified Him not as God." There are only two kinds of people in the
world, the people who glorify God and the people who don't. The people who glorify God end up in heaven. The people who do not glorify God end up in
hell. Glorifying God is the purpose for everything. It's a tragic thing not to glorify God. I always think of Herod in Acts 12 who wanted
glory for himself. So he declared Herod Day in the amphitheater,
Caesarea, put on his royal robe, elevated himself on the throne, had all the people
hail him as he gave a speech and the people responded by saying, "It's the voice of a
god, not a man." Just what he wanted to hear. And this is how Herod Day ended. "And the Lord struck him and he was eaten
by worms and died." Not exactly the planned end of Herod Day. Why? Because he gave not God the glory. And I remember that from the fourth chapter
of Daniel where Nebuchadnezzar tried to take glory to himself and God turned him into a
beast for years. Glorifying God is the heart of everything. Living a life to the glory of God is the reason
that God has saved us, Christ has redeemed us. But how do we do that? How practically do I live my life to the glory
of God? How can I be to the praise of His glory? It is to the praise of His glory, as we read
in Ephesians 1, that He chose us. It is to the praise of His glory that He loved
us, that He adopted us, that He instructed us, as He gave us truth. It is to the praise of His glory that He sealed
us with the Spirit under an eternal hope and an unending inheritance. It is to the praise of His glory that He has
done all these things. I cannot add to His innate glory. I cannot add to His attributes. But I can give Him honor that He is do. How do I do that? How do I adorn the doctrine of God with my
life? And somewhere, maybe in Akron, Ohio or maybe
somewhere else, after I had been in Akron, Ohio and got these little pieces of paper,
I began to write things down and the first thing, and this is the order I wrote them
in...by the way, I only spent about...I don't know...fifteen minutes going over this cause
I wanted to see what would happen if I just kind of took it this way and what would come
to mind and the order is the way I would do it again, I think. The first way that we glorify God is by confessing
Jesus as Lord...by confessing Jesus as Lord. In Philippians chapter 2 there is that great
passage of the self-emptying humiliation of Jesus, the condescension of Jesus in which
He exists in the morph of God but doesn't regard that as something to be held on to
or grasped, or emptied Himself, verse 7, takes the form of a slave, becomes made in the likeness
of men, the appearance of a man He humbles Himself all the way down to the point of death
on a cross. And in response for this reason, God highly
exalted Him, bestowed on Him the name which is above every name which is the name Kurios,
Lord, so that at the name of Jesus which is Lord, every knee will bow of those who are
in heaven and on earth and under the earth and that every tongue will confess that Jesus
Christ is Lord...and here's the reason, to the glory of God the Father. You cannot ever glorify God unless you start
by confessing Jesus as Lord. That's the starting point. You can never live a life that glorifies God
apart from confessing Jesus as Lord. That is what Romans 10:9 and 10 says, "If
you confess Jesus as Lord with your mouth while believing in your heart that God raised
Him from the dead, you shall be saved." This we know to be a divine miracle, 1 Corinthians
12:3, "No man can say Jesus is Lord but by the Holy Spirit." But this is the foundation of glorifying God. You confess Jesus as Lord, He is kurios, you
are doulos. In fact, in Romans chapter 1 Paul said that
we preach obedience to the faith for the sake of the name. And in 3 John, John writes that we should
care for those who are worthy preachers of the gospel, for they do it for the sake of
the name. Everything is for the sake of the name, for
the glory of God. In the words of Jesus which are unmistakable
in John 5 and verse 23, He said, "So that all honor the Son even as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor
the Father." You cannot glorify God unless you glorify
Christ. You cannot honor the Father unless you give
honor to the Son. You cannot affirm God unless you affirm the
Son of God. He is Lord, He is the only Savior, the only
Redeemer. There's not one person in the history of the
world who can glorify God at all apart from acknowledging Jesus as Lord. This is the beginning point to the glorying
of God. In the thirteenth chapter of John, verse 31,
"Therefore when He had gone out, Jesus said, 'Now is the Son of Man glorified and God is
glorified in Him.' If God is glorified in Him, God will also
glorify Him in Himself." In other words, they're inextricable. They are linked together. The glory of God is tied to the glory of His
Son. I knew that at the very beginning if anyone
was to glorify God, it would be through the acknowledging through the acknowledging of
the Son of God as Lord. You remember at His baptism, the Father said,
"This is My beloved Son in whom I'm well pleased." On another occasion the Father said, "This
is My beloved Son, listen to Him." The greatest testimony ever given concerning
Jesus, greater than the testimony of His words and His works was the testimony from heaven
by His Father. And when you acknowledge that the testimony
of the Father is true, you give glory to the Father. If you reject the Son, then you diminish the
testimony of the Father. You dishonor the Father buy denying the truth
of His affirmation of the Son. This church has never wavered in its life,
never wavered from an acknowledgment that we affirm that what the Father has declared
to be true about Christ is in fact true. And we honor the Son and therefore we honor
the Father. The focus of this church has always been God-ward. That is why we don't jump on every bandwagon
that rolls across our path. That is why we don't deviate from the Word
of God. Our focus is God-ward. It is Christ-centered. It always has been, it always will be. We've never been trendy. We never will be. We never can be because we are focused on
the unchanging glory of God and the unchanging reality of Christ who is the same yesterday,
today and forever. I remember in those early years I had read
a biography of Henry Martin, a missionary to India. I wrote that down here. And he first was in a pagan temple, Hindu
temple when he arrived in India. And his first experience in that place was
horrific. And I can understand it because I've been
in those places. And he turned and ran out after just a few
moments and he picked up his little diary and he wrote this, "I cannot endure existence
if Jesus is to be so dishonored." And he wept. I think we understand that as a church. We're committed to the honor of Christ which
honors the Father who affirms the reality of His Son as the one and only Savior and
Redeemer. Secondly, I wrote this down. If you're going to glorify God, first you
confess Jesus as Lord, secondly, you have to aim your life at that purpose...you have
to aim your life at that purpose. That seems kind of obvious but all I mean
by that is you have to focus on glorifying God, not on you, or not on your circumstances,
or not on some other inanimate objective, but your focus is on the glory of God. You aim your life at that purpose and that's
back to 1 Corinthians 10:31, "Whatever you do, whether you eat or drink, do all to the
glory of God." This is the all-consuming desire. This has been the relentless focus of my mind
through all the years of ministry, what would glorify God? What would glorify God? How can I glorify God? By what means can I glorify God in this situation,
in that situation? Sometimes people ask me about the consequences
of a certain ministry or the consequences of a certain message or the fact that what
I say sometimes in a public media setting is offensive to people, they ask me...Does
this concern you? Does this bother you? And it may seem a little bit simplistic but
it's what my focus is...I only seek to do what glorifies God. And in the end, that has some very important
sort of supporting concepts in my mind. One, it means that you do it at any cost...you
do it at any cost. Do you remember the words of Jesus in John
21 when he was talking to Peter? He was telling Peter at the end of that chapter,
which is the end of the gospel of John, that Peter had lived a fairly free and easy life
when he was young. You have gone where you wanted to go and done
what you've wanted to do. But He says to him, "The time will come when
people are going to bind you and they're going to take you where you don't want to go and
they're going to do to you what you don't want done." And what He's talking about, of course, is
the future arrest and crucifixion of Peter. And then John comments on that in verse 19
of John 21 by saying, "This He said, signifying by what death Peter would glorify God." So, the point being, you glorify God when
you aim your life at that purpose, no matter what the result...no matter what the cost. This is taking up your cross, right? This is denying yourself. That is why...that is why this church has
never been preoccupied with its own comforts. That is why you have never been a congregation
of people who come here expecting somehow to be personally elevated in your own feelings
about yourself, but rather you have come here understanding that the glory of God is the
all-consuming reality. And if it cost you everything, that is worth
the price. That's why Peter could say, you know, before
his life ended when he wrote 1 Peter chapter 4:14 to 16 that when you suffer for righteousness
sake, the spirit of grace and glory rests on you and you glorify God when you suffer. So I've always known that if you're going
to aim your life at that purpose, and I will admit, I'm still waiting for the suffering. This last week I read the biography of Hudson
Taylor, I hadn't read it before, this was the one written by his son. And I kept saying all the way through, the
suffering, the suffering, the suffering. He goes to China all by himself. Doesn't know where his next meal is going
to come from. Buries his sweet little Gracie, buries a little
son that's a few days old after his wife gives birth. And then a few days later, his wife dies,
puts her to rest. Suffering is relentless and endless, and endless,
and endless. But the exuberance is just overwhelming because
of his confidence in God at any cost...at any cost. It also means that if you're going to aim
your life at that purpose, that there's no price too high to pay for the glory of God. It also means that you suffer when God is
dishonored. And this is something that I think I understood...well
I certainly understood it long, long ago because I wrote this down. And I had been reading through the Psalms
and I had come to Psalm 69 where David says, and it's also a messianic prophecy, "Zeal
for Your house has eaten me up." Pretty remarkable. I'm so passionate about Your house, Your temple,
You, Your honor, Your worship, Your adoration, Your praise that it eats me up. I'm consumed with Your glory. And then he says, "The reproaches that fall
on You fall on me," which means when You're dishonored, I feel the pain. When You're dishonored, I suffer. And then Jesus, you know, John 2 starts His
ministry by going into the temple and He says, "You've turned this place into a cave of robbers." And He makes a whip and He wipes out the place. Psalm 69:9, "Zeal for Your house is eating
me up, the reproaches that have fallen on You have fallen on me." And what it means is this, when you're living
your life to the glory of God, you will glorify God no matter what it costs. And secondly, you feel the pain when He is
dishonored. You know, sometimes people have said to me,
"You're not as funny as you used to be." I used to work hard at kind of being humorous
when I worked with kids in the younger years in my ministry. No, I'm not as funny as I used to be because
life isn't as funny as it used to be because I have lived all these many years, I've been
preaching now for 50 years and I have seen God dishonored and dishonored and dishonored
and dishonored and dishonored and many times in the name of Jesus Christ. And the accumulative effect of this is a very
great burden of suffering. It's a kind of suffering that I don't know
it the way I should know it, I don't feel the pain the way the pain should be felt. I don't have as great an honoring of God in
my heart as I wish I had but I do suffer when the Lord is dishonored, when He's misrepresented,
when He's mocked, scorned, mistreated. That's why I have a very low tolerance of
some kinds of preaching which manipulates and dishonors His Word, or living, or things
that trivialize the sacred. There's a third element in this idea of aiming
your life at that purpose that came to me when I wrote this down. You aim your life at that purpose which means
you glorify God no matter what the cost, which means you feel the pain when He is dishonored,
but thirdly, it means you're content to be outdone by others as long as He is glorified. Now there just seems to be so much competition
in ministry. Look, I grew up with competition. I was an athlete all my young life, all through
my university college days. I understood competition. I understood the idea of competition was "I
beat you! You lose, I win!" I understood that. That's what it's all about. I was not the kind of person who said, "It's
not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game." Baloney. It's whether you win or lose. You don't pick up the daily sports and it
says, "So-and-so played a nice game." It doesn't say that. It says, "Somebody won...and Somebody lost." That's the way it is. We are wired in our fallenness. We are wired in our pride for victory. We are wired for the ego fulfillment. It comes with that and so much of that fallen
pride comes into the Kingdom and there can be jealousies and strife and envy and I never
wanted that. And I understood early on that if your heart
is right and all that matters to you is that God is being glorified, then you're content
if He's glorified even if someone else is honored above you. And what led me to, I think, the simplest
and clearest understanding of this was Philippians 1. Without question, the Apostle Paul is the
great light, the great gospel light of his era. There's nobody even close. And as he writes to the Philippians he is
in prison, he has been, in that sense, put in a very difficult position. There are people who know that he's a prisoner
because the Lord is using him there for the advancement of the gospel. And by the way, during his imprisonment, the
gospel did wonderfully advance as the end of Philippians says in verse 22 of chapter
4, "All the saints greet you, especially those of Caesar's household." So while he was a prisoner, he was leading
those in Caesar's household to the knowledge of Christ. So, his imprisonment did work out for the
advancement of the gospel. But there were others who jealous of Paul
who had animosity toward Paul because he was everybody's favorite, the most beloved and
the most used, they wanted to spread the idea that he was in prison because he had failed
somehow, perhaps a moral failure, perhaps some kind of carnal failure, perhaps he had
reached a point of usefulness, whatever it was, the Lord had put him on a shelf and now
everybody ought to turn away from Paul and turn to this new breed. They were disdainful of the Apostle Paul and
condemning of his condition. It is to this that he speaks in verse 15. He says, "There are some preachers out there,
some, to be sure, who are preaching Christ even from envy and strife." He knew that. He knew there were people who were jealous
of him, jealous of the way he had been used of God, jealous of his gifts and skills and
opportunities and impact. There were also some, he says in verse 15,
who preached from good will. They affirmed me, they love me, they support
me. "The latter, those with good will, do it out
of love." He means for him. "Knowing that I am appointed for the defense
of the gospel." That is they know that I am not unfaithful,
that I am preaching and defending the gospel. And that's why I'm in the condition I'm in. "The former, however," verse 17, "those who
preach from envy and strife, proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition rather than from pure
motives." What an ugly thing that is. Of all places where selfish ambition, strife
and envy should show up, it shouldn't be in the ministry of the gospel. They want to hurt me more. They're trying to cause me distress in my
imprisonment, which means they're trying to add wounds to my already wounded condition. What's his response to this? Eighteen...what then? My response, "Only that in every way whether
in pretense or in truth Christ is proclaimed and in this I rejoice." Emphatically yes, and I will rejoice. I will never let the human element become
the issue. I will never let whoever gets the credit become
the issue. Christ is preached and in that I will rejoice
no matter what their attitude is toward me. That's what it means....you know, you live
in your life to the glory of God when you would pay any price for His glory, when you
feel the pain when He is dishonored, that's the negative side. And on the other side, when you're content
to be outdone by people who do what you do with more blessing than you do it. You're consumed then with the glory of God. I wrote down a third, and I would probably
put them in the very same order. We glorify God by confessing sin...we glorify
God by confessing sin. In the book of Joshua when the children of
Israel were being brought into the land by the great power of God, you all remember the
story of Achan, right? Achan, who disobediently took the spoils,
brought them back and buried them in his tent when the people of Israel had been commanded
to take no spoil. And there is a remarkable and, I think, very
formative moment there that we need to understand, it's in the seventh chapter. If you want to look at it for just a brief
moment. He is confronted by Joshua in verse 19. And this is what Joshua says to Achan. "My son, I implore you...and then this...give
glory to the Lord, the God of Israel. Give praise to Him." How do I do that? How do I do that? Here's how, "Tell me now what you have done,
do not hide it from me." The third way you glorify God is by confessing
sin...confessing sin. Give glory to the Lord God of Israel. Give praise to Him by telling what you have
done. Do not hide it. "So Achan answered Joshua and said, 'Truly
I have sinned against the Lord, the God of Israel, and this is what I did.'" And he said what he did. And then verse 24 says, "Joshua and all Israel
with him took Achan, the son of Zerah, the silver, the mantle, the bar of gold, his sons,
his daughters, his oxen, his donkeys, his sheep, his tent, all that belonged to him,
brought them up to the valley of Achor. Joshua said, 'Why have you troubled us? The Lord will trouble you this day and all
Israel stoned them with stones and they burned them with fire after they had stoned them
with stones." Wow! All the people, all the possessions, all the
animals. But before the act of judgment fell, God was
to be glorified by a confession of sin that showed that the judgment was a righteous judgment
and therefore God was vindicated. You give glory to God when you confess your
sin so that the chastening that comes into your life is seen as a just act by God. When you deny your sin, when you hide your
sin, when you will not confess your sin and your sinfulness and things come into your
life that are troublesome that are the chastening of God, you would tend to blame God and to
think God unfair. But where there is a heart of true and pure
and honest confession of sin, there is a readiness to accept the chastening of God as that which
is deserved. Confess your sin. Psalm 51, early in the ministry here, I preached
a message on Psalm 51, "Against Thee only have I sinned...against Thee only have I sinned." He had sinned against Uriah, he had sinned
against Bathsheba, but in his mind it was really all against God. And all David ever asked for at that point
was that the chastening have an end, for it was a just chastening, that it have an end
and that he received back the restoration of the joy of his salvation. Confession is to admit your sin, to repent
for your sin, and to give honor to God if God decides to chasten your sin. You know, this is such a pervasive attitude
in life, it seems to me that a person who really understands the horror of sin could
never complain about anything that came into their life in a negative way because all of
it could be perceived legitimately as chastening from the Lord. Are we perfect? And if we're sinful, and we are, and if we're
regularly sinful and we are, then who are we to think that we should pass through some
long period of time in our lives without any trouble? It's a wonderful thing to confess your sin
and to be able to worship God in the midst of the most difficult issues and situations
of life knowing that this is what you deserve and that God's purpose in it is the purpose
of a Father who wants to chasten a son so you can moved in the path of righteousness. Then I wrote down, "We glorify God by trusting
Him." And I drew that out of Romans 4. Romans 4 is the great section on Abraham and
says about Abraham in verse 19 that he was not weak in faith. Even though he contemplated his own body. Now remember, God said you're going to have
a son, right? And he realizes that he's a hundred years
old and Sarah's womb is dead. She's in her nineties, never borne children. But he is not weak in faith. God says you're going to have a son. He believes it even though humanly it is not
possible. So verse 20 says, "With respect to the promise
of God, he did not waver in unbelief but grew strong in faith, giving glory to God." God is glorified when you believe His promise. That is what sustained Hudson Taylor. Goes to China by himself, this little guy,
not remarkable in any way. And goes purely on the basis that he was going
to pray that God would provide his needs. Prayed for a place to stay. Prayed for protection and safety. Prayed for the next meal. And did that for 50 years. And by the time he came to the end of his
life, he had 750 missionaries in China from the United States and England and about 5,000
Chinese workers and they were all operating on the same basis, faith and prayer and no
fixed promises. Time after time after time after time after
time he took God at His word. He believed God. He believed God. And God vindicated Himself, and vindicated
Himself and vindicated Himself and did a massive mighty work so that today the millions of
Christians in China today can trace their spiritual heritage back to Hudson Taylor. Trusting God. You remember the great hero chapter of Hebrews
11? "By faith...by faith..by faith...by faith...by
faith." Trusting God is simply saying I believe that
what God says, He will do. You know, if you say, "I'm a Christian, I
believe in God, God is sovereign over my life, God provides everything I need," and you're
a picture of fretting and worrying and anxiety and fear and reaction and over-reaction, that's
a terrible contradiction. Do you really believe? Do you really trust? Do you really believe that the Lord is going
to sustain you? That my God will supply all your needs according
to His riches and glory by Christ Jesus? Then act like it. Then let prayer be your response to difficulty. I certainly was indicted all the way reading
this book because I'm not looking for where I'm going to get my next meal. You know, we have a little bit of a problem
in our economy here, people start killing themselves. We need to learn as Christians to demonstrate
the kind of trust that is exhibited in the direst of circumstances because we believe
that God can be taken at His Word...like Abraham. And then I wrote down, "By fruitfulness...by
fruitfulness." In John 15 Jesus talks about the vine and
the branches and that it's the Father's will that you bear much fruit that the Father may
be glorified...that the Father may be glorified. He's glorified in our fruitfulness. What does it mean? What is fruitfulness? Well there are two kinds of fruit...attitude
fruit, action fruit. I remember when I first started thinking about
this many, many years...attitude fruit, what's that? Galatians 5:22 and 23...the fruit of the Spirit,
love, joy, peace, gentleness, goodness, faith meekness, self-control, that's all attitudes,
spiritual attitudes. Action fruit, what's that? Philippians 1:11, the fruit of righteousness,
the fruit of your lips, Hebrews 13:15, praise to God, the fruit of bringing someone to Christ. Paul says to the Romans, "I want to have some
fruit among you." That's action fruit. Action fruit without attitude fruit is legalism. Action fruit as the result of attitude fruit
is true spirituality. God wants us to be fruitful by walking in
the Spirit and living in the Spirit, we enjoy the fruit of the Spirit. And out of the fruit of the Spirit comes the
behavior that is Spirit-driven, Spirit-empowered. The fruit of righteousness, the fruit of praise. Just thinking of Colossians 1:10, you'll remember
this, "So that you walk in a manner worthy of the Lord to please Him in all aspects,
or all respects, bearing fruit in every good work." That's action fruit. God is glorified when you bear much fruit. You don't want to be a little-fruit Christian. You can't be a no-fruit Christian because
if you're a Christian at all, the life of God will manifest itself in you that's why
Jesus said, "By their fruit you shall know them." But you don't want to be just a few shriveled
up grapes. You want to be an abundantly productive believer
and God is glorified in your spiritual fruitfulness. It starts with attitudes and then action. And then I wrote down praise. Psalm 50:23 says, "Whoever offers Me praise,
glorifies Me." Whoever offers Me praise, glorifies Me. You could almost make them one and the same. God is glorified when we praise Him. It reminds me of Luke 17 where the lepers
that were cleansed went on their way and only one came back and gave glory to God by thanking
Christ. What does it mean to praise? Just three things, really. One, reciting God's attributes. Two, reciting His works. Three, giving thanks for both. Reciting His attributes, His character, His
nature, what is true about Him and reciting His works, what He has done and giving thanks
for both. That's praise. Whoever offers praise, Psalm 50:23, glorifies
Me. Then I wrote down, number seven, prayer. Do you remember John 14, Jesus said to the
disciples in the Upper Room that whatever you ask in My name, I'll do it that the Father
may be glorified in the Son. Whatever you ask in My name, I'll do it that
the Father may be glorified in the Son. Why does God answer prayer? To put Himself on display, put His glory on
display. When you pray it's not as if you're going
to change God's plans which have been established from before creation. When you pray, it's not that you're going
to make some great massive paradigm shift take place in the Kingdom. The primary purpose of our praying is to let
God put Himself on display in visible ways. Pray little and you will see little first
hand of God's great power and glory. I keep thinking about Hudson Taylor, he said,
"One day he looked at their resources and they needed 49 pounds and 11 pence to finish
the money they needed for the missionaries." And so he went to his knees and he prayed
and the next day a man came up to him up out of nowhere, he had never met, and gave him
a 50 pound note. That happened to him again and again and again
and again. Would God have sustained his ministry in the
purposes of God? Certainly, if God was going to accomplish
His purpose. But what continued to strengthen that man's
resolve and make him the man that he was, was every time he prayed he saw the glory
of God displayed. Pray so that God can put His glory on display. So that He could see His power and His grace. And then I wrote down number eight, we glorify
God by using our spiritual gifts...by using our spiritual gifts which are Holy Spirit-enabled
abilities that come to us from the Lord because He wants to minister through us to the church. In 1 Peter 4 it says each has received a gift,
some are speaking gifts and some are serving gifts. And they're given so that in all things God
may be glorified through Jesus Christ, 1 Peter 4:11. So when you use your spiritual gift, and this
has been something that's marked this church since the early years...I remember we used
to talk a lot about spiritual gifts, I did a number of series on spiritual gifts...what
prompted that a lot in the early years was the confusion and chaos of the Charismatic
Movement which was misrepresenting the work of the Holy Spirit, and misrepresenting spiritual
gifts and confounding and confusing and offering counterfeits to the true work of the Holy
Spirit. And I felt I needed to help people understand
the truth. And so we went in to the doctrine of the Holy
Spirit, in to the ministry of the Holy Spirit, the gifting of the Holy Spirit and how that
worked out in the church that has fleshed its way out in the 40 years since we did that
in those very early days. And we understand that we use our gifts, my
speaking gift, your speaking gift is to minister to those to whom we speak. My serving gift, your serving gift is to minister
to those to whom we serve. And so, we have these gifts for the mutual
edification of one another. And this is what builds up the body of Christ. You use your gift and God is glorified. Well then in kind of rapid fire I wrote down
five final things. You glorify God by bringing others to Him. Second Corinthians 4:15, Paul says, "All things
are for your sake." What does he mean by that? Everything I do is for your sake that the
grace, saving grace, which is spreading to many may redound to the glory of God. Every time I bring the knowledge of the gospel
to someone who believes, it adds one more voice to the hallelujah chorus. We glorify God in that. We glorify God by proclaiming the Word. Second Thessalonians 3:1, "Pray that the Word
may go forth and be glorified." We glorify God by moral purity...moral purity,
virtue, holiness. That's 1 Corinthians 6, isn't it? "You've been bought with a price, therefore
glorify God in your body," 1 Corinthians 6:20. We glorify God by unity. Romans 15:5, "May the God who gives perseverance
and encouragement grant you to be of the same mind with one another, according to Christ
Jesus, so that with one accord you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ." Accept one another as Christ accepted us to
the glory of God. This has always marked this church...unity. God has blessed and protected this church
all these 40 years. This has been a church of one heart and one
mind without regard for ways, background, economics. This is to the glory of God. And the last one I wrote on this little Holiday
Inn stationery was we glorify God by contentment...by contentment. Hard sometimes to be content even though we
live in a culture that should overflow with contentment since we are so indulged. But I think that's what Paul has in mind in
Philippians 4 when he says, "I know how to be abased and I know how to abound. I know how to get along with humble means
and I know how to live in prosperity. In any circumstance I have learned that the
secret of being filled and going hungry, having an abundance and suffering need because my
God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus." And then he says, "Now to our God and Father
be the glory forever and ever amen." I'm content with what He gives me and I give
Him glory for it. Well there are a few that I wrote down later
on the back. But you get the picture, don't you? Father, we thank You that You have in Your
sweet grace and kindness long ago helped us to see that we are to live lives to Your glory. We thank You, our Father, that Your Word is
so simple that a child could understand it and yet so profound that we have yet to come
close to plumbing its glorious depths. Thank You for these people, precious people
who have lived in the pursuit of Your glory. Thank You for the years of joy that they have
brought to me, all the elders and leaders and faithful folks who have come through the
years and gone and been a part of this great ministry here, have lived out these convictions. They have been for us all the fixed points. They have been the foundation stones for all
of us. That's why we're here. That's why the folks are here today. There's no mystery about this church. But You bless the people who give You glory
and You've done it and You will continue to do it. And for that, we praise You and we seek even
greater blessing as we are evermore faithful to this commitment. Enable us by Your Spirit to live to Your glory. Amen.
