Is Enjoying God the Same as Glorifying God?
00:00:00.000 | (music)
00:00:04.000 | Enjoying God and glorifying God.
00:00:07.000 | Are those different things or are they the same thing?
00:00:10.000 | It's a really good question for you today, Pastor John, who joins us remotely over Skype today.
00:00:15.000 | Here's the question as it comes in to us from a listener named Roland.
00:00:19.000 | "Hello, Pastor John. I have a question about enjoying Jesus versus glorifying Jesus.
00:00:24.000 | It seems like enjoying Jesus Christ would look like fellowship and communion with Him,
00:00:30.000 | a relatively private matter between Jesus and me,
00:00:34.000 | but glorifying Jesus Christ sounds more like observable works and words that show the watching world His worth.
00:00:42.000 | These two things seem to feed one another rather than being the same thing.
00:00:47.000 | But I've listened to APJ long enough to suspect that you'd reach a different conclusion,
00:00:52.000 | but I can't seem to piece this all together. Can you help me understand their relationship?"
00:00:59.000 | Well, not an entirely different conclusion. (laughter)
00:01:03.000 | Let's start with a quick clarification about everything else that follows, just to preempt a misunderstanding.
00:01:10.000 | When I speak of enjoying Jesus or glorifying Jesus,
00:01:15.000 | I mean in both cases enjoying Him for who He really is and glorifying Him for who He really is.
00:01:26.000 | I don't have in mind an enjoyment or a glorification of some popular notion of Jesus that is not who He really is.
00:01:38.000 | So there, that's the beginning clarification.
00:01:41.000 | Now, with that set up clarification behind us, let's begin with a hearty affirmation of Roland's thoughtfulness here.
00:01:52.000 | Roland is right that glorifying Jesus and enjoying Jesus are not identical.
00:02:01.000 | He's also right that enjoying Jesus is in its essence a private experience of the heart
00:02:09.000 | and glorifying Jesus in its essence is the offering of evidence to others that Jesus is glorious.
00:02:19.000 | Now, given those two definitions, there is nevertheless at least one situation in which
00:02:27.000 | enjoying Jesus and glorifying Jesus become one thing,
00:02:32.000 | namely in the situation where my heart can be seen by someone else, even though my body is totally inactive.
00:02:43.000 | For example, I might be a paraplegic with no muscles working at all, not even my facial muscles.
00:02:53.000 | If someone could see my heart in that situation and see my heart experiencing joy in Jesus,
00:03:03.000 | that joy at that moment would be an instance of glorifying Jesus,
00:03:09.000 | because my definition of glorifying Jesus was offering evidence to others that Jesus is glorious,
00:03:18.000 | and they'd be seeing that, and it would be evidence to them.
00:03:21.000 | My goodness, there's joy in there, and he can't move a muscle.
00:03:24.000 | How great must Jesus be?
00:03:27.000 | And there are at least three others, three other persons who can always see my heart,
00:03:37.000 | namely God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
00:03:44.000 | So, if my heart is enjoying Jesus, at least three other persons see evidence that Jesus is glorious,
00:03:56.000 | and glorious to me, because enjoying Jesus for who he really is,
00:04:02.000 | especially in times of suffering, is real evidence that Jesus is glorious,
00:04:09.000 | if someone can see it, and someone can always see it.
00:04:13.000 | At least three persons can see it.
00:04:15.000 | There's another reason why enjoying Jesus and glorifying Jesus need to be distinguished.
00:04:23.000 | That is not treated as identical, and it's because there are ways that God is glorified,
00:04:34.000 | or Jesus is glorified by a person's existence, even when the heart of that person is not enjoying him.
00:04:43.000 | For example, Pharaoh was raised up by God to glorify God's power, which he did,
00:04:52.000 | but not by enjoying that power, but by simply being the object of God's powerful and righteous wrath.
00:04:59.000 | So, Exodus 9, 16, God says, "For this purpose I have raised you up,
00:05:07.000 | to show in you my power, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth."
00:05:15.000 | So, Pharaoh glorified God's power and name, but not because he enjoyed either of them,
00:05:24.000 | but because his destruction became the evidence of God's glorious power.
00:05:32.000 | So, when I say God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him,
00:05:41.000 | I'm not saying that God is glorified by a person's existence only when that person is satisfied in him.
00:05:52.000 | God was glorified by Pharaoh's existence. His life was an evidence to others that God is powerful.
00:06:00.000 | But Pharaoh was not satisfied in God or his power.
00:06:05.000 | So, the words "in us" are very important when I say God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.
00:06:18.000 | And I realize, every time somebody asks me a question, I get more clarity about this.
00:06:23.000 | I realize that with the words "in us," I have created a confusion, at least for Roland,
00:06:31.000 | namely that glorifying God might be something totally private in us,
00:06:39.000 | without giving any evidence to anyone outside of us that God is glorious.
00:06:45.000 | And I'm trying to clarify, that's not the case. That's not what I mean.
00:06:51.000 | I want to say glorifying God or glorifying Jesus always involves giving some evidence to other persons
00:07:01.000 | that God is glorious, beautiful, valuable, great, satisfying.
00:07:07.000 | Now let me make one more clarification, or take our clarification one step further.
00:07:15.000 | I said earlier that enjoying God and glorifying God are not identical.
00:07:20.000 | Yet, the whole burden of my theology, Christian hedonism,
00:07:26.000 | is that any attempt to glorify God that is godly or spirit-guided or gracious or faith-rooted or pleasing to God,
00:07:39.000 | any attempt to glorify God must come from a heart that is at least in possession of a mustard seed of being genuinely satisfied in God.
00:07:51.000 | If our hearts are totally devoid of enjoying God, our hearts cannot attempt to glorify God in a way that pleases Him and makes Him look beautiful.
00:08:05.000 | And the more fully our hearts are satisfied in God, the more fully God will be glorified in our outward behavior.
00:08:16.000 | Now when I say that, I'm thinking of Matthew 5.16 by way of illustration.
00:08:23.000 | Jesus said, "Let your light so shine before others so that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven."
00:08:35.000 | Now that fits perfectly with Raymond's comment that glorifying God sounds more like observable works and words
00:08:45.000 | than a private inner experience. And that's what Jesus is saying here.
00:08:50.000 | People will see your good works and glorify God. Your good works will give visible evidence that God is glorious.
00:09:01.000 | Now what Christian hedonism points out, relentlessly points out,
00:09:06.000 | is that good works done from a heart with no satisfaction in Jesus are not God glorifying good works.
00:09:17.000 | They are not putting God's glory and God's worth on display.
00:09:22.000 | Because the heart that is doing them feels no glory, feels no worth in God.
00:09:29.000 | Thousands of unbelievers do that kind of good works, the kind that Paul described in 1 Corinthians 13.
00:09:36.000 | "If I give away all that I have and deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing."
00:09:42.000 | Jesus did not admire these kinds of good works.
00:09:46.000 | "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, you clean the outside of the cup."
00:09:53.000 | That means you do lots of good things. They look really good, squeaky clean good things.
00:09:58.000 | And the plate is clean on the outside, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.
00:10:05.000 | So this outside veneer of good works is not coming from the enjoyment of God,
00:10:11.000 | but from greed, for money, for human praise.
00:10:15.000 | And right here in Matthew 5, there is evidence that the good works which glorify God in verse 16,
00:10:23.000 | come from a heart satisfied in God.
00:10:26.000 | Remember, Jesus had just said, what, four verses earlier,
00:10:30.000 | "Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account."
00:10:37.000 | And then he says this absolutely crazy and glorious thing.
00:10:40.000 | "Rejoice and be glad, for great is your reward in heaven."
00:10:45.000 | So, your heart can rejoice in hardship, in persecution, because of the promise of heaven.
00:10:52.000 | You will be with God and you will be overwhelmingly rewarded and satisfied.
00:10:58.000 | And then he says, "You're the salt of the earth. You're the light of the world."
00:11:04.000 | Which I think means the world desperately needs the flavor and the brightness of people so satisfied in God,
00:11:11.000 | they can rejoice in suffering. That's a weird and glorious, beautiful kind of human being.
00:11:16.000 | And then he says, "Let that salt be tasted. Let that light shine in your good deeds."
00:11:23.000 | That is, let the taste and the brightness of your God-satisfied heart be seen in your...
00:11:31.000 | Then your good deeds will have the flavor that really makes God look valuable.
00:11:38.000 | So, God is most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in him means,
00:11:45.000 | both that the heart itself, when satisfied in God, is good evidence to God,
00:11:54.000 | who sees the heart, that he is glorious in your eyes.
00:11:58.000 | And it means that the heart satisfied in God will produce a public brightness
00:12:08.000 | and a taste in the way it responds to suffering and in the way it does good deeds.
00:12:15.000 | Thank you, Pastor John, for breaking that down for us.
00:12:18.000 | And thank you all for listening to the podcast.
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00:12:30.000 | To find other episodes in our archive or to submit a question to us of your own,
00:12:34.000 | do that online at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:12:39.000 | Next time, we're going to talk about the power of singing in winning spiritual battles
00:12:43.000 | by looking at the power of singing in the physical battle of 2 Chronicles 20.
00:12:48.000 | This is a really important point Pastor John draws out of the text,
00:12:52.000 | a point we all need to see and embrace.
00:12:56.000 | I'm Tony Reinke. We'll see you back here on Wednesday. Thanks for listening.
00:13:00.000 | [Silence]
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