Dennis Tuuri

Please turn to John chapter 17 which is today’s scripture reading. John chapter 17. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. Jesus spoke these words, lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come. Glorify your son that your son also may glorify you. As you have given him authority over all flesh that he should give eternal life to as many as you have given him. And this is eternal life that they may know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

I have glorified you on the earth. I have finished the work which you have given me to do. And now, oh father, glorify me together with yourself with the glory which I had with you before the world was. I have manifested your name to the men whom you have given me out of the world. They were yours. You gave them to me and they have kept your word. Now they have known that all things which you have given me are from you.

For I have given to them the words which you have given me and they have received them and have known surely that I came forth from you and they have believed that you sent me. I pray for them. I do not pray for the world but for those whom you have given me for they are yours and all mine are yours. And yours are mine and I am glorified in them. Now I am no longer in the world but these are in the world and I come to you holy father keep through your name those whom you have given me that they may be one as we are while I was with them in the world I kept them in your name those whom you gave me I have kept and none of them is lost except the son of perdition that the scriptures might be fulfilled but now I come to you and these things I speak in the world that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves.

I have given them your word and the world has hated them because they are not of the world just as I am not of the world. I do not pray that you should take them out of the world but that you should keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them by your truth. Your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself that they also may be sanctified by the truth.

I do not pray for these alone but also for those who will believe in me through their word that they all may be one as you father are in me and I in you that they also may be one in us that the world may believe that you sent me and the glory which you gave me I have given them that they may be one just as we are one. I in them and you in me that they may be made perfect in one and that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them as you have loved me.

Father, I desire that they also whom you gave me may be with me where I am that they may behold my glory which you have given me. For you loved me before the foundation of the world. Oh righteous father, the world has not known you, but I have known you. And these have known that you sent me and I have declared to them your name and will declare it that the love with which you loved me may be in them and I in them.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for this high priestly prayer of our savior. And we pray that your spirit may instruct us that we might believe these things that our savior has prayed for and might believe that these have indeed been answered by you to our great edification and joy. Help us now in this time to focus upon your word by the power of your spirit. In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.

I have followed a long series of sermons on the law of the covenant by looking at the very summation of thy law as it relates to children and fathers for the last two sermons found in Ephesians 6 at the center of the second section of application of God’s word to us. It’s important to see the implications of the law in its full detail, but it’s also important to spend a couple of weeks as we did looking at the very simplicity of the law that really our lives are all wrapped up in whether we’re going to honor God or not.

And we demonstrate that through whether we honor the authorities and the functional inferiors, those under the authority that we’ve been given by God as well. The Lord Jesus Christ has ascended. We’re in that season of liturgical time between resurrection Sunday and Pentecost, the gift of the Spirit and the providence of God. Pentecost Sunday falls when Peter Leithart will be preaching at our family camp.

So we have kind of one of our festival seasons related to that part of the Christian calendar. So these songs of resurrection and ascension that we sang again today are very good and appropriate for us. We want to make sure and we want to do this all of our lives. We won’t stop making sure of this fact that the law has been given to us not to obtain right standing with God, but rather the law has been given to a saved people.

So now I want to spend one Sunday talking about God’s three gifts to us, which truly are one gift both to us as parents and also to our children. And again see that the father in heaven knows what he’s doing and knows how to give good gifts to his children that ask him. And look at it briefly as a model also for how we should interact with our children. We’ve spoken of this several times over the last couple of years.

And let me just say at the beginning here that the particular gifts that we’ve singled out on your outline, glory, knowledge, and life and the particular order in which I believe the worship of the church should proceed, glory, knowledge, and life are to a degree somewhat arbitrary. I mean, they’re not arbitrary, but there’s other perspectives in the word of God. You know, you can look at the four gospels, and I’ve seen at least three different ways to relate the faces of the cherubim in Ezekiel 1:10 to the four gospels.

And each of these systems to varying degrees makes some sense. Why? Because each gospel is a complete gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. And Jesus is the fulfillment of all the four faces of the cherubim. So we can see aspects of the four faces in each gospel. And so when we split these gifts off, glory, knowledge, and life, they’re really aspects of the one gift of salvation to us. They’re really the gift of God to his people in the resurrected and ascended Christ.

So to a degree, these things are perspectives, but they’re perspectives that I think the scriptures draw out for us. And I think that we have them in the right order in terms of the worship of the church. But I don’t want to quibble about the order. And I don’t want to quibble if you think maybe some of these gifts should have different designations to them. These are clearly gifts of God to us. And they seem to me to be a focal point in the context of the scriptures.

So we want to talk about these good gifts and we’ll look at this chart in a few minutes and eventually we’ll get around to John 17. But I want to start first with our point of need for these gifts. It does no good to tell you I’ve got something for you if you think you’ve already got it. You don’t care for the gift then. And if you don’t think you need it very much, you don’t esteem it very highly. So I want us in a couple of minutes here to look at Romans chapter 1 and where really these three elements of our fall and of our reclamation in Christ are addressed there.

But before we look at Romans chapter 1, you know, we’re used to reading Romans chapter 1 as a list of why those people are the way they are and why those guys are terrible and all that stuff. But remember that the conclusion of Romans chapter 1 is found in Romans chapter 2 verse one. “Therefore you, oh man, are inexcusable, whoever you are who judge, for in whatever you judge another, you condemn yourself. For you who judge practice the same things.”

Now, the point of Romans is that there’s one church and that the priestly nation and the rest of the world that have been set up by God in the Old Testament is completed in the work of Christ. So one of the big thrusts that James B. Jordan taught us at family camp in—I don’t know when, ’95, ’94, sometime—was that these are now one in Christ. And as a result of presenting that oneness in Christ, what Paul does in Romans is he shows how we’re one in sin.

And so we’re one in redemption in the work of Christ. And so there’s no more any Jew gentile distinction. So because of that, he does this wonderful job that we all know about in the book of Romans drawing out this doctrine, this doctrinal section, and he begins with all men being condemned in sin. So when we turn to Romans 1 in a couple of minutes, we want to turn to it, not you know, thinking about somebody out there, but thinking about ourselves and who we are in Adam.

Who is that old man that Ephesians tells us to put off? And remember that this book of Ephesians is written to saints and they’re continually being reminded to continue putting off the old man and putting on the new man. So we’re not completed with this process. We all have sin and this sin is seen in summary form in Romans chapter 1. Ecclesiastes 7:20 says there is not a just man on earth who does good and does not sin. Not a one. And it’s ultimately we all sin.

Galatians 3:22 the scriptures have confined all under sin. All of us are in the context of sin. 1 John 1:8-10 again written to Christians. “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us.”

So what are you going to do? Are you going to listen to these words from Romans chapter 1 and lie to yourself and lie to God that they don’t really apply to you? Or are you going to say that in my Adamic nature, that old man, this is his sins? This is his tendencies? Are you going to pretend today that you kept the Ten Commandments perfectly? Or were you sincere when you brought your confession of faith a couple of minutes ago and you know that a consideration of the Lord God of the universe, Yahweh, the covenant God of us, that you know that in various times this last week, you failed to live your life in submission and obedience to him.

You went after other gods, other ways of achieving happiness. You know that even when you went to God, you went to God idolatrously using either his scriptures, the church, other mechanisms. You set up rituals and patterns, not God ordained ones, to seek his face. And you thought you could approach him through your own imagination. You know that there were times this last week when you did that if you’re very perceptive.

You know that you didn’t live a full witness that you took the name as Christian this last week in vanity various times. Maybe in your outward actions that your wife or your husband or your children or your co-workers or your friends saw. Maybe just in your thought life. Maybe in the privacy of whatever closet you go into to think your own thoughts or to do your own actions. You know are sinful. You know that you did not live that full witness as a Christian, that you took God’s name, Christ, upon you in vain emptily at some point this last week.

You know, you had improper thoughts about your wife. You know, you had improper thoughts about your husband. And whether they were actually thoughts that said, “What a turkey that guy is,” or that wife is, or that child is, or that parent is, or whether it was just a failure to think about your husband and submit to him with the wholeness of your heart, or a failure to think about your wife and build her up and give her the glory and honor as the joint heir she is.

Or a failure to glorify your children in the context of your discipline. You probably walked away from this sermon last week. And if you’re like me, within hours or maybe a day or so, you already forgot the way to chastise your children correctly, reminding them of their baptism in Christ. You turned away from that. You put on the old man, and you disciplined them for your own purposes. Maybe you did, maybe you didn’t. But some of this stuff I’m talking about, you did.

And you probably did it immediately, fairly immediately after the sermon last week, if not sometime during this last week or maybe this morning. You know that you didn’t honor the authorities that God gave you this last week. You know that you were dishonorable in your thoughts again to your husband, to your parents, to the civil magistrate, to the elders of the church, to the deacons of the church, whatever it is, you know, to your boss at work.

But dwell on that one for a while and ask yourself, did you keep a full witness of the Lord Jesus Christ in proper submission to the authorities that you were in the context of this week or did you dishonor them? And you know that you have at least in the past and many of you probably this last week had improper thoughts about men or women, lusted after things or people. You know that this is what happened.

President Carter years ago gave an interview in the Playboy magazine, he said he lusted after women in his heart. Well, he got crucified for that, so to speak, barbecued. I’m not sure it was a very wise thing for him to do. But, you know, he was being honest. And as you come today to understand the gifts that God gives you, you’ve got to understand your own inability to receive these gifts in your own flesh.

In the Adamic nature, you’ve got to know your need as you come to the worship service for these gifts or God isn’t going to give them to you. It’s not some sort of you put a nickel in the slot. You say the prayer. You take the Lord’s supper and you hear the word of God and take notes and you pull the handle and you get these gifts. It’s not like that. The gifts are all found at the foot of the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ through a confession of sin.

You know, you didn’t properly use all your resources this last week for the glory of God. You sought your own glory. You sought the glory of things, the allurments the world gave you. You wanted that reflected glory of the Portland Trailblazers and they fell. You felt bad about it. Not sure it’s bad to want that reflected glory, but you know, you attach these things. We seek glamour, glory, weight in things other than the person and work of God.

That’s our tendency in the flesh. And we seek our own knowledge about things. You prepared for a household meeting last week. How much of your preparation was getting on your face before God and searching the scriptures in terms of church-state relationships? And I know you got limited time, but did you at least pray about it? And did you try to put on the thinking cap of God’s word instead of just the thinking cap of pragmatism.

What’s going to work best for us as we proceed down the path? Now, you know, pragmatism in the proper Christian context is good. But I’m just saying that typically our actions are a blend of the old man and new man and otherwise God wouldn’t continually remind us in the book of Ephesians that you got to put them off. Put off the way of knowledge that isn’t according to God’s word and put off, you know, the seeking for millennial life, abundant life, to the things that you want.

Mick Jagger, you know, one of the themes of our generation can’t get any satisfaction. Why? Because men in their fallen state try to get weight and glory through the glamour and the glimmering of the world. And they get those things, but they still don’t feel very satisfied. Or they seek after all kinds of arcane knowledge. And now we’ve got the internet to help us to seek knowledge.

And knowledge is a good thing. But we seek this knowledge apart from the mediation of Christ’s word and we get lots of understanding, but at the end of the day, we still don’t feel very satisfied that we’ve gotten what we need in terms of knowledge and we seek after abundant life. We want fun. We want joy. We want to taste something good and feel something good and, you know, have joy, but we seek it incorrectly.

And when we get that stuff, it just doesn’t satisfy us. You know, shop till you drop. Well, part of the reason for that is you’re shopping trying to get satisfaction through the financial transaction. Through this exchange of money for things that you think will bring you glory or knowledge or life, but at the end of the day it doesn’t work. And you walk home and for a while you’re sort of pleased with what you bought and then you look at it and think, well, I don’t know.

It just wasn’t what I wanted. Well, you know what I’m saying is if you have that sense that you need something that’s good to come to worship with. In Revelation, our savior tells one of the churches that, you know, you’re poor, you’re naked, and you’re blind. Come and buy from me, you know, buy from me what you need. The picture of the transaction of dollars for gifts in markets is really just a picture of the ultimate thing that goes on in our transaction with God particularly in the context of worship where we come to him and we buy acknowledging that we’ve got no money that it’s got to be a gift that he gives to us.

And so if you don’t understand that transaction that goes on in worship and you go into the world and you think that somehow through those financial transactions or the fellowship transactions with people that you can get this stuff, you’re going to walk away empty. Empty. God says he’s got what you need. Now look at Romans 1. Romans 1, verse 18, the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.

Now, this is what we do. It’s what the old man does. He suppresses the truth of God in his sinfulness because what may be known of God is manifest in them. For God has shown it to them. Our problem is not intellectual. We see in the created order, the scripture tells us all we need to know to do what we should be doing. For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes are clearly seen being understood by the things that are made.

Even his eternal power and Godhead there without excuse. Now, what did they do wrong? Verse 21’s going to tell us. “Because though they knew God, that’s a given, they did not glorify him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts and their foolish hearts were darkened.” So he links two things here. Not glorifying God and as a result a futility of mind in terms of knowledge. Fallen man doesn’t glorify God and cannot help but not be glorified himself, then he loses his glory, all his sin, and fall short of the glory of God.

And fallen man is given over to depraved knowledge by God. Verse 22, “Professing to be wise, they became fools, changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like unto corruptible man.” Same two things. Little chiasm here. They don’t glorify God by thanking him. They become futile in their thinking. And then they are foolish. They think they’re wise, but they’re foolish because they exchanged the glory of God for the glory of other things in corruptible things like birds and men and creepy crawly sort of stuff.

Romans 1 says at the heart of our old man is this not glorifying God, not attributing glory and weightiness to him and as a result not seeing ourselves in relationship to his glory but seeking glory in the things around us that are made to represent God to us. We like the glimmer the weight, the purchasing power of gold. And that’s a good thing if we relate it to God. We like the tastiness of food. That’s a good thing if we relate it to God’s word, to the Lord Jesus Christ, to his blessings.

So we exchange the glory of God represented in the things around us for the glory of these creaturely sort of things apart from God. So we seek glory now not by going to the source of glory of which everything is a manifestation. We seek glory directly through the created world without the mediation of God in Christ. And that’s the essence of who we are in our Adamic nature as fallen men is we’re looking for glory in all the wrong places.

We’re not on target anymore. We don’t glorify God. And that glorification of God is explicitly linked to thankfulness. You wonder, you know, why you’re unthankful and why you have such a hard time giving God thanks in all things, not necessarily for all things in the context of all things. There’s a difference I think and I think it’s because we don’t understand the mediation of glory by God to us.

I mean, how does Jesus become glorified? By going to the cross. It’s the hour of his death that he combines with his glorification. It’s through dying to ourselves and living to God that we’re glorified. And fallen man in Romans 1 says exchanges the glory of God and seeks that glory instead in created things. And what’s the end result? Well, the end result is this long list of horrible sins.

Going down to verse 32, “That they know the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death.” You see, we seek glory incorrectly. He turns us over. We then have incorrect knowledge and foolishness that we’re seeking after instead of true knowledge. And the end result of that, Romans 1 tells us, is death. They deserve death. And that’s just what they’re going to reap from God who is again not like fathers. He always keeps his word.

So we have in Romans 1 a picture of who we are in Christ. We need stuff. We need glory from God because we’ve refused it. We need knowledge from God because we have depraved minds. We’re foolish instead of wise. And we need life from God because the end result of our rebellion forsaking his glory and his knowledge is death. So the scriptures say we have tremendous needs.

As we come to God, all men have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Glory again is heaviness. In the Hebrew Old Testament, it is a weighty, a very substantial concept. It’s not some, you know, mystical idea of things. It means heaviness or weightiness like that gold. Glow—in glory. A man is created out of air, breath of God, and he’s created out of dust. This floating sort of stuff. He’s created light and insubstantial. And as he goes on in life, he becomes heavier. He becomes more glory. At least he should.

But when we exchange the glory of God and don’t seek glory from him anymore, but in ourselves or in the glimmerings and glamourings in the glory of the world, we become dirt bags again. We become insubstantial. We have no weight. We have no, you know, we cry out for answers to this absence of weight and authority and significance in our lives. You know, let me throw in something here in terms of my particular stage in life.

There’s a lot of us going through this. You know, we used to sort of when I was young, we used to joke around, few of us did, about midlife crisis, how that’s a worldly concept. There’s nothing to it, you know, and just mature and grow in grace and get better and better. It’s not like that. My experience says that indeed there are times and most men I know have the same experience. Whether it’s culture or not, I don’t know.

But the manifestation in our culture is between 40 and 50 you do go through some things. Your wife goes through menopause up to 50, 55. You’re going through hormonal changes in the providence of God and you can get depressed. Well, I think one thing that God is doing with you is he’s operating on these levels you don’t—you haven’t done. I don’t care who you are. I’ve known men very successful in life, but they still don’t feel like they’ve done what they could have done with their lives.

They don’t feel glorious enough. You see, and the things that their money can buy them don’t seem satisfying enough to them anymore. So they go buy a hot new red sports car or they, you know, go after a mistress, whatever it is, terrible, sinful things. Why? Because God is taking them to a deeper level, I believe, as he’s maturing them, showing them that indeed that they have to have glory mediated through Christ and they have to have life mediated through Christ and knowledge as well.

So the scriptures, I think, point out to us that when we suffer, these are probably the areas we’re suffering in. We’re seeking false glory. Or maybe God is maturing us in understanding of glory. We’re dying to our dreams, but God in his grace is opening up new dreams for us, new things to do. And they’re not necessarily the things we thought we should be doing. They’re not the splashy kind of a thing maybe that we thought we ought to be doing.

But in the providence of God, they’re just what he wants you doing. And if you do those simple things as you move through midlife into the next stage of your life, as you leave behind children, for instance, in whatever way the providence of God has caused that to happen, and you take up the task that he’s called you to do, then you can believe that there is glory, weight, and substance in the context of that calling.

You can lay that at the cross of Christ and receive that gift of glory in terms of that new calling and receive the understanding of what really matters in the context of abundant life. Romans 1 says we sin and fall short of the glory of God. And we also as Romans 1 also tells us we also walk away from understanding. James, John, Job. In Job 12 verses 1 and 2 says, “No doubt you are the people and wisdom will die with you. No one seems to think that they’re the ones who know everything and Job just ridicules the man who has knowledge apart from the Lord Jesus Christ.”

James chapter 3 says, “Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show by his good conduct through his works that his works are done in the meekness of wisdom. If you have bitter envy and self-seeking in your hearts, do not boast and lie against the truth. This wisdom does not descend from above, but is earthly, sensual, and demonic.”

We’ve got a problem. We’ve forsaken glory. We’ve got a problem when we seek wisdom frequently in the context of our age, we’re being told to seek it not from above, not knowledge from Christ mediated through his word, but knowledge from below. That knowledge from below produces contentions in the context of the body of Christ. It produces divisions, envying, strife, difficulties, false knowledge, false wisdom.

2 Corinthians 10:5 says that Christ came to cast down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. Put off the old man. Put on the new man. Put off seeking wisdom, knowledge, truth apart from the mediation of Christ. Put off, you know, political ways of thinking that aren’t in concert with the truths of God’s word. Put off the wisdom of this world. The scriptures tell us.

1 Corinthians 1:18 says, “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to who? Those who are being saved. It’s the power of God. It is written, ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise. Bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.’” In other words, those who are prudent with a worldly wisdom.

1 Corinthians—a big part of 1 Corinthians is all about God setting the wisdom of the world on its head by exalting those in Christ who seem to have no wisdom at all. So God tells us that we’ve got a problem where our tendency in Adam is to seek wisdom from the world. And our tendency then has this result of Romans 1. We shed the glory of God and seek it in our surroundings. We seek knowledge from below ultimately and not from above.

And as a result we reap death. “He who sins against me wrongs his own soul.” Proverbs 8:36 says, “All those who hate me end up loving death.” Proverbs 5 says in terms of the man who forsakes wisdom and goes after the harlot, “You mourn at last when your flesh and your body are consumed. You say how I have hated instruction and my heart despised correction. I’ve not obeyed the voice of my teachers nor inclined my ear to those who instructed me.

I was on the verge of total ruin in the midst of the assembly and congregation.” God says that we’ve got a problem because we forsake his glory. Because we seek our own wisdom and the wisdom of the world, we walk in paths of death. We walk in paths that reap death to ourselves and those around us as well.

We have to agree with 1 Corinthians 16:22. “If anyone does not love the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be accursed. O Lord, come.” The end result of not loving Christ’s glory and his knowledge is that we have a curse upon us. And we’re to pray that way as Paul did. May anybody who does not love the Lord Jesus Christ today, who does not desire glory mediated through Christ, knowledge mediated through the word, may we be accursed today in the presence of Christ. And then he goes on to say, “O Lord, come.”

Jesus is coming today. We see that primarily at the context of the Lord’s supper. And Jesus says that he’s going to save some and some here may be gotten sick by that supper because the truths of this word are plain to see and are in operation in terms of God’s providence. So we come to church hopefully cognizant of our violation of God’s law. Hopefully understanding that our problem is not seeking glory, not seeking knowledge or not seeking life.

God has made us in his image to desire those things. Our problem is wanting to seek have glory unmediated from Christ and the same with knowledge and life. Our problem is that in Adam we have spurned God’s glory, knowledge and as a result his life can move in terms of death. So our problem as we come here today is we need these gifts and we confess before the Lord Jesus Christ that we cannot get them any other way.

And by him giving them to us. We come today to receive gifts from God and to bring our children to each of these three elements of the worship service to receive these same gifts from God which are really one gift in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now God says he fully intends to give us these gifts and I want to spend a little bit of time here about the positive side now stressing the negative—our need for these gifts. Let’s be assured that as we come to worship today, God intends to give us these gifts.

First of all, the gift of glory. Now, we think of glory and you know, we think of Romans 8:29 and 30, that golden chain that those whom God foreknew, he predestinated to be conformed to the image of Christ that he may have supremacy in all things. Those whom he predestinates, he calls. Those whom he calls, he justifies and those whom he justifies he glorifies.

So we have this five-strand golden chain beginning with God’s foreknowledge his love for us that’s what knowing means said in all eternity now that’s a central verse for Calvinists hopefully all of us and our children should be raised knowing Romans 8:29 and 30 we like verse 28 but 29 and 30 is the demonstration it’s a whole process it’s a chain that begins with God’s love his foreknowledge and as a result of that everything else works itself out.

It’s all of God’s sovereignty. But we know that part of that chain is that final step glorification. And we tend to put that off until our death. We tend to think of that in as the hope of glory in terms of going to glory in the future tense. And part of this is correct. Philippians 3:21 says that our body is going to be conformed to Christ’s glorious body. Speaking of the future.

1 Peter 4:13-14 says, “Rejoice when you suffer that when his glory is revealed, you may also be glad with exceeding joy.” So there’s certainly an element of that.

But in 2 Thessalonians 2:14, we read that he has called us by our gospel for the obtaining of the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the purpose according to this particular verse of our calling is the obtaining of that glory. That final step in that golden chain of Romans 8:29 and 30.

Now in Psalm 84:11, we read that the Lord God is a sun and a shield. The Lord will give grace and glory. No good thing will he withhold from those who walk uprightly. Seems not to just put it off to the eschaton. Seems that this is the process that God is always in the context of giving his people grace and glory. No good thing will he withhold from those who walk uprightly.

And in 1 Thessalonians 2:10-12, we read, “That you are witnesses, and God also, how devoutly, justly, blamelessly we behaved ourselves among you who believe. As you know, how we exhorted and comforted and charged every one of you as a father does his own children, that you would walk worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.”

Now, I think that has a present worldly sense to it. God has called us into his kingdom and glory. And he links these things together. And he seems to be saying that if you’re in the kingdom, you also have this glory that God has restored to you.

Indeed, in Romans 8:29 and 30, you know, it’s not just the prophetic past tense that’s going on. In other words, he says, “Those whom he justified them he also glorified.” It’s a sense in which we can understand that because everything comes forth from the decrees of God. It’s all accomplished. But I think that there’s a sense in which as you’ve been brought to faith in Christ and justified that God begins to give you glory now in the context of your life.

If you sought glory in the creatures, now you’re seeking glory in God. And God gives you that gift. He’s called you into his kingdom and his glory. And indeed, in 1 Peter 5, Peter says, “The elders who are among you, I exhort. I who am a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ and also a partaker present sense. I am a partaker of the glory that will be revealed.”

The glory that will be revealed in its fullness or consummation in the future. But he’s already, Peter says, a partaker of that glory. He goes on in verses 10 and 11 to say, “May the God of all grace who called us to his eternal glory by Christ Jesus after you have suffered a while perfect, establish, strengthen, settle you. To him be glory.” So he’s called us to suffer to the end that he might glorify us.

Now in the context of this world, he glorifies us by means of sufferings. But the end result of the suffering is that we’re established, strengthened, settled. This is before we die. And the end result of this is that we give all glory to God that he gives to us. And that’s why I think 2 Corinthians 3:18 says that we all, comparing us to Moses now, who saw God’s glory, we all with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord are being transformed present tense.

We’re being transformed into the same image, the image of the Savior, which is a glorious image from glory to glory just as by the spirit of the Lord. In Philippians 1 it says that he who began a good work will complete it to the day of Christ. God is in the process when he brings you to salvation. What he does is he ministers to you and one of the things he ministers to you is the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And when we come to church, God says he’s going to give us the glory of new personhood. He’s going to give us the glory of forgiveness of our sins. It’s sins that by which we fall short of the glory of God. It’s not seeking glory from God and in him according to Romans 1. That is our beginning problem. So it seems that the first gift God comes to give us is this glory of forgiveness that we’re new persons to the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

So God comes today and he gives you gift of glory, weightiness, substantiality, personhood, significance, worth. And that worth is given to you on the basis of your coming to him, acknowledging that you have nothing to bring him, only your sins to lay at the foot of the cross. Only your attempts to get that glory somewhere else. And he forgives you of that and says, “Seek glory from me. I’ll make you substantial. I’ll transform you. I’ll have you go from glory to glory. You’ll share in the glory of Christ in the context of your life now.

You’ll have weight and consideration because you’ve come to me and have sought that mediation of glory through the Lord Jesus Christ by acknowledging your need.” So we come today and we recognize that we’ve sinned and fall short of the glory of God and our children know that they’ve sinned and we assure them, you know, the officiant assures you that your sins are forgiven, that your glory is being restored to you through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And it’s a call to seek glory again from him. Now we know that we come and get knowledge. That’s probably a little clearer to us. But, you know, it’s important to recognize the scriptures tell us this. In 1 Thessalonians 2, it says that we’ve received the word of God. Christians have and which you’ve heard from us. You welcomed it not as the word of men, but as it is indeed the word of God, which is also effectually works in you who believe.

Isaiah 8:20 says, “To the law and to the testimony! If they don’t speak according to this word, it’s because there is no truth in them.” 1 John 2:20 says that we have an anointing from the Holy One. “You know all things. I write to you, my children.”

Two of my boys were in a class this last week or two and they heard some folk talk about how, you know, when people are first born, they have all knowledge. They know everything. And then because of, you know, all the problems in the world, they kind of tail off and at some point, probably midlife crisis time, they get back to that childlike innocence and they know everything again.

Well, you know, he’s right in rejecting the fact that children are neutral entities, that blank slate idea. But he’s wrong in thinking that children have all proper knowledge when they’re born. The scriptures say that, you know, we’re born in rebellion against God. And what we need is to come to the foot of the cross.

And it’s here at the foot of the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ in our salvation that he gives this the unction of the Holy Ghost that we do indeed know all things in Christ. So, it’s in the new birth, not the Adamic birth, but the Christian birth that we have this unction from God and God says that you know when you come here today he’s going to teach you how to properly get knowledge in relation and in connection with this Romans 1 thing that you seek it incorrectly.

So now you seek it correctly by going to the law and the prophets by going to the word of God and he gives you today the gift of knowledge. He opens up the door and he gives you the gift of knowledge and he tells you his word and Romans talks about transformation of our lives through the washing of this word. And this word comes into us and begins to give us new knowledge, proper knowledge, not the wisdom that’s from below, not the wisdom of the world.

Christ brings the wisdom that comes from above, his revealed word to us. And he restores knowledge to us. And then finally, of course, he gives us life. “I came that they might have life and that abundantly.” Jesus is the bread of God who came down from heaven to give life to the world. And as much as Romans 6:23 says the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so he says to us then that he comes and ministers life to us. Again, in Proverbs 3, wisdom is there and the man who creates happiness and the man who finds wisdom. She is more precious than rubies. All the things you may desire cannot compare with her. Length of days is in her right hand and in her left hand and riches and honor. So glory and then life in the context of the wisdom of God’s world as mediated to us through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

So God comes today to us and he ministers to us these three gifts of glory, knowledge, and life. Now, let’s look at the chart just a little bit and then we’ll close with John 17 in just a moment to reiterate these things to us.

Okay. And we’ve talked about this before, but the more we talk about it, the more it will become ingrained. In the Old Testament sacrificial system, there was a series of three offerings that happened when you went into that tabernacle or temple. The first thing you had to do is to bring a sin offering or what’s called a trespass offering. It’s sin offering in the King James version.

And the reason you had to do that was because your sin had defiled the tabernacle or the temple. There’s a relationship here between the temple or tabernacle and your sin. So when we come to worship service, the first thing we have to do is clean the worship environment, so to speak. We have to confess that we’re sinners and receive the assurance of the forgiveness of our sin through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ who is of course all the offerings.

So in the first movement of the Old Testament worship system and of course that is our model. Romans 12 refers to our worship as sacrifice. Hebrews talks about the word of God coming as a two-edged sword. And we don’t think of that sacramentally, but sacrificially, but that’s what it’s referring to. Of course, if you’re a New Testament Jew and you hear about the two-edged sword that cuts up the offering, it’s that’s what it is. The word of God comes and you’re offered as it were.

When God comes close, it involves sacrifice and death because we’re sinners. So when we look at the sacrificial system of the Old Testament, it informs our worship. And the first thing they had to do was to present a sin offering saying, “We’re sinners. It’s just your grace by which we’re accepted.”

And God says, “You know, the wage you sinned and fall short of the glory of God, but I’m going to give you glory now in relationship to your confession of that sin to me. I’m going to forgive you. I’m going to make you a new person. I’m going to restore weightiness to you. You’re going to move from a dust bag to a heavy duty metal man like the Lord Jesus Christ in Revelation 1. He’s heavy. He’s weighty. He’s the ancient of days.”

And so God restores our sense of glory as we bring to him the fact that we sought glory elsewhere and we make confession of our sin in the first part of our worship service. Now the second offering that was done were really two put together. There was a whole burnt offering, so-called really the word is ascension offering and along with that was a tribute offering or in your King James version a grain offering.

The first is an animal, the second is grain. And the grain offering was always put upon the whole burnt offering. So you’ve cleaned, you’ve confessed your sin and now you have to say that indeed it’s the work of the ascension offering of Christ that produces peace for us. And so God would assure the people—it’s not so much confession of sin now they go into the presence of God through the ascension of that dead animal.

The animal is killed then he’s put on the fire and in the fire, he ascends to God. And the word for burnt offering means ascension. It’s olah, the offering that goes up and ascends. So because Christ is our sin offering, we get to ascend into the presence of God. And in the context of that, his word is given to us. His knowledge is given.

We’re forgiven of our sins through the sin offering. And now we ascend into the throne room of God and receive communion and union with him. And in response to that word of his that slays us and puts us back together. We give our tribute offering to the king. So we come together and the word of God is preached. We receive knowledge at the foot of the cross. We consecrate ourselves in response to the sermon. We come forward in this church to see the consecration of all that we have and we bring our tithes and offerings as a tribute to the great king.

So we move through that second phase of Old Testament worship in response to the sermon consecrating all that we have and bringing our tribute to the king. And then finally after that was done there was a peace offering and the peace offering was distinctive in that you got to eat part of it. Most of this stuff is food either for God or God and the priests but the peace offering you got to eat part of that too.

So the picture is life together in community with God and with man. And so we move to the communion table with the Lord at the last part of our worship service where God brings us abundant life in the context of community. So these three offerings track or can at least be seen as ways in which we can track the worship of the church in the context of what we’re doing every Lord’s day.

We come here today confessing that we’ve sought glory someplace else in our old man. And God assures of us of our forgiveness and does that transforming work of taking us from glory to glory through the work of Christ and the focal point of that is the confession of sin and the assurance of your forgiveness. The priest says, the pastor says, you’re forgiven.

Then we hear the word of God and we confess as we respond to that word that we have no knowledge of ourselves. That our knowledge must be built upon God’s word. And we consecrate all that we have in response to the preached word of God. And we bring him our tribute as his subjects. He gives us knowledge. He gives us glory. And our response to that is to sing forth his praises, to say amen. We can get glory no place else. He gives us knowledge and our response to that is to say amen. Our souls wanted knowledge. We sought it someplace else. We know that your word is the gift of knowledge to us. Amen to that.

And our amen is the