Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church
## Pastor Dennis Tuuri

A beautiful psalm that reminds us of what worship is as we’re ushered into the courts of the king as his bride. Come to the wedding table here in a little while. And we’ve been brought forth here so that our Valentine can give us gifts. So, we’re going to look at Leviticus 9:22 specifically, but I’m going to read just a little bit of context. So, actually begin reading at Leviticus 9:22 and read through verse 24.

And our sermon is on God’s Valentine gifts. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

**Leviticus 9:22-24**: Then Aaron lifted his hand toward the people, blessed them, and came down from offering the sin offering, the burnt offering, and peace offerings. And Moses and Aaron went into the tabernacle of meeting and came out and blessed the people. Then the glory of the Lord appeared to all the people and fire came out from before the Lord and consumed the burnt offering and the fat on the altar. When all the people saw it, they shouted and fell on their faces.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for the wonderful picture this is of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And we thank you that you found him, his ascension offering acceptable and brought him up into the heavens that we might be blessed by you, Lord God. May we shout with joy today as we contemplate the gospel of our savior and its many gifts that come to us as a result of it—these three major gifts of glory, knowledge, and life.

Bless us Lord God with the gospel today and then empower us to live out that gospel to distribute good gifts to one another and particularly in the context of our marriages. In Jesus name we ask it and for the sake of his kingdom. Amen.

Please be seated.

I saw an email this week that said, “Three senators determine America’s future.” You know, I certainly appreciate the difficulties that our country is in and the significance of what happened in the United States Congress last week. And there are many abominations to be found in that tale. But clearly the future of America doesn’t rest on three senators. Doesn’t rest on the United States Senate or the United States Congress, the administration—none of these things. America’s future rests in the hands of God. And in terms of the way he likes to work, the future of America rests in the hands, so to speak, and in the actions of all kinds of millions of people across this country.

And very significantly, I think the future of America really can be discerned more clearly not in the vote of three senators, but rather in the actions that go on in our homes. You know, our homes are kind of the beginning place. It’s the place where the kingdom comes out of. It’s where we live our lives. And so, what happens in those homes and what happens in relationships between mom and dad—specifically thinking of Valentine’s day—this is what is exceedingly significant for the future of America.

Now, water flows downhill. Following up Gary’s sermon from last week, heavenly water comes down from above. And so, we can’t have the kind of actions we want in the context of our relationships in the home, particularly in terms of marriage, but in other relationships as well, if we somehow cut off the source, the headwaters of that blessing that flows from person to person and then from our families to the culture.

If we cut off the headwaters and ignore what happens in the Lord’s worship. So what I want to look at today is this water flowing downhill. The heavenly water that comes to us today is the gospel, of course, and the gospel can be seen rather clearly in the sacrificial system of the Old Testament—kind of a prism that breaks out the various aspects of what the gospel of Jesus Christ is. And so we want to look at that gospel somewhat.

Look at God’s Valentine gifts to his bride and in worship every Lord’s day. And then look at that in terms of how that flows into our marital relationships and into all relationships as well, but again, primarily marital relationships.

We have a very misplaced sense, as this email titled “Three Senators Determine America’s Future” shows. I went to mention this a couple of weeks ago when I talked on tithing, but it’s been ironic to me for the last 25-30 years to see some radical tax protester types who don’t tithe. And so, you know, it’s very odd that people think that somehow the government’s taking too much of their money when they’re not willing to pay God’s tithe. That’s why confiscatory tax rates, I think, normally come upon us. That’s what it says in the Bible—that if we don’t acknowledge God as king, then he sets up kings over us to take more than they should and to drive us back into submission to him.

And the same thing’s true here. You know, a lot of guys want to talk about political action and this and that other political issue, but much more important—and those things are important, you know. I’m down with all that. I do that stuff. But much more important than that, you know, the headquarters of all that sort of action is the family. And the headquarters are these gifts of God that come out to flow into those families. And so, you know, I really don’t have a lot of time for people who have a lot of things to say and yet don’t engage in this most important of activities: building their homes, building their relationship with their wives.

Anything can become idolatrous, the best of things. And one way to measure idolatry is that if it pulls us away from the obvious daily tasks that God has given us to do—and this idea is one of them.

Now, this gifting of one another in the terms of our marriage and relationships—we started a series of classes this morning in the young adults, 20 to 24, whatever it is, going through this book by Norman Shepherd, Women in the Service of the Church. And I have been tasked by the elders to write a position paper for RCC this year on the role of women in the ministry of RCC. And uh I think it’ll be a fun thing—it already has been kind of a fun thing to go through Norman Shepherd’s little booklet.

I wanted to read a quote from it. Um, and the person that gave me this quote along with it said this: “If men refuse—and talking about male female relationships in the church, we could say in the family as well—If men refuse to be leaders, we can expect that women will refuse to be helpers and vice versa.”

And then a quote from Shepherd’s book: “Modern feminism is in many ways a reactionary movement. It’s a reaction to injustices, real and perceived. Women have responded in a spirit of hostility and aggressiveness that sets men against women and women against men. The same spirit has penetrated the church and is contrary to the word and the spirit of the gospel.

Instead of companionship, helpfulness, and mutual respect as co-workers in the spread of the gospel, we see animosity, bitterness, strife, and division in the church. Both men and women need to repent of the spirit of hostility and aggressiveness. Male leadership is not tyrannical oppression, and female help is not second rate servitude. Men do not lead inferiors but co-heirs of the gracious gift of life. Women do not serve men but they serve our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”

Amen. Amen.

So I’m going to talk about first of all what God does for his church and then we respond. We just sang, you know, in a responsive fashion the processional song. Men sing first, women respond to men. Man was made first. A woman was made to be man’s helpmate. That’s the way it works. That’s what we’re all happy and best at doing. But we pervert those relationships.

So, I’m going to, you know, the idea here is that worship is dialogue between God and us. He starts, we respond. And the way this flows into the rest of our lives is we both are responsible to gift each other in the same way, men and women in the context of our homes. But the greater responsibility to lead is on men. So that’s where the emphasis should be in our homes—on men doing, fulfilling this giving of gifts that God gives to us.

So let’s look at Leviticus 9:22. And I know for many of you this is, you know, you kind of know some of this stuff already, but it’s important to think about it. The gospel gifts and worship.

**Leviticus 9:22**. I was at a Reformation Society meeting. It’s a new group forming in Oregon for the last year or so, and there was a meeting a couple weeks ago. Dave H. took me to it, and there was a fellow there, Dan Morris, who pastors—who used to be an OPC elder and a PCA elder, now he pastors an independent church—and he spoke on the gospel in worship, which was an interesting theme to me. And he uses his text John 4, and you can draw some implications from John 4, of course. But you know, I sat there thinking, you know, if we want to think about the gospel in worship, if we want to think about worship, we got to look at Leviticus.

If we want to talk about wisdom, there’s wisdom all over the Bible, but you know, there’s this focal book of Proverbs. And so, we want to think about worship and the gospel. Leviticus is what it’s about. The offerings described in Leviticus are different aspects of the good news. It’s gospel. It’s always been, you know, good news what God would do for his people. And now, the real good news is Jesus has come to do this stuff that those offerings prepared us for.

And so, Leviticus 9:22 can be thought of as the gospel in Leviticus—the gospel and worship. Every Lord’s day we come here and we try to structure our worship being informed by all the scriptures, but in part, of course, by Leviticus. The first four or five chapters of Leviticus describe the offerings. Leviticus 9:22 tells us the order or sequence in which those offerings are given. Okay.

Leviticus 1:5 is a theological ordering. The most important one, it sort of says, is the ascension offering. And so it starts with that. But when the sequence is actually carried out in Leviticus 9:22, we’re told what they did. The verse we just read gives us a sequence of these offerings. And so it results in him blessing the people. But before that, he’s offered, it says, sin offerings, burnt offerings, and peace offerings.

And so there’s this sequence of things that go through beginning with sin offering. Well, the sin offering purified the worship environment. Okay. And then the burnt offering—it’s actually it’s a very poor translation. The word is *ola*, which means ascension. The ascension offering. And then the peace offering. These are all gospel. We tend to restrict the gospel to the sin offering, right? The gospel is we’ve been forgiven of our sins. And then we don’t even get to the other, you know, three or four other two or three offerings that are listed for us, which are all part of the gospel.

So we’ve truncated the gospel, and that truncation can be seen in the way we worship, where worship is just seen as the good news that our sins have been forgiven. But there’s a lot more going on than that. And if we look at these things, we’ll see that in part what’s going on is that God is gifting us with various aspects—good gifts for us.

So let’s look at these three gifts. There’s the good news first of all of forgiveness, that is part of the gospel and good news. The purification or sin offering purified the people and the worship environment. It took away barriers to the rest of what they’re going to do in the context of worship.

Now, the Bible says, and so in terms of our worship, the purification offering at the beginning of our service is this confession of sin and the assurance of forgiveness that links up with that aspect of the gospel—that Jesus has forgiven us our sins. And what this is, I think we could think of it as the restoration of glory to man.

Romans 3:23 says that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. So sin results in shame for us. Glory is weightiness, respect, honor, personhood—who we’re supposed to be. When we sin, we shame ourselves. We remove our glory, our weightiness, our honor, our respect. And God in forgiving us of our sins restores us to true personhood, which is a glorious thing. Man is made in the image of God. He has glory and weight. We lose that through our sin. And God assures us in the gospel that glory has been restored to us.

Romans 8:30 says, “Whom he predestinated, these he also called. Whom he called, these he also justified. And whom he justified, these he also glorified.” We tend to think of glorification as a future aspect. But this is past tense. It says in Romans 8:30, he has glorified us.

John 17:22 says this: “The glory which you gave me I have given them that they may be one just as we are one.” Again, that’s past tense. So Jesus is praying—you know, the long, the real Lord’s prayer is John 17. Some people say Jesus is praying for us, and there’s a copy of that prayer in a structure that I think exists. I came up with it on your outlines today. But that prayer is all about glory, knowledge, and life—these three gifts that the sequence of offerings in Leviticus 9:22 tells us happens in worship.

And so one of those gifts is glory. And Jesus says he’s given us glory—past tense. So when Jesus wants to really pray for us, he prays in terms of our glory. So God gives us this wonderful gift that we are now restored to our personhood. We have glory, weight, respect. We’re called again as image-bearers of God. Restored to that image through the confession, absolution of sins—through the application of the work of Jesus Christ in purifying us from our sins.

So this is the first gift.

Now our strategy map as a church says that worship drives three activities. Worship drives mission. In other words, we’re gathered to be sent out. Worship means that we’re supposed to go with some sort of command, mandate, mission to fulfill. This week, that mission is primarily or focused on giving gifts of glory, knowledge, and life to each other and particularly in the context of marriage.

Well, so they’re gathered together, and the first thing Jesus tells the disciples in Matthew 28, based in the Great Commission, is “Go,” right? And so Jesus commands them that what he’s going to prepare them with is to the end that they would be these true image-bearers of God once more and go out with a glorious, this weighty, respectable, honorable mission from him. So we’re—our vision strategy map as a church involves this aspect of the restoration of personhood so that we can be God’s image-bearers again as we go into the world when we leave this place.

So God gives us glory, which again the synonyms are respect, honor, weightiness—opposite of shamefulness. Okay.

Well, that’s not the end of the good news. That’s where, you know, modern evangelicalism tends to say, “That’s it. Good news is over.” No, lots of offerings left. And the second offering in Leviticus 9:22 that Aaron has accomplished before he comes down and blesses the people is the burnt offering.

Well, as I said, in Acts chapter 1, Leviticus 1, that word is ascension. It doesn’t mean burn. It means ascension. Its emphasis is not death. Its emphasis is transformation of state, right? So, you know, death kind of purifies things, but ascension means that we’ve been purified so that we can be transformed in terms of being men and women again. We’re transformed progressively. You could say this is referring to sanctification, I guess, is one way you could sort of look at it—is that this idea of transformation.

I say up and down because, you know, Gary pointed out last week, you got heavenly waters, earthly waters. We take stuff down here, take it up there, transform it, and it transforms as it comes back down. We go to heaven to get a heavenly perspective on what we’re supposed to do based on the word of Christ for that day. And we’re up in heaven, and God is telling us that this is one of the aspects of the gospel: you’ve been transformed. Not just killed and purified and glorified, but now I’m going to mature you. I’m going to instruct you. I’m taking you to heaven so that we can have a little chat. I can instruct you in my ways so that you can go down, pray for, and work to the end that my will may be done on earth as it is in heaven.

So the ascension offering—there’s no mention of the tribute offering in Leviticus 9:22. But that’s the next offering in Leviticus 2. You go from the ascension offering to the tribute offering. The tribute offering, people call it the cereal offering. That’s because it was composed of cereal or grain primarily, but there’s incense on there, too. But the word again is mistranslated. *Mincha* is the Hebrew term. It doesn’t mean cereal. It means tribute that someone pays a king.

And the way it worked was we can—we’ll go to other places where we find out that the tribute offering is actually put on top of the ascension offering literally. And so they’re connected together. And so when Aaron—when we read that Aaron did the ascension offering, we can imply the implication is that’s linked up with the tribute offering. If you do the ascension offering right, it has to have tribute on it as well. So the ascension offering and the tribute offering are this part of God’s way, the gospel of transformation.

We have a call—”Lift up your hearts.” We emphasize our ascension into heaven. We have the preaching of God’s word. You know, and that’s where we find it. If we go into the Holy of Holies in the Old Testament temple, there’s the law of God in there. So when we go into heaven, that’s what we get: a new word, we have new thoughts, we have a new understanding of who we are. We’re transformed by the preaching of God’s word. We respond by offering ourselves.

And this is where we have the pastoral prayer, because the tribute offering, our offering in response to God’s ascension and giving us a new word, is partially incense, which are the prayers of the saints. So that’s why we do the pastoral prayer there. This is the restoration of knowledge.

Romans 12—very familiar text in terms of worship. “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable liturgy or service of worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may know what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”

Transformation involves receiving new instructions from God. We understand the world around us from a heavenly perspective. So God gives us a gift. He says, “You want to figure things out? This is how it all works. You come up here. I’ll show you things. I’ll give you my word. And that word will help you to interpret the events of your life.” So we have knowledge, okay?

God restores us to glory and respect. And the next gift is knowledge. He gives us knowledge of our lives, and a knowledge that’s supposed to be acted upon to transform things.

Second Corinthians 10:5 says we’re to cast down arguments and everything high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to him, to Jesus. Every thought captive. Our transformation happens as we go into heaven, and God begins to bring our thoughts captive to the truth of his word.

Jesus prayed for this as well in John 17. He says, “For their sakes I sanctify myself that they also may be sanctified by the truth.” So Jesus prayed that we would get glory, continue to get the glory that he gave us. He prayed that we would have knowledge, sanctification by means of the knowledge, the truth of the Father’s word.

And our strategy map—the next section down—”Go, doing what? Making disciples, baptizing them, and teaching them to observe all things that I’ve given you.” So when we leave, we leave with a mission to help bring people to glory and relationship to God. We also leave with a mission to take the knowledge that he’s given us and share it with other people—to transform the world through an application of the knowledge of Christ.

And then the last aspect of the good news, the gospel is celebratory fellowship. Aaron offers the purification offering and then the ascension with the tribute offering, and then he offers the peace offering. And the peace offering—this is the one where the worshipper himself gets to eat part of it. So he gets a meal with God. And so this is celebration and fellowship. And this is what follows in the third sequence of our worship. We come to the Lord’s table and we eat a meal with God in heaven.

And there it is. At that meal, typically, you know, the pastor representing Christ sort of sums up a little bit of application from that meal to the sermon and kind of one last little discussion time at the table. He’s had us in the living room. He’s brought us in the front door of heaven by washing us, giving us glory. Then we sat around the living room for a while and talked, and he talked to us in prayer. He’s talked to us in the preaching of the word and reading scriptures, etc. And he’s renewed our knowledge. He’s given us knowledge. And then he invites us into the dining room, and we get into the dining room, and he gives us rejoicing life around the table together, right?

John 6:22—we read that the following day when the people who were standing on the other side of the sea saw that there was no other boat there except that one which his disciples had entered and that Jesus had not entered the boat with his disciples but his disciples had gone away alone. Well, that’s the wrong verse. That’s 6:22. I think we wanted 6:33.

So in John 6:33 actually we can look at right there in that handout, which is already printed in nice big text for me. So if you turn to that third page of the handout—you know what’s going on in the handout here is that the way John 17—Oh, this isn’t John 6:33 though. That’s John 17. Back to the Bible.

Well, as I’m looking that up, you can look at John 17 and see that there’s this structure where the bookends are in terms of positions 2 and 6—they are glory. Then the next ones as we go into the interior is knowledge, and the center is rejoicing life with the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so this idea—these three gifts of glory, knowledge, and life that line up with the sacrifices of Leviticus 9:22—in context are really what Jesus prays to the Father for us as well. So these are quite significant aspects of what worship is, what God does—these Valentine gifts. We open up the box, and there are these three gifts, okay?

Now in John 6:33, we read, “For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life unto the world.” So this is the bread of life discourse. He’s just fed the people, the feeding of the 5,000. He’s explaining what happened, and he says that he’s the bread of life come down from heaven. He’s the heavenly manna, and the purpose of that is to give life to the world. So life is rejoicing life together with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and with each other as well. And the peace offering is a picture of that celebratory fellowship together that happens in the context of our worship at the Lord’s supper.

So it’s the restoration of rejoicing life together.

John 10:10, Jesus says, “The thief doesn’t come except to steal and to kill and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, that they may have it more abundantly.” Rejoicing life together. Abundant life is what he says we’re to have.

John 17:13, “Now I come to you and these things I speak in the world that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves.” So God wants us—the whole purpose of Jesus is to bring us to celebratory life, joyous life together in community. That was the peace offering in the sequence of the three offerings of Leviticus 9:22. And that’s the Lord’s supper.

In terms of what we’re doing here, the Great Commission in Matthew 28—he says, he gathers them together, they worship him, and he says, “Go.” Restores them to a sense of personhood, respect, and glory, the sense of mission. Then he says, “Teach them to observe everything I’ve commanded you.” Restoration of knowledge to them so that they can share the knowledge with others. And then he says, “Lo, I am with you always.” The special presence of Christ is assured to them at the end of that. And that’s what happens here. He’s with us always. And he reminds us of that at the Lord’s table. And that’s the source of rejoicing life—is relationship with Jesus Christ and his people.

So these are the great Valentine gifts that God brings to us. This is the gospel.

John 17:26 reads, “I’ve declared to them your name. I will declare it that the love with which you loved me may be in them, and I in them.” So when he sums up what he’s doing in that prayer in John 17:26, he says love is what it’s all about. He loves us, and because he loves us, he prays that we might continue to be glorified. He prays that we might have the gift of increasing knowledge, and he prays that we might have celebratory life and fellowship together.

All of this is the love of God. The gospel is love. God loves you. Believe it. And every week, the way that’s demonstrated to you is God comes, calls you here, not first and foremost to offer him gifts. That’s a response. He draws you here first and foremost so that he can give you things, that he can give you restored glory, restored knowledge, restored life. This is stuff everybody wants. People have an inbuilt need for this stuff.

And our problem is that sinfully we try to get it apart from the mediation of the Lord Jesus Christ. So we go after false glory, and the Bible warns us about that. We go after false knowledge. The Bible warns us about that. And we try to have false rejoicing life together. You know, bad relationships. Eric Clapton had this old song about having enough of bad love. See, we don’t want bad love with bad glory and bad knowledge and bad life with somebody and rejoicing. That isn’t really rejoicing. It turns to, you know, dirt in our mouths. We want the good love, and that’s what God ministers to us.

Now, the second page of the outline—and I’ve handed this out before—look at it very briefly. We won’t spend any time on this, but it’s a reminder of all these things what I’ve just said. It kind of does the same stuff. There are the three offerings: purification from Leviticus 4, the ascension from Leviticus 1 and 2, and then the peace offering from Leviticus 3. There’s the basic meaning of these things. There’s the liturgical action in terms of our worship that’s associated with these things. And there’s the desires and three gifts—the glory, knowledge, and life.

Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. And it’s a repetition of these three gifts. He gives us we become new men with a new mind, new word to have new life in our disposition, who we are. We’re new men. What’s the norm and standard? The word of God found in heaven. And then the external situation, the situational place we find ourselves in is in the context of this new life.

And we could say that there’s an emphasis. The Trinity is, you know, we don’t want to push this too far, but there’s a sense in which glory is related to the glory of the Father’s personhood. And Jesus is the word, and the Spirit causes us to have rejoicing life together. So there’s an emphasis on the Trinity here. The Trinity loves us. We have relationship with the Trinity that kind of flows in these three directions.

And then there’s some architectural elements of the temple and tabernacle there that is a reminder of these three gifts. These threes are found in the temple. And that’s why—because God is giving us visual representations of the temple of the wonderful Valentine gifts that he as our lover gives to us.

All right, that’s gospel. That’s good news. Every week you come here, and every week God loves you and he preaches the gospel to you. And even if the sermon isn’t explicitly on it, every liturgical action we’re involved with is the love of God giving you respect and honor, giving you an understanding of the world, and giving you life together in community. You may not be able to get together with very many people during the week, but here we all get together. That’s a ritual meal, so it may not feel that way, but that’s what we’re doing. We’re rejoicing in community, and these things are supposed to flow out.

Water flows downhill. We’re in heaven now. This is supposed to flow into our lives and inform our lives. We’re supposed to gift others in faithful response to this wonderful gospel. Word. Jesus says in Matthew 10:8, “Freely you have received, freely give.” So what he we receive, the Valentine gifts we get from him, we’re to distribute to other people. Give them freely. Freely given, freely give.

Now, I’m going to emphasize this: is that what our marriages are about—that couples should be giving each other the gifts of glory, knowledge, and life. But it’s not restricted to that. This is what reality is. This is all human relationships involve the gifting of these things to others in the context of Jesus Christ.

Ephesians 4:25 says, “Putting away lying, let each one of you speak truth with his neighbor. We are members of one another.” So we’re to do the truth. We learn. We’re to speak to one another. We’re supposed to pass on these great gifts that God gives to us.

Now, Proverbs 25:1 and 2—the opening section of Hezekiah’s Kingly Proverbs—verse 2 says, “It’s the glory of God, the very first proverb in this mature set of proverbs, glory of God to conceal a matter. The glory of kings is to search out a matter.”

Now, Proverbs 25 warns us against false glory. But here it tells us the right way to get glory. Searching out a matter. We’re supposed to figure out: how do I give glory and knowledge and life to others? Pastor Tuuri, well, you’re supposed to search that out. And when you do those things, the end result, although it’s not your objective, but it happens, is your own glory. So there’s a self-interest in doing these things as well.

Or another way to put it: the gifts that God gives to you—in the words of Bruce Cockburn—they only live if you give them away. If you refuse to give the gifts, you don’t get them anymore, okay? So they only live if you give them away. The proper response—and that’s because the response indicates you’ve believed the gospel. If you don’t respond by giving away what God has given you, it means you don’t believe you’ve been given it by God, right? And if you don’t believe the gospel, well, you don’t believe the gospel, okay?

So, how do we do this? We want to give each other gifts. And you know, overview—you know, husbands and wives should honor each other. And this is where this study by Norman Shepherd we’re doing in our Sunday school class is so important. I mean, in general, men in their fallen state—and that will be the tug on us as well since we’re trying to put off the old man. You got to recognize the old man isn’t totally put away. And men tend to, you know, think more highly of men than women. We tend not to give wives glory, respect, honor. As Shepherd says, they’re not really inferiors. They’re the joint heirs of the gift of life, right?

So, and we need to do that. We need to bring each other glory. And wives need to build up husbands and their respect for them and build up their respect. So, in general, a great marriage happens. Valentine’s days are really cool things. When couples give each other glory and as a result of that they talk, they exchange knowledge, and they end up making great decisions about their lives that’ll lead to joy and not pain.

So if you end up—you know, people come into my office—married couples or even friends—we just want to be happy together. Yeah, but you’re not respecting each other, or you’re not talking with each other, or you’re not listening to each other. Those are the necessary prerequisites. We don’t we don’t come in here and eat that right away, right? We’ve got to go through. God has a system of gift-giving that he wants us to emulate. And if we’re all jammed up at our tables at home, it’s probably because we’re jammed. It may not be. Sometimes you just don’t know. It’s okay to rejoice. But usually the problem is the first two. Those gifts aren’t flowing.

It’s kind of like the financial problem. Money isn’t flowing. Well, what has to flow in relationships—all relationships, Christian relationships, but particularly focusing today on couples—what has to flow is glory, knowledge, and life. And unfortunately, you know, sometimes, you know, people just want to jump into rejoicing life together. And when they do that, they bring shame to each other and shame to the relationship.

Now, God forgives sins. You know, nothing you do is irreplaceable. But that’s what happens. We jump to want that gift without going through the other two. So, our job in response to the gospel, our delight, our privilege is to give these gifts that’ll last a lot longer than candy or anything else. These, and there, of course, candy is supposed to represent it. Candy is rejoicing life together. But we’ve got to get there by giving glory and knowledge first, okay?

So, respect. Respect. We want to give each other respect.

I got this illustration. Joshua 22 is the appendix to the book of Joshua. And it says, you know, they’ve conquered the land pretty much. And Joshua is letting the tribes go back to the other side of the Jordan, the ones that had helped their brothers get their land. And so, it’s a story that emphasizes communication—good and bad. And it begins with Joshua commending the tribes, the two and a half tribes that are going to go back across the border. Real men commend each other. They give each other glory and respect. And real husbands give glory to their wives.

Now, you ask yourself—some of you, I know some of you—you’re just as apt to give shame to your wife as you are to give glory to your wife. Now, you just got to repent of that. And I know it’s hard. Old habits are hard to be put to death. But that’s after all, we got the spirit of the living God working with us, right? So this will happen. Believe the gospel, and your job is to minister glory to someone else.

Now, when people don’t get glory, it’s like air. You may have a conversation. You’re trying to work a problem. You’re trying to get to rejoicing, good decisions. But if you take away respect, it’s like taking all the air out of the room. That’s all the other person can think about is how they’ve been dissed.

So the first things first: you have to restore or minister glory to one another. Means you got to kind of look for its absence. Right? What happens when people don’t get glory? They either go into silence or violence. Typically they either clam up or they strike out. So they tend to—if you’re having a discussion about where should we go for dinner tonight? Nobody’s talking. Your wife isn’t talking to you. Your husband’s not talking. It’s a sign that they may not feel glorified. You haven’t ministered the gift of glory to them well enough.

So, what you have to do is you have to look for signs that glory and respect aren’t there. You have to be self-conscious about this, okay? You don’t want to seek your own glory. Proverbs 25:27, “It’s not good to eat much honey, nor to seek one’s own glory is not glory.” So, you know, that’s a tendency we’re all going to want to do. Do we all want to kind of get our own glory? Can’t get at it that way. But we have to minister it to somebody else. So, your wife can’t get that glory on her own. You got to give it to her, okay? It’d be wrong for her to seek it out, really.

Proverbs 25:28, “He who has no rule over his spirit is like a city broken down without walls.” If people don’t have glory, then they lose control over their spirit, and now they’re defenseless to their enemies. So, glory—proper glory or improper. Proper glory is what drives control or loss of control of our spirit, and what drives then whether we’re successful in having a great city or being broken down.

You know, Paul in 1 Corinthians 1—in 1 Corinthians, he’s going to tell the Corinthians, you’re doing a lot of really stupid things. Every time he brings instruction, it’s because they’ve goofed up some way, right? But he doesn’t start that until verse 10. He goes on for nine verses referring to them as saints. Says they got every gift. They’re really zealous. They’re doing good things. He commends the Corinthians. What’s he doing? He’s giving them glory before he starts to bring the knowledge.

Because if they don’t have glory, they’re already probably feeling guilty somewhat. And Paul just rails on them from the get-go. You know, they can overcome it maybe in the grace of God. But the point is, he knows the way to minister discipline is in the context of—or instruction is in the context of glory.

Jesus comes to those churches in Revelation, and he brings them glory. He says, “Boy, you’re doing really good stuff. This is the things you’re doing right now. I got a few things I got to talk to you about in terms of what you’re not doing right.” So God does this to us. He gives us glory.

What does the Bible say? We’re supposed to be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another. We sing that little ditty. I sing the ditty. But so much is there. We’re, you know, kindness to somebody is giving them respect or glory, right? We’re commanded to be tenderhearted. Husband, wife says, “Well, I don’t—I’m not tender-hearted. I’m not going to act like I am.” Yeah, you should. You should grab a hold of that heart and that attitude, repent of bad attitude, and put on good attitude. We’re commanded to be tender-hearted to each other, and certainly we’re commanded to be tender-hearted to our spouses. But the way we understand that is not to be tender-hearted to somebody, you know, if we’re just looking at their sin. But we’re to be forgiving each other as God forgives us.

Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other. So, God says this is, you know, kind of basic new man sort of stuff that we’re supposed to be like. We’re supposed to be kind, giving each other respect.

See, Aretha Franklin sings that song because at the time, really, honestly, in a lot of places, men were not giving and still don’t give women respect. Now, if men won’t minister to it, then women kind of grab for that glory, and they end up with false glory, and the whole thing just winds down. But it’s probably, I think, the covenantal responsibility—as Shepherd says—for feminization and proper feminization is the fault of men who treat women as inferiors.

You know, we read the verse, “Well, they can’t teach or exercise authority because they were deceived. They’re really stupid women. They—the reason why they can’t teach is because they just they’re not smart. They’re going to get deceived. They’re all goofed up.” That text doesn’t mean that at all.

If the text meant that, how do we deal with texts like “A taught man, a better way of things, with her husband, but she still teaches people.” How do we deal with the general admonition given to us in Ephesians that we’re to be singing songs, exhorting each other, and teaching one another? And this is a general statement in Ephesians given to men and women.

See, we just get all mixed up. Now, you got to understand what the verse means in context in its creation account. But it doesn’t mean what it doesn’t mean is that women are inferior intellectually at all. So we need to give respect to our spouses. Same thing with women toward men. Ministering respect.

You know, we’ve probably at this church, you know, I’ve probably contributed to improper attitudes toward women. There’s nothing in the text from 1 Timothy 2 that would prohibit, I think, or I’m not convinced that it would prohibit a woman from teaching men the Bible. It seems like the prohibition is against the preaching of the word. And we had a discussion about this at a men’s meeting, and you know, I think most of us when pressed would say, “Well, yeah, I don’t think there’s prohibition. Yeah, Priscilla can teach some guys.”

I was at a conference when, before the URC formed up, at the Alliance of Churches coming out of the CRC. And they were very sensitive about women’s issues and evolution. That’s why they were leaving the CRC—improper views on these things. But they had a woman in to teach them about evolution, science, and stuff to a bunch of pastors. They saw no problem with that. Why do we? And yet the practice of this church, right? What we practice usually is ends up what we believe.

No matter what I might tell you about, we’re not a homeschooling church. Some of you, when we support a private school, we’re like, “Wait a minute.” Because the practice was we didn’t do it. Sandy, when we joined the CRC, some people were saying, “What do we need that for?” Hey, I’ve told you ever since we started, we’re going to be connected. “Well, yeah, but we got along fine without it.” So our practice tends to teach more than our words do a lot of times.

And our practice has tended to say women aren’t capable of teaching men. I repent of that.

So, glory. You know, we have to minister glory to one another. When we’re in a relationship, when we’re having a conversation with our wife or our husband, and we feel like we’re feeling unsafe, we’re feeling disrespected or not glorified, we want to know how we’re acting. We want to be able to step out of that conversation—not physically, but mentally—re-evaluate. Wait a minute. What’s going on here? Communication isn’t flowing. We’re not getting knowledge shared. Means we’re never going to get to rejoicing life. What happened? Well, you dissed her or she dissed you, or somebody felt disrespected or dishonored.

And so what you want to do is you want to step out for a minute, evaluate, move back in, delighting in confession. I’m so sorry that I didn’t minister glory to you. And in fact, I said things that were shaming to you. You know, delight in confession. The neat thing about sin is it can be forgiven. You know, we should delight in it.

And so when we step back into these conversations, we do so giving each other glory. Start with heart. What do you want? Okay. What’s your heart? What do you want for your wife? What do you want for yourself out of that conversation? And very importantly, what do you want for your relationship?

Go back to first things. You know, in this church, you know that those things that you want really in Christ are good things. Would you be treating your spouse that way if you really were focusing on what you want the relationship to be? You want to get to rejoicing life by dinner time. But you remind yourself, well, that’s what I want. I want us to really be happy together. So, would you act that way? You just called her a ninny or whatever it is. Would you act that way if you kept that goal in mind? Well, no. So, what you want to do is go back and examine your purposes. What do you want?

Start with heart. And it’s a reminder to us of what we want. And it’s a restriction against the stupid things we may do in sin.

Amos 3:3 says, “Can two walk together except they be agreed?” What you want in that conversation is to come to agreement and good decisions, which results in celebration. But you can’t get there unless you’re agreed, and you can’t get to the exchange of knowledge if there’s no glory flowing one to the other. Honor and respect.

So you need mutual respect in the conversation, and you need mutual purpose. You need to have a purpose in mind. What are we trying to accomplish? This CRIB acronym: Commit. Find a mutual purpose. Because what we do is we get upset at strategies, and we really can’t talk strategies in a discussion until we have a purpose.

So commit to a mutual purpose in your mind with your partner. Recognize the difference between the strategy and the purpose, right? So separate those things out. If you don’t have a mutual purpose, invent one. Well, let’s make this the mutual purpose and see how that goes. Because if you don’t have a purpose to get to agreement on, you’re not going to really work out very well on the strategies.

And then brainstorm strategies to affect that purpose, okay?

So, CRIB is just one of these old acronyms that comes from this book, Crucial Conversations, which I’ve talked a lot about.

Okay. Now, the purpose of respect is to get this communication and knowledge flowing one to the other. You have knowledge. Your spouse has knowledge. You want to increase the knowledge and get to synergistic fellowship and rejoicing together—good decision-making that would be better than either one of you. If you don’t think you have a need for your spouse, well, get divorced. I mean, if you don’t have a need for their knowledge, just, you know, go away somewhere. Because I mean, that’s the starting place: knowing your insufficiencies of yourself.

And in this one, one of the very important techniques that this book emphasizes—the Scriptures do too—is mastering your story.

What do I mean? Well, something happens in a conversation, and we get ticked off. We have these emotions, and people say, “Well, emotions are just what emotions are. All emotions.” No, emotions happen from an interpretation of what has happened. They’re facts. We interpret those facts by a story we tell to ourselves that pushes the emotions. And if they’re improper emotions, results in actions that cut communication, that stop it.

So what we have to do in order to get to the table in this ministration of knowledge is to master our stories—master the interpretation of events—which means recognizing that we get it wrong a lot, right? Other Scriptures tell us that. Proverbs 16:22 says, “Understanding is a wellspring of life to him who has it. You can’t get to life until you get the understanding. And the understanding has to come through a correct interpretation of events.”

“The heart of the wise teaches the mouth and adds learning to his lips.” So our job is to increase learning. And we increase learning when we repent of the wrong sort of interpretation of the events.

“We’re not to let sin reign in our mortal body that you should obey its lusts.” You’re mad, you’re sad, you want to retreat, whatever it is. Well, you’re not supposed to let that reign in your relationship with your spouse. And what you want to do is one thing: you want to reinterpret the facts that just happened. Maybe you’re wrong. A lot of times you are.

What does Proverbs say? It says, well, you know, one guy comes and tells the story, and it sounds good. But then his neighbor tests him. The first one that comes to you seems right. The first interpretation you have, based in your own interpretation of the facts, always seems right to us. But we’re encouraged to have that interpretation challenged by other people. We’re to be able to discern this stuff.

What we typically do is we tell ourselves certain kinds of stories. Instead, so we tell ourselves that person is a villain. That somehow, even though that person has loved you for a long time, all of a sudden you think that person is against me. He’s a villain. Or you think that I’m a victim. You know, they’re just attacking me. Or you think I’m helpless. He’s such an idiot. There’s nothing I can do about it. So: villain, victim, helpless—stories, interpretation of these facts that are wrong usually.

And what we want to say is no, that person’s not a villain. That’s a human being. They may be sinning, maybe not. But they’re an image-bearer of God, and they’re my husband or they’re my wife. They’re not a villain. They’re my daughter. They’re my mom. They’re my dad. They’re my son. They’re my brother. They don’t hate me. Why am I getting paranoid on the whole thing here? Why am I thinking I’m a victim to what’s going on here? No. No, no, no. You’re not a victim. You’re an actor in the relationship. You can do things. You don’t have to sin. And you’re not helpless. You’re an enabled member of the body of Christ.

So, you change the interpretation of the facts. You get rid of these stupid stories you tell yourself—and I tell myself—that cause us to cut communication. We want communication to flow. We want to be in love. We want to hold hands and gaze in each other’s eyes. But when we tell each other, when we interpret what they do wrong—lots of interpretations to things, right? When we interpret it wrong, then we can have bad emotions and bad activities.

“The first one to plead his cause seems right unless his neighbor comes and examines him. He who answers a matter before he hears it, Proverbs 18:13, it is folly and a snare to him. The spirit of a man will sustain him in sickness, but who can bear a broken spirit? The heart of the prudent acquires knowledge, and the ear of the wise seeks knowledge. A man’s gift makes room for him and brings him before great men.”

Those Proverbs all run together—that’s 13 to 16 of Proverbs 18. What is it all saying? Well, it’s saying what I just said. You don’t want to have the misinterpretation of the facts. You don’t answer a matter before you’ve really finally heard it and worked it through. If you do, it’ll become shameful to you. You lash out, and now you’ve lost respect again.

“The spirit of man will sustain him. But who can bear a broken spirit?” When you tell yourself these wrong stories—I’m a victim, they’re a villain, I’m helpless—you end up with a broken spirit in terms of that relationship with your husband or wife. And that’s really difficult to deal with.

“The heart of the prudent acquires knowledge.” Keep working at it. Your job is to acquire knowledge from your mate and to give your knowledge.

“The ear of the wise seeks knowledge.” You need it if you’re wise.

“A man’s gift makes room for him.” Why? Because he gives respect and glory to the other person.

So, glory, respect, mastering our interpretation of events, knowing our need for a free flow of communication.

“First, when it comes, it seems right till his neighbor tests him. Casting lots causes contentions to cease and keeps the mighty apart. A brother offended is harder to win than a strong city, and contentions are like the bars of a castle.”

Same thing. These Proverbs are linked together. If we misinterpret the facts, we have contentions, right? And we have to look at new interpretations. Lots determine things. We pray that God would help us to discern the causes and what’s going on.

Job 29:16 he says, “I was a father to the poor, and I searched out the case that I did not know.” You don’t know the case usually when you prompt to opinions. Search it out.

1 Corinthians 13:5 says love “does not behave itself unseemly, seeks not its own, is not easily provoked.” Don’t—and you’re easily provoked when you tell yourself improper interpretation of the events. Or maybe even proper ones. Maybe your spouse really did sin against you. But what are you supposed to do? Be kind-hearted, forgiving each other, right?

So, we want to keep communication flowing. You want to state your path, right? You want to share with the other person your facts. You’re having a discussion about something. You share your facts. You tell your interpretation of the facts, right? You ask the other person, “Does this seem right to you?” And you really do care. You do. You’re not so strung up on your own version of things you’re not going to ask sincerely.

And then you talk tentatively. You know, when you’re doing this, you’re tentative of what you’re saying because you want to, you know, you’re going to be changed through correct interaction with your partner.

And then you encourage each other. Proverbs 15:18, “A wrathful man stirs up strife, but he who is slow to anger allays contention.” Don’t become angry quickly. Don’t fail to master your interpretation or your stories.

Explore the other person’s path. Ask the other person, “You don’t know what your wife’s telling you, your husband’s telling you. Ask them, what do you want to talk about in relationship to this matter?” Mirror back to them. “Well, it seems to me you’re saying this.” Paraphrase what they say. “Is this what you’re saying?” And so in your own words. And if all that fails, prime the pump. Say, “I think this may be what you’re thinking.” You’re sitting there quiet. We have to have communication flow. Maybe this is the problem.

So these are just tools. Proverbs 20:5 says that “counsel in the heart of the man is like deep waters, but a man of understanding will draw it out.” We’re supposed to be mature men and women who will be able to draw out the other person’s story. Now, that assumes you know that they have things to bring to you that are needful to you. And if you do know that, then act like you know it. Give respect, glory. Give the gift of knowledge and receive that gift of knowledge, knowing that you need it very importantly.

So, knowledge—that’s the second gift in the context of relationships. It’s what God gives us today, and it’s what we’re to minister to one another as well.

And then finally, celebration. Uh, celebration again: “A wrathman is obstructed. He who is slow to anger allays contention.” So contention is the opposite of celebratory life together. And so we’re supposed to be wise, not wrathful, not quick to anger. We’re supposed to come to good decisions together.

“A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold and settings of silver.” So the Bible says if you communicate well, a word spoken in its circles, a word spoken really well, right? It’s like apples of gold. It leads to the best kind of rejoicing life together at a table. It leads to joyous, celebratory life.

Proverbs 15:22 to 24, “Without counsel, plans go astray, but in the multitude of counselors, plans are established. A man has joy by the answer of his mouth, a word spoken in due season—how good it is. The way of life winds upward for the wise that he may turn away from hell below.”

So the two things are contingent upon us using words correctly. When we minister glory and respect, attain knowledge that gets us to rejoicing life as opposed to leading us down to hell.

Proverbs 24:3-6, “Through wisdom a house is built. By understanding it is established. By knowledge the rooms are filled with all precious and pleasant riches.” You want rejoicing life. You want that rich house. Wisely apply yourself to giving the gifts that you receive today—glory and knowledge—and that comes to good decision-making. The end result of that is celebration together.

Isaiah 50:4, “The Lord God has given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak.” This is all impossible apart from the indwelling spirit of God. But that again is what he assures you of today—that the Spirit has given you these gifts. The Spirit will teach you how to minister these gifts to one another. And the end result of the Spirit is rejoicing life together in him.

This trinitarian center will hold. The center of our world today will not hold, right? Yea, awaits the second coming. The center will not hold any center, any you know, core of who we are and what we do that isn’t directly related to the person of Christ and the trinitarian God we serve will not hold. Praise God. But the center that’s based upon the inner trinitarian nature of the Trinity—if we have God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit at the core of who we are—if we accept these gifts of his and then minister these gifts to another, this will determine the future of this country. That center will hold.

John 17:3, in that prayer of Jesus, he says, “This is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” That’s life. Knowing God. That’s the center. Knowing what he does for us, knowing what the gospel is in these gifts, and knowing how to minister the gospel to one another to the glory of God. This is what will determine the future of America.

Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you. We receive these wonderful gifts from your hand today joyously, Father, acknowledging that these come through the merits of Jesus Christ alone. What wonderful gospel news these things are. Help us, Father, to think through these matters in terms of how to give these good gifts to one another. Bless our homes, Father, this week. Bless husbands and wives particularly as they minister these gifts of glory, knowledge, and life to one another.

In Jesus name we ask it. Amen.