Be Part of Something Bigger: To God Be Glory in the Church
John 12:12-19; Ephesians 3:10,21; Psalm 96:1-3
It’s Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week. Palm Sunday is the day Jesus entered into Jerusalem just as the prophets had said the Messiah would do. After having done amazing miracles for about three years, many people apparently had begun to think that Jesus might actually be the long awaited Messiah. But, the way they saw Jesus was wrong. What they thought Jesus would do was wrong. They had envisioned him as a powerful military leader like Moses or David, a man who would save them from all their problems. So, they cried out, “Hosanna!” – meaning, “Save us now!” “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!" "Blessed is the king of Israel!” (Jn 12:13)
But, their vision of Jesus was too small. They saw him only for what he would do for one group of people. Let’s not criticize them too much. We are much like them. We still have people each election year who cry out, “We want someone different, someone who will make things better for our group. We don’t like things the way they are. Let’s have a leader who can make us (meaning, our own group) great again!”
As you know, Jesus had come to change more than just the situation of one nation. He had come to offer salvation for all who would believe in him. He came not just to deal with the political oppression of one people but with the oppression of sin that had the entire world in its grip. He came not as the king over one nation but as the King over all kings. He came to make all things new.
How do you see Jesus? I grew up with the usual Sunday school flannel graph pictures portraying Jesus as someone with light colored hair and blue eyes. We’ve all seen those. But, just before Christmas last year, a report came out about some work done by British scientist Richard Neave. He used forensic facial reconstruction to reveal what he believes to be a true depiction of the face of Jesus Christ. While the image should not be taken as a definitive model of Jesus, Neave says it is a historically accurate representation of how a man born in Jesus's time and place would have looked: https://metrouk2.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/jesus.jpg
Many churchgoers were offended by the way the artist made Jesus look – so rugged and Middle Eastern. They are more used to a picture done by German artist Albrecht Duerer done in 1500. It’s a picture I have seen countless times: http://everypainterpaintshimself.com/article_images_new/S-P_at_28_1500_4.jpg
Few people in the American church would be offended by Duerer’s oft-seen portrait. But we should be! Why? Because Duerer’s painting of Jesus was a self-portrait! He painted himself as Jesus. Many art historians say Duerer’s painting is a proclamation of his supreme role as creator, which is supported by the painting's Latin inscription: "I, Albrecht Dürer of Nuremberg portrayed myself in everlasting colors aged twenty-eight years". I think one of the clearest messages of Palm Sunday is that we dare not see God as we want him to be but as he reveals himself to be.
How Do You See Jesus?
Again, I ask you: How do you see Jesus? If the people on the first Palm Sunday could be so misguided about Jesus’ mission and people for centuries can be so mistaken about Jesus’ physical appearance, how can we accurately know Jesus? And this brings us to our final message in our series on the Guiding Statement of Lake Avenue Church, a series I’ve called Be Part of Something Bigger.
I will simply tell you today that you can know Jesus through the witness of God’s Word and through the witness of God’s people all around the world who have genuinely met Jesus by faith. And, when you have come to meet Jesus by placing your faith in him, you come to know God. Faith in Jesus makes you alive to God. When Jesus came to earth, he was “Immanuel”, God with us. As John said, “When we saw Jesus, we beheld glory, the glory of the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth (Jn 1:14).” “We saw him!” John marveled. “He lived among us!”
And Jesus affirmed John’s words. Jesus said, “No one has ever seen God except God the one and only Son, the one closest to the Father, has made him known (Jn 1:18).” So, if you long to know God, you first have to meet Jesus through faith. Jesus said, “The one who has seen me has seen the Father.” To continue to see God’s glory in Jesus, you must read the inspired accounts of his life found in the first four books of the New Testament. Read what he taught. See how he dealt with people. Observe how he lived out his priorities. What you will see is the glory of God revealed in Jesus.
The Apostle Paul confirmed this in his letter to the Ephesians. In a verse I show you quite often, this is what Paul wrote: To God be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever (Eph 3:21)!
The “glory” of God is a word that refers all God’s attributes and qualities. So the glory of God refers to all that God is – and “all that God is” is so majestic and so beautiful that it goes beyond human knowing. If that is true, then how will people ever know what God is like? Where is God’s glory to be seen? The Bible confirms in this verse that it’s seen in Jesus. Paul wrote, “To God be glory in Christ Jesus.”
But, do you see that there is another place where people in our world should accurately see what God is like? Where else should the world see the glory of God? I’ve spoken to us at LAC often about this but today I want you to see it in the context of our church’s Guiding Statement: The Bible says the world should be able to see the glory of God is, almost shockingly, in the church. “To God be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus.” One main theme of the New Testament is that God’s plan to complete his work in the world and make all things new is to place local families of his people linked by faith in Jesus in communities all over the world to visibly represent God’s glory where he has established us. This is why we declare at the conclusion of our Guiding Statement that we long to be a “God-glorying community.” When we say that we pray people will see much of what God is like by what God is doing in and among us here at the Lake Avenue Church in Pasadena. We seek to glorify God at LAC. So, in this last part of our Guiding Statement, we have put together all that is found in the rest of the statement. We long to have God transform each of us and all of us so that we will declare God’s glory to the world through out lives and words.
We humbly confess that we are still in a process of becoming all that God would have us be. We surely do not yet fully reflect the glory of God in our church. As Pastor Denny Bellessi used to say often, “We are a piece of work!” We truly are! But, we’re God’s work – and when he works in us, he will make us into people who declare what he is like to a world that needs to know him and to experience his salvation.
Through these months of 2016, we have taken week after week to think about becoming a community that declares the glory of God to the world. Let me walk you through it now. To declare God’s glory, we must:
- Grow in Our Walk with Christ – Our vision statement says that that we seek to have each one in our church family grow to become “complete in Christ” (Col 1:28) and thereby reflect God’s glory. This is the goal of all discipleship, i.e., that our lives will increasingly reflect the ways of the Jesus we follow. The main problem for us, as we all know, is our sin. But, Paul addressed this in Rom 3:23: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…” But then Paul goes on: Through faith, “we are justified as a gift by God’s grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus.” So God washes our past clean when we confess our sins and believe in Jesus – and he gives us his Spirit and His church for our remaking. Here at LAC, for that remaking to happen, we urge each of us to be involved in three essential connections: 1) worship in unity with your church family, 2) grow in your walk with God in one of the grace-filled communities our church offers, and 3) serve in God’s mission as a part of your church. We are to declare God’s glory though our growth in holiness.
- Be One Though We Are Many – We are called to embody both the breadth and the loving unity of God’s global family right here in the San Gabriel Valley. We call this value “kingdom community”. Listen to how Jesus put this when, just before he went to the cross, he prayed for all those who would believe in him, including people from every people group, language and nation: John 17:22-23a: Father, give them the glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me… One of the most beautiful and, at the same time, mind-boggling truths that God reveals to us in his Word is that he is one God eternally existing in three persons. But, let me say this now: One of the most beautiful and, at the same time mind-boggling, truths about a church -- that becomes what God would have us become -- is that it is to be one unified “household of faith” even while it is as different as people around the world are different. We become one family in Christ. That kind of unity glorifies God.
- Love the World as God Loves the World – We have two values that call us to love people made in God’s image both through our words and deeds. We care about the eternal souls of people for whom Jesus died so we value being an “Evangelistic Community”: We respond to Jesus’ call to be a community that individually and corporately calls people to follow him as Savior and Lord. And we care about the pain and distress that sin has brought into people’s lives so we value being a “Reconciling Community”: We seek to pursue God’s justice, mercy and compassion by being involved in his ministries of reconciliation.
So, today, we conclude by saying that we long to have our individual lives and the life of our church family bring glory to our Heavenly Father. We long to be – pray to become – a God-glorifying Community. Look at how we put it: “Guided by God’s Word and relying on the power of the Holy Spirit, we seek to be a prayerful community that makes the glory of God known through our words and lives.”
We pray that people will see what God is like by watching what he is doing in and through us. By doing so, we pray that we people in our neighborhood and in our world might experience the saving, healing, life-transforming reality of God made available in Jesus until God’s work is complete, until all things in this world are made right, and until God kingdom of peace and justice reigns.
When we follow Jesus, we truly become a part of something bigger. Indeed, the scope of this is made known in Psalm 96:3 -- Declare his glory among the nations; make known his marvelous deeds among all peoples. Do you see what God calls us to do? We are to declare the glory of God not only in our neighborhood. We have the privilege of making him known among all peoples. This was what Jesus called us to do in Acts 1:8, i.e., to give witness to Jesus to the ends of the earth. Because of that, I’ve asked Pastor Scott White, LAC Pastor of Global Outreach, to come and bring our entire series to its proper conclusion. He will point us to the role we sense God is calling us to play in glorying his name among the nations.