Hope and Glory
- David Fairchild
- Mar 14, 2010
- Series: Ephesians
The last couple of months we’ve been exploring the book of Ephesians together. We’ve worked slowly through this opening passage because it is a crystal clear explanation of the gospel. This beautiful diamond has many facets to it that we want to enjoy and grasp.
Paul is writing it as one long run on sentence from verse 3 to 14. Your translation might have periods to break up Paul’s thoughts, but in the original Greek this is one long sentence. Paul stacks beautiful gospel truths on top of one another. As he’s writing to the Christians in Ephesus, he’s preaching the gospel to himself and it causes him to praise God. He gets caught up in what he’s writing. He can’t help himself. Yes, it’s poor grammar and structure, but he doesn’t care. He’d rather be guilty of a run-on sentence than stop the outpouring of his heart in praise to his God for his glorious grace.
I understand what Paul is doing because I experience this when I’m preaching or counseling someone. I find myself so moved by what’s being said that I can feel my heart melt, my sanity return, and my love for God grow as I’m speaking. This isn’t because of my communication skills; it’s because of the content of what I’m communicating. Sometimes I’m speaking the gospel to someone and they look as if they’re hard hearted towards the truth, yet I still find myself worshipping God and drawing joy and encouragement from what’s being said. It’s a weird thing.
I also find that when I don’t have a chance to speak the gospel to someone and discuss the beauty of Jesus and what He’s done, I get a little dry. It seems like I’m most myself when I’m most focused on these truths.
However, I realize that preaching the gospel to one another and to ourselves is not a natural thing to do. We often feel ill-equipped to say the right things. I want to encourage each of you here this morning to become preachers, to step out in courage and speak to one another about the hope we have in Christ and the glory that is promised to us. I want you to no longer be spectators in the dialogue of your mind, but preachers. I want you to remove the heretic from the pulpit, grab the mic and preach this good news to your own heart.
So, every week that I have the privilege of getting up here to communicate the gospel, I’m hoping that as I phrase things a particular way and give specific analogies, that they’ll be a handle you can grab on to and use. I’m not only preaching, I’m trying to make preachers out of each of you! What a glorious community of hope we’ll become once we grasp the importance of humbly receiving and courageously giving the gospel to one another regularly.
This is what Paul is doing for us in this passage. He’s bringing our eyes back to truths that transform us from despair and faithlessness to hope and praise.
Let’s pray and then read the passage.
Ephesians 1:11-12: “In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, 12 so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory.”
Because this passage is set in this long paragraph, it can feel a little disjointed stopping on it. First, it’s connected to what’s already been said; that God, out of His grace and good pleasure, has chosen us before the foundation of the world, has predestined us to adoption and sons of God, has redeemed us and forgiven us by shedding His own blood for our sins, and has shown us that the reason for all of this is so that He’ll take everything and unite it in Christ so that what’s wrong with this world and ourselves will be made right.
Second, it’s connected to what we’re going to talk about next week which is assurance of our faith and the role of the Holy Spirit in guaranteeing our inheritance with Christ.
The passage has moved from God’s perspective in salvation to the benefits we have as His children.
This morning, He’s giving us a kind of synopsis of what our lives are all about. He’s telling us His reason for choosing us, loving us, adopting us, redeeming us and promising us a glorious future. This reason is found in verse 12:
Verse 12: “so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory.”
Let me put this another way: “God has given us a share in His inheritance and according to His plan, which is motivated by His good pleasure, He gave us His Son so that we would praise His glory.”
Or, even shorter; “God predestined us to praise His glory.”
The truth is that God has a treasure stored up in Himself that He is bringing us into and this plan is His pleasure (His will), and it was decided before time began.
If we stopped in verse 11, we still wouldn’t know what the reason is for doing all of this. It’s true, but it doesn’t tell us the reason why, it just tells us what He’s doing and how He’s doing it. But we want to know why! Why would He do this?
“So that” begins the answer, “we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of His glory.”
Remember, Paul is writing this to form the identity of the Ephesians and cause them to worship. He wants them to know their purpose for existing.
The foundation for both our worship and our purpose for existing is the same: it’s the praise of God’s glory.
Here is the million dollar truth that feels like penny advice. When you’re feeling your absolute lowest about yourself, when you just want to give up, when you have no hope and you’ve failed miserably, when your self-esteem is at it’s very lowest, you were predestined by God before time to His glory.
How does that feel? If you’re being honest, it probably doesn’t feel very warm. To be told when you’re feeling terrible about yourself that your entire existence is for the purpose of praising God’s glory seems, well, unloving.
We’ve fallen into the notion that when our self-esteem is at it’s lowest, what we need is to rebuild our self-esteem. But God’s word tells us something quite different. God’s word teaches us that when you’re feeling your lowest about yourself, the last thing you need to is to build your self-esteem. In fact, the reason for our hopeless despair is because we keep trying to build our self-esteem. Building our self-esteem is actually what causes our loss of hope!
Why? Because you were not made to make much of yourself, you were made to make much of another. We were not made to glorify ourselves (which is what self-esteem tries to do) we were made to glorify something else. It’s what our souls long for. As John Piper puts it, we are “glory-starved” creatures. He says this:
“We are all starved for the glory of God, not self. No one goes to the Grand Canyon to increase self-esteem. Why do we go? Because there is greater healing for the soul in beholding splendor than there is in beholding self…The point is this: We were made to know and treasure the glory of God above all things; and when we trade that treasure for images, everything is distorted. The sun of God’s glory was made to shine at the center of the solar system of our soul. And when it does, all the planets of our life are held in their proper orbit. But when the sun is displaced, everything flies apart. The healing of the soul begins by restoring the glory of God to its flaming, all-attractive place at the center.”
Some Questions About God’s Glory
Isn’t this a character flaw in God?
We look at the need for someone to be praised and adored as a character defect. When we think of God creating the world, making us, saving us, giving us His Son, judging mankind, and restoring everything so that we would glorify Him, it seems as if that would be a character flaw.
In fact, there is a word in psychiatry that is used to describe such a person and that is a megalomaniac. The definition for megalomania is this:
A psychopathological condition characterized by delusional fantasies of wealth, power, or omnipotence.
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An obsession with grandiose or extravagant things or actions.
If God really is the most glorious, beautiful and admirable being in the universe, wouldn’t we be angry if He kept Himself from us? If coming to Him means finding home and finding what our souls have longed for, wouldn’t we want Him to draw us to Himself? If praising God’s glory is what we’re made for, why would we want God to be a gentleman by sending us anywhere else?
Yes, it’s true that a man who needs to be constantly praised probably has a major defect in his personality. No man is worthy of all our praise. His life, character and attributes don’t support his demand for their constant praise. It’s a flaw because he’s not worth it. If this man was sinless, pure, holy, righteous, gracious, perfect, sovereign, all-powerful, all-wise, and infinitely glorious in all his attributes, then and only then would he be worth it. But, as a fallen man, he simply isn’t. This is why we reject the ego-maniac that demands our praise and this is why we worship the only One worthy of all our praise.
How does God demanding my praise make me happier?
But where do I fit into the equation? How can this truth, that I was predestined to praise God’s glory, bring me joy?
Because, God’s demand for praise is also his demand for our happiness. Deep in our souls we know we are made to make much of something great. The best and most lasting joys come from standing in awe of something and letting it take our breath away as we’re consumed with its majesty.
CS Lewis says this:
“Men spontaneously praise whatever they value, so they spontaneously urge us to join them in praising it: ‘Wasn’t in glorious? Do you think that magnificent?’ indeed we can’t help doing it…because praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. Our expressions of praise are inadequate—but how if one could really and fully praise things to perfection—then indeed our delight would attain perfect development! To understand what [heaven] means we must imagine ourselves in perfect love with God—drunk with, drowned in, dissolved by, that delight which, far from remaining pent up within ourselves…flows out from us incessantly again in effortless and perfect expression…Scots catechism says a man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. But then we will know these are the same thing. To fully enjoy is to glorify—in commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him.
We praise great music and great food. We praise our lovers. We praise an amazing achievement in sports. We praise a film or work of art. We love to praise. We share that praise with others by telling them how great it was and how much they should experience it, too. We can’t help ourselves; the entire universe is a concert of praise for something great.
But God is the only one that is infinitely worthy of praise. We will never get tired of praising God, never want to listen to his “B” side, never want to see part 2, never want to exchange Him for another lover when we’ve finally seen Him for who He really is.
God knows we’re made for Him and if He were to send us to anything other than Himself, He’d be an idolater. Calling us to come to Him is the most loving thing He can do. God is God-centered because He is the most valuable being in the universe. Piper puts it this way:
“God seeks our praise not because He won’t be happy until He gets it. He’s seeking our praise because we won’t be happy until we give it. This is not arrogance. It is love." -John Piper
So what is God’s glory?
Ok, so I know that I’ve been predestined to praise God’s glory, but what exactly is His glory?
The Hebrew word for glory is “kabod” which means heavy, weighty, permanent, and substantial. It isn’t simply an attribute of God either. Glory is the infinite worthiness, beauty and excellence of all of His attributes, and all of His attributes combine to show God’s glory.
God is not simply wise and loving, he is gloriously wise and loving. In other words, He is the best and greatest wisdom and love.
He is not just important and worthy of our adoration and affection, he is gloriously or supremely worthy compared to anything or anyone else.
Jonathan Edwards puts it this way:
“God…is infinitely the greatest and best of beings. All things else, with regard to worthiness, importance, and excellence, are perfectly as nothing in comparison to him…The ultimate [goal] of God’s works is…the glory of God.”
Every other being is “perfectly as nothing in comparison to Him.” Nothing can compare in any way to the weightiness and supremacy of God. Scripture often describes it as blazing, blinding, and an unbearable brilliance to our finite minds.
He is the fullest definition and source of all that is good, loving, powerful or wise. Nothing deserves our deepest respect and honor more than the Lord because compared to Him everything else is lightweight.
To glorify God means to see Him as being supremely and ultimately valuable. It means that we see nothing as more valuable and substantial, real and permanent, weighty and beautiful as He is. If He is not the greatest value and supreme treasure, it isn’t because something is wrong with Him, something is wrong with the eyesight of our hearts. We’ve forgotten that we were made to make much of Him and not ourselves.
But here’s the problem. We were made for it so we will always pursue glory in something, even if it’s not God. When we forget what we’re made for, we don’t stop pursuing something weighty, permanent, substantial and ultimate because we’re built for glory.
That is what hope is built upon—we want to trust what can last, what can bear up the weight of my life. We place our trust in the thing we’ve made ultimate. In other words, we put our trust in what our hearts find most glorious. Trust, hope and glory are all interconnected.
We trust in what we believe is substantial (which is what glory means) and we are banking on it coming through (that’s our hope).
Let me walk you through how this works out practically in one specific area: romance. It could be any area that’s become too important, but let’s look at this one.
If our ultimate is romance, it will be more substantial to us than God’s glory so that we come to see it as our purpose and significance for our lives. In replacing God, we have to fill that void with something else. Ernest Becker calls this “apocalyptic romance” where people become secular and replace God as the center with romance. We look to romance to give us the feeling of transcendence and meaning that we’re made to have in God alone. Speaking about this kind of secular person, Becker says:
“He still needs to feel heroic, to know that his life mattered in the scheme of things...He still had to merge himself with some higher, self-absorbing meaning, in trust and gratitude…If he no longer had God, how was he to do this? One of the first ways that occurred to him was the ‘romantic solution.’…The self-glorification that he needed in his innermost nature he now looked for in the love partner. The love partner becomes the divine ideal within which to fulfill one’s life. All spiritual and moral needs now become focused in one individual…In one word, the love object is God…Man reached for a “thou” when the world-view of the great religious community overseen by God died…After all, what is it that we want when we elevate the love partner to the position of God? We want redemption—nothing less.”
And this romantic notion of love is not reserved for only the singles of our community who are pining for a partner. It can be sexuality for a man who is looking to use women to feel powerful and attractive. It can be a relationship that someone needs to feel beautiful and accepted. It can be a companion that someone needs to feel safe and secure.
In all these things, the person of interest has been elevated to the status of a god. Even if you’re traditional and you are trying to find your meaning and purpose in having the perfect Christian life and home you are doing the same thing. You are using God and your spouse to give you what you think is most important.
Having babies and a perfect home to find your identity is just as idolatrous as the man pursuing multiple partners to feel powerful. Becker shows us the failure of romance and relationships as a glorious god:
“The failure of romantic love as a solution to human problems is so much a part of modern man’s frustration…No human relationship can bear the burden of godhood…However much we may idealize or idolize him [or her], he inevitably reflects earthly decay and imperfection…After all, what is it that we want when we elevate the love partner to this position? We want to be rid of our faults, of our feelings of nothingness. We want to be justified, to know our existence has not been in vain. We want redemption—nothing less. Needless to say, human partners cannot give this.”
All of these are dead ends. Our children, our spouse, our lovers, our looks, our house, our finances are not weighty, substantial, or rather, glorious enough to bear the weight of our lives. They can’t justify us and remove our imperfections, they can only add to our hopelessness and frustration. They can’t give us meaning and purpose.
Yet God says in this passage that He not only predestined us to praise His glory, but that He did this according to His purpose and according to His good pleasure, or as the passage says, His will. His will means His good pleasure.
Do you hear that? No matter how much your heart is telling you that your plans and your purposes are what’s best for you, God says that He made you to make much of Him. This is His purpose for you and it is according to His desires, His passion, His delight and His good pleasure.
He wants you to taste and see that He is good, that in His presence there is fullness of joy and at His right hand are pleasures forevermore (Psalm 16:11).
I wonder how many would be helped by demoting your spouse, your loved one, your children or your idea of romance and relationship from being a god, to being what they are, broken sinners in need of grace.
I wonder how many of you would feel hope if you trusted again that God’s plans and purposes are what’s best for you and He’s the only one that you can really trust.
How do we Change?
But how in the world are you going to have the power to do something you haven’t been able to do so far? How are you going to demote romance, relationships and the perfect life?
Before we can really change we need to know two things; 1) What does God think about His people placing glory in other things? 2) What is God’s solution?
When we look at Israel’s history we see ourselves. We see a people that have been freed from Egypt, freed from slavery under the hand of a cruel master, and yet we see a people that grumble and complain, that are continually tempted to give glory to an idol. Yet we also see our God regularly pursuing His chosen people, bearing with them and calling them back again to Himself by His prophets. In fact, the role of the prophet was almost always to call them to repent and return to their true love and leave their false lovers.
The book of Hosea give us a glimpse of how God feels when His people give themselves to impermanent idols.
2 2 “But now bring charges against Israel—your mother—
for she is no longer my wife,
and I am no longer her husband.
Tell her to remove the prostitute’s makeup from her face
and the clothing that exposes her breasts.
3 Otherwise, I will strip her as naked
as she was on the day she was born.
I will leave her to die of thirst,
as in a dry and barren wilderness.
4 And I will not love her children,
for they were conceived in prostitution.
5 Their mother is a shameless prostitute
and became pregnant in a shameful way.
She said, ‘I’ll run after other lovers
and sell myself to them for food and water,
for clothing of wool and linen,
and for olive oil and drinks.’
6 “For this reason I will fence her in with thornbushes.
I will block her path with a wall
to make her lose her way.
7 When she runs after her lovers,
she won’t be able to catch them.
She will search for them
but not find them.
Then she will think,
‘I might as well return to my husband,
for I was better off with him than I am now.’
8 She doesn’t realize it was I who gave her everything she has—
the grain, the new wine, the olive oil;
I even gave her silver and gold.
But she gave all my gifts to Baal.
9 “But now I will take back the ripened grain and new wine
I generously provided each harvest season.
I will take away the wool and linen clothing
I gave her to cover her nakedness.
10 I will strip her naked in public,
while all her lovers look on.
No one will be able
to rescue her from my hands.
11 I will put an end to her annual festivals,
her new moon celebrations, and her Sabbath days—
all her appointed festivals.
12 I will destroy her grapevines and fig trees,
things she claims her lovers gave her.
I will let them grow into tangled thickets,
where only wild animals will eat the fruit.
13 I will punish her for all those times
when she burned incense to her images of Baal,
when she put on her earrings and jewels
and went out to look for her lovers
but forgot all about me,”
says the Lord.
The Lord’s Love for Unfaithful Israel
14 “But then I will win her back once again.
I will lead her into the desert
and speak tenderly to her there.
15 I will return her vineyards to her
and transform the Valley of Trouble* into a gateway of hope.
She will give herself to me there,
as she did long ago when she was young,
when I freed her from her captivity in Egypt.
16 When that day comes,” says the Lord,
“you will call me ‘my husband’
instead of ‘my master.’*
17 O Israel, I will wipe the many names of Baal from your lips,
and you will never mention them again.
18 On that day I will make a covenant
with all the wild animals and the birds of the sky
and the animals that scurry along the ground
so they will not harm you.
I will remove all weapons of war from the land,
all swords and bows,
so you can live unafraid
in peace and safety.
19 I will make you my wife forever,
showing you righteousness and justice,
unfailing love and compassion.
20 I will be faithful to you and make you mine,
and you will finally know me as the Lord.
21 “In that day, I will answer,”
says the Lord.
“I will answer the sky as it pleads for clouds.
And the sky will answer the earth with rain.
22 Then the earth will answer the thirsty cries
of the grain, the grapevines, and the olive trees.
And they in turn will answer,
‘Jezreel’—‘God plants!’
23 At that time I will plant a crop of Israelites
and raise them for myself.
I will show love
to those I called ‘Not loved.’*
And to those I called ‘Not my people,’*
I will say, ‘Now you are my people.’
And they will reply, ‘You are our God!’ ”1
1 Tyndale House Publishers. (2004). Holy Bible : New Living Translation. (2nd ed.). Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House Publishers.
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