Doing All to the Glory of God and the Book of Isaiah
[28th November 2012]
Yesterday we had a chapel talk about doing even the simplest things of life to the glory of God – based on 1 Cor 10:31, “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”
But today I do not want to talk about the ‘simple things’ we do, but I want to talk about the greatest thing we can do to the glory of God. I want to talk about this because this is my last opportunity to speak to eighteen of you who will graduate on Saturday and probably the last time you will ever hear me speak about anything.
How do we glorify God? One of the enthusiasms of our day in the Christian church is ‘worship’, much of what passes for worship is what Kemp Pallesen calls ‘songing’, rather than worship. Our church services easily become dominated by the whims of worship leaders and their musical tastes and skills rather than the New Testament’s directions for public worship.
Now, one of the primary themes in Isaiah’s prophecies is the ‘Glory of God’. It is referred to 38 times. In ch 6, Isaiah receives his call in the temple in Jerusalem from the Lord to go out and proclaim the word of God. Isaiah sees God’s glory in a vision of heaven in which the holy angelic beings praised God’s Him. To maintain fellowship with God, Israel clearly needed something more than the Law of Mt Sinai which she had miserably failed to keep, as Isaiah chh1-5 had just shown. As we read through Isaiah we begin to catch glimpses of something more, something new, something greater than the Law coming on the scene. Already in Is 4:5, “Then the LORD will create over the whole site of Mount Zion and over her assemblies a cloud by day, and smoke and the shining of a flaming fire by night; for over all the glory there will be a canopy.” Mt Zion is going to bring something that Mt Sinai never could – the glory of God on the earth.
After condemning Israel for her failures, in Isaiah chh13-23, God gives the Gentile nations a working over for their wickedness and warns of their coming judgment. Yet at the end, in Isaiah ch24, there is a message of hope for us Gentiles too, although it was not yet fully clear. At the end of time Gentiles from all around the earth will be praising God.
Is 24:13 For thus it shall be in the midst of the earth
among the nations,
as when an olive tree is beaten,
as at the gleaning when the grape harvest is done.
14 They lift up their voices, they sing for joy;
over the majesty of the Lord they shout from the west.
15 Therefore in the east give glory to the Lord;
in the coastlands of the sea, give glory to the name of the Lord, the God of Israel.
16 From the ends of the earth we hear songs of praise,
of glory to the Righteous One.
Isaiah’s very heavenly call was symbolic of the gospel according to Isaiah that he was proclaiming – something new. He was able to keep going because he had received a vision of the glory of God filling the whole earth, not just the temple. He needed a heavenly vision because it was definitely not yet visible in the natural and because it would be a tough road to walk on – as he lived in the spiritual slum of 8th cent BC Judea.
Isaiah caught a vision of the big heavenly picture, he could see the end-game. That’s why he volunteered in Isaiah ch6 in response to the heavenly vision. “Here am I send me!” His message was to be one of judgement only redeemed by the promise of the holy seed who is of course the coming messiah the Lord Jesus Christ – who would be the means by which the heavenly glory seen in the vision would be brought to earth.
Like Isaiah, Paul was not disobedient to the heavenly vision; Paul refers to God’s glory 64 times in his 13 letters. The heart of the problem is that we have all sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God – the glory of God is not yet fully realised on earth. Not everyone is glorifying God yet. Part of the eschatological hope for Paul was that at the end of time when “every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” [Phil 2:10-11].
This message of future glory demands a preacher. As Isaiah says in 52:7,
How beautiful upon the mountains
are the feet of him who brings good news,
who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness,
who publishes salvation,
who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.”
Paul applies this passage to himself, and to all those who bring the gospel message. Yes, you have beautiful feet!
But to do this in daily life and stick at it, we need the big picture. Isaiah made plenty of enemies as he told Israel that they were like Sodom and Gomorrah! He needed the big picture when he must have been tempted to give up – why bother when no-one responds? He needed the big picture as faced up to persecution by King Manasseh, who according to Heb ch11 had him sawn in two. He needed the big eternal picture of the glory of God filling all the earth.
Like Isaiah, we are going to need the big picture, otherwise we will fall by the wayside. You will need the big picture when you run short of money in ministry; when your kids are gasping with malaria at 2 am and you just do not know what to do. You need the big picture when no-one seems to be responding to your preaching and ministry. You need the big picture when you feel like you are being abused in your medical ministry. You will need the big picture when even your own church seems to lose interest in your ministry.
You say you want to glorify God? It’s not a better sound-system in the back of the church. No it is the ministry of proclamation of the good news of the God’s glory coming to earth through the finished work of Jesus Christ for every people. This is the ministry of glory.
Holy, holy holy is the Lord of Hosts
The whole earth is full of his glory.