The Gospel & Seeking After Glorifying Grace

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The Gospel & Seeking After Glorifying Grace

March 13, 2022

Salvation consists of 3 parts. Justification, Sanctification, and Glorification. We have talked about the first two, but now this week we start speaking on God's grace in justifying us. God's grace not only justifies and sanctifies but it also brings us to the end and it wills us to seek after glory, that same glory found in the face of Jesus Christ. This is why this is good news, because God's grace glorifies us! Thanks for listening.

Key Texts:

* John 17:10,24

* Romans 2:7;9:23

* 2 Corinthians 3:18

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Transcript

That brings up the good point too, that we need to recognize that the seeking after glory can be done in the godly way and it can be done in the wrong way. And Philippians 2 lays this out. We are not to be people who seek after vain glory, which is glory derived and originated in ourselves.

That is not the glory we are supposed to be seeking, right? We shouldn't be like Odysseus or Aeneid, or Achilles, and win all these great battles. And then we receive glory from men for our great acts of valor. That is not what it is supposed to be about.

That's vain glory. We should be receiving glory that finds its end in Jesus Christ. Don't think I will even ask you to make Jesus Lord of your life.

That's the most preposterous thing I could ever tell you to do. Jesus Christ is Lord of your life. Whether you serve him or not, whether you bless him, curse him, hate him, or love him, he is the Lord of your life, because God has given him a name that is above every name.

So that the name of Jesus Christ, every knee shall bow, in tongue confess that he is Lord. Some of you will bow out of the grace that has been given to you, and others will bow because your kneecaps will be broken by the one who rules the nations with a rod of iron. And I'll not apologize for this God of the Bible.

[Music] This is the For The King podcast, and I'm your host, Rocky Ramsey, joined with my co-host and brother Bryce, where we proclaim the edicts of the king over all his creation, that Yahweh reigns. Welcome to the For The King podcast. Thanks for joining us wherever you're listening in from.

We appreciate you spending time to hear about God's Word, to hear about the truth of the king, who this king is, his name being Jesus Christ. And we are in the midst of a series we've been doing here in the For The King podcast on Sundays called the Gospel Foundations series, where we talk about the foundational, pivotal, central things of the gospel laid out in God's Word. We've been doing this for a while now, and we've since arrived in recently talking about God's grace.

We've talked about God's grace that justifies us, God's grace that sanctifies us. We've taken a two-week hiatus because things got busy, so we're sorry if you've been looking forward to these episodes, but now we're back at it. I'm excited to now talk about God's glorifying grace.

And this is going to be, we're going to within the series have a four-part series of the different ways in which God's grace glorifies us, and God's grace is shown most clear, sorry God's glory is shown most clearly in the person of Christ. That's kind of what we're trying to get at here. So in this four-part series, we're going to, talking about God's glorifying grace, we're going to start with teleological grace, or a grace that is going somewhere, a grace that's pointing towards something, or is progressive in the life of the Christian.

So the text I'm going to start off with is a backdrop to this whole idea is going to be John 17, 24, where Jesus says in this high priestly prayer, "Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world." So we have to remember as post-millennial kingdom lovers of the King that Jesus, this glory has been given to Christ. We read at the end of Ephesians 1, he's seated at the right hand of the Father. So this is a glory that Christ has now, as he's winning the nations, and that glory is revealed more and more to those that God has given him, which is the world.

As we see in Habakkuk 2.14, the knowledge of God will go to the ends of the earth. So yeah, so that's the text that we're dealing with here. It kind of has a backdrop to the rest of the episode.

Bryce, anything you want to add or do you want to get into the rest of the texts? Yeah, it's good. Let's keep going on. Okay.

So, well, I mean, you have the first one. That's kind of getting that going there. Alright.

Yeah. So yeah, the first text is going to be out of Romans 2.7 specifically, but we'll start in verse six and so on. And, and the grace or the glory that Jesus Christ has is one that we are commanded and that we have a responsibility to seek after.

And that is something that we're going to see most clearly in this text. So in Romans chapter two, verses six and so on, it says that he will render to each one, according to his words, to those who by patience and well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality. He will give eternal life, but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury.

So the key text here is verse seven. It's those who by patience and well-doing seek for glory. So this is something that is diametrically opposed to our pietistic American evangelicalism, which teaches that mankind isn't supposed to seek for glory.

We shouldn't seek for glory. We shouldn't seek for honor. Because really what it means to be a Christian is that you just talk about how wretched you are every single moment of your life.

But really we live in a transformative grace where Jesus has transformed our hearts to become like his. And we are slowly being transformed into his image. And one way that this is accomplished is that in well-doing or sorry, in patience and in well-doing, we seek for glory and honor.

So glory is something that Christians are commanded to seek after. We are not supposed to be doormats that are walked upon at every single moment of our lives, but we're supposed to be those who by patience seek for glory. And we always ask the question, where is that glory obtained? And ultimately like Rocky already mentioned at the beginning, this is something that's only found in God.

Jesus Christ is the one who is glorified. He's seated at the right hand of God, his glory, is as the sun that shines over all things. And we are supposed to seek for that, that we might obtain it for ourselves.

And there's kind of this paradox that we have in scripture here, where back in Isaiah 44, it talks about God's glory. He gives to no other. So we must ask the question here, if we're seeking for the glory and we obtain it, how are we getting it? Does that seem to contradict itself? Well, no, because the glory that we are receiving is given to us by virtue of our being united to Jesus.

So it's by virtue of us being one with Christ, entering a covenant relation with him that we now by patience and well-doing seek for glory and honor. So this text is very clear, we should seek for glory. We shouldn't be as these pietistic Christians that seek to treat us like these just dumpsters that nothing really matters for us here in this world, that we shouldn't seek for glory.

We shouldn't be honored among men. But the Proverbs say, do you see a man who is well-doing in his work? I tell you, he will stand before kings. So there's an honor and a glory that this man receives.

And people in the old covenant, like David and Moses, they receive glory and honor by virtue of what they did for the kingdom of God, by God's grace. Yeah. Yeah.

Let him who boasts most in this that he knows Yahweh. So if we're going to boast or have glory or honor in and of ourselves, it's going to be from Yahweh himself. And if you read further on in that Romans two passage, verses nine through 11, there will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek for God shows no partiality.

So he's not showing partiality in some arbitrary way. If you do good, and we know that any good there's no who does good, no, not one. This goes back to our whole tulip series and the sociology of the Calvinistic position that God alone is the one bringing in glory and honor to us.

He's not showing partiality in that sense, because it's something his own choosing. It's not on some arbitrary standard. It's on his will, which is never arbitrary.

It's not, it's not partiality because it's based on God's will. Partiality is some arbitrary choosing based on vain things, vain glory. All right.

Good. And that, that brings up the good point too, that we need to recognize that the seeking after glory can be done in the godly way and it can be done in the wrong way. And Philippians two lays this out.

We are not to be people who seek after vain glory, which is glory derived and originated in ourselves. That is not the glory we are supposed to be seeking, right? We shouldn't be like Odysseus or Aeneid and, and, or Achilles and when all these great battles, and then we received glory from men for our great acts of valor. That is not what it is supposed to be about.

That's vain glory. We should be receiving glory that finds its end in Jesus Christ. And that's why it's progressive because we progressively gain glory as we seek after it.

So yeah, there's two forms of glory. We want to do it in the right way. And we do recognize that there's an unbiblical way that you seek after glory.

Exactly. Yep. So just to corroborate the point more that it comes from God, we have also later on in Romans nine verse 23.

I'll start in 22, just to be clear. What if God is starting to show his wrath and make known his power has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepare for destruction in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory. So he's making known the riches of his glory by preparing vessels or people, people for mercy, for glory.

So again, this is connecting God's glory to the glory that's being received, because there's vessels that are receiving mercy. That's where their glory is coming from God showing his glory by giving glory to vessels of mercy. Good.

Yeah. And even even on that even further to like you get to see here that this isn't just about the final consummate reality that we will be with Christ and glory and glorified bodies, but this is actually referring to in time and space, it's temporal. Yeah.

And the reason you can get that because in the whole passage, it talks about for this very purpose in verse 17, I have raised you up referring to Pharaoh that I might show my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth. Right. So very Pharaoh was is the vessel he's one vessel prepared for destruction.

Yeah. And in a similar way, that's a temporal timestamp of Pharaoh back in Egypt way thousands of years ago. And in the same way, those who have been prepared for glory now, they receive mercy.

Now, we receive mercy temporally in time, we don't receive this arbitrary, you know, platonic form type of mercy that's only in the heavenlies. This is something that takes place in real time. Exactly.

Yeah. And you can go listen to my nearness of God judgment series to talk about wrath in real time. Yeah.

Okay, so it's really good. Yeah, yeah, thank you. So second Corinthians three 18.

Again, as we behold God, as we behold God's glory, we will by virtue of his glory, a derivative glory will we get so and second Corinthians three 18 says and we all with the unveiled face beholding the glory of the Lord are being transformed to the same image from one degree of glory to another for this comes from the Lord who is the spirit. So if we're going to be transformed from one degree of glory to the next, it's going to come from the Lord who is the spirit, as we behold the glory of the Lord. So this is a derivative glory.

And this again, this is a teleological glory. It's the glory of God that we're being transformed into the same image, the image of God that we've been given. This is a teleological, this is a progressive kind of glory that we're given.

And remember, we were doing a four part series on glory. So we'll talk more about the facets of how this teleological glory finds an end. We're going to get to that finds us in Christ, it finds its end in heaven for us and the eternal state.

But but this is a good text for that. Anything you want to add, Bryce? And yeah, this this whole narrative to and second Corinthians chapter three is referring specifically to the difference of the old and new covenants. And it's highlighted by this narrative of Moses who went up and met before the Lord who we know is Jesus Christ.

And he came down from the mountain and he had to veil himself. That's why we all now have unveiled faces as we behold the Lord. But Moses had to bail himself because the glory that he received was to come.

It was something that they couldn't handle yet because they were not in the new covenant. So again, this always points back to Jesus. But even still, Moses passed from one degree of glory to the next as he beheld the face of Christ.

And that's what you get in Second Corinthians chapter four, because it talks about Jesus. For Jesus sake, in verse six, it goes on to say for God who said, let light shine out of darkness has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. So again, this is something that's rooted in Christ.

And if you want this progressive glorification, you must find it as you behold the glory of the Lord in the face of Jesus Christ. So again, it's not a vain glory. This is something that you find in Jesus as you seek after him.

Right. So the saints of old, David, Moses, even the saints of new, like Paul, they all beheld the face of Christ and they are glorified men. And they were glorified men even on the earth before they met the Lord.

Yeah, that's kind of like the idea of gravitas in a sense. But yeah, having like a weightiness to you, but but the Christian gravitas gravitas is obviously a Greek virtue. If we're going to talk about a Christian virtue that would mirror gravitas and be glory, a man having, but it was a derivative glory because he's a saint, righteous by virtue.

And think about it, too. Like even First Corinthians 11, the woman is the glory of man. Yeah.

Wait, am I thinking about that? Right. Yes. The woman is glory man, but for the woman, her glory is her hair.

Right. So it's something, this isn't just an agnostic type of glory that you receive. This is something that even that, again, it takes place in real time that you receive now.

It's right. And now it has to do with your physicality, right? You see the glory of the woman by her physical hair. Right.

So women who have these blue hair, you know, blue dyed hair and short haircuts, they don't look, they do not look, no, that's not something that's pleasing to the eye. It's not, that's not, sorry. It's not glorious.

Yeah, it's not glorious at all. And that's why, you know, my wife is the most beautiful woman on the planet because of she has long, beautiful, blonde hair and she's a chaste woman and that's a virtue. Right.

So this, it is something that's physical as well. Like a man, his, his, his glory is his strength for a father. The father's glory is his children in a lot of ways.

That's what the proverbs pick up. A wise son makes a glad father, right? They are his glory in a sense. He displays them to the world.

And that's what God does with his children because the glory they received comes from the only one who can perform these things, which is Jesus Christ, because he has prepared us for good works that we would walk in them. So good works is how we glorify God. And as we glorify God, we receive glory.

And it's a beautiful thing to behold. Yeah. Amen.

Okay. So let's wrap up here. Last text you want to look at John 1710.

All mine are yours and yours are mine and I am glorified in them. So Jesus is glorified by us. We're given glory by him by virtue of looking to him and glorifying him.

Will we be receiving the benefit of glory? And that again, that's back to the high priestly foot, high priestly prayer. If you read through the high priestly prayer prayer, you'll see a lot of verbiage about the glory that Christ has and the glory that he wants, the unity he wants in the body of Christ to be united to him in glory in that sense. Yeah.

So it's really a beautiful thing. We need to find it in the person of Christ. Christ is glorious.

And he humbled himself and he's now glorified in the saints. He's now seated at the right hand of the father, um, ruling over the nations with a rod of iron. I mean, that's glorious to see a king in his, to see a king in his glory, you see him ruling over.

There's no glory for a king that has no authority. That's not ruling over something. So yeah, obviously Christ, you know, to tie it back into post-millennialism, um, you know, Christ is seated at the right hand of the father and all the nations are, are now his nations.

Um, so that's his glory. Now, let alone being God, God incarnate and being, uh, eternal, almighty sovereign, just righteous, you know, immutable, all the things that he has in and of himself on top of ruling the earth as a footstool. So, right.

And that's exactly what you get to see that image that you're talking about Rocky. That's what you find in Isaiah chapter six, one in the year of Uzziah. Um, um, Isaiah looked up and he saw the Lord see it at the right hand of God.

Right. And then, and then he saw the seraphim crying out, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God almighty. Right.

Isaiah has got to see the glory of the Lord. Yeah. And that's exactly what you see.

This is quoted in John chapter 12. And this is something that Isaiah, it says in verse chapter 12, verse 41, Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke of him. So he saw the glory of the Lord.

So holiness and glory are similar. They're not entirely the same thing, but they're similar as you grow in holiness, you grow in glory, right? Because your glory is in a, in a sense that the temple as it's being built, which is your person is the holiness as it's being built. And then the, the architecture, the beauty of the temple is now the glory.

That's what's being shown forth to the world. So that's what Jesus is. Jesus is pure and holy in his person and he shines forth his glory to the world.

Right. So we are to do the same thing. And as Rocky had mentioned that a king has glory when you see him with his crown, with his scepter in his right hand, sitting on his white throne, wearing his kingly robes.

That's when you see him as glorious. And that's how we ought to look at Christ. Isaiah saw that and he saw Jesus' glory.

And we are supposed to be people who look after the glory of Christ and we seek for it. Yeah. Glorious is maybe another way to think about it.

It's holiness expressed. It's visible holiness. It's holiness on display.

That's God's glory. And his glory is obviously different than human glory. It is pure expressed glory of his holiness.

Yeah. Yeah. Which is a beautiful picture.

So find it in the person of Christ. If you want to have glory, if you want to have, you know, the Christian version of gravitas, if you want to have glory, then seek for it in the person of Christ. Seek God.

Okay. You'll stand before kings. Yeah.

So that's what we want to exhort you with. This is a glory that's teleological. That's what we're trying to get across today.

Look forward to the next few weeks. I'm hearing more on this series on a glorifying grace, a grace that glorifies. That's what we're going to do the next four weeks, the next month.

So yeah, join us on that. You can check out the website for the kingpodcast.com and you can reach me if you have any questions or any inquiries or anything you want to reach out to me about or Bryce so you can reach me at for the kingpodcast@gmail.com. Thanks for tuning in. I always end with a doxology, so I'll just do first Timothy one, seven, king of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, the honor and glory forever and ever.

Amen. Sole day of glory. Glory.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.