06: Soli Deo Gloria

Romans 11, 33 through 36.

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable are his judgments, and how inscrutable his ways.

For we for who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor, or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid.

For from him and through him and to him are all things.

To him be the glory forever.

Amen.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Thanks.

Good afternoon.

I bet you guys all came in here to get out of the heat.

How's that working for ya?

So you will notice when you stand up today that you will have to peel yourself off of the chair that you're sitting into.

So just a forewarning: it's not you, it's everyone.

So welcome to church this afternoon.

My name's James Rathman.

I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

We are at the end of our summer series, and we're about to be moving into our fall sort of kickoff.

So things that are going to be starting in the fall, uh, we've got redemption groups that are going to be starting after next week.

So after Sunday the 8th, redemption groups will all begin.

These are our small groups where we meet in each other's homes throughout the week.

So if you would like to be part of a redemption group, which we highly recommend, the best way to sign up is to go downstairs into the lobby at the Connect table, and Sebastian wave, the one waving, will uh be able to sign you up for a redemption group.

Um another great way is to go online uh and go under Gather Small and you can sign up there, or download the Redemption Church Denver app and tap groups and then click join.

Um but meeting someone face to face, that's typically the best way to join a group of humans.

So uh that's coming up.

Also, uh next week we're going to be beginning a new series called Redemption Applied.

Uh Redemption Applied is going to take us all the way through the fall up till uh uh up till Thanksgiving, and then we'll go into like a Christmas series.

So uh what this is about is what is the vision of Redemption Church Denver?

So, what are the top ten things that we want to be really focusing on and zeroing in on as a church uh here in our city?

So uh really looking forward to moving through this series together, and I think it'll be a great time to do so.

This will lead up to a discussion of church membership.

So, what does it mean to be a part of Redemption Church, and you'll have the opportunity to join as a member at the end of this series.

Um right now, as you can tell, our church is in a exciting middle point.

So you can tell by the incredible heat uh and that we're meeting here at 4:30, that we're in a bit of a non-traditional moment as a church.

So, what I want us to be able to do through this next series is grasp the vision of where we're headed and why it is that we exist as a church in the city.

Uh, this is something that I think is going to be really exciting to be a part of.

It's going to be really challenging for us on a number of levels.

Um, but I think what God has for us as a church, uh, we haven't even begun to grasp to scratch the surface of yet.

Uh so thank you for joining us.

Thank you for enduring the heat with us.

Um this is a uh uh a refining time for our church.

You know, we there are churches all over the world that are gathering together today in all sorts of circumstances, uh, many far worse than this.

And God is being glorified in these churches.

God is glorified by our discomfort that we prize coming together still, even at a time that is kind of strange and out of rhythm with what it normally would be.

And so, as a church, for us to grasp that and lean in to that reality instead of race off to what the most next, to what the ne to comfort, to what the most next comfortable thing is, it's not an expression, uh, that would be a mistake.

Because there's real glory that's happening here.

And that's what today's sermon is all about.

Today's sermon is all about God seeking his glory in the gospel.

So uh I'm going to pray.

Uh, and if you would pray with me and then we will begin into our text today.

Father, we praise you for the way that you have worked things according to the counsel of your own will.

Lord, we thank you that you are the one who is in control and who shows us your will each day.

Lord, we pray that you would give us hearts that are willing to receive it with gratitude.

Father, I pray that as we look into your text today, we would find our right place in your story.

And that in finding it, you would enliven our hearts with an incredible joy that we might get to be in your presence.

And even better than presence, we might get to be united to you.

Father, open our hearts that we might see the depths of your glory.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So this is the last sermon in our series covering the five solas of the Reformation.

What we've been through is uh uh we sort of took the end of the summer here to do something deeply theological because we found that that goes really well with hot rooms on Sunday afternoons, uh, is really deep theology.

So there's uh we've moved through the first four solas, and today is the last one.

Now, what we're looking at here is uh basically a description or a summary of the doctrines that sparked this incredible revival in the 1500s in Western Europe.

And what happened was that the church had sort of deteriorated to a point where the very gospel had been lost.

And through the rediscovery of the gospel by the Bible getting back into people's hands, uh they they a revival, a new life took place throughout the whole church.

And uh with this revival, it's become typical to look back at it and summarize it in these five doctrinal phrases.

So that's what we've been looking at through this series, and these all begin with a sola.

Sola means alone in Latin, and these are sola scriptura, which means scripture alone, sola fide, which means faith alone, sola gratia, which means grace alone, sola cristo, which means Christ alone, and today's the final one, which is solideo gloria, which means for God's glory alone.

Now, the first four all have to do with our personal justification before God.

So how interested you are in them has to do with how interested you are in your justification before God.

What does it mean to stand before God and for him to drop the hammer, drop the gavel, and say, not guilty, free, innocent, in fact, righteous.

That is our justification before God.

You may be thinking, isn't that all it's about with you people?

Is it always about just like God saying whether or not you get to go to heaven when you die?

And look, we do like that.

But that isn't all justification is.

In fact, what you understand about your justification, perhaps more than anything else, will determine how you experience God on a day-to-day basis, and even how you experience any other aspect of your life on a day-to-day basis.

We're always trying to justify ourselves.

We're always feeling guilty for not measuring up to some level of justification, or perhaps feeling prideful because we think we have measured up to some level of justification.

And that sort of boundary is a pretty good depiction of the way we lead a lot of our lives.

Which is, okay, so I've hit this target, so then I feel okay about myself, or I didn't hit that target and now I feel crushed.

We're always considering justification, even passively, in the back of our minds, as we're ranking ourselves against each other.

So our justification is really, really important.

Understanding our justification is the difference between living free lives of joy or living condemned lives of despair.

And so we can see this play out in the first four solas.

In Sola Scriptura, we see that sin had caused us to become deaf to the glory of God that we're surrounded by, and God gives us his scripture so that he might shout to us in a language that we can understand, so that we might come to him and be saved.

Sola Cristo.

It shows us that although we were created in the image of God, we considered that that was not enough, and that it would be better if we actually took the place of God in our own lives.

And in that incredible act of arrogance, we dethrone God in our hearts.

But God, who is our King, did not look upon us treasonous people as something to be thrown away.

Instead, he placed himself humbly under our arrogance, and we killed him for it, and it's by his death that we are saved.

The humility of God triumphed over the arrogance of us.

And so, because of the blood of Jesus, Jesus alone, we are saved.

So in Solo Cristo, we see our justification again.

And then in Sola Gratia, we see what is it that compelled Jesus to save a people like us?

And Solo Gratia explains it's nothing in ourselves.

There was no goodness that he saw in us and said, Oh, because you've earned this metric or because you've justified yourself in this way, now I will come down and justify you.

That's not the story.

God is compelled completely by his grace alone.

The good news of the gospel is that it's based in the very graciousness of God Himself.

And so what is our hope in?

What is our faith in?

Well, I'm getting ahead of myself.

Our faith.

Sola fide.

So fide, meaning faith, uh, it is by faith alone that we are justified.

Because it is by grace alone that we are saved, it makes sense that the only way to experience that salvation, the righteousness of God, would not be by a work that we bring to it, but would be by the mere reception of the gospel by faith.

So that we say, when Jesus said that he died for us and that accomplished our salvation, we believe him.

And we will depend on him alone for our salvation.

And it's as simple as receiving it, and then it's as complicated as our faith playing out into every area of our lives for the rest of our lives.

So, the first four all tie directly to our justification in these easily tangible ways.

And so it starts to make sense to us why this sparked such a revival.

Because all of these people, this entire culture that was so saturated with this intense religiosity, all of a sudden they started to break free and throw that yoke off and realize there's a way to actually live freely with God because this thing that I'm trying to earn and give to him, God has already accomplished and freely gives to me.

The freedom that washed over that culture.

It's amazing.

It's an incredible thing.

But this last one, Soli Deo Gloria, for the glory of God alone, this one may seem like an outlier to us.

What does this have to do with our justification?

Or perhaps it might feel like this undoes all the hope that we had just experienced through the other four solas.

Because what Soli Deo Gloria says is that God accomplished this great work for the ultimate purpose of his glory.

So what is this?

Is the love that we receive from God just like the love from any other narcissist?

Is it such that when God loves us, it's not really for us.

It's not a love that really comes, you know, with uh without some strings attached, right?

In it, God is ultimately seeking his own glory.

It can feel as though that somehow diminishes these great works of God.

But as we see and as will be revealed, hopefully through this sermon, as we come to understand what God is seeking, who God is, when he is seeking his glory alone, we'll find that God being completely and utterly committed to his own glory is the best news in the world.

It's the best news in the world.

That's exactly what we want from God.

We want him to be committed to his own glory.

So at the end of every sermon, uh at the end of every time we gather together, we sing the doxology.

And Zach takes out his pitch pipe, goes, hmm, he doesn't really, but I wish he did.

And we sing, praise God from whom all that's right, and then we stand on the back of Matthew Haggerty, who just pulls it together for us.

And we uh uh we all sing that, and it's it's supposed to be this explosion of praise that propels us out into the rest of our lives, so that this thing that we do here on Sundays, which is gathering together as a people to worship the living God, that praise doesn't stay here, but it overflows into the rest of our lives, so that the rest of everything we do is marked by praise, by praise of God.

So that sort of doxology, that's what we see Paul explode into at the end of this section of his letter to the Romans.

So Paul writes this incredible 11 chapters, uh basically describing the gospel in the most amazing, wonderful terms you could ever possibly imagine.

And then at the end of chapter 11, he he explodes into this incredible moment of praise.

And it sounds like this.

This is Romans 11, 33 to 36.

We've just got 36 up there, because that's where we're gonna hang out.

But all I want you, I want you to just hear this.

This is what we read today.

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God.

How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways.

For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor, or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?

For from him and through him and to him are all things.

To him be glory forever.

Amen.

I hope as a church that we would find ourselves in moments in God's word where we explode as we just see God's glory before us.

So, in this final verse of that explosion of passion when he's gazing upon the glory of God in the gospel, it says that it sort of praises God using prepositions, which is anything a bird can do to a cloud.

And it says, For from him, for from God and through God and to God are all things.

So, what does all things include?

Let me count the things.

All things, that's everything, right?

So all things are from God.

Everything is from God, and all things are through him, which means he didn't just create and step away, but that he is bringing about providentially all things.

And all things are to him, which means what is the ultimate purpose of everything in all of existence?

It is God.

To him be the glory forever, from through, and to.

So in that we see this pattern of God producing, managing, and then receiving his glory.

All things are for the glory of God.

So let's start with what is glory?

You know, when when well you'll you'll know it when you see it.

Uh glory is uh kind of a tough thing to pin down, but the scriptures do us a favor and they help us a lot.

So, what's a good example of glory?

Well, we can start where we started with sola scriptura.

You know, a great example of glory is the sky.

I don't know if you've seen it lately.

Uh the sky.

So Psalm 19.1 begins here and it says, The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.

See, what the sky is doing, the sunsets, the stars, it in all of creation is doing this.

The reason that you, you know, contrary to better advice that you've received, you go chasing waterfalls and you take selfies in front of them.

The reason that you do that is because those things contain glory.

What you're seeing there when you look up at the stars, when you look at a sunset, when you gather people around and you go on a hike to see an amazing view, what you're doing is you're seeing glory.

It's why you move to the mountains.

They're primarily, before they're anything else, they're declaring glory.

That's the first thing that they're doing.

And so when I say you'll know it when you see it, you do.

You're drawn to it all the time.

When you have a really good cup of coffee, you're experiencing glory.

When you have a great beer, like a modello.

That's such a Denver joke.

That was such a Denver joke.

Um, to like make fun of a light beer, um, especially light beer.

Uh, then uh you are you're tasting and experiencing actual glory.

Glory of God.

These things are not so far away as we think, and yet we don't know or see it as the proclamation of God's glory.

We don't look at the stars.

When we look at the stars, the first thing we see now in our kind of broken down Western Enlightenment minds is giant balls of gas forever away.

We we've collapsed things into these categories that we think are the most real categories.

But they're not.

The most real category of creation is a proclaimer of glory.

And so to get our minds right is to receive the glory that the world is proclaiming.

But as I said, our minds aren't right.

Corrupted by sin, instead of seeing the proclamation of the glory of God, we say that thing's glorious in itself, and so that must be all that there is.

Here's an analogy that I got from this book called Through New Eyes by this guy named James B.

Jordan.

And he says this you know, us uh living us as corrupted by sin uh is and not seeing the glory of God, not being able to distinguish God's fingerprints in creation is kind of like this.

He says, Imagine if the only music in the world was Bach.

Like, I'm realizing I should have chosen the different artists.

Because when I hear Bach, like nothing just came into my mind.

So let's do this.

Imagine that all the music in the world is Taylor Swift.

Congratulations to some of you.

I apologize for the rest.

All the music in the world is Taylor Swift.

And so whenever you hear any music, it's just Taylor Swift.

93.3.

It's the it's Taylor Swift, you know, 97.3.

World class rock means variety, so we have all of Taylor Swift's music.

That is all the music that you ever hear anywhere.

When someone plays Music somewhere, they are always and only playing Taylor Swift.

So then when you go to talk about music, you forget that you would ever be talking about Taylor Swift, because to you, this is just music.

This is the way that uh Jordan says it.

He says, now since there is no other music to compare this music to, would you be able to hear, remember we swapped Taylor Swift for Bach, will you be able to hear Bach's personality in the music?

Or would it be easy for us to forget about Bach and assume that music simply is?

You see, that's what we do with creation.

We look at it and we forget about God.

We forget that it was created of his own imagination.

We forget that he calls out the stars by name.

We forget that he tells the sun to move where it moves.

We forget that he is the one doing all of these things because it's so ubiquitous.

He's doing everything.

And so what the scriptures re-train our hearts to do is to see the glory of God that is being proclaimed in the world.

It retrains us to see that this isn't just the way things are, but this is something that God is gloriously doing.

Now, when we move in a way of viewing the world as though creation simply is, as though, and this is the way that most worldviews operate, and it's kind of the default way that we tend to operate, that uh that we're just governed by natural laws and creation and matter and all these things that it's made up of, they just simply are.

And so these are the eternal things in the world.

To talk about something real is to talk about something physical, and that is the determinative function of creation, of the world, I should say.

And then we start to treat God not as God who all things are from and through and to, but we start to treat God as just another part of creation like us.

So God becomes like us, like a human, just better.

God becomes like a superman, and a superman who was, you know, uh like us good, but just really good.

And like us, powerful, but really powerful, and like us intelligent, but really intelligent.

And that becomes the category that God starts to fill.

Now, if that type of Superman were to show up and say, I do things only for my glory, so you need to live in a way that just brings me glory.

We'd say, This is not a good deal.

You're not the type of thing that can live for only your glory.

And because God moves into this category of Superman because of the way that we relate to his glory and creation, then we start to resent God for seeking his own glory.

And we think you shouldn't be pursuing your own glory above all else.

I thought you loved me, but as it turned out, you were just seeking your own glory, and it feels like a loss.

But that's because we've missed who God really is.

For a Superman to gain glory, he would need to use creation to glorify himself.

He would need to gather up as many people as he could, he would need to conjure them into worship, he would need to go and get as much gold as he could, and all of those things would be adding to and contributing to his own glory.

And it would be some sort of a loss for anyone that wasn't participating in him getting his own glory, or uh, or someone else who wanted some glory for themselves would always be net losing when the superman got glory for himself.

Does that make sense?

There's only so much gold in the world, for example.

And if you wanted to have the most glorious temples, then that means your temple would be moderately less glorious.

But God does not relate to the glory in creation like a superman relates to it.

Because all the glory in creation is from God.

Which means that it's only there because he put it there.

And if he put it there, that means he has it.

God seeking his own glory in creation is part of a bigger story than a God who happens upon the world and says, I want this thing to worship me.

The only reason that there's glory in the world in the first place is because he put it there.

Because all glory is from him.

This is where Paul goes as we're kind of moving backwards up his doxology.

He says in Romans 11, 35, he says, or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?

Who is it that comes to God and says, Okay, I'm gonna try and give you some glory?

And and now will be square, right?

Because I had some glory and now I gave it to you, God, right?

Now you have more glory.

Uh no, God gets the gift and he's like, thanks for giving me this glory, but do you, I don't know if, I don't know if you remember.

I was the one who gave you that glory in the first place.

Like the reason that you have that glory is because it's from me.

This is like the way that we tithe, right?

Just kidding, I just wanted to suck the air out of the room.

This is uh it so when we're giving to God, right, of our own resources, what we're saying is, God, you're the one who gave this to me in the first place.

This is only mine because it was, it's yours.

And so for it to be yours again is just the same.

That's the way his glory works.

Who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?

And so this comes through in the ways that we start to consider creation.

The Superman would create a world to fill up some lack in him.

He would create a world to give him a glory that he didn't already have.

So this comes out in ways that we talk about why God created in the first place.

Because we'll often say, like, well, God was sitting there and he was lonely.

And so in God's loneliness, he created the world so that he might have people to shower his love on and to not be lonely anymore.

No, God is not lonely.

God is lacking nothing because all things are from him and through him and to him.

This is the God that we're talking about.

Perfectly satisfied in himself, perfectly glorious in himself, perfectly complete in the community of the Trinity.

There is nothing that God is lacking whatsoever.

The way that theologians sum this up, God is happy.

We worship a happy God, completely happy in himself, enjoying being God.

God never shows up and is like, hey man, it would be great if I could get a break.

Does anybody know where uh oh man, the guy's name flipped my mind.

Jim Carey is.

Jonathan Edwards, who's the best at talking about this, he says this.

Surely it is no argument of indigence.

And if you're reading a good Jonathan Edwards book, they'll tell you what that word means in brackets, uh, depravity or poverty.

Surely there is no argument of a lack, right, in God that he is inclined to communicate his infinite fullness.

It's no argument of the emptiness or deficiency of a fountain that it is inclined to overflow.

That is what creation is.

It's the overflow of this glorious fountain who is God.

It's him pouring out of himself more and more of who he is.

And he creates it into the world in this manifold ways where there's all sorts of variety and strangeness and peculiarity and majesty that's just in creation, that's in our state.

Not every state can say that, but that's in our state.

But then one might ask, how can this glorious God, who's all good, completely satisfied in himself, overflowing his goodness, well, how does that God creating a world relate in any way to the world that we live in and inhabit?

Because when I look around at the world, I see a hurricane that's about to wreak havoc on Florida, see uh catastrophes all over our planet, some natural disasters, us humans turning on each other.

There's probably like a deer that no one will see ever anywhere that has a broken leg right now.

Why?

Why would God create such such a thing to happen in the world?

It seems like the world that we have could actually be posed as the perfect argument against a perfectly glorious, perfectly satisfied in himself God even existing.

Seems like if we wanted to say that type of God existed, we wouldn't say he gloriously created a world and it's this one.

In fact, we'd probably say much the opposite.

So, how can those things be brought together?

Well, first of all, we need to pay attention to the question that we're asking.

The question that we're asking there is, what type of world would a God who is purely glorious in himself create?

And we say, well, a purely glorious world.

But there's a question that we should have asked before that, which is why would a perfectly glorious, perfectly satisfied in himself, God, create anything at all, anyway?

Why would God create the world?

And when we switch that question, the only reasonable motivation for God to create anything is to enjoy himself more.

It's to overflow out of his own glory.

What is it that motivates the perfectly glorious God?

It's the perfectly glorious God.

So then, what type of a world would that God create?

Well, he'd create the world that was able to perfectly demonstrate his most glorious qualities.

In Exodus, Moses spends a lot of time with God, and repeatedly he's like, Show me yourself, tell me your name, things like that.

And God responds.

And in Exodus 34, 6 through 7, this is how God describes his name to Moses.

He says, uh, that God passes before Moses when he's in the cleft of a rock.

It's all very strange.

He says, The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, this is the Lord's name, the Lord the Lord, a God merciful and gracious.

This is the most glorious God.

Slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children to the third and the fourth generation?

So if that God were to create a world, let's walk through it.

That God is merciful and gracious.

That means the world would need to include people that he could be merciful and gracious to.

So what does it require in order for someone to be shown mercy?

What do you have to do first to get shown mercy?

Any takers?

Transgress his law.

Transgress his law.

Perfect example.

Really on the nose.

You have to transgress his law.

That's right.

So if this God, who is merciful and gracious, wants to create a world to show who he is, the glory of who he is, he would create a world where people had transgressed his law, and that he might come to them and say, You're forgiven.

He's slow to anger.

You know, that might require God to commit himself to a people that would constantly give him reason to be angry.

He is abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.

This means that it would require a world of people who, by no desert of themselves, receive his steadfast love.

It would require a people who would seem like they are faithless to their God, that way his faithfulness might shine through in this incredibly glorious way.

He forgives sin and iniquity.

This means that it is a world where there is sin and iniquity, and that he himself as God might come in and say, You are forgiven.

And he doesn't clear the guilty, which means that he is a God of perfect and absolute justice.

So if that God wanted to create a world that perfectly demonstrated his glory, I think that type of world would look a lot like this one.

You know, our world actually satisfies those types of requirements perfectly.

We're full of sinful, faithless people that break laws, that need justice shown to them, and that need mercy shown to them.

So God demonstrates his glory in this world.

But as you'll see, there's kind of a contradiction, right, in those last two qualities of God's character.

Because how can he be merciful and forgiving sin and iniquity?

And how can he also be the God who by no means clears the guilty?

Don't you see this is the wonder of the gospel?

This is the heights of God's glory.

Because it's on the cross in Jesus that God becomes a man so that he might bear the burden of our sin and iniquity, so that the sin in the world might be punished by God, by no means cleared, by no means just winked at, by no means just pretending that it didn't happen, but actually by a perfectly just God dealt with.

And then at the very same time, at the very same occasion, he is being completely merciful.

So he holds out his hand, says, to all who would come to me, you will be saved.

You will experience this great, incredible mercy, the heights of glory, which is being connected to me in me alone, I give to you freely, because look at my name.

I'm abounding in steadfast love.

You can trust me.

I forgive sin and iniquity.

I by no means clear the guilty.

Look at Jesus.

I have perfectly accomplished that.

How can justice and mercy possibly take place in the same being, let alone the same moment in space and time?

The cross is the only answer.

It is the heights of glory.

And so when God is pursuing his own glory, it means our salvation, our rescue, our being united to him.

God pursuing his own glory is exactly what we want.

And what does it result in for us?

But worship.

It's where we see this come together, just like Paul sees it come together at the end, and he proclaims this in Romans 11, 36, says, or Romans 11.33, I'm sorry.

Oh the depths of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable are his judgments, and how inscrutable his ways.

He's talking about the cross.

He's talking about how we were all bound up in sin so that he might free us, so that God might demonstrate who he is, so that his glory overflows into the world.

God pursuing above all else his glory is the same thing as God pursuing our salvation.

It's the same thing as God pursuing the highest joy for his people, the highest happiness in existence.

Remember, he is a happy God.

And our hope is that we might experience that happiness.

I want to finish with this last quote.

This is from Jonathan Edwards, and he says, God's respect to the creature's good and his respect to himself is not a divided respect, but both are united in one.

As the happiness of the creature aimed at is happiness in union with himself.

So when God calls us and he says, make your lives about glorifying me, it's the same as God saying, make your lives about the pursuit of the highest happiness in existence.

When God says, I am pursuing above all else my glory, you can hear, I am pursuing above all else you being united to my happiness.

How certain can we be of our salvation when we place our faith in Jesus?

Look, God will not miss his glory.

Which means that God will not miss your good.

That's how linked God has made them.

He has set the world in motion in such a way as to his pursuit of his glory is the same as his pursuit of your good.

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God.

How unsearchable are his judgments, inscrutable his ways.

So it is all for glory, all for God's glory.

And that's the best news of all.

With that, let's take one question.

How can we find satisfaction in God when we cannot see Him?

Without relying on some sort of mysticism?

Well, it depends on what you mean by mysticism.

If looking up at the stars and saying these are a proclamation of God's glory is mysticism, then I'm fine with that type of mysticism.

If looking at the world and seeing, you know, the most fundamental aspect of the human is not that they're this biological reproducing organism, but that they are the image of God, then I'm okay with that type of mysticism.

So uh it's hard to answer without understanding our terms, but finding satisfaction in God is a matter of two things.

It's a matter of faith in him, to where we say, look, the story that you have laid out is the story that my life is going to be a part of.

It's a matter of saying, coming to Jesus and saying, Look, I have no righteousness of my own that could possibly unify me to this glorious God.

But Jesus, you have done it all.

And so I will come to you.

So that you might take this heart that is dead, that can't even see the glory in the world, and you would give me a heart of flesh, so that I might look out and see that I'm looking for the image of God, and it turns out I'm surrounded by it.

It's sitting at my own dinner table, and I haven't even had the eyes to see it.

So it's a matter of faith that recolors the world and that cements us into being God's children.

And then it's also a matter of obedience.

We think of obedience as removing freedom.

But Paul, earlier in this letter, he describes the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

The glory is what brings the freedom.

And how do we demonstrate that God is the most glorious thing in our life?

We obey Him.

When He calls us to love one another, to love Him above all else, that's us seeking to be in His glory.

And so our very obedience, while that might seem like a constraint on our freedom, it is the very thing that brings our lives into real freedom.

So, how do you uh find satisfaction in God?

You you trust Him and you obey Him.

That's how.

And uh you're mystical but not weird.

Okay.

We're about to take communion, and when we take communion, we are celebrating this reality of God's glory, which is that the heights of his glory are demonstrated in the gospel.

That at the very same point in history, justice and mercy came together, and that all of creation moving towards his glory is good news for us.

It's the project we want to be a part of.

So let's celebrate that together.

If you are a Christian, we welcome you to partake.

If you are not a Christian, we welcome you to be one.

It is a simple submission of the heart to Jesus, a reception of his invitation to bring you into the glory of the happy God.

It requires nothing for you to bring, only that you would lay down for him.

So with that, let's pray.

Father, we praise you for your glory.

We pray that our lives would be lived in pursuit of it.

We thank you that you have structured the world in such a way that your pursuit of your own glory means your pursuit of our goodness and our unity with you.

Father, would you let that settle into our hearts?

Would you let that cover over deep fears that we might have?

Where we know that you are pursuing your glory and you won't miss it.

Father, we lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.