Whatever you do, whether you eat or drink, whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God. Now, this text, we should begin to say in, when he says eat or drink, he’s been talking about food offered to idols. He says, whether you eat the food that’s been offered to idols or don’t eat it, what you do should be done for the glory of God. It should not be done to say you’re better than the brother or sister who doesn’t eat, or does eat. The following statement is an observation on a moral judgment. Frequently, when I say something or others say something, you may think it’s a judgment against other believers, and this is not the case.

Before I forget, there are a bunch more eggs out there that’s brought in this morning. Thank you, Steve. If you’d like to take them, they’re out in the foyer. Please be gracious to your brothers and sisters, and let’s not have a Walmart rush to trample each other to get the free eggs. So this following statement is an observation, not a moral judgment.

But we are today again dealing with concepts that typically do not come up in a traditional church service. Likely to be something we don’t often hear, and therefore, you might be tempted to think that your pastor is doing something strange and for some people even cultish. So I must remind you again this morning that simply because you have not heard a topic does not mean it’s in error or strange, just means you’ve never heard of it. Now, how do we avoid the assumption that what we’re hearing is outside the norm? The answer is we go to the scriptures. We look at what the Bible clearly teaches and says.

Now, it is true that there are areas of the Bible where we have debate and disagreement. When we have those, we dig down deeper. But typically, when the scripture is clear, and you’ve heard me say this different times, even though this one, believe it or not, is even being challenged in our culture today. Do not commit adultery. Means don’t sleep with somebody you’re not married to. Pretty plain, cut and simple.

You really can’t debate that statement, okay? So there are some issues in scripture we can debate, and some cannot be debated because they’re just very clear and straightforward. If we find that the scriptures bear out the subject or the context or the concept, we cannot think it or should not think it as strange or it’s unusual. We should accept it as the teaching of scripture. Now, in our brief foray into Ephesians chapter 1, a term came up that repeatedly that provoked some questions. We want to deal with one of those today.

So that statement was God determined beforehand to save a people for the glory of his name, for the glory of his name. Now, what exactly does the glory of his name convey? What exactly does the glory for the glory of his name convey? Now, we’ll come back to our revelation study at September. This morning, we might deal with this two or three weeks here about God’s glory. This morning, it’s more of the why and not the what, okay?

Describing God’s glory as a what is very difficult to do. So this morning, I’m dealing with one aspect of the why. So let’s begin with this question. What would you say if I told you the highest motivation for all that he does is his personal glory? That everything he does, his ultimate concern, is his glory. What would you say if I presented that?

Now, almost immediately, there will be or could be two objections. The first one is, boy, that sounds so egotistical, so self-centered. God is only interested in his glory, his highest motivation is his glory. And we would say if it was a human, we’d say that person is only interested in themselves. And we would be right, that’s a sound observation that we would come back to. The second consideration is that God’s love is his highest motivation.

When we say that God’s glory is his highest motivation, many people would say, wait a minute, Pastor, what about God’s love? God loved the world. This must be his highest motivation. Well, to that I would give you two other thoughts. First, you can only reach that conclusion by restricting ourselves to one or two verses dealing with God’s love. John 3:16, God so loved the world, and 1 John 4:8, God is love.

Those two verses, if you just went with them, you could make the argument that God’s highest motivation is his love for humankind. But then we need to remember this. The purpose of his love itself is to bring glory to his name through his redemptive acts. We benefit from his, in other words, his love is the means by which he glorifies his name by saving sinners. Remember that statement, to save a people for the glory of his name. And this is the consideration.

Now we saw this in our Ephesians text, and we will again see it in later texts this morning. But let me give you this quick reminder. Ephesians 1, verse 4, 5, 12, and 14. In love, he predestined us for adoption and sons through Jesus Christ, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. He loved us so that we would praise him and honor him for who he is and what he has done. In him, you were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit to the praise of his glory.

So God is moving and working to save people. And this is an act of love, but behind that act of love is God’s concern to glorify and magnify himself. Now this is a very important consideration. Listen to this from William Hendrickson in his commentary on Ephesians. He says, the rapturous contemplation of that freely bestowed love to those viewed as lost in sin and ruin moved the apostle to cry out, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. As he contemplates God’s love, he has moved to praise and celebration, as we noted in our journey through that chapter.

The heathen also at times ascribe praise and honor to their gods. But in their case, they do it to appease them or to extract some favor from them. And you’ll hear this in certain circles of the Christian church today. Let’s get really noisy when we’re praising God so he will do something for us. And this is not the right kind of glory. It’s not a glory that’s given to him for the greatness of who he is, but in the hopes that he will do something else for us.

Hendrickson goes on to say, therefore, such praise ends in man, not in the God to whom honor is ascribed. It resembles Cain’s offering, which the Lord could not accept. In Ephesians 1 at the close of each paragraph, there is genuine adoration, and such adoration was God’s intention in saving man. Love was the vehicle through which he saved us, but the goal of saving us is God’s eternal glory and fame and praise. The Ephesians text begins with the announcement that God has chosen to save us for the glory of his name. Now, unfortunately, again, like so much in the modern church, there is a deficiency in grasping the significance of this concept.

So to unpack it, or to attempt to unpack this, I wanna give you two more considerations today. And these are, God is not a human being, and the Bible overflows with references to God’s concern for his glory. That God is not a human being. Now, that statement is so simple, and it’s so familiar to us. Everyone in the room would say, well, sure, amen, God is not a human being. That’s why he’s called God.

And yet, God’s concern in the scriptures reveals that this is a legitimate issue, and that we can lose sight of the fact that God is not like us. God is not like us. Let me give you some thoughts to verify that. First, consider that the second commandment given at Sinai, you shall have no other gods before me, is the first. And the second one is, you shall not make any image. You shall have no graven image.

Now, in Deuteronomy 4, we unpack this a little further. Then the Lord spoke to you out of the midst of the fire on Sinai. You heard the sound of words, but saw no form. There was only a voice. Since you saw no form on the day that the Lord spoke to you, out of the midst of the fire, beware lest you act corruptly by making a carved image for yourselves in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female. Now, he goes on and says, don’t make it in the likeness of any animal either, but I want to call your attention to this.

He says, do not make an image of me that resembles you, because I’m not like you. I’m standing apart from you. We’ve dealt with this some, and I, calm down, pastor. I’ve dealt with anthropomorphisms. There’s a big word that you don’t need to know, but basically it means the Bible describes God in human terms. It talks about the ear of the Lord, the eye of the Lord, the hand of the Lord.

In Nahum, it says the clouds are the dust of his feet. Now, he doesn’t have feet like you and I. Jesus does, since he became incarnated in human flesh, the second member of the triune. God has a physical form, but God doesn’t have a physical form. And he says, don’t ever try to capture me like that, because when you do, you’re sending a message that God is like his creation. And he’s not like the creation.

He’s completely different from the creation. And kudos to Jason, who’s been doing such a tremendous job unpacking the attributes of God and reminding us of that. You saw no form. Don’t think of me as just one of you. Now, then there’s this passage from the book of Numbers with Balak and Balaam. Balaam took up his discourse and said, rise, Balak, and hear.

Give ear to me, O son of Zippor. God is not a man that he should lie, or a son of man that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Has he spoken, and will he not bring it to pass, or will he not fulfill it? Now, again, note that phrase. God is not a man that he would change his mind.

This is one of the biggest areas of confusion in the Christian church in America today, the idea that God changes. It’s called process theology. If he’s like us, then he must change, because we change. And that’s where it breaks down. He is not like us. We are like him in some respects, because we’re made in his image.

But he is not like us in any respect. And this is what the scripture bears out again and again. Listen to Isaiah 40:25. To whom, then, will you compare me that I should be like him, says the Holy One. Isaiah 55:8-9. My thoughts are not your thoughts.

Neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than your, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. I don’t have time to unpack that passage particularly. But I would call your attention to the fact that if you go back and read it, it’s a salvation text. And God says, I’m saving people you think would not be saveable and are not worth saving. And he says, this is the context of his thoughts being different.

He will rescue and deliver people that we might want to write off in our lives. Now, all of these passages and many others suggest that our tendency as fallen human beings is to do this very thing, to think of God in human terms. And many of our attempts at analogy focus on how God is like us rather than how we are like God. And we talk about this. Well, you know what? When I think about it, I think about this and we apply it to God.

And most of the time, we are wrong in doing that. Being made, as I said, in the image of God means that we are like him in many respects. And in the redemptive process, we will become like him even further through the resurrected body. But he is not like us. He is not a man. Now, what does that mean?

You cannot say that this claim that God is only concerned about his glory is an egotistical statement because that’s a term we use of fallen man. God is incapable of having his ego out of balance and that kind of thing. John Frame, in his book The Doctrine of God, talks about how in Matthew’s gospel especially, there’s this egocentrism of Christ. Everything is about Jesus. He says, I decide who gets to go to heaven. If you build your life on my words, you will succeed.

And if you don’t, you will fail. He’s all the time talking about himself. And this proves he’s God because a human making those kind of statements would be an egomaniac and we want nothing to do with him. But this is God in the carnate, the second member of the triune God saying those things. God is the highest good. Anselm of Canterbury said this.

He describes God in this way, the being that none greater can be conceived. You cannot imagine something greater than God. You cannot imagine something greater than God. And this is what we must think. He’s not one of us. There’s that song that I was hearing in my mind and I can’t remember the lady who sang it.

But it goes like this. What if God was one of us? Just a slob like one of us. And talking about it, and I always think it’s ironic Christ came to be one of us. But God in his divinity is nothing like us. And so we cannot accuse God of egotism because he wants to glorify himself.

He is the highest, best thing. I wish I was better at this part of the thoughts today. And maybe I can unpack it some more better. But if God is the greatest of the great, the best of the best, the purest of the pure, then we should never think of him in those kinds of terms of egotistical because he wants to glorify himself. Now then, we come to the second point. God’s highest concern is his own glory.

Due to scriptures to convey that, does the Bible actually say that God’s concerned about his name? Now here, I want to give you a couple of comments that demonstrate the importance of this. And I can quote from other people. One is Jonathan Edwards, who was a Princeton professor. He was born in 1703. And he was part of the so-called First Great Awakening.

And then the second person is John Piper, longtime pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the heartland of liberalism in America today. If you can survive 30 years in a church in Minneapolis, man, you are doing something great, amen. But here’s what Jonathan Edwards says first. God had respect to himself as his last and highest end in this work, the work of redemption, et cetera. Because he is worthy in himself to be so, being infinitely the greatest and best of all beings. All things else with regard to worthiness, importance, and excellence are perfectly as nothing in comparison of him.

All that is ever spoken of in the scripture as an ultimate end of God’s works is included in that one phrase, the glory of God. Now, John Piper, echoing Edwards’ comments, says this. He asked this question, why is it important to be stunned by the God-centeredness of God? Because many people are willing to be God-centered as long as they feel God is man-centered, that he revolves around us rather than us revolving around him. It is a subtle danger. We may think we’re centering our lives on God when we are really making him a means to self-esteem.

We’re back to what Hendrickson hinted at. Over against this danger, by the way, this comes from a book called Brothers, We Are Not Professionals, that he wrote for the ministers of our nation. Brothers, over against this danger, I urge you to ponder the implications, brothers, that God loves his glory more than he loves us, and that this is the foundation for his love for us. I’m going to repeat that. God loves his glory more than he loves us, and that this is the foundation for his love for us. Now, that last statement might be especially shocking.

And yet, if we agree, and unfortunately in America, many Christians do not agree with this. If we agree that we do not deserve his love, then what is the foundation for that love? If we don’t deserve it, then in what other sense does God extend it to us? And the answer is for the glory of his name. This is where we fail in a culture that says we’re basically good. Basically, good people do not need the glory and grace of God in their lives of redemption.

What does Jesus say? I didn’t come to call the righteous, though there aren’t any. I came to call the lost. I came to call the sick. There is none righteous, as we saw in Romans again and again. If we say that we do not deserve his love, where do we locate the motivation, the basis for that love?

And this is where it falls down, because in our default human position, we believe we do deserve God’s love. I repeat, our sign message last week, if God’s love is unconditional, many people in our culture believe that. But then why does Jesus say you must be born again? Why in Luke does he say you must repent or you will perish? Why does he accept Abel’s offering, but not Cain’s? When did this unconditional love begin?

And where does it stop? When we say it’s undeserved, it’s unmerited, but to benefit from his love, you must meet the conditions. And again, this isn’t the category of common grace versus special grace. It’s a different category and a different discussion. But in our culture today, most people think I deserve God’s love. And that’s why the message of grace is lost, because if I deserve it, he really hasn’t gone out of his way to do anything for me.

Only when I get a grasp, as what Scott described today, of this brokenness of my heart that looks at everyone else in the world as an interruption to my happiness, only when I come to terms with that will the glory and the majesty of God’s work in love rescue me from my sin. Do the scriptures clearly say and testify to the conclusion that God’s primary motivation is the glory of his name? Next week, we’ll come back to God’s glory and judgment, because God does glorify his name through judging sin. And I can’t preach that message today. Let’s start. Do the scriptures clearly testify to this conclusion?

Let’s start with something everybody in the room knows, the Lord’s Prayer. And what is the first petition in the Lord or the model prayer? Hallowed be thy name. Before you ask for forgiveness, before you ask for a provision of daily bread, before you ask for the kingdom to come, you say what? Hallowed be your name. May your name be declared and seen as holy.

When Jesus is asked, how do we pray? His words are, glorify God in your prayer. The first thing you do is glorify God in your prayer. How many were so guilty? We come to God, and I realize you have to work at this. The flesh doesn’t want to do it.

But many times we go to God, and the first thing we want, now God, today I need this, this, this, this, this, and this. And I don’t do that as much anymore. I start off with, thank you, Lord. Thank you for this, this, this, this. Thank you for yesterday. Thank you for today.

Thank you for my house. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Do any of us start our prayers, God, would you allow me to be an instrument of glorifying your name today? Whatever you do, not just in church, but in your life, seek to glorify God. That’s the first thing Jesus says. How do I pray, Lord?

Teach us to pray, the disciples say. And he says, here’s how you do it. Begin with an acknowledgment and a proclamation of God’s glory. Now, there are two Christian concepts that have permeated our culture. And by that, I mean even non-believers are familiar with these thoughts. The first one is Amazing Grace, that song, that music, that theme.

I remember the, if I’m not mistaken, Star Trek II, The Wrath of Khan. Spock dies, and they shoot his body down on this planet. And what is playing in the background? Amazing Grace on bagpipes. Now, John Newton wrote the words to Amazing Grace. The theme itself was not attached to the song until 1835 by a Baptist minister in New England.

But that song, it’s just part of our consciousness, isn’t it? People sing it, play it at funerals. You’ll hear it, and you’ll see it, part of who we are. Another passage that has become just part of the fabric of our culture is the 23rd Psalm. The Lord is my shepherd. But do you know what the third verse says?

He restores my soul. He leads me in the path of righteousness so I can get to heaven when I die, so I can go through life without any problems, so I can be guaranteed a big reward when I get there. He does this for his name’s sake. Now, you say, pastor, how do we know that that’s attached to the glory of God? Well, we could look at Psalm 79. Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of your name deliver us and atone for our sins for your name’s sake.

Now, this is what’s known as, and Scott used it this morning, about contrite, brokenhearted, and contrite. It’s two terms for the same expression. And it’s called parallelism, and there’s different categories. And I don’t know which category this is, but it’s parallelism, where you say the same thing again in different words to drive home your point. So he was bruised for our iniquities. He was wounded for our transgressions.

It’s the same point, but it’s driving home the emphasis. And so what we have here in Psalm 79 is that. For thy name’s sake and glorifying his name are one and the same concept. And the psalmist prays, he confesses God is leading him for his glorious name’s sake, and then he cries out that God would deliver him. Now, this concept, thy name’s sake, appears in another 12 passages in the Psalms. And the book of Psalms is the hymn book of Israel.

And by the way, some Reformed churches sing nothing but the Psalms. They don’t have hymnals. They sing through the Psalms week by week. Now, I cannot say that that’s right or wrong, but it does say to those people who do that, they’re going to be more familiar with this concept, for thy name’s sake. Now, from here on out this morning, we’re going to engage in that very tedious, what time is it, that very tedious practice of your pastor. Because I don’t want you to leave here thinking, well, that’s what he thinks.

That’s his opinion. That’s his viewpoint. I’m going to show you every one of those passages and then some where the scripture says God is doing things for his sake. And notice how in some of those, it’s paired with his love. You see both. So let’s begin.

Psalm 6:4. Turn, O Lord. Deliver my life. Save me for the sake of your steadfast love. Psalm 25:11. For your name’s sake, O Lord, pardon my guilt, for it is great.

Psalm 31:3. For you are my rock and my fortress. And for your name’s sake, you lead me and guide me. Here are the echoes of Psalm 23 in that passage. Then notice again, Psalm 106:6 and 8. Both we, 6 through 8.

Both we and our fathers have sinned. We have committed iniquity. We have done wickedness. Our fathers, when they were in Egypt, did not consider your wondrous works. They did not remember the abundance of your steadfast love, but rebelled by the sea at the Red Sea. They’ve already rejected his love.

Why should he act then on their behalf? Yet he saved them for his name’s sake, that he might make known his mighty power. How about Psalm 109? But you, O God, my Lord, deal on my behalf for your name’s sake. Now, certainly in all of these is that consideration. He’s not dealing with us because we deserve it.

We don’t deserve it in these passages. He’s dealing with it because of who he is, and in an effort to make himself known to broken human beings. Psalm 115:1. Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory for the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness. By the way, we’re only dealing with the passages that call for God’s name’s sake. Not all the other passages dealing with God’s glory.

Psalm 143:11. For your name’s sake, O Lord, preserve my life and righteousness bring my soul out of trouble. For same with 1222, the Lord will not forsake his people for his great name’s sake. Again, if you look at the context, they’re in rebellion against God. They don’t want nothing to do with God. God says, I’m going to save you for my name’s sake.

Wow is what I have to say to that. It has pleased the Lord to make you a people for himself. 2 Kings 19:34. I will defend this city to save it for my own sake. I’m doing this for the glory of my name. The Lord was pleased for his righteousness’ sake to magnify his law and make it glorious.

Isaiah 43:25. I, I am he who blots out your transgression for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins. This is where Piper says that his concern for his glory is the motivation for his love. The acts of love are done not because we deserve it. Again and again and again, the message of the Bible is we don’t deserve it. He does it for the glory of his name.

Now listen, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins. Isaiah 48:9 through 11. For my name’s sake, I defer my anger. For the sake of my praise, I restrain it for you that I may not cut you off. For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it. For how should I, should my name be profaned?

My glory I will not give to another. Jeremiah 14:7. Though our iniquities testify against us, O Lord, act O Lord rather, though our iniquities testify against us, act O Lord for your name’s sake. In other words, we’ve got no basis for calling upon you today. If we have any hope of your mercy, it has to be for your name’s sake and not for our righteousness’ sake because we have no righteousness. Jeremiah 14:21.

Do not spurn us for your name’s sake. Ezekiel 29. But for the sake of your name, that it should not be profaned in the sight of the nations. And then Ezekiel 36. When they came to the nations, they have to get the contextual significance here. This is after he sends them into captivity for their sins.

They continue to rebel against him. Go back and read the book of Ezekiel. And Ezekiel sees visions of people, Jerusalem is in ruins. The people had carried into captivity. And Ezekiel has shown visions of people in Israel still worshipping idols. They’ve rejected God’s chastisement and his love.

And he says, when they came to the nations, when they went to where I sent them as an act of judgment, they profaned my holy name. I had concern for my holy name, which the house of Israel had profaned among the nations. Therefore, say to the house of Israel, it is not for your sake that I act redemptively. It is not for your sake that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name. I will vindicate the holiness of my great name.

I know this flies directly in the face of an American culture who believes God’s purpose of existence is to guarantee my personal happiness. He’s working for the glory of his name. Now listen to this passage from Ezekiel. It’s too big to put on a slide, so I got to read it to you. I will call your attention to how it connects to the passages from Jeremiah regarding the new covenant, where God becomes our father and we become his children. Now listen what he says.

And I will give you a new heart in that day. I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you. I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. This is back to Ephesians. He’s given us the Holy Spirit as a guarantee of our inheritance.

You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers and you shall be my people and I will be your God. Remember last week we looked at those passages and said they are metaphors for God being our father and we being his children. Now listen, did you hear that? I will put my spirit within you. You’ll dwell in the land that I gave your fathers. You shall be my people.

I will be your God. It is not for your sake that I act declares the Lord God. I’m going to undo this mess of rebellion and sin that has plagued man from the beginning in the Garden of Eden. I’m going to undo it all. But I’m going to do it for my sake. Because in the glorification of his name is the hope of our redemption and our supply.

It is not for your sake that I will act declares the Lord God. Let that be known to you. Be ashamed and confounded for your ways, oh house of Israel. Now two things and we’re done. First, why would anybody argue against the idea that God wants to glorify himself? What possible objection could we have to that?

Not even from all the scriptures I brought out, but just the idea, well look at God had done to rescue us from our sins and yet we want to deprive him glory. I’m not saying any of us are doing that, but I’m saying that’s a foolish justification in my view. But these many passages and many, many more, as I said, these passages make clear God has regard for the glory of his name. The question then for each of us, in light of this command of 1 Corinthians Chapter 10, am I ordering my life for the glory of God as commanded? Am I seeking to glorify God in my Facebook post? In my language around people who don’t believe?

Am I seeking to glorify God in my giving? In my prayer life? In my love for my enemies? In my determination to be obedient to his word at however broken that is? Scott touches on something that all of us deal with, road rage. I mean, it’s just crazy.

I mean, you know, I’ve got to be careful, pastor. The big problem America has is its drivers cannot stay on their side of the yellow line. I mean, I follow trucks up Fort Road that are taking turns across the line. So I understand road rage. But Jesus in Matthew said what? If you’re angry at your brother without a cause, you’re in danger of hellfire.

And you do not know that the person in that car is not a believer. We don’t take that command seriously. Are we ordering our lives so that we are in compliance with this command, glorify God in everything? Not just your church attendance, but in every aspect. Your parenting, your husband and wife relationships, your civic duties. Are you seeking God’s glory?

All of that. Because God is concerned with his glory. Amen?

Source: Reasoning Tree Church — “Glory to God in the Highest”
Date: August 9, 2026