Good morning, everybody. And to all you mothers, happy Mother’s Day.
I’d like to read a few verses before we pray.
John 11:23-26
Jesus saith unto her, Thy brother shall rise again.
Martha saith unto Him, I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day.
Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth on Me, though he die, yet shall he live.
Philippians 3:10
That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed unto His death.
1 Corinthians 15:17-19
And if Christ hath not been raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.
Then they also that are fallen asleep in Christ have perished.
If we have only hoped in Christ in this life, we are of all men most pitiable.
John 11:40
Jesus saith unto her, Said I not unto thee, that, if thou believedst, thou shouldest see the glory of God?
Lord, we want to thank You for making it possible that we could even come into Your presence. But, Lord, just being in Your presence and knowing that You love us and redeemed us is not enough.
Remember, Moses said, “Lord, show me Thy glory.” Lord, this morning, that’s what I ask: You show us Your glory in these things that we discuss.
I thank You, Lord, that when Moses asked that, it was not some kind of thing where he was just wanting to have some experience. He wanted to see. He really wanted to see You.
Lord, You let him. You covered him up, and You said, “You can see My back as I pass by.” Lord, even if we would be able to see that today, or be brought into seeing that just from thinking about Your Word, that would be wonderful. That’s what we ask for.
We know that there’s nothing we can say or do that can make these things happen to us. We only look to You and have this petition: that You would show us Yourself in such a way this morning that You would have a real effect on our lives.
Lord, only You can do this. We ask, by the Holy Spirit, that You’ll bear witness to Who You are and Who Your Son is. In Jesus’ name, amen.
This morning, I’ve got to continue—as you know, I’ve been talking on John for the last whatever it’s been. I started out by saying we’d do a verse-by-verse kind of thing, but if we did that, I think the Lord would have come already and I still wouldn’t be finished.
So I’ve been taking something that has really struck me out of each chapter. We’re in John 11, and we all know that is the raising of Lazarus. That’s what we usually look to.
But I’ve seen something different for the first time in reading these passages and thinking about them. I’ve always looked at the raising of Lazarus as a miracle. You look at this miracle and go, “Well, this is really neat. I see the power of God. God can do this.”
Something has been different. As a matter of fact, this chapter isn’t about Lazarus. Lazarus just happens to be a figure, but he’s really not the focal point of it.
It is the Lord Jesus Himself. What I want to do is define what the Lord is really saying this raising of Lazarus is all about. I want to look at what the Lord says about Himself, then I want to look at the sign, and then have a little application to these things.
I read the last verse in John 11, verse 40, where it says, “Did I not say to you that if you would believe, you would see the glory of God?”
That really, really struck me: you would see the glory of God.
I don’t know how you guys think, but a lot of times when I think of the glory of God, I think of something really bright. Sometimes, when I’m on my way to school, the sun is rising and it gets so bright that you have to put down the little visor and put on sunglasses.
That’s what we think glory is: some kind of brightness. In a sense, there is that brightness, that type of glory. You read, especially in the Old Testament, that the glory of the Lord appeared.
There is also that glorious satisfaction—you know, being satisfied in something. But when I was preparing for this, I read about three books after I read the Scriptures and thought about them.
I read this definition of glory from T. Austin-Sparks, and it blew me away. I want to read it slowly, because I know a lot of you guys take copious notes. You write down everything we say. You’re like my math-side kids: I just write, and they go, “Don’t stop. Wait, wait, wait!”
But anyway, this is what he said. First of all, he said, “The glory of God is satisfaction.” Then, describing that satisfaction, he said:
The glory of God is the satisfaction of His very nature. In other words, He is pleased in the core of His being.
Then he went on to describe what that means and what it looks like:
If our whole life was gathered up into one particular object and concern, so that we had nothing else to justify our existence, and that object was a consuming passion, so that for it we lived, and we thought, and we planned, sacrificed, suffered, and worked, and longed for with an unutterable longing; and then that object was realized, where it was reached or it was possessed—if that happened, one should be quite unable to shut it in to ourselves. It would break out and affect all around us. That would be glory.
I had never thought of these things. I remember when I was a kid, I know what he’s talking about, because I’ve done something where I put everything on the line to achieve something. Unfortunately, I didn’t achieve it, so I didn’t really get the glory. But I know what he’s talking about.
Something that you set your heart on to have—then you think, what does God want to have? We’ll talk about that at the end, but this is the whole thing. This is what glory is.
You put everything that you are into this thing, into having this thing. Then, when you have it, you just can’t hold it in. It goes everywhere.
It is almost like that must have been what creation was like. You just couldn’t hold it all out there. No big bang—just glory.
This has given me a whole other way of viewing things.
I started thinking about the verse in Romans 3:23: “All have sinned, and fallen short of the glory of God.” I always looked at that as being, “Well, my light doesn’t compare to Him.” But it’s not saying that.
It is saying that we’ve fallen short of what He desired. It gives it a whole other perspective. Everything that God had desired man to be, we’ve fallen short of.
We can’t be the very thing we were created to be. We have fallen short of satisfying Him in that way.
It takes away all the nitpicky picture of God up there with some little chalkboard—or nowadays, I’m sure it’s a computer or laptop—marking down points: “Jim’s doing this. Frederick’s doing this.” Then we imagine our little picture getting dimmer and dimmer and dimmer.
It takes all that away. It says that the thing God really longs for, we as a race—not just as individuals, but as a race—could never be.
It doesn’t take away the whole sense of, “Oh, gee whiz, I’m going to go to hell.” It takes away the idea that God created us for something, and what He looked for He could not find. It is a whole other perspective.
Or consider John 1:14:
And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us … and we beheld His glory.
When I think of that now, I think: here is this man, Jesus Christ, in Whom we behold the glory of God—not the shiny stuff, but the satisfaction that God has in a man, the way He wants man to be.
This man is the very One Who satisfies God in all that He created man to be. It makes us look at things differently.
We have been talking a lot lately about the purpose of God. What is the purpose? Why has He made us? That was really the thing that drove me to finding the Lord—or the Lord finding me.
Were we made without purpose? What a crummy trick, if that were true. God made us just to have us die, go back, and become dust again. What a rip-off.
But He didn’t. He has a purpose in which He can be satisfied—not just that we look at His purpose and say, “I’m going to be satisfied,” but that He is satisfied and says, “I’m so satisfied that I made you.” God makes it so much different.
Up to this point in the human life of Jesus, God’s glory has broken through three times. I don’t mean little bright stuff coming out or some big bright thing.
First, when He was born, even heaven could not contain the glory, so it spilled out. You saw the angels singing, “Glory to God in the highest.”
The One God had desired was born. The One Who was going to bring everything back into what it was supposed to be was born. Heaven could not contain it; the angels were out there, and the shepherds saw them.
Then, when the Lord was baptized, God could not keep silent: “This is My Son, in Whom I am well pleased.”
Then, when He was transfigured on the mount—first, when He said, “I will go to the cross,” there was glory. As perfected Man, He could have walked right into glory, right into heaven, and taken His seat right then and there.
But He decided to walk on. Moses and Elijah were there talking about His departure. Then God spoke again, when Peter said, “Should we build three tabernacles?” God said, “This is My Son, My Beloved.”
Again, God could not hold it in. Yet there is another time He is going to speak out, because there is yet more of this pleasingness.
In John 12:27-28, Jesus says:
Now is My soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save Me from this hour. But for this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify Thy name.
He is talking about going to the cross. “Father, glorify Your name.” In other words, may the satisfaction of Who God is be found in the cross.
It is found in the cross of Christ. It is not enough that Christ just lived; He was to die on the cross.
Yet there is a future glory to look forward to. In John 17:5, the Lord Jesus says:
And now, Father, glorify Thou Me with Thine own self with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was.
He is looking past the cross now, into not only the resurrection but the ascension, where He is back in His place in heaven. He says, “Glorify Me.” This is the glory. This is the joy set before Him that enabled Him to endure.
This is what glory is. This whole chapter defines glory. When we are talking about resurrection, and saying this is glory, this is the glory of God to do this.
There is a satisfaction that God has beyond you and me that is only found in the Son, and yet we are called to share in it.
That made me look at things really differently. I hardly saw Lazarus at all in reading this chapter. But I did see something: the Lord Jesus, and something of what satisfies God.
Now, looking at this, I want to see what Jesus said, what Jesus did, and then apply it.
I believe this is the fifth “I am” that Jesus has in the book of John. We have had:
Then He comes to this declaration: “I am the resurrection and the life.” Silly me—I almost said, “I am the way,” but that is next time. We have at least three more “I am” statements to go.
“I am the resurrection and the life.” There are two things here. First, He says, “I am the resurrection.”
Now, hadn’t He raised people from the dead before this? Come on, Bible scholars. Jairus’s daughter, right? “Talitha cumi.” The little girl arose.
Then there was the widow of Nain. He raised her son from the dead. So this is not the first time He has raised somebody.
But here He says, “I am the resurrection.” At this time, there were Jews who did not believe in the resurrection—the Sadducees. The Sadducees are sad, you see, because they do not believe in any resurrection. Remember that from Sunday school?
But when Jesus was talking to Martha and said, “Your brother will rise again,” she said, “Yeah, I know, in the resurrection of everybody.” He was not talking about that.
I want you to understand: He was not talking about that. He was talking about one specific incident that is going to include something.
When He says, “I am the resurrection,” He is pointing to Himself. If He is talking about Himself and says, “I am the resurrection,” what does that infer?
You have to have a death before you have a resurrection. So there is an inference: if I am the resurrection, there has got to be a death.
Even the disciples did not catch this. He had told them before, in Matthew 16, “I’m going to go, I’m going to suffer, and in three days I’m going to rise.” Peter came and said, “May this never be. You’ll never die.” But there has to be a death.
Of necessity, there has to be a death.
Why, then, did Jesus—did Christ—take on flesh and blood? You have to think of this, because everything hinges on it.
If you do not know why He became flesh and blood, you will never know the purpose God has for us. Some people think He became flesh and blood so He could be a teacher.
Well, yes, He was a teacher, but that was not the purpose for Him taking on flesh and blood. He did not become a man just so He could be a teacher. Many people would be satisfied with that: “Oh yeah, the Teacher was wonderful.”
Many people relegate Him to just that: He is just a teacher. But there is more than that.
He did not become flesh and blood just to be a king. Although He is a King, that was not His purpose in becoming flesh and blood.
So why did He become flesh and blood? To become an offering. That is the whole purpose behind this.
There had to be a death. Without His death, there is no salvation for us. Without His death, there is no salvation.
There is no way God can have glory in humanity apart from this. There is no way.
Romans 8:3 says that He became flesh so that God might condemn sin in the flesh. There is a condemnation meant for man after Adam, after the first race.
Christ became like man, like sinful man, in order that sin might be condemned in the flesh.
There is a song we sometimes sing that comes out of Hebrews 2:9:
But we behold Him who hath been made a little lower than the angels, even Jesus, because of the suffering of death.
Why? For the suffering of death. Then a little further on, it says that He, by the grace of God, might taste death for every man.
This death is not just physical death. It is also total separation from God—separation from the glory, from the satisfaction that God has, for eternity.
But He came in flesh so that we might enter into that glory—not the bright light, but that place where God says, “I am so satisfied with what I have done.”
It is like when we were studying Genesis. He made everything and said, “Good.” It is good.
He did more than taste death for every man. He drank the dregs.
I do not know if you guys know what dregs are—not dreads, that funky hair. Dregs are the residue of something you have drunk; it is at the bottom of the glass.
The best way I can describe it is when you are enjoying a cup of coffee, right to the end, and all the grounds got into it. You almost gag, right?
Or, if you are my age, you have that Metamucil. You get the stuff at the bottom. You have got to get it to get the full effect, you know.
That is the lousiest taste. The dregs are the worst part of it. He drank the dregs.
There is a hymn—I could not find it, though I know I have sung it before—that says, “My bitter cup, He drank it up.”
So the whole thing is that there had to be this dealing with our sin, and it happened in Christ. That is why He became flesh.
Now the second part says, “I am the life.” What does He mean, “I am the life”?
He means the life that comes out of the grave. That new man. The old man is dead now, but what is raised up is a new creation.
He says, “I am the life of the new creation.” That is why we get things about abiding in Christ. If you abide in the vine, the life of the vine comes into the branches.
In that whole thing, when we talk about Christ in me, the hope of glory, that is what we are talking about. Christ is actually living in us, and we can really experience His life in us.
That is something we really need. If we are not experiencing it, we need to go to God and say, “God, I don’t get this. I’m not experiencing this. Where is this?”
It takes people sometimes years and years and years, until they are old like me, to find these things. Hudson Taylor took years of service.
Here was a great missionary in China, going through all these things, and he was just saying, “I just can’t do this anymore.” God said, “That is because you’re trying. You’re doing everything in yourself. You are being good, you are doing good stuff, but the life is not Mine.”
If the life were Mine, you would not be burnt out inside. Yes, our outside is going to get burnt out, but the inside is not. The inside is the strength. The spirit of a man will overcome that infirmity.
So He says, “I am the life. I am the life of this new creation.” He is not just the resurrection, but the life.
His dying is glory. It says in Isaiah 53:10-11 that it pleased the Lord to bruise the Son:
Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He hath put Him to grief: when Thou shalt make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand.
He shall see of the travail of His soul, and shall be satisfied: by the knowledge of Himself shall My righteous servant justify many; for He shall bear their iniquities.
There is glory there. There is glory in that.
That is what He said. This is what He did.
Depending on who you read, some people say Jesus did seven signs, and some people say He did eight signs. It depends on who you read. I could say this was the seventh sign; I could say it was the sixth sign for my own purposes.
But so far, this is what we have seen:
Some people say this is the sixth sign; some say it is the seventh. You can figure it out. The thing is, it is a sign.
It is not merely an event. “Oh, He raised Lazarus from the dead. Oh, that is so cool.” No—it is not an event. It is a sign.
A sign directs us to see something: “Look here.” “Exit here.” “Stop.” We are supposed to see something in this.
What are we supposed to see? You say, “Oh, we are going to see the power of Jesus.” That is true. We are going to see the power of Jesus, and it is wonderful.
But my focus went to Lazarus. This is where I saw Lazarus.
Lazarus was probably the younger brother of Mary and Martha, the baby of the family—probably a little spoiled, with two doting sisters.
He got sick, and they said, “Jesus, the one whom You love is sick.” Jesus did not go immediately. He waited, and He waited until Lazarus was dead.
I think G. Campbell Morgan said that when the messenger came to Jesus, Lazarus was already dead. Jesus stayed there two days, and it took a day to go back, so Lazarus had been four days in the grave.
But the thing is, Lazarus is dead. He is lifeless. He cannot respond to anything.
You could go up to Lazarus and say, “Lazarus, how are you doing?” He would not say anything. “Lazarus, let’s go for a walk.” He would just stay there. “Are you deaf?” No—lifeless. He cannot respond.
That is what death is. We are spiritually dead. That means that we cannot respond to God.
Lazarus is dead. But it is more than simply being dead, because he had been in the grave four days.
When Jesus said, “Where did you lay him?”—get my English right; my mother-in-law is here, I better—then He said, “Roll away the stone.”
They said, “He has been there four days. He stinketh.” I heard a great sermon on that at a Calvary Chapel conference once: “But Lord, he stinketh.”
What does that mean? It means he had been decomposing. Four days—he had been decomposing. He was not just freshly dead; he was starting to be rotting dead. Is that a good way to put it? He was rotting dead. He was starting to stink.
All that means is that corruption had taken hold of him. Rotting had taken hold of him and was having its way with him.
This is the end of all mankind. All mankind. I do not care how great a person is or how small a person is—this is the end of all mankind: to rot.
It does not seem very glorious, does it?
But this is us. This is us in God’s eyes. We are dead.
Not only are we dead, but we are in the grips, under the power, of corruption. It is having its way with us. We cannot do anything about it, but we are.
That is why Lazarus meant something to me, maybe because I saw myself in Lazarus. This is me. This was me before Christ.
Dead in trespasses and sins. What hope does this man have? He is already dead. There is no hope for him.
What hope does a dead man have of living? There is none. He is already dead. There is no hope for him.
Well, all it took was a word. Quickened.
I really like that idea. Lazarus was not resurrected, because he was going to die again. Jesus just called his spirit back into his body.
We are made spiritually alive because our spirit is dead. Our flesh is not dead, is it? We are just walking around. Even as Christians, we know our flesh is not dead.
But our spirit is dead. At one time, for those of us who were not Christians, we could hear nothing from God. But somehow, we were quickened.
What was it? It took a word from Jesus. Jesus did not go into the grave. He did not touch Lazarus. He did not do anything. He just said, “Lazarus, come forth.”
He called him by name. “Lazarus, come forth.” He knew him. He knew his condition. He knew he was dead. He knew he was in the grips of rotting.
That did not stop Him from calling him. “Lazarus, come forth. The way you are, come out.”
That is just like we have in Colossians 2:13-15:
And you, being dead through your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, you, I say, did He make alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our trespasses;
having blotted out the bond written in ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us: and He hath taken it out of the way, nailing it to the cross;
having despoiled the principalities and the powers, He made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it.
You are dead. Well, so was Lazarus. We have been called forth.
Romans 4:25 says that Jesus “was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification.”
In other words, our sins are forgiven. We have been brought out of death into life. The sin that killed us is now gone. We are justified before God as if we had never sinned. That is what it means. That is the new life we have.
Lazarus comes out. You can say, “This is a wonderful thing. Lazarus has been called forth.” But there is one thing wrong.
You have to imagine: in those days, they did not have embalmers and embalming fluids as we do today. They wrapped the body up and put spices in between. You were wrapped up and laid on a slab.
How is Lazarus going to get out? He is all wrapped up, so to speak.
You have to imagine this. It might seem a little comical, but can you imagine hopping out of there with all this stuff? Maybe some myrrh falling out here and there.
But he comes out. First of all, he is alive, because he is hopping out of there. Everybody knows he is alive.
We can say, “I have seen the power of God,” and you have. But we stop at saying, “I am satisfied with justification. I am satisfied that Jesus has taken care of that and now God is not mad at me anymore.”
But Jesus does not stop there. In John 11:44, He says:
Loose him, and let him go.
Resurrection—His being the resurrection—is not just that our sins are forgiven and we are justified. Resurrection means that the things binding me are cut loose, and now I am free to move around. I am free to move around the cabin.
This is a wonderful thing. This is what Paul was saying in Philippians 3:10: “That I might know the power of His resurrection.”
The power of His resurrection is more than sins forgiven. It is being unbound. It is being unbound from the things that had kept me, in my natural state, bound up and following after them.
I am now free. “Loose him, and let him go.”
That is as if Jesus is speaking to death personified and saying to it, “Let go of him.” There is no vestige of death that can keep its hold on us.
That is what resurrection is. That is what the power of the resurrection is for us.
We cheapen it by merely thinking, “He rose from the dead, I’m justified,” and then going on living in the power of the natural man.
Jesus said, “No, I am the resurrection and the life. Death has no hold on Me, and if you are in Me, it has no hold on you.”
This is something to be experienced. This is not some theology. This is salvation.
Do you understand that? Salvation is not just, “Oh, I’m not going to hell.” Salvation is that death has no hold on me. I am free from it.
By death, I mean corruption. Not physical corruption; I mean moral corruption, mental corruption. It no longer has a hold on me. I am free.
Now, I can go back like a dog to its vomit, or a pig to a mud hole. I am free to do that. But there is no glory there.
What does glory look like? How is glory manifested? We talked about this whole story being about the glory of God. Well, where is the glory here?
You have to go to the next chapter to find the glory.
John 12 begins:
Jesus therefore six days before the passover came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, whom Jesus raised from the dead.
So they made Him a supper there: and Martha served; but Lazarus was one of them that sat at meat with Him.
Mary therefore took a pound of ointment of pure nard, very precious, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped His feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odor of the ointment.
There they made Him a supper—not Lazarus; they made Jesus a supper. Martha served, but Lazarus was one who sat at the table with Him.
Have you guys read 2 Chronicles? I’m sure you have, right? Probably one of your favorite books, 2 Chronicles. In chapter 9, it talks about the Queen of Sheba coming to visit Solomon.
Solomon was the most glorious of all the kings, with all his array and everything. Jesus said that the flowers of the field, in all their glory, do not compare with Solomon.
The queen came and asked Solomon questions and did all that. But, if you read 2 Chronicles 9:4, she basically says, “I came here thinking I would hear something special.” I’m paraphrasing.
But then she says, “You know what really did it for me? I came here, I saw all this stuff, and I heard your wisdom. But then I looked at your servants—how they are dressed, how they serve, and how they are seated at the table. It blew me away.”
“When I see your servants, it magnifies your greatness.”
There is glory here. Remember, glory is what God is really looking for in man: His satisfaction in what He has done.
When you look at Lazarus, you see first that God is satisfied to have man sitting at a table with Him, perfectly at rest.
Lazarus is in the presence of God, and he is at rest. He is not thinking, “Oh man, I wonder if He knows.” There is nothing bothering his conscience.
That is what God wants out of man. He wants man to be perfectly at rest in His presence.
When you are sitting at a table with somebody for lunch or dinner, what are you doing? You are having fellowship.
That is another thing God wants. He wants fellowship with man. That is what was lost at the very beginning: fellowship with man.
That is what we see in Christ as a man: unbroken fellowship with God. That is why we can behold His glory. But this is the very thing God wants for us; it is not just for Jesus.
We are in the presence of the Son. I am as near as He is. I am as clean as He is, as to purity. I can have fellowship, and I can be at rest in the presence of God.
That is glory to God—not brightness again, but God’s satisfaction: “This is what I have been desiring. This is the very thing I created you for, and now I have it.”
And Martha—I’m sorry, I said Mary. We always get down on Martha. I think most of it is because we see ourselves in her.
You know why we get down on our kids? Jeffrey and Catherine will find this out. It is because we see ourselves in them. That is what we hate most about our kids: little mirrors of us.
Martha is often put in a bad light because we see ourselves in her. Her devotion was distracted. “Oh, come on, I’ve got all this stuff to do.” And the Lord is saying, “Can you just sit with Me for a minute?”
“Oh, but I’ve got all this stuff.” “Can you just sit with Me for a minute?”
You know those commercials: “Give me five minutes of your time, and I’ll change your life.” I wonder if the Lord is saying that to us: “Give Me five minutes of your time, of your day, and I’ll change your life.”
Five real minutes—not when you are thinking about something else, texting, and saying, “Okay, Lord.” Give Him five real minutes.
Martha was a server. That was her nature. There is nothing wrong with being one who serves, but her service was distracted from fellowship with God.
Service is to come out of fellowship. We are not just to serve, serve, serve and never have fellowship. Nor are we to serve first and then have fellowship. Fellowship with God first; service comes out of that.
You need to read those Oswald Chambers books. They are full of this.
But here, we do not find Martha complaining. She is not distracted. That is what the Lord is looking for. Glory to the Lord—that is pure service.
Not distracted service, not wondering what I am missing. Some of us do not serve the Lord because we think we are missing something else.
This is pure service. That is glory to God because God made us to serve Him. One of the reasons He made us is to serve Him.
Serving Him does not mean, “Okay, I’m bringing a platter to You and bringing Your slippers,” or something like that. It means going out and doing His bidding, going out and doing His will. That is service.
Finally, we find Mary. Mary is the one pouring out this oil. We say this is worship, and that is what we always see. We make a big thing of Mary, and rightfully so.
But this worship was not worship that did not cost her anything. This was very expensive perfume. How did she get it? She probably bought it.
What did Judas say about it? He said, “It was worth three hundred denarii.” A denarius is a day’s wage. It was worth a year’s wages.
What I want to say is this: it is not anything in Mary that is offered up to God so that God says, “Oh, Mary, you are such a wonderful person. I just love the fragrance of Mary.”
Because our fragrance—I’ll tell you a little secret. Last week, when we were doing the table and stuff, I stunk. I snunk. I know, because I smelled myself. It was terrible. It was the odor of Jim.
I remember getting to the car and asking my wife, “Do I smell?” She said, “Yes.”
Because she loves me, she sat in the car with me. But it is not the odor of Mary.
God is not after the odor of Mary. He is after the odor of the Son—the resurrection and the life.
Worship is not merely, “Oh Lord, we love You. We praise You.” Yes, that is part of worship, but we can do that without being in the Spirit. We can do it just because everyone else is doing it.
I cannot sing very well, but I can sing with you guys. That is not necessarily worship.
Worship is when I put my life into God’s hands and say, “You can have it.”
Then what does He do? He takes that and fills it with His Son. Then He says, “I’m going to pour it out.”
It is His decision to pour it out. He is the One Who turns the cap and pours it out at His discretion. We are pliable like that.
That is worship. The thing is, it costs us.
That is what God is after. He is after worship that costs us—the laying down of our lives so that Christ can come out.
It is like David, when he went back to get the ark. He said, “I cannot do this without cost.” Remember that in 2 Samuel?
It is the same with us. The cost is simply this: “Lord, here is my life. Do with it as You want. Fill it with Christ, and pour it out as You want. Let it make that aroma: Christ, not me.”
These things are glory, because in these things God is satisfied. This is what He is after. His whole being is focused on this—more than anything.
When He gets it, everything changes.
That is why Jesus could say to His disciples, “You are the salt of the earth.” Why? Because that glory is there, and it affects not just them but everything around them.
“You are the light of the world.” Why? Because the glory of God is there and affects them—not brightness.
People see and say, “These people are different. What makes them different?” What marks them as different is that God has satisfaction in seeing His Son in them.
That is what He is after. That is His glory.
As the psalmist said, like we were singing earlier:
Let the glory of the Lord endure for ever;
Let the Lord rejoice in His works.
May the Lord be glad.
Lord, how is it that we can have a part in satisfying You? How can this be?
Oh, how can we not thank You and praise You, and ask that You would be satisfied in us as individuals and as groups?
Oh Lord, that is our prayer. May we see Your glory. May You be satisfied. In Christ’s name, amen.