Confessing Jesus as Lord and Glorifying God

We glorify God by confessing Jesus as Lord. Now that's where it all begins. If my life is to be focused at glorifying God, that means that initially I must focus my attention on the lordship of Christ. That's where it all begins. Welcome to Grace To You with John MacArthur.

I'm your host, Phil Johnson. The Westminster Catechism calls it the chief end or the highest purpose of mankind. Simply put, you were created to glorify God. But what exactly does it mean to give God glory?

What are the practical steps you need to take? John MacArthur has answers today as he examines the fundamentals of Christian living, helping you understand what it means to follow Christ. It's part of a series he's titled Back to Basics. Now to show you how to fulfill your highest calling, glorifying God, here's John. Now we closed our last study by saying we wanted to share some practical ways in which we glorify God. If glorifying God is the master key to spiritual growth, what are the other keys that make up that master key? First of all, we glorify God by confessing Jesus as Lord. Now that's where it all begins. If my life is to be focused at glorifying God, that means that initially I must focus my attention on the lordship of Christ.

Now what do I mean by that? Well, Philippians chapter 2 gives us the answer, verses 9 through 11. After the great passage on the kenosis or the humiliation of Christ, talking about how he became a man and took upon him the form of a servant, was found in fashion as a man humbled himself, became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross, then the Word of God says this, Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven, in earth, and under the earth. Now listen, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Now listen, the humiliation of Jesus Christ was an act of obedience to the Father.

In response, the Father glorified Jesus Christ and exalted him, and then he calls on everything in the universe to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, and then gives this closing statement, To the glory of God the Father. The reason then that we are to confess Jesus as Lord is because it glorifies God the Father. Now that is the basic principle of salvation. We are to confess Christ as Lord, that is salvation for the glory of God. Now I believe that most people think that we should be saved for other reasons than the glory of God. If you ask the average person, why do you share Jesus Christ?

Why do you communicate your faith? They'll probably say, well because we want to keep people out of going to hell. We want them to avoid eternal punishment.

Now that's a valid reason, but not the major one. The major reason for people to be saved is not to avoid hell. Someone else might say, no I present Christ because of love. The love of Christ constrains me because God loves them, and because I love them, I tell them about Christ.

And that's a valid reason, but not the main one. And someone might say, well I speak the gospel because I'm commanded to do that. I'm commanded to go into all the world and preach the gospel, make disciples, teach them all things whatsoever Christ has commanded. I'm commanded, or I love, or I want to keep people out of hell, and all those are valid, and all of those are biblical reasons for evangelism, but they don't come to the apex. The major reason to preach the gospel, the major reason to become a believer, is for the glory of God.

It boils down to this. To live without salvation is to deny Christ, and to deny Christ is the greatest affront possible to God. It is the one sin that is unforgivable. If a person continues in unbelief, that is an unforgivable sin. In fact, that is the major sin of man.

Jesus said in John 16 that He would send the Holy Spirit to convict the world of sin. What sin? Because they believe not in me. The greatest sin that a man can commit is the failure to believe in Jesus Christ.

Why? Because that is to say that He is not God. He is not the Savior. He is not to be worshiped. He is not to be Lord, and to say that is to dishonor the Father. In John chapter 5, for example, Jesus says so pointedly in verse 23, all men should honor the Son, listen, even as they honor the Father. He that honoreth not the Son honoreth not the Father who sent Him. You cannot give glory to God unless you give glory to His Son, who is the fullness of His glory. So listen, we begin then to give glory to God when we give glory to Christ.

And how do you do that? By confessing Him as Lord. And that simply means salvation. He's not talking about some second act. You don't say, well, I've taken Him as Savior, but later on I'll make Him Lord.

No, no. Those aren't two distinct things. When you are saved, you confess Christ as Lord. That is salvation. In Romans 10, 9, and 10, it says, if thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. In other words, salvation is a matter of confessing the lordship of Christ. That He is God, that He is sovereign, that He is Lord, and that is a personal application of that reality. Somebody asked me not long ago if I was a lordship salvationist. I wasn't sure what that was.

I thought you were supposed to stand on the corner and play a trumpet or beat a drum if you were one of those. But that isn't really what he meant. A lordship salvationist, he meant, is somebody who believes that you must believe that Jesus is Lord to be saved. He said, do you believe that way? I said, I don't know any other way to accept Christ. He is Lord, and I accept Him on His terms, not mine. I don't redefine Jesus as something less than He is and take Him that way. Is He Lord, I said to this person? He said, yes. I said, then how do you take Him?

You must take Him as He is. If you confess Jesus as Lord, it is to the glory of God. Now simply stated, no one has the capacity to go beyond that in spiritual maturity. No one can glorify God until they start right there. That's the touchstone.

That's where it all begins. Let me take this a step further for those of us that are Christians. I believe that if Christ is Lord in our lives, if we have received Him and we're born again and He rules, and He does rule by the way all our lives, it's only a question of whether we obey it, not whether He rules. And as He rules in our lives, we must keep in mind that the preaching of the gospel is mainly so that He may rule in other lives for His own glory.

In other words, the great sin of man is to live and not glorify God. In Romans chapter 1, Paul says that we preach obedience to the nations for the sake of the name. He says, we don't preach the gospel for their sake. We preach the gospel for His sake. 3 John 7, he says, we go out preaching for the sake of the name.

Same thought. Not for their sake, for His sake. So that He might be acknowledged as Lord. And that's where it begins. If you're not a Christian, you've never confessed Christ as Lord, there is no capacity within you to live to His glory. It's an utter impossibility.

It cannot be done because that's where it all begins. You cannot say, I deny Christ. He is not my Savior. He is not my Lord. And then proceed to try to grow spiritually or proceed to try to glorify God in another way. You are slapping God in the face at the very most vital point.

If you dishonor the Son, you dishonor the Father. So glorifying God then begins, as Paul says in Philippians 2, with confessing Jesus as Lord to the glory of God the Father. And so we say that salvation is a necessary beginning for spiritual growth.

The fact is, you can't grow until you're born. Now, second truth. The second thing that I want to share with you along this line is this. We will glorify God firstly by confessing Jesus as Lord, and secondly by aiming our lives to obey His lordship. Secondly, by aiming our lives to obey His lordship. When we allow God to clothe us with the purple robe of His righteousness, He is glorified. When we open our hearts and receive His Son, He is glorified. When His Spirit takes up residence in our lives, He is glorified. When we call Jesus Lord, He is glorified.

But then there's a second corollary. Having received the Lord, we are to respond to His lordship. The key verse I want you to understand, and this is 1 Corinthians 10, 31. It says this, Whatever you do, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God. No matter what you do, do it all to the glory of God.

The idea then is that that becomes a pervasive attitude. No matter what I do, it is to the glory of God that my focus must be made. Now certainly this is the way that Jesus lived. In John chapter 8 and in verse 50, Jesus says this, I seek not mine own glory.

There is one that seeketh and judgeth. Back in verse 49, I honor my Father. Jesus said, I'm here for one reason, not my glory, but His glory.

And that's really what we're saying. You're going to grow spiritually. You're going to focus on His glory when that becomes the pervasive element of your life. So, if I am to aim my eyes to the glory of God, if I am to aim my life at this, if I am to submit in obedience to the Lordship of Christ, there will be an attitude of humility.

There will be the death of pride. We must be aware of self-worship. We must aim always and only at God's glory. Now what does that mean? To say that I submit in obedience to His Lordship, to say I aim my life at that, to say whether I eat or drink or whatever I do, I do it all to the glory of God. Just exactly what does that mean?

Well, let me say it this way, and I'll just give you a few sub-points right here. First of all, it means that you will give God glory no matter what the cost, no matter what the cost. Now, that's a pretty heavy statement, but that's the essence of what it means to submit to His Lordship, to aim your life at His glory.

You will glorify Him no matter what it costs. In John 12 and verse 27, Jesus said this, 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. What should be my prayer as I anticipate the cross?

God, bail me out. This is the hour for which I came. Father, glorify Thy name. And there came then a voice from heaven saying, I have both glorified it and will glorify it again. God, He says, humanly I'd like to get out of this. This is an incredible price to pay, pain, anguish, sin-bearing, but Father, glorify Your name no matter what it costs me.

See? Now, that's what it means. As you learn to live your life, content to do God's will at any cost, content to glorify Him no matter what the price, you'll be fulfilling that second great principle of spiritual growth, that second great key. You'll be unlocking that area of obedience to His Lordship. Let me give you another illustration by having you turn to the end of the book of John, John chapter 21. And here we run into this situation with the Apostle Peter.

We'll be coming back to this very same incident in our story because it illustrates several things. Because it illustrates several great truths of spiritual growth, Peter has been earmarked by God since before the foundation of the world for very important functions. Peter is to be the key to the first 12 chapters of the book of Acts. He is the key in the apostolic preaching of the cross as the church is born in Jerusalem and moves out around the world. He is to be a dynamic and gifted leader. And so it's very important that he be firmed up, rooted, set in place for the task to which God has called him. But unfortunately, Peter is a little flaky, to put it in a contemporary term. And it's very hard for Peter to make a commitment. He's got all kinds of verbiage. He just doesn't hang in there.

Every time he was given a test, he flunked. If he was a seminary student, he would have long been gone. And yet the Lord knows that this is a very needed man. And so even though he has helped Peter in the past, he's gone out of his way to show him his power to walk on water.

He has fed him at the point of the feeding of the 5,000. He was there at the transfiguration. He has heard the great confession and really it came out of his own mouth. But from God's heart, thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. Peter has been on some tremendous adventures with Christ where he has seen displays of power even in the garden as the soldiers came.

And when Jesus spoke, they all fell over backwards like dominoes. I mean, Peter has seen some great things. Amazingly enough, he's even seen the resurrected Christ in the upper room. And by this time of John 21, had a personal audience with the resurrected Christ. And yet after all of that, he's still flaky.

He's still... I think he felt inadequate. I think he looked at himself and said, Peter, every time you've ever been given a test, you blew it.

Well, who's to say you're going to pass one now? And Jesus said to him, Peter, you go in the Galilee and go in a mountain and wait. Well, Peter is there in chapter 21, but he's getting an itchy tunic and he's not going to be able to sit on the side of that hill much longer.

He was kind of a hyper guy to start with. And it's kind of tough to just sit up there and wait. He's been waiting and waiting and waiting and Christ hasn't appeared. And so finally he says in verse 3, I'm going fishing. I'm going back to what I used to do. I never did believe myself in this ministry deal anyway.

I've bombed out every time I've had an opportunity. There's one thing I can do and it's fish and I'm going back. And he was the leader, of course. And so all the other six guys like a bunch of rubber ducks came down the same hillside and said, we're going to. So they all waddled down and got in a boat. Peter was the leader.

That's the whole point. God wanted to use him. What happened in verse 3? They entered into the boat, the Greek says, which may indicate they went back and picked up Peter's own boat. He was going back to his old profession and they were all going with him. They were all his fishing buddies. But there was one thing they couldn't do was fish because the Lord had rerouted every fish in the Sea of Galilee so they couldn't catch him to get his point across.

So he fished all night and caught nothing. The Lord appeared in the morning, had a confrontation with Peter, checked out his love, and we'll get to that text later. And then when Peter told him three times he loved him, he comes back with this in verse 18. Verily, verily, I say unto thee, when thou ist young, thou girdest thyself and walkest where thou wouldest.

Now just stop for a minute. Peter, you've pretty much had it your own way. You called the shots, put on your own belt, and went where you wanted to go. Girding up yourself was a picture of preparation for a journey.

Whenever you wanted to do what you wanted to do, you did it. But when you shall be old, that's going to change. You will stretch forth your hands and that very phrase is used in extra biblical literature to speak of a crucifixion. You're going to stretch forth your hands.

Somebody else is going to gird you and take you where you don't want to go. Verse 19, watch it now. This spoke he, signifying by what death he should, here it comes, glorify God. Now notice this. Peter would come to the point in his life where he would glorify God by dying.

How? Because he would be willing to pay any price before he would deny the will of God, even death. Now that was news to Peter because every other time he'd face death, he reneged on his testimony.

On one occasion when they confronted him with the fact that he was a follower of Jesus Christ, he cursed and took God's name in vain and swore that he was not and made an oath that he never kept. So you see, this is news to Peter. But what the Lord is saying is, Peter, there's going to come a day when you will die for me and in dying glorify me.

Why? Because that will be my will and you will be content to die for my sake. That's the way it was with Paul, for me to live is Christ and to die is gain. If I live, I live unto the Lord. If I die, I die unto the Lord. So whether I live or die, I'm the Lord.

So what's the difference? I'm the Lord's. You see, to aim my life at the glory of God, now that I'm a Christian, to focus on doing whatever I do, whether it's eating or drinking, to the glory of God means that if it has to be death for his sake, let it be. Let it be.

Let it be. I think of the tremendous story of the missionaries throughout the history of Christian missions, story after story after story becoming one great composite story of people willing to die for Christ. I think of Hebrews chapter 11, the heroes of the faith who are listed there who died in the great anticipation of glory and resurrection of whom the world was not worthy.

There was no price too high for them. I think of Latimer and Ridley who were burned at the stake for their faith, singing praises to Jesus Christ. I think of Savannah Rolla, the great preacher in Italy who had preached the gospel of Jesus Christ and the system took him and burned him at the stake.

Again and again through history there have been those willing to do anything for the cause of Christ. I always go back to the story of John Paton, that great missionary who went to the New Hebrides. He graduated from school and he was sent to the New Hebrides with his wife and there were only man-eating cannibals there and they landed on that little place, they had a row of dinghy because the ship went by, didn't even go to the shore and they rode the shore, didn't speak the language, didn't know anybody. All they knew was people had come there and never returned. They had become somebody's lunch.

And so they got on the shore. It's pretty tough you know to get on the shore of a place inhabited by cannibals whose languages don't speak and figure out how you start, right? I mean you don't put a little sign that says Sunday school class Sunday at 9 30 we welcome you all. That isn't really the way you do.

What do you do? You don't know the language. You don't know the people and your thread of life hangs over your head. I remember reading in a particular book something of the story of that and later on the chief of the tribe in that area was saved and he came to John Paton and he said to him, Mr. Paton, I want to ask you a question. He says in those early months that you were here, he says, who was the army that girded your place of dwelling every night and protected you?

God's holy angels apparently even became manifest in that protecting time. But Paton stayed there after a few weeks. His wife gave birth to a baby. The baby died.

A few days later she died. He slept on their graves for three or four nights to keep the natives from digging them up and eating them. He stayed there alone and he stayed there for 35 years. He says in his biography that at the end of those 35 years, I don't know of one native that hasn't made at least a profession of faith in Jesus Christ. He went there with all the great hopes.

The only thing he ever loved really in the world was his wife and then the cherished baby had to sleep on their graves and all alone he stayed. But God used him because he was content to do God's will no matter what it cost him. And that's what it means to aim your life at his purposes. If you're charting your own course, if you're saying, Lord, here's what I'll do and here's what I won't do.

If you're saying, Lord, I got it all outlined here. If you're not willing to pay the price of a little bit of embarrassment, if you're not willing to pay the price and humility of being defamed and dishonored by the world, if you're not willing to pay the price of a little less possessions in this life, then maybe you'll never know what it is to be content with his will at any price. And maybe you'll never really know what it is to grow spiritually because you'll not be aiming at his glory.

It's when you are consumed with his glory and not your own comfort and not your own ease and not your own plans and your own will. So you're listening to John MacArthur, the Bible teacher, each day here on Grace to You. He's also chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary, and today's lesson is part of his series outlining the ABCs of the Christian life.

It's titled, Back to Basics. John, I loved what you said today about being content and trusting in God, and I know you would say that if you have trust like that, you can't be passive. That sort of faith calls us to proclaim our faith to a lost and dying world, and so talk a little bit about the responsibility that we as believers have to preach the gospel and how that's not just the duty of a pastor or a missionary. One of the basic realities of being a believer is you know that we're all called to fulfill the Great Commission, and proclaiming our faith should be the overflow of joy, the overflow of love, the overflow of gratitude.

So it's not something that is unnatural for us. It should be the very first thought that we have whenever we open our mouths to speak to a non-believer. There ought to be the reality there that I need to tell this person if the conversation leads that way about what the Lord has done in my life.

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