GOD-GLORY-PURSUED-US

To say that worship is either about glorifying God or finding personal satisfaction is to put asunder what God has joined together. His glory and your gladness are not separate tracks moving in opposite directions. Rather His glory is in your gladness in Him.

Sam Storms

The term “glory” refers to the visible splendor or moral beauty of God’s manifold perfections. The “glory” of God is the exhibition of His inherent excellence; it is the external manifestation of His internal majesty. To “glorify God” is to declare, draw attention to, or publicly announce and advertise His glory.

Sam Storms

Pleasure is the measure of our treasure. How do you measure or assess the value of something you cherish? How do you determine the worth of a prize? Is it not by the depth of pleasure you derive from it? Is it not by the intensity and quality of your delight in what it is? Is it not by how excited and enthralled and thrilled you are in the manifold display of its attributes, characteristics, and properties? In other words, your satisfaction in what the treasure is and what the treasure does for you is the standard or gauge by which its glory (worth and value) is revealed. Hence, your pleasure is the measure of the treasure. Or again, the treasure, which is God, is most glorified in and by you when your pleasure in Him is maximal and optimal.

Sam Storms
The Ultimate Aim of Theology, November 8, 2006, www.enjoyinggodministries.com. Used by Permission.

God is most glorified in us when our knowledge and experience of Him ignite a forest fire of joy that consumes all competing pleasures and He alone becomes the treasure that we prize.

Sam Storms
One Thing, Christian Focus, © Enjoying God Ministries, 2004, p.12. www.enjoyinggodministries.com. Used by Permission.

We do not have any honor and glory in our possession that He supposedly lacks, thinking that somehow we are able to give Him what He does not already have inherently and eternally. Our role, our joy, is to ascribe and declare and proclaim to and of Him what He is and always will be.

Sam Storms
One Thing, Christian Focus, © Enjoying God Ministries, 2004, p.56. www.enjoyinggodministries.com. Used by Permission.

The glory of God is a silver thread which must run through all of our actions.

Thomas Watson

It is, perhaps, one of the hardest struggles of the Christian life to learn this sentence – “Not unto us, not unto us, but unto Thy name be glory.”

C.H. Spurgeon

A Jealous God, Sermon 502, March 29, 1863.

Job had been talking as if he knew exactly how God should run the world. His sense of integrity had been the basis of his presumptuous claim that God should have treated him better. Outraged that he could not square his innocence with his fate, Job had dared to challenge and judge his Creator…(therefore) Yahweh's answer came in the form of a rebuke – an overwhelming reminder that the first religious obligation of the creature is to acknowledge and glorify the Creator.

Bernard Anderson

God's purpose is to glorify Himself through His church. He is glorified as the church is true to Him and His Word, as the church mirrors His purity and holiness. Failure to keep the church pure brings discredit to God on this earth and brings to His name great shame in the failure of those who profess to know Him.

Richard P. Belcher

We all know people, even unbelievers, who seem to be natural servants. They are always serving others one way or another. But God does not get the glory; they do. It is their reputation that is enhanced. But when we, natural servants or not, serve in dependence upon the grace of God with the strength He supplies, God is glorified.

Jerry Bridges

The bedrock of missions is not the value of man. It is the spread of God’s glory. The biblical commitment to evangelism and missions is rooted in God’s passionate concern to make His name known.

Steve Fernandez

Missions and the Glory of God's Name.

A church that says no to missions is not just saying no to men. It is not just a matter of leaving men in their sins. It is saying no to God’s greatest concern: the spreading of His glorious name among the peoples of the world. This is His passionate concern; it must be ours.

Steve Fernandez

Missions and the Glory of God's Name.

Nothing makes God more supreme and more central than when a people are utterly persuaded that nothing – not money or prestige or leisure or family or job or health or sports or toys or friends – is going to bring satisfaction to their aching hearts besides God. This conviction breeds a people who passionately long for God on Sunday morning. They are not confused about why they are here. They do not see songs and prayers and sermons as mere traditions or mere duties. They see them as means of getting to God or God getting to them for more of His fullness.

John Piper

Brothers, We Are Not Professionals, Bethlehem Baptist Church, 2002, p. 239.

When people cast fear to the wind and spend themselves and risk their lives and fortune in the cause of God’s truth, and in love for other people, then God is revealed for who He really is: infinitely valuable and satisfying – so much so that His people don’t need the fleeting pleasures of sin in order to be content.

John Piper

Brothers, We Are Not Professionals, Bethlehem Baptist Church, 2002, p. 120.

A God-centered theology must be a missionary theology. If you say that you love the glory of God, the test of your authenticity is whether you love the spread of that glory among all the peoples of the world. Or another way to say it is that worship is the fuel and the goal of missions. Missions exists because worship doesn't. God's passion is to be known and honored and worshipped among all the peoples. To worship Him is to share that passion for His supremacy among the nations.

John Piper

The Driving Convictions Behind Missions, Nov. 2, 1996.

What does it mean to glorify God? It does not mean to make Him more glorious. It means to acknowledge His glory, and to value it above all things, and to make it known.

John Piper

Desiring God, 1996, p. 56, Used by Permission, www.desiringGod.org.

God will not judge anyone for failing to perform a duty if the person had no access to the knowledge of that duty. But even without the Bible, all people have access to the knowledge that we are created by God and therefore depend on Him for everything, thus owing Him the gratitude and trust of our hearts. Deep within us we all know that it is our duty to glorify our Maker by thanking Him for all we have, trusting Him for all we need, and obeying all His revealed will.

John Piper

Desiring God, 1996, p. 56, Used by Permission, www.desiringGod.org.

The proper understanding of everything in life begins with God. No one will ever understand the necessity of conversion who does not know why God created us. He created us “in His image” so that we would image forth His glory in the world. We were made to be prisms refracting the light of God’s glory into all of life. Why God should want to give us a share in shining with His glory is a great mystery. Call it grace or mercy or love – it is an unspeakable wonder. Once we were not. Then we existed – for the glory of God!

John Piper

Desiring God, Bethlehem Baptist Church, p. 55, used by permission, www.desiringGOD.org.

Delight in the glory of God includes, for example, hatred for sin, fear of displeasing God, hope in the promises of God, contentment in the fellowship of God, desire for the final revelation of the Son of God, exultation in the redemption He accomplished, grief and contrition for failures of love, gratitude for undeserved benefits, zeal for the purposes of God, and hunger for righteousness. Our duty toward God is that all our affections respond properly to his reality and so reflect His glory.

John Piper

The Supremacy of God in Preaching, Baker, p. 78.

[The Bible speaks of God’s glory in three ways.] First, glory is the inward majesty of God; second, it is the brightness God sometimes shines out into the world; third, it is the worship we offer to God. When we see God’s glory, the proper way for us to respond is to give Him the glory-to offer Him all the honor and praise He deserves. As Jonathan Edwards concluded, “The end of the creation is that the creation might glorify [God]. Now what is glorifying but a rejoicing at that glory He has displayed?”

Philip Graham Ryken

If a church truly loves God and the fame of His name, it is jealous for more and more people to know and praise Him. Every conversion means one more mouth is praising God, and every church planted is a chorus of mouths. Our love for the world is born out of our love for God. The greater our love for God, the greater our desire for others to display God’s glory by enjoying Him.

Jonathan Leeman

Reverberation, Moody Publishers, 2011, p. 193.

Our only hope is to return to the God of the Scriptures and the truth that the center of all meaning in life is not ourselves but God. God is the center of the universe and the essence of all wisdom and all truth. The purpose of life derives from God’s desire to see His own glory and behold His own beauty. Thus it is time for Christians to be called back to the truth that the meaning of life is to be found in “the glory of God alone.”

John Hannah

To God be the Glory, Crossway, 2000, p. 22.

We have been made to mirror God’s holiness and righteousness back to God, not so we may benefit (though there are immeasurable benefits to personal godliness), but so God will be glorified in beholding Himself in His creatures.

John Hannah

To God be the Glory, Crossway, 2000, p. 24.

Since God is only pleased with the perfections that He alone possesses, and since these have been granted to us through the Holy Spirit, the believer can glorify God. God is glorified when He sees Himself in the character of the believer.

John Hannah

To God be the Glory, Crossway, 2000, p. 37.

The Scotch catechism says that man’s chief end is “to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him.

C.S. Lewis

Nourish right conceptions of the majesty of God in your minds. Let us consider that we are drawing to God, the most amiable object, the best of beings, worthy of infinite honor, and highly meriting the highest affections we can give; a God that made the world by a word, that upholds the great frame of heaven and earth; a Majesty above the conceptions of angels; who uses not His power to strike us our deserved punishment, but His love and bounty to allure us; a God that gave all creatures to serve us, and can, in a trice, make them as much our enemies as he hath now made them our servants. Let us view Him in His greatness, and in His goodness, that our hearts may have a true value of the worship of so great a majesty, and count it the most worthy employment with all diligence to attend upon Him.

Stephen Charnock

God glorifies Himself toward the creature also in two ways: 1. By appearing to...their understanding. 2. In communicating Himself to their hearts, and in their rejoicing and delighting in and enjoying the manifestations which He makes of Himself... God is glorified not only by His glory being seen, but by its being rejoiced in. When those that see it delight in it, God is more glorified than if they only see it. His glory is then received by the whole soul, both by the understanding and by the heart.

Jonathan Edwards

Now what is glorifying God, but a rejoicing at that glory He has displayed? An understanding of the perfections of God, merely, cannot be the end of the creation; for he had as good not understand it, as see it and not be at all moved with joy at the sight. Neither can the highest end of creation be the declaring God’s glory to others; for the declaring God’s glory is good for nothing otherwise than to raise joy in ourselves and others at what is declared.

Jonathan Edwards

God is glorified not only by His glory’s being seen, but by its being rejoiced in. When those that see it delight in it, God is more glorified than if they only see it. God made the world that He might communicate, and the creature receive, His glory…both [with] the mind and the heart. He that testifies his having an idea of God’s glory [doesn’t] glorify God so much as he that testifies also his approbation [i.e., his heartfelt commendation or praise] of it and his delight in it.

Jonathan Edwards

The spiritual beauty of the Father and the Savior seemed to engross my whole mind; and it was the instinctive feeling of my heart, “Thou art; and there is none beside Thee.” I never felt such an entire emptiness of self-love or any regard to any private, selfish interest of my own. It seemed to me that I had entirely done with myself. I felt that the opinions of the world concerning me were nothing, and that I had no more to do with any outward interest of my own than with that of a person whom I never saw. The glory of God seemed to be all, and in all, and to swallow up every wish and desire of my heart.

Sarah Edwards

The supreme motive in our redemption is not for us to receive anything. Rather, we have been redeemed so that God may receive worship – so that our lives might glorify Him. Any personal blessing for us is a divine response to the fulfillment of that supreme purpose… We are to seek to glorify God before we seek to gain anything from Him. To be concerned primarily with the blessings is to experience salvation in a shallow, self-centered manner.

John MacArthur

The Ultimate Priority, Moody Press 1983, p. 24.

Whatever man may stand, whatever he may do, to whatever he may apply his hand – in agriculture, in commerce, and in industry, or his mind, in the world of art, and science – he is, in whatsoever it may be, constantly standing before the face of God. He is employed in the service of his God. He has strictly to obey his God. And above all, he has to aim at the glory of his God.

Abraham Kuiper

It has pleased God lately to teach me more than ever that Himself is the fountain of happiness; that likeness to Him, friendship for Him, and communion with Him, form the basis of all true enjoyment. The very disposition which, blessed be my dear Redeemer! He has given me, to be anything, do anything, or endure anything, so that His name might be glorified – I say, the disposition itself is heaven begun below.

Samuel Pearce

Man is never sufficiently touched and affected by the awareness of his lowly state until he has compared himself with God’s majesty.

John Calvin

Institutes, 1, 1, 3.

Whenever I am afield or outdoors, there steals over me the acute consciousness that I am confronted on every hand by the superb workmanship of my Father. It is as if every tree, rock, river, flower, mountain, bird, or blade of grass had stamped upon it the indelible label, “Made by God.” Is it any wonder that in a simple yet sublime sense of devotion, respect, and reverence for all life, Christ longed for His Father's name to be hallowed throughout the earth?

Phillip Keller

Resolved: that every man should live to the glory of God. Resolved second: that whether others do this or not I will.

Martin Luther

Since man was made for the glory of God, he can never be what he was intended to be until his life is properly focused on the glory of God… So God’s glory does not detract from man’s life. Instead, His glory is the sun around which the whole of life must revolve if there is to be the light and life of God in our experience. Since we were made for His glory, we will always malfunction whenever we fail to live for that purpose according to the Maker’s instructions.

Sinclair Ferguson
The Sermon on the Mount, 1987, p. 127. By permission Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA.

How do we bring glory to God? The Bible’s short answer is: by growing more and more like Jesus Christ.

Sinclair B. Ferguson

Healthy Christian Growth, The Banner of Truth Trust, Carlisle, PA. 1991, p. 2.