Giving God Glory
John 12:30-33
You’ve probably seen those commercials where someone is “on the spot.” Like the new father that is on the spot where responsibility meets scared to death…he is so there. You never really feel like you’re ready for those moments…and you aren’t…you can’t be.
I remember the first time that the Junior Varsity basketball coach, Larry Meyer, looked down the bench and called my name. My mouth went immediately dry, and I went to the scorer’s table to check in. The buzzer sounded for me. You ask for whom the buzzer sounds? It sounds for me. The next 45-50 seconds were a frantic blur. Find my place on the floor, who am I guarding? Too late the guy who just made the lay-up, that’s who I’m guarding…now run down to the other end, the guards bring the ball up the court and suddenly I’m catching the ball with fingers that feel like wood, I catch it, not cleanly and easily like in practice but I manage to hold on. I have this strong urge to pass it to someone, anyone as quickly as possible. I pass it off to the center…who is a sub like me and he shoots from way outside his range. Mercifully the buzzer sounds and the game ended and I had not totally embarrassed myself… At least not as bad as the center. I was on the court, but I wasn’t ready. My time had not yet come.
About 10 years later I was asked to preach a sermon. I wasn’t really trained…I’d been directing the choir and helping with youth. I chose a great passage…Elijah and the prophets of Baal. Choose you this day whom you will server. When it was over, I had certainly chosen a great passage. My time had not yet come.
Several times in the gospels, Jesus refuses to do things because, he said, “My time has not yet come.” In John 2, Jesus’ mother came to him at a wedding feast and told him that the family had run out of wine…the strong idea was that he should do something about it. Jesus told her his time had not yet come. But then he turned water into wine anyway…but in a way that only the servants knew where it had come from.
Twice in John 7 Jesus says his time is not yet come. In on instance he sends his disciples ahead to the feast, because his time is not yet, and later at the feast when some enemies were wanting to arrest him it says, “they were seeking to seize Him; and no man laid his hand on Him, because His hour had not yet come.”
I know how it feels when the time is not now. I think I felt ready to be married when I was 17 years old…probably three or four times that year. But gratefully my time was not yet.
Maybe you know how that feels too. Haven’t you been in situations where you wanted to do a great job…but you were pretty sure you didn’t have what it takes to do a great job?
I suppose Jesus didn’t feel like I did, (he always had the right stuff) but he knew when the timing wasn’t right for him to do certain things. He knew when it would be right to reveal his true identity as God’s son…and a sense of when he would glorify God by going to the cross.
Because Jesus had several times in Johns gospel said, “not now” to the timing of things, it’s interesting to me that when Andrew and Philip show up to tell him that some Greeks want to see him. He says, “the time has come for the son of man to be glorified.
I sort of feel sorry for those Greeks…those ancient fraternity brothers who found Philip and said, “We would like to see Jesus.” Because it doesn’t say whether or not they got to see the Lord. I sort of assume they didn’t get to meet with him. They were unfortunately looking for Jesus, just as his “time” arrived, and he may not have had the leisure time to visit with the boys from Theta Pi. When your time comes, it’s a time to focus in on what you have to do, not on what pieces of your life others might like have.
The opening scene of the ABC News documentary The Search for Jesus begins with a voice-over from celebrated TV reporter Peter Jennings. He's reading the Christmas story out of Luke against a backdrop of a Middle Eastern man carving the face of Jesus into a block of wood. As the man finishes and sets the carving down, and as Jennings finishes the Scripture, the camera focuses on Jennings standing in a garden to introduce the documentary. His opening lines highlight the interest that even the secular media has in Jesus.
"Hello, I'm Peter Jennings, and we have been searching for Jesus—as reporters, that is, because it's an irresistible story. And whatever your faith or religion, there's simply no denying the extraordinary influence that Jesus has had—that he does have—in people's lives. The reporters were looking for Jesus because he is an interesting story…the visiting Greeks were looking for Jesus because they had heard of him.
But John’s gospel sticks to the important thing: Jesus announcement that “the hour has come.”
What hour exactly has Jesus been waiting for? The right hour. The correct timing. Jesus’ life was lived with a sense of pacing. It made a difference to him how things played out. Jesus lived his life “on purpose.” Jesus was a man on a mission and he would not be deterred from fulfilling that mission on time. And at last the right time for glory had come. For Jesus, that’s what this doing the right thing in the right time was all about…bringing Glory to God.
God’s glory is what this passage about. And God’s timing is important to God’s glory. After announcing that the hour has come, Jesus quickly lays out his plan. His example is a seed, and unless it is put in the ground and dies, it remains just a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.
Mentioning the counterintuitive truth that if you focuses on your own life, will lose it. But the one who does not focus on himself will gain life for eternity. Jesus is clearly planning on not remaining a single seed…he wants to produce a crop. He clearly does not hold his own life so dear that he is unwilling to fulfill his mission, even if it means the cross.
In an honest moment, Jesus humanity shows itself, he says, “Now I’m troubled, and what can I say?” I have to say, “no” to myself, because this is the very reason I came to this hour. And then the reason for it all. “Father, glorify your name.”
God speaks from heaven, “I have and I will!” I have been glorified and I will be glorified again. I read that as “atta boy, Jesus!” His son has lived a life pointing others to the Father. He’s proud of his son, and he’s about to be more pleased with him still.
Jesus felt the full weight of his decision…don’t pretend for a minute that he didn’t…his heart was truly troubled…but his sense of purpose, and what he was trying to accomplish was greater than a moments emotion. And look what Jesus understood he was accomplishing:
· Now is the time of judgment on this world. (There’s nothing that makes the world squirm in their sinful ways more than a person living what they believe.) The scribes and Pharisees would be shown for what they were. Rome would be shown to be nothing but a bully, and though they were legally in charge of the situation, the Roman governors were pushed about by the cries of the people.
· Now the prince of this world will be driven out. Satan’s kingdom was about to take the hugest hit. The cross was the decisive battle and for Satan the war would be lost…he is defeated only some mopping up to do now.
· When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men to myself.
These promised accomplishments: The world being seen correctly (that’s judgment), Satan’s defeat, and opening the way of salvation to all…I guess that’s a pretty good days work…even if it means a cross.
--That’s a seed dying to produce a crop.
--That’s a man being willing to die, so that you and I can live.
--That’s a person setting aside their emotions to do an amazing yet frightening thing.
--That’s a life that glorifies God.
Pastor Mike Breaux’s daughter Jodie answered God's call to go into missions work: During her junior year of high school, Jodie struggled to find a faith of her own. She wanted to know in her heart that all of what she'd been taught to believe was true and that Jesus Christ was real. Honestly, she was headed down a dark road. But God was faithful to her, and heard her family’s prayers. She eventually found a faith of her own, and when she graduated from high school, she said, "I don't think God wants me to go to college right now. I want to take a year to go to Haiti, and I want to serve people in a medical mission down there."
Her dad said, "Are you sure you want to do this? Jodie, it's 3,000 miles away from home. It's AIDS-infested and the poorest country in the western hemisphere. And do you know it's controlled by the voodoo religion?"
"I know all that," she said. "But I feel like God wants me to go and help those people." I said, "Okay. If that's what you want to do, we'll make it happen."
One of the hardest days of pastor Mike’s life was putting his little girl on an airplane and watching it lift off, not knowing whether he'd ever communicate with her again.
One night the pastor got an e-mail from Jodie. She wrote: "Dad, tonight has been the most remarkable night of my life. I got called out to this hut to deliver a baby. Dad, I've only delivered one, and that was with somebody. I'd never done this by myself, but I was the only one around. They called me, and I get to this hut, and there's this naked, screaming lady on the dirt floor. I got a flashlight, and I'm thinking, Here I am, 18-years-old, and I'm in a hut in a third-world country with a naked, screaming, pregnant lady. I have a flashlight, and I don't know what I'm doing—but I'm here.
To make matters worse, this lady from the voodoo religion walked into the hut, dressed in her red and blue voodoo garb, and began to chant some voodoo incantation in Creole. She put some kind of oil on the lady's head, and when she started to walk away from me and the woman, she stopped at the woman's belly, put some other kind of salve there, and walked the opposite direction—all while chanting this Creole spell. I didn't know what to do. She stood at the head of this woman and stared a hole through me. When I was getting ready to deliver this baby, I just looked back at her, and I started singing. I knew she didn't understand English, but I just started singing: 'Our God is an awesome God, he reigns from heaven above, with wisdom, power, and love, our God is an awesome God.'"
Jodie said that the voodoo lady became completely unglued. She grabbed all of her stuff and ran out of the hut. Jodie wrote, "That night I knew that that baby was going to be born with the blessing of God and not the curse of Satan."
As her dad read Jodie's e-mail, his fatherly side thought, You get on a plane tomorrow! What are you doing in a hut with a voodoo woman in the first place? But then his heart beat with excitement for her. He thought, Way to go, Jodie! Way to bring glory to God! Way to make a difference with your life! Who knows who that little baby she delivered that night is going to grow up to touch and who that person is going to touch—all because of one courageous girl who said, "Okay, God, I want to put my life in your hands; I want to make a difference."
What about you? What are you willing to do to fulfill your purpose? You do know you have a purpose, right? You do! The Westminster Catechism says, that our purpose is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. Glorifying God is what your life is for, it’s what my life is for. And you know what, you will not glorify God from your pew there…unless you get up from your pew to serve him. I will not glorify God from this pulpit, unless I walk out of this place and serve him. Chances are you will not glorify God from your comfort zone…I’ve yet to meet (or read about) anyone (except Jesus in this passage) whom God called from a burning bush and said, “just keep doing what you’re doing.” In our lives, God is glorified as we adjust to his work, his plan, in his timing.
Jodie glorified God as she followed God’s lead in her life. It took her way outside her comfort zone, and way-way outside her dad’s comfort zone. But who would say that the girl wasn’t livin’? Her heart was pounding, she was on the front lines…and even to her surprise, satan was defeated…just like Jesus said. Glory to God!
Your life brings glory to God when you serve him. In sacrificial going for the sake of another, in extravagant giving for the work of the Kingdom of God, in mind blowing service—where you go out of your way to meet a need. OK, yes and in a million common ways of giving, serving and going that are available to us every day…as long as it’s done to the glory of God.
What if each one of you, allowed God to lead you to just one act of God-glorifying service this week? What if we all sought one way to honor God so that the Lord would say Atta boy______ Atta girl ______. What if we said, “Lord I have no idea what you’d like to do with me, but here I am…show me what to do and I’m so there.”
There’s a commercial on where a girl grabs an absent minded delivery person keeping him from going out into some busy traffic. Then he does something for someone else, and it goes on with a chain of events where people do nice things for each other. What if that began to happen on a whole new level because we left here today and sought to glorify God in just one new way this week. Maybe with a gift, maybe with an act of kindness, maybe with an act of service that stretches us. Leave here to glorify God. Jesus glorified God by doing the right thing at the right time…so sure, you have to cooperate with God for the timing of things…but your time is not past, you haven’t missed it. God can bring glory to his name through your life this week. You know what? I think your time has come. What do you think.
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