10/06/2024
It is not just that true disciples ought to strive to do all things to the Glory of God. But as true disciples we should also recognize that anything and everything that happens to us is by the Sovereign and Providential purpose of God for His own self Glorification. Including the promises and blessings, as well as sickness and death. God is the most beautiful and glorious and perfect Being. He is eternal and uncreated. He is perfectly good and perfectly holy. He is perfectly just and perfectly righteous. He is ultimately worthy and deserving of all the glory and praise and honor that we can give Him for all eternity. And because of who God is, a failure to Glorify God is a sin. And that is not because God is an egomaniac. It is because He is worthy of it. And everything that God does for His people, whether in blessing or suffering, whether in prosperity or poverty, whether in comfort or pain, health or illness, life or death, it is all ultimately for His glory.
If Jesus had not waited for Lazarus to die in order to go to Mary and Martha and cry with them, hug them, embrace them, grieve with them over the death of Lazarus, they would have missed out on a nearness and intimacy with Jesus that they could never have known otherwise. And at the end of that narrative John tells us that many believed in Him because of this. God was glorified, Jesus was glorified in this miracle and Mary, Martha, and Lazarus grew closer to Jesus than they ever would have otherwise. And as a result many believed in Jesus. God’s Glory is our good, you see. And the Glory that Christ experienced in the Cross, Resurrection, and Ascension is what accomplished our salvation. Again I say, God’s Glory is our good.
Pastor Weston Lindsey