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Seeking the Glory of the Sender
A sermon by Pr. Larry Kirkpatrick, presented at Mentone Seventh-day Adventist Church on December 11, 2004 and published on GreatControversy.org December 11, 2004.
He that speaketh of himself seeketh his own glory: but he that seeketh his glory that sent him, the same is true, and no unrighteousness is in him” (John 7:18).
Whose glory are we seeking? Baptism is a public testimony that one has accepted Jesus Christ as one’s personal Savior. The Christian participates in the act but all the glory is for God. Indeed, a baptism is an admission of sin and failure, and admission of weakness and shame. It is an admission that one cannot make it on one’s own. It is an admission that one needs Jesus.
Baptism is more than a public confession of these things; much more. Among these, it is a testimony that one trusts in Jesus not only to count His death in his place, but to send also the Holy Spirit as a regenerating power. There is a change in the Christian person. What He would be without Jesus, without the Holy Spirit, is not what he is. He becomes something more. Union with the Creator recreates. What else do you think it would do?
Baptism testifies to an inward reality that is different for an unconverted person than it is for a converted person. I have new life inside. The Holy Spirit has been invited to take up residence here. It testifies that a different glory is now being sought than before one was converted.
He that Speaketh of Himself
Who do you speak of before you are converted? You know the answer, don’t you? You speak of—you. You are the central person, in the preconversion life. As a baby sees herself as the center of her tiny world, so the unconverted person sees himself as the center of his world. He may realize that the world does not actually revolve around him, but without a real submission to God, he cannot help but to operate as though it does. The unconverted person must, inevitably, speak of himself, for there is no other center to his world.
But maybe you say you’ve known unconverted people who had a focus external to themselves: a sports-team, a musician (term used loosely), an athlete, a television or movie personality, even a hobby or some uncommon pastime. Their attention was focused on this other person or group or practice. But I say to you, external focus, if not upon God and His things is still in fact an internal focus. It can be mere idol worship. If you are worshiping an image other than God, you are worshiping an idol. If you are worshiping an idol, then you are opposing God’s moral code. Remember, God has commanded, “Thou shalt have no other Gods before Me.” There is one true God and there are innumerable false gods. To put a false god first though, is to speak for yourself; it is to speak of yourself.
If you speak of yourself then whose glory are you seeking? You are seeking your own. If you are seeking your own glory it is because your vision is focused too low. You need to look again, and look a little higher. God’s plan for you is higher than you could ever imagine on your own. You will not understand God’s purpose for you unless you look all the way up to Him, on His throne, high and lifted up. His train must fill your temple and mine. We must see His bright glory to see something truly worthy of our speaking.
Seeking the Glory of the Sender
But how do we know if we are speaking of ourselves or of God? How do we know if we are converted? See, conversion is a long-term process. God knows our hearts. But there are some points that can help us. Try this:
It is true that there may be an outward correctness of deportment without the renewing power of Christ. The love of influence and the desire for the esteem of others may produce a well-ordered life. Self-respect may lead us to avoid the appearance of evil. A selfish heart may perform generous actions. By what means, then, shall we determine whose side we are on? Who has the heart? With whom are our thoughts? Of whom do we love to converse? Who has our warmest affections and our best energies? If we are Christ’s, our thoughts are with Him, and our sweetest thoughts are of Him. All we have and are is consecrated to Him. We long to bear His image, breathe His spirit, do His will, and please Him in all things” (Steps to Christ, p. 58).
Whose side are we on? Are we seeking our own glory or the glory of the sender? Apparently virtuous behavior is not conclusive evidence, because we may be influenced by social motives. Are we wanting to have influence over others? Or are we seeking self-validation from others? We want their approval. We might do some good things in order to gain that. Maintaining social respect can lead us to avoid those things which would bring down the disapproval of those around us. So a selfish heart may perform what are apparently generous actions. Jesus reminded us that even the wicked wish good gifts for their children.
So how do we get past our human weakness and fallibility? In a definite and entirely unambiguous sense, presently, perhaps you cannot. But you can get some help. Ask yourself, Who has your heart? Of whom and what are you thinking? Do you enjoy thinking of God’s things? Is the habitual trend of your thoughts back to Him? Now none of us have all the focus on Jesus we really should, so don’t use these ideas to attack yourself. This is not a club, but a thermometer. Why do you use a thermometer? Not just because you are curious about what your temperature is, but you use a thermometer when you are ill and you want to get well.
If your thoughts keep going back to God, keep going back to Jesus, then give praise to God for it. If less so than they should, then ask God to help your thoughts trend back to Him more and more. But you have to train yourself. You have to actively participate. You want to read your Bible, pray, be in attendance at the meetings of the church, tell others about God, speak to others about the great controversy war, give a Bible study, feed the fire.
Who do we love to talk about? Do we talk more about our pastor than we do about Jesus? If so, there is a problem. Do we talk more about our spouse than about Jesus? More about our dog or cat? Who has our heart? Our speaking will show it. This is why Jesus so plainly tells us, “He that speaketh of himself seeketh his own glory.” Remember, speaking of ourselves can take many forms. Not that you cannot speak of other things, the mundane aspects of life; you have to and God expects you to. But what do your thoughts return to when you are not dealing with the mundane and the temporal? Who do they return to? Take your temperature and find how you can beecome more and more habituated on thinking of Jesus.
Who has our warmest affections and our best energies? Are you an active Christian or are you rolling along in the sidecar more interested in the trees and other sights breezing past? Who and what has your time? The Lord Jesus and His gospel, or the mundane? Yes, you must earn a living, yes you want to support your family, get an education, serve God in whatever calling He makes known to you as His will for you. No problems here. But do you have affection for Him? How do you become more affectionate toward God? One way, it would be well for us to spend some quiet time each day in thoughtful reflection on the life of Christ. This is a real person. There is really someone like this who exists! Our Savior.
Being True, No Unrighteousness Inside
Jesus said that those who seek the glory of the Sender are true. We seek not our own things, not our own glory, but the glory of the One who sends us. Thus our words, our thoughts, are different.
If we are Christ’s, our thoughts are with Him, and our sweetest thoughts are of Him. All we have and are is consecrated to Him. We long to bear His image, breathe His spirit, do His will, and please Him in all things.
If we will wallpaper our mind with Scripture, then it can be true for us that “all our thoughts are with Him.” Then it can be true that “our sweetest thoughts are of Him.” Let us ask ourselves, is all that we have and that we are consecrated to Him? As we worship Jesus, express image of the Father, we more and more begin to bear an image like His own. If we seek the glory of the Sender we can become true. He is the truth, we can become true. He is the way, we can find the way, He is the life, we can be nourished and changed by His life.
The world is looking for true people. The population is inundated with phonies, so inundated that it is expected that most people will in fact be phonies. But when someone comes along who is a living testimony to Him that is True, you know what that is? An anomaly; something very different. Christians are supposed to be walking anomalies, walking exceptions. They are “not,” Jesus said, “of this world.” They are exceptions, rebels, those who refuse to blend in with all the other sleepwalkers.
At the end of time God prepares a whole group of “anomalies” and shows that error, darkness, evil, and sin are the actual anomalies, the actual conceptual intruders in this universe.
Think about it. Why is God developing a group He calls the 144,000? Why is He using fallen humans to vindicate His character? Is it not enough that Jesus came and lived and sacrificed for us? Can we add to the atonement He has made?
But what I just said misrepresented the matter rather considerably. Yes, Jesus came and lived and sacrificed that life for us. But some are saying that He did that because He had an advantage over us, for He was in fact God come in the flesh and He did something for us that we could never do for ourselves. But what saith inspiration?
The world’s Redeemer came not only to be a sacrifice for sin but to be an example to man in all, a holy, human character…. The only begotten Son of the infinite God has, by His words, His practical example left us a plain pattern which we are to copy…. We are ever to be thankful that Jesus has proved to us by actual facts that man can keep the commandments of God, giving contradiction to Satan's falsehood that man cannot keep them…. We need not place the obedience of Christ by itself as something for which He was particularly adapted, by His particular divine nature, for He stood before God as man’s representative and tempted as man’s substitute and surety. If Christ had a special power which it is not the privilege of man to have, Satan would have made capital of this matter. The work of Christ was to take from the claims of Satan his control of man, and he could do this only in the way that He came—a man, tempted as a man, rendering the obedience of a man…. Bear in mind that Christ’s overcoming and obedience is that of a true human being. In our conclusions, we make many mistakes because of our erroneous views of the human nature of our Lord. When we give, to His human nature, a power that it is not possible for man to have in his conflicts with Satan, we destroy the completeness of His humanity…. It was not God that was tempted in the wilderness, nor a god that was to endure the contradiction of sinners against himself. It was the Majesty of heaven who became a man—humbled Himself to our human nature” (Ellen G. White, Manuscript 1, 1892).
Did you understand? Jesus came not only to be a sacrifice for man but to be an example to man in all. He came to leave us a plain pattern which we are to copy. Just stop and think about that. For Him to give to us a behavioral example that will mean anything at all, we must be capable of echoing that behavior. If we can’t copy, then there is no meaningful example. If Jesus was different from me in His humanity, then I have no real example. If His purpose is to help us become “true” then He must demonstrate to us how we can move to that point.
Did you notice that we are not to place Christ’s obedience by itself, not to imagine that He obeyed God so successfully because to do so was something for which He was particularly adapted by His particular divine nature. Had He a special power which it is not the privilege of man to have, Satan would have had a field day, he would after all have had a real case against God. This is why in Philippians we learn that “Jesus emptied Himself.” This is why we learn in The Desire of Ages, p. 336 that in the midst of the storm on the sea of Galilee, Jesus “rested not in the possession of almighty power,” that “That power He had laid down,” that He trusted not in His own might but “He trusted in the Father’s might.” He did not retain His almighty power but simply refuse to use it, but He had laid that power down, He had removed Himself from the possession of it, and the miracles manifest in His ministry were accomplished through the Father’s Deity and not through His own.
The work of Christ was to take from the claims of Satan his control of man. That is, Satan really did have claim over fallen man, he actually did have a measure of control. Jesus “could do this only in the way that He came—a man, tempted as a man, rendering the obedience of a man.” What kind of man? A fallen man. He must come as a being as human as we are, and with an heredity like ours.
It would have been an almost infinite humiliation for the Son of God to take man's nature, even when Adam stood in his innocence in Eden. But Jesus accepted humanity when the race had been weakened by four thousand years of sin. Like every child of Adam He accepted the results of the working of the great law of heredity. What these results were is shown in the history of His earthly ancestors. He came with such a heredity to share our sorrows and temptations, and to give us the example of a sinless life (The Desire of Ages, p. 49).
Was Jesus’ humanity different than ours? Inspiration answers us back that, when we give to His human nature a power that it is not possible for man to have in his conflicts with Satan, we destroy the completeness of His humanity. When we say Jesus was different than us, we remake Him of not the same humanity as ourselves; we grant His humanity a power that it is not possible for man fallen to have. We say that He was God come in the flesh, He can be true inside, we are not and we cannot be, not completely be, true inside. Therefore logically, we cannot be sent to vindicate God’s character in any way shape or form as Jesus was.
But consider that last statement I gave in the quote: “It was not God that was tempted in the wilderness, nor a god that was to endure the contradiction of sinners against himself. It was the Majesty of heaven who became a man—humbled Himself to our human nature.” But Jesus was God. But here inspiration says it was not God. But it actually says, It was not God that was tempted. He was still Jesus, He was still God by right, He was still the Majesty of heaven, but He emptied Himself and humbled Himself to our human nature. To whose human nature? To our human nature—ours—that of the descendents of Adam, that of the hereditary ancestors, or as Revelation 14 denominates us, “the remnant of her seed.” How are the remnant of her seed found? They are keeping the commandments—not disobeying and whining and excusing. But “Every child of fallen Adam must, through the transforming grace of Christ, become obedient to all God’s requirements” (Faith and Works, p. 41).
Our Scripture said, “He that speaketh of himself seeketh his own glory: but he that seeketh his glory that sent him, the same is true, and no unrighteousness is in him” (John 7:18). How do we come to that place, that place where we are speaking of Jesus and not of ourselves, where we are seeking His glory, not our own glory, where we are true, and there is no unrighteousness in us? How do we come to the mental and emotional disposition where we long to bear His image, breathe His spirit, do His will, and please Him in all things? How do we make our baptism real?
We are baptized into whom? Into Jesus Christ. Then we must avoid false pictures of Him. We must accept that He took our humanity and that that matters. We must realize that He overcame the same way we must overcome. We must realize that Jesus lived as He did through strength from on high, and that we may live as Jesus did through strength from on high. We may focus on the fact that we have no excuses and that the bar of duty has been raised so very high, or, we may rejoice that Jesus was sent to seek the glory of the Sender and rejoice that we have been sent to seek the glory of the Sender, and that to us are granted exceeding great and precious promises through which we, as did Christ, are to partake of the divine nature and escape the corruption that is in the world through lust through damaged human nature running wild.
Conclusion
At the end of the day we understand that Jesus’ overcoming was that of a true human being, and we are true human beings. We understand that He had no advantage over us and that we must not lose sight of His example for us. What He has not assumed, He has not healed. Thank the Father therefore that Jesus came and let the ladder all the way down to touch the dust of this world. Thank the Father that Jesus was sent, and that He sought the glory of the Sender.
At the end of the day, baptism shows we are claiming the title of Christian. But what we have become will show whether we did in fact finally become one. “Christian” means Christ-follower. But in the end it will be seen whether we have been a Christ-follower or a Satan and self-follower. At the end it will finally be clear whether we truly were Christian or selfian and Satanian.
Let us ask God to change our hearts and minds. Let us have confidence in Jesus who came down, all the way down, into our situation, and overcame in it, and showed us how to overcome in it. Let us be thankful that we are sent and that we are empowered to live in a way showing we’ve been sent. And to God be the glory. Great things He is doing. GCO
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