Landon Coleman
Immanuel Sermon Audio
Salvation: Glorification
If you have a Bible, we're going to look at a lot of different verses tonight. You can get a head jump on Romans chapter 7, the end of Romans 7, going to be the first couple of verses that we read tonight. Like I said earlier, this is the last night that we're working through this series on salvation. So we started week one earlier this fall with just a general discussion of salvation. And a couple of the key ideas that we talked about week one, just in the broadheading of salvation, is that there's a sense in which God has saved us. He is saving us, and He will save us. And certainly tonight, when we think about glorification, the balance of that or the emphasis of that really is on the future. You'll see that there is a present aspect to it, but really the emphasis is on the future, that God is going to do this work in the lives of His people in the future. We also talked about when we think of salvation, we have to be mindful that we are saved by God, we're saved from God, from His wrath, and we're saved for God, for His glory. And when we think about being saved for God's glory, that ties in with what we're talking about tonight in this doctrine of glorification. So that was week one. Week two and three, we talked about propitiation and redemption. We just spent two weeks, we could have spent more, but we spent two weeks talking about salvation accomplished. The work that Jesus Christ did and finished and completed on the cross, not just to make our salvation possible or a theoretical maybe out there, but to secure it and to do everything that He needed to do to save a people for His glory. We talked about regeneration, that's the work of the Holy Spirit. We're dead and He makes us alive. On the heels of regeneration, we talked about conversion. The Holy Spirit does the work of regeneration, not us, not me, not parents, not grandparents, not pastors. Conversion is our response to the miracle of regeneration. And conversion is marked by two ideas. It's a turning from sin and a turning to Jesus. It's repenting of sin and putting your faith in Jesus, repentance in faith. That's our conversion. We talked about the difficult sort of abstract, somewhat mysterious, but really basic and fundamental doctrine of our union with Christ. And if you've been with us on Sunday mornings, we're working through the heart of the book of Romans, and union with Christ is wrapped up in everything that Paul says in Romans when he talks about our justification and our sanctification and all the things that God is doing in our life. Those things are being done by virtue of the fact that we've been united to Jesus by faith. So justification and adoption, those are courtroom ideas. Application is the criminal court, we're saved from sin's penalty. Adoption is the family court. We are brought into God's family as children. We talked about reconciliation. Our relationship has been restored. Sanctification, which we're also talking about right now in Romans six and seven and eight on Sunday mornings. Last week was resurrection and tonight is glorification. One of the things I wanted to mention to you as we put a bow on this series tonight is that there are other things we could have talked about in this series on salvation. Okay, we have not been exhaustive in working through the doctrine of salvation or the doctrine of soteriology. We could have gone back in time, back before Jesus, back before the Old Testament, back before creation, and we could have talked about the councils of God and the decrees of God and eternity past. We didn't talk about those things as part of salvation, but certainly the New Testament speaks about God's planning and his purposes and even his pre-determining and his predestining the salvation of his people. Now, we're not going to leave those things out because we're going to come to all of those things in short order on Sunday mornings as we keep working through Romans eight and nine and ten, and there's some difficult ideas to sort through there. We could have talked about in this series some of the themes and the ideas that Jesus in saving us has defeated the spiritual powers of evil in the heavenly places. Okay, a theological category for that would be a Christus Victor type theme, the idea that Jesus has put the principalities and the powers to open shame by saving a people through his death on the cross. We could have spent a Wednesday night or two or more talking about that. A lot of theologians, if you look at some of the topics we covered, they look at regeneration and actually break that into two discussions. They break it into something called calling and something that we have termed regeneration and they make a distinction there and we just kind of lumped all of those ideas together. So we haven't been exhaustive, but we've covered a good bit of ground. I want to start by reading a quote from Bruce Demerys. We read this last week. It fits well with the two ideas that we're talking about tonight. Demerys says in the broadest sense, the glorification of saints will occur in four phases or stages. The first phase will occur at the believer's death when the immaterial soul spirit departs this sin curse body to enter Christ's immediate presence in glory. The glorification proper occurs in a second stage. This involves the resurrection of the saints transformed bodies in reunion with their spirits. This great event will occur at Christ's second coming in glory. And the third phase of glorification believers will be vindicated before the judgment seat of Christ, and then in the fourth phase of glorification, this is the believer's entry as embodied spirits, resurrection bodies reunited with your soul or your spirit, embodied spirits into heaven. So I gave you that quote last week. I give it to you again for two reasons. One, it helps you understand that what we said last week about resurrection is tied up and it's tangled up with what we're saying about glorification. And it was difficult last week to speak about resurrection without also talking about glorification. And likewise this week, it's difficult to think about glorification without also talking about or thinking about what we discussed last week in resurrection. So these things are tied up together. And I shared that quote with you to say, "Demorist is one of the guides that we have had in this study along with John Murray and a few others," they don't all agree on how to sort out in disentangle resurrection and glorification. There's a little bit of disagreement here which tells us that this is a complex thing. So those are the two things on our plate last week and this week. Resurrection, we're no longer dead. And then specifically tonight, glorification, we are no longer sinful. We're no longer sinful. So I just want you to think about this idea. We're no longer sinful. And I tried to come up with some human scenarios that might communicate something of the longing that the Christian ought to have for this day when we are no longer plagued by sin at all. We are completely set free from the penalty and the power and even the very presence of sin. One of the things that came to mind is somebody, maybe some of you may be a loved one who has heard a doctor say, "You have cancer," right? They've run the test. They've called you up. They say, "We're going to need you to come in. You're anxious. You're nervous. You're in the room," and they say to you, "You have cancer." And then for many of those people, you end up in a room like this, a chemo room. Just chair after chair after chair and they hook you up and you take your treatments. And some of you have been in rooms like that. They're difficult rooms to be in. Whether you're the one taking the treatment or whether it's your loved one there, that's a difficult place to be. And if you've been in that spot or you have a loved one in that spot, you understand how badly that the person who is ill and their loved ones, how badly do they want to hear the doctor say after treatments and surgeries and everything else, you are now cancer free. You're done with it and it's gone. There's a longing to hear those words. We joked a little bit Sunday about marriage and the debts that you might inherit in marriage and maybe in your life through marriage or through poor financial decisions, you've racked up debts or you know someone who has racked up great debts and maybe you know and you've experienced the longing of someone who has been crushed by debt to call up Dave Ramsey and to scream out in their best Mel Gibson Braveheart voice, "I'm debt free," and they're so excited to scream that out and to be released of that burden because they've been carrying it and they've been weighed down by it and they're so excited, those people who call in. They're so excited to reach that point in life and to be able to proclaim and to celebrate, "I'm done with that. It's completely gone. It's no more part of my life." Maybe you've had a friend who's been incarcerated. I think about one of my good friends growing up who made some bad decisions and he ended up having to spend some time in prison and I went and visited him a couple of times and talked with him and he had done what they had accused him of doing. There wasn't any question about that. He was trying to serve his time and he has served his time and he's since gotten out but I remember talking to him through the glass on the phone in him saying, "I just want to get done with it. I just want to be done." I don't want to have this hanging over my head anymore. I don't want to be here anymore. I just want to be free. I want to be out of here. Here's what we know. If you are a Christian, if you're a Christian, that means there's been a point in your life where you have come to grips with the reality of the holiness of God and you have come to see maybe not comprehensively but at least accurately the horror of your sin and you can only see the horror of your sin in light of the holiness of God. You understand and appreciate the holiness of God when you see your sin for what it is. There's a mutual building of those two understandings. When you see God in his holiness and you see yourself in your sinfulness. If you're a Christian, there has been a point in your life where God reached into your dead soul and gave you a new heart. He fundamentally changed you, took out your heart of stone and he gave you a heart of flesh. And there's been a moment in your life if you're a Christian where you have repented of your sin, you've confessed it to God, not making excuses for it, you own it for what it is, you see it for what it is. You confess it and you turn from it and you repudiate it and you say, "God, I turn from these things. I don't want these things to mark my life anymore." And if you're a Christian, that means the Holy Spirit of God not only gave you a new heart but he now lives in your heart. The Holy Spirit has made you his temple and he is at work in you to will and to work for God's good purpose. He's at work for your sanctification, having freed you from the power of sin. He is teaching you how to live like a free person as we've been talking about in Romans on Sunday mornings. And the longer you live as a Christian, it seems to me that there should be a growing desire in your life. I don't know how old all of you are individually, I don't know how long each of you has been a Christian when you got saved. And if you're a Christian, the longer you live on this earth as a Christian, you've been regenerated, repented of your sin, you see God in his holiness, you have the Holy Spirit living in you, there should be a growing desire in your life to say, "I want to be done with sin." I want it out. I don't want anything to do with it anymore. The Apostle Paul talks about that feeling and that struggle and that frustration at the end of Romans, chapter 7. He's been very honest about his struggle with sin, his frustration with sin. And in Romans 7, 24 he says, "Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?" And last week we talked about the value of the body. He's not specifically saying, "It's just a physical problem." If you read Romans 7, he's talking about the flesh and he's talking about the old man and the old person and his struggle with sin and he's saying, "I need to be delivered from this. I can't do it. I can't do it. I feel stuck and I want to be free from it. Who's going to deliver me? This wretched man that I am, verse 25, "Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord." God's going to deliver His people from not only the penalty of sin and the power of sin, but one day the presence of sin. And Paul begins to talk about that in Romans chapter 8. We'll read a few verses from Romans 8 tonight. So let's start with a fundamental question. We've asked this every week, "Why do we need to be glorified? Why do we need to be glorified?" Starting with God's always a good place to start. So we'll say this. God is glorious. He is glorious and His deeds are glorious and He deserves glory and the Bible is very clear that He desires glory. It's wrong for you to desire glory because you're not God. It's right, fundamentally right for God to desire glory because He is God and He is glorious and His deeds are glorious and He deserves glory. So I gave you a lot of verses here in Exodus and Psalm. I'm going to be honest, we're not going to look at those. You're going to look at those. You can read those up. And it's just a small sampling of what you'll find in those two books. Let me just make a few comments about this word glory. I looked it up this week. The first time the word glory appears in the Bible is not what I would have ever guessed. We could play Bible jeopardy all night long, you would never guess it. It occurs one time in the book of Genesis and it's at the end of the book of Genesis. It's when Jacob the patriarch is dying and he's pronouncing blessings on his children. And he talks about two of his boys, Simeon and Levi. Simeon and Levi had done some foolish things earlier in their life and Jacob as he's blessing these boys, he mentions that and he says, "You guys in your folly and the things that you did, you hurt my glory." And what he's saying is, "You hurt my reputation. The things that you did reflected poorly on me, damaged my standing, my reputation, what people thought about me." And Jacob had not forgotten that even late into life. Then you come to the book of Exodus and it's just filled with talk about glory. And I'll just give you a few examples of what you read. God says to Moses multiple times that he intends to get glory over Pharaoh. That's his plan from the beginning. He says, "I want people to know. I want them to see, I want to get glory over Pharaoh and over Egypt." You read in the book of Exodus, after God saves people, they go to Mount Sinai and the Bible says that his glory descended on the mountain. This is visible manifestation of his presence and who he is descended on Mount Sinai. We'll talk later tonight about Moses. You remember there was a point in Moses's life where he prayed, "God, would you please show me your glory? I want to see your glory." And then at the end of the book, man, if you quit on the book of Exodus as soon as they start building the tent, you miss the ending, which is so great because they finish the tent and they tell you about it twice. You get to read about the instructions and you get to read about the building and you say, "I don't know. I don't know." But you get to the end and the tents in the middle of the people and the glory of God comes and fills the tent and the people of God are completely overwhelmed by his presence in his glory. It's something they can't even take in. They're just on their faces, the priest are there to serve and to do all the priestly things and they can't do any of those things because the glory of God is so overwhelming. So what does the word mean? The Hebrew word is "covode" and it means primarily "heaviness," meaning it's not light, it's not trivial, it's not flighty, but there's substance to this word. It's splendor, honor, the Greek word is "doxa," it means bright, magnificent, fame, honor, majesty. God's glory, what you see in the Bible, Old Testament and New, is it is closely related to his holiness. It's closely related to his holiness. So if you're around a manual much, one of the things I try to talk about a lot is that holiness is fundamental to who God is. It's the one basic sort of catch-all thing that you need to know about God. He is holy, holy, holy, and Isaiah 6 and in Revelation 4. And in both of those texts that speak about the holiness of God, the glory of God is drawn up into the conversation. So what you literally read in Isaiah 6, and you can turn there, Isaiah 6, Isaiah sees the seraphim and they're calling out to one another, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, the earth is filled with his, and you would assume they're going to say with his holiness because he's holy, holy, holy. But what they say is the whole earth is filled with his cavote, with his glory. And it's almost like the idea is that when God's holiness goes on display, when the fundamental truth about who he is is on display for people to see, that's his glory, his fame, his reputation, his character, his essence, the weightiness, the heaviness of who he is. You see the same thing in Revelation 4 where the angels are crying out in heaven, holy, holy, holy. And immediately after that, they begin to give glory to God. So you see the same connection there in the book of Revelation. So God is glorious, what about us? We have exchanged the glory of God for images, and we have fallen short of God's glory. I came across Psalm 106 just in my personal Bible reading schedule about a week ago. Psalm 106 verse 19, speaking of the Exodus says they made a calf in horrib, and they worshiped a metal image. They exchanged the glory of God for the image of an ox that eats grass. They forgot God, their Savior, who had done great things in Egypt, wondrous things in the land of Ham and awesome deeds by the Red Sea. Therefore, he said he would destroy them, had not Moses, his chosen one, stood in the breach before him to turn away his wrath from destroying him. Look, we could have a whole sermon on those verses, verse 19 to 23 about salvation and the mediator and God's plans and his purposes, and he has someone raised up ready to intercede for the people. But the fundamental truth that we're paying attention to is that the people, as they were there at the foot of Mount Sinai and Moses was receiving the law, and Aaron was with him at the bottom, they exchanged the glory of God for an image of a cow that eats grass. Cattle, they chose cattle that just eats grass over the glory of God. Paul echoes this phrase in Romans chapter 1, and Paul expands it, and he says, "You know what? We all do that. We exchange the glory of God for a created thing. We take in the heaviness of God, and we trade it away intentionally for something that is just created that's here today and gone tomorrow." He describes it as a foolish thing, a wicked thing, an unrighteous thing. And then Romans 3, 23, we have fallen short of God's glory. So let me make one quick comment here, since this is the last night. You cannot understand the biblical truth about salvation. If you don't know who God is, and if you don't know who you are, it's completely impossible. Okay, it's a fundamental flaw in the way that many churches share the gospel and train people to share the gospel. They just jump right in and say, "Would you like to invite Jesus into your heart? Would you please raise your hand?" And these people know nothing about the glory and the majesty and the holiness of God, and they know nothing about their sinfulness. They can't possibly understand anything about salvation. It's the same reason, okay, I'm just going to prepare you, the A-Team here, Wednesday night A-Team. In the next couple months, you know where we're at in Romans, right? We're moving towards the end of Romans 8. We are not skipping Romans 9. We're going to talk about every single verse in there. And some of you are going to read things in Romans 9 and say, nah, there's no way that means that. And the reason so many people just out of hand reject what the Bible, I think clearly says in Romans 8, 9 and 10, is because fundamentally they don't have a right understanding of God and His holiness and His glory. And fundamentally they don't have a biblical understanding of their sinfulness. They bring God down and they bring themselves up. And everything in the Bible does the opposite. It brings God up and it brings us down. And when you have a right view about who God is and who we are as sinners, then the things that are somewhat controversial in Romans 8, 9 and 10 become less controversial because you say, well, yeah, that kind of makes sense. I suppose that is exactly how it would have to be if God's going to save people. So we'll get there Sunday mornings. How does God glorify sinners? I've said this several times tonight. God saves us from sin's penalty. It's our justification. He saves us from sin's power. It's our sanctification and He saves us from sin's presence. That's our glorification. So we read the end of Romans 7 just a moment ago. Look what Paul says in Romans 8, verse 30. He says, those whom He predestined, He also called, I told you we didn't talk specifically about calling. We could have talked specifically about calling. Those He predestined, He also called and those whom He called, He also justified and those whom He justified, He also glorified. Now it's not my aim to delve into the details of all of those individual things tonight because we're going to do that on Sunday morning before too long. It's my aim to say to you that theologians rightly call this the golden chain of salvation and that as you move from stage to stage, word to word, in verse 30, there are none lost in that process. All the ones who were predestined or called, all those who were called or justified, all those who were justified, He glorified. That's the grammar of verse 30 and that's the logic of chapter 8, that God's not going to lose any of the people that He intends to save, not any of them. And I don't know if you notice this, but we just read verse 30 that says, those whom He justified, He also glorified and that's past tense and yet you're not glorified yet. And Paul's using what we would call in the Old Testament a prophetic past to say, look, this thing is glorification is coming in the future, it's out there. But it's so certain He speaks about it as if it's happened in the past. The book of Isaiah is filled with this. Isaiah talks about things as if they're past tense but they're prophecies about Jesus. That's Isaiah 52 and Isaiah 53. He was crushed for our iniquities. Well that was hundreds of years away, but Isaiah talked about it in the past tense because Isaiah is saying, man, it's going to happen. Not maybe, not probably. It's not like election night, where you say, I don't know, how's it going to go, what's this state going to do, is it going to work, you don't know, it's not like that. It's going to happen. He is going to be crushed for our iniquities and that's what Paul's doing here as he speaks about glorification. We have been saved from sins penalty. We have been saved from sins power. That's Paul's argument in Romans, we're learning to live as free people and we will be saved from sins presence glorification. So we'll break this down into a few stages and we'll go through these quickly for the sake of time. The first phase of glorification is actually part of our sanctification. These things are sort of connected and you'll find one verse in the New Testament, 2 Corinthians chapter 3 verse 18, Paul says, "We all with unveiled face beholding the glory of the Lord are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another." This comes from the Lord who is the Spirit and you can read 3 and 4 in 2 Corinthians. He's talking about how God's at work in the life of his people now. He's removed this veil so that they can see the truth of the gospel and we are being transformed from one degree of glory to another which tells you your sanctification which is taking place now is like the preview to your full glorification. In the end you will be completely freed from sins presence and God is at work in you even now to sanctify you and to transform you from one degree of glory to another. The second phase of glorification involves what we called last week the intermediate state. Philippians chapter 1 verse 23, just as an example, Paul says, "I'm hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better, but to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account and you understand when he says depart, he means die. Not I'm going to Midland and I'll be back. What I would like to do is to be done with this world and if I'm done with this world I go to be with Jesus and we talked about this intermediate state where your body's in the ground and your spirit is with the Lord in heaven, paradise." So the intermediate state, second phase, third phase of glorification involves the resurrection. 1 Corinthians 15, 20 says the resurrection of Jesus is the first fruits, many will follow. The resurrection of his people will certainly follow. We talked about the resurrection last week and then fourth, the fourth phase of glorification involves the eternal state, the eternal state. Revelation 21 verse 27 is speaking about the new Jerusalem, the new creation. John says, "Nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb's book of life." So only the redeemed whose names are written in the Lamb's book are going to enter and those who enter will not be marked by anything unclean or detestable or false. No more sin, completely freed from sin's presence, 22 verse 3 says, "No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and the Lamb will be in it and his servants will worship him." So that's the eternal state where we're completely freed from sin's presence. Let me just give you quickly a few metaphors or a few ideas. When I use the word metaphor, I don't mean to say that these things aren't going to happen. I just mean to say there's a number of images used in the New Testament to talk about our glorification. All of this is kind of abstract, so these images kind of give you something to cling on to and think about when it comes to glorification. Glorification is like receiving a great inheritance, a great inheritance. If you're a person on social media, I don't know how the algorithm treats you, but every now and then I see somebody share a meme or something of someone in quicksand, and it says from all the movies I watched growing up, I thought I was going to have a lot more interactions with quicksand in my life than I actually have, meaning when you're a kid it's in every movie there's quicksand and you think, "I got to know how to get out of quicksand," because I'm going to one day accidentally walk into quicksand. When I thought about this over the last week, glorifications like receiving a great inheritance, I think as a kid, I thought there were going to be a lot more long lost uncles who were going to die and you were going to get a letter in the mail that said, "Hey, good news. People, Phil died and he left you ten million dollars." And I haven't had any of those letters, maybe you've had some of those letters. I grew up with a lady right across the street from our house, she moved in when I was probably in grade school and the lady seemed ancient to me, she probably wasn't, but she seemed ancient because I was a kid and her mother lived with her and she seemed like as old as Methuselah and they didn't have any other people in their family. No other kids, no other grandkids, no nieces, nephews, it was just these two ladies. And I used to think growing up, you know, I help her with her lawnwork. And one of these days, they probably, I don't know, an inheritance. According to what Peter says, 1 Peter 1, 3 to 5, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again. How is a person born again? By being nice, by being good, by going to church, by their parents doing the right thing? By God's mercy, a person is born again. According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again, regenerated, to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and he's the first fruits. Verse 4, "We've been born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you." You actually do have an inheritance. And it's better than the little old lady across the street, or Uncle Phil, or anybody else, is being kept in heaven for you, who, you who, by God's power are being guarded. Through faith, for a salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time. The full experience of your salvation is in the future. God is guarding you even now. He's holding on to his people. The means that he uses his faith, not your good works. It's not your church attendance, it's not how much you give to missions or to your church, but it's faith in Jesus that keeps you united to Jesus, and it's God who's guarding you. And this salvation and this inheritance is going to be yours in the last time. What's glorification going to be like? What's it going to be like to be free from sin's presence? In one sense, it's going to be like a great inheritance that you finally take possession of. Glorification is like receiving the crown of life. Thirdly, glorification is like entering an eternal kingdom. Fourthly, glorification involves the beatific vision. Exodus 33, 18. That's when Moses said, "Lord, please show me your glory." Did God do it? He caused all his goodness to pass by, and he hid Moses in the cleft of the rock even for that. Didn't exactly answer that prayer the way Moses asked it. You can read Matthew 5, 8. Jesus talks about the pure in heart will see God. They will see Him. That's the beatific vision, beholding the glory of God. Paul talks about it in 1 Corinthians 13. He says, "Right now we see through a glass dimly, but then in the end we'll see." We'll see the Lord. 1 John 3, 2, says, "We will be made like Him in the end, because we will see Him as He is." And that's glorification. We will be made, conformed to the image of Christ, saved completely and forever from the presence of sin, and wrapped up in that idea is seeing Him. We will be made like Him because we see Him. Hebrews 12, 14, "Strive for peace with all men and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord." Even now you're working out your salvation with fear and trembling. With the hope that in the end you will see the Lord. Number five we read is our call to worship. Glorification involves worship with all the redeemed. Now look, I told you last week that you had questions and I had questions, and you probably have questions again about glorification, things rolling around in your head and there's something in us that says, "Yeah, but what's it going to be like?" You start to think, "What's it going to be like to be completely freed from sin's presence?" And sometimes when we think about heaven, we talk about heaven, we say things that are maybe less than true. So sometimes we say, "Maybe you say this to your kids, or maybe you say it to yourself." When I get to heaven, I'm just going to ask God all the things that I didn't know about or want to know. I have a feeling that you can ask some questions when you get to heaven. I don't know that for certain, but I think you can probably ask some questions. I don't have any reason to think that God owes you or me any answers. You might give us some, but you understand even in the glorified state, we are creatures, and He's still the Creator. It's not going to be a chummy thing. Think about the angels in Isaiah and Revelation who have never been tainted by the presence of sin, and even they cover their eyes and they cover their feet and they fall down on their face and they're completely overwhelmed with the glory of God. They don't just waltz up and say, "Okay, question number one. Here we go." That's not how it works for them. I don't know why we think it's going to work that way for us. Sometimes we talk about heaven like we'll understand it, we'll understand it better by and by. When we get there, we'll know it all, you're not going to be omniscient in heaven. God's omniscient. He's the Creator. You're the creature. I don't have all the answers. All these other things we've talked about, justification and adoption and reconciliation and the work of Jesus, you understand these are finished, completed realities and things that have been applied to us and things that we've experienced, and this is one of those things where we're looking forward in faith and we're reading through Scriptures and we're looking through the glass dimly and we're saying, "God has given us some clues and some instruction and some truth but the fullness of this, it awaits us in the future." How does it change us now? Let me give you a few thoughts and we'll wrap up. Prayer. While we await our glorification, we pray confidently and with help and through groans. Romans 8, verse 18, Paul says, "I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with what? With the glory that is to be revealed to us." He's not telling you to put your big boy pants on. He's not telling you that your suffering is no big deal. He's not telling you any of that, he's saying, "But compared to the weight of glory, the heaviness, the awesomeness of what's going to be revealed to us, these things are not worth comparing." He'll tell the Corinthians this light, momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory. But here he says, "Our sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing to the glory that's going to be revealed to us." And then the rest of Romans 8, he's really kind of talking about prayer. He just kind of weaves in and out and he's talking about prayer and he says, "You know, creation is groaning and we're groaning and sometimes we don't even know how to pray. You just, you don't even know." And he says in here, "You understand the Holy Spirit is helping you, the Holy Spirit is interceding for you." And he says later that Jesus, the one who died, who was raised, who was at the right hand of God, verse 34, is also interceding for us. And he says, "There's not anything in all creation that's going to be able to separate you from the love of God so you should pray with confidence. There's nothing that can separate you from the love of God. Those he predestined, he will glorify. None will be lost. You pray confidently, you pray with help, you pray with groans. Discipleship, the goal of the Christian life is spiritual maturity and Christ likeness. Ephesians 4, Paul says that God has given leaders to the church. He talks about apostles and prophets and evangelists and pastors and teachers, okay? Those and prophets are the foundation of the church. We don't have any of them today. We still build on them. We have evangelists, we have pastors, we have teachers, and Paul says, "God has given these people to the church so that you won't be like children, tossed to and fro by the waves and the blown about by every wind of doctrine, but you'll be built up and established and strengthened." I'm going to be honest with you, sometimes we think about this work that Paul's describing in Ephesians 4 and the work of pastors, teachers, and we say, "We just need to learn more things. We need to be better educated about the Bible." And you know what? In the United States, we do need to be better educated about the Bible and we do need to learn some things. But having a head full of Bible facts does not make you Christ-like. You need the Bible facts. You need the truth about who God is. You need the truth about who you are, but it's entirely possible to have a head full of Bible facts and to not Ephesians 4 grow up into Him who is the head and to be built up in love. You're going to have lots of Bible facts and not grow up into the head who is Jesus and not love the people that God has put into your life. Do not conflate or confuse knowing Bible truths with spiritual maturity. Those are not the same thing, one to one. And God's aim in the church is to build it up to maturity, knowing Bible facts, absolutely. But the point of those Bible facts is that you grow up into Him who is the head and you build the church up in love. Evangelism, I'll just leave you with a little thought here, God is the gospel. There's a very helpful book, short book by John Piper with that title. And here's the point of that book. The reason that you should accept the gospel is so that you get God. Not just so you can be reunited with great grandma in heaven. Not just so you can live in a little cabin by lake in the new heavens and the new earth. Not just so you can walk on streets of gold, not just so you can be completely debt free, not so free, no more ankle bracelet or parole officer or anything like that's not the primary point. All those things are going to be true in the new heavens and the new earth. But the primary fundamental reason you respond to the gospel is so that you get God. He's the prize. He's the treasure buried in the field that you gladly and joyfully sell everything in liquidate everything in forsake everything to get that treasure. God's the gospel. That church gathered worship of God's people is first and foremost for God's glory. And too often what happens in the Bible Belt is we make worship services about lost people. Churches do this all the time. I've had conversations with pastors about this just in the last couple weeks. We say, well, we don't want to make them uncomfortable. We don't want to use big words, they don't understand. We don't want to do things that they might, you know, be offended by. And we cater and we tailor everything that happens in a quote unquote worship service to people who aren't even believers. When the fundamental aim of a worship service ought to be what would glorify God the most? How could we bring most honor and glory and praise to Him? How could we not offend someone who doesn't even understand the glory of God? But how can we honor the Lord? So one last quote from John Murray, he's been a faithful guide in this study. He says, "Glorification is the final phase of the application of redemption. Is that which brings to completion the process which begins in effectual calling? Indeed, it's the completion of the whole process of redemption. For glorification means the attainment of the goal to which the elect of God were predestinated in the eternal purpose of the Father. It involves a consummation of the redemption secured and procured by the vicarious work of Christ." Father, we're grateful for Your Word, grateful that You have revealed the truth about Your character to us in the Scriptures. You are a holy God, you are a glorious God, all of Your works are glorious. You are worthy of all glory, and Lord, we recognize that You desire Your people. You desire Your creation to glorify You. And Father, we want to be willing participants in that plan. We want to offer You the glory that You rightly deserve. We want to feel the weight of Your character. We don't want to treat You as a light, trivial thing. Father, we pray that Your mercy would continue to rest on us, people who have exchanged Your glory for created things and people who have fallen short of Your glory. Help us to see not only the truth about You but the truth about ourselves. Father, build in us a longing and a desire that grows to be free, not just from sin's penalty and its power but ultimately its presence. It would give us a growing desire to see You and to be conformed to the image of Your Son. Father, give us a longing for this completion of salvation that awaits us in the future. Lord, we are grateful for the chance to be gathered here tonight, and our prayer is that You have been glorified in the things that we've done. We pray these things in Jesus' name, amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]