Glory of God Part 2: Christ Glorified God

Let's turn first of all to John chapter 17. Now what I want to think with you about this evening is how the Lord Jesus has glorified God. And this is another inexhaustible subject and I'm going to be going through a fair bit of scripture reading so I hope it won't be too confusing or tedious to you to examine various passages or sections of the Word of God.

But if we notice a few verses in chapter 17, this is just before the Lord Jesus goes to the cross. So he knows he's about to die, to leave this world. Verse 1, these words speak Jesus and lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, Father, the hour is come.

Glorify thy son that thy son also may glorify thee. Now drop down to verse 4. I have glorified thee on the earth. I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.

And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was. Now in the rest of the chapter he talks about the people, the men that the Father had given to him and his faithfulness to this stewardship entrusted to him and he uses the word glory and glorified a number of times through the following verses but we won't really address them now. But I want you to think about this, this fact that is expressed here.

Here is a man who is about to leave the earth and he can lift up his eyes to heaven and he can speak to someone in heaven as Father. That's the first vital thing to think about. And I have a number of things, a number of aspects of the way in which the Lord Jesus has glorified God.

I've put them down in five categories. For some, I'm not sure just why, but I've been going in fives all through this subject. But what impresses me is that what I'm thinking of particularly tonight as the Son of God, it is in that relationship primarily that he has revealed God.

And so he is glorifying God in the capacity, in the relationship as being God's Son. And so that's the first thing I want you to think about. He is the acknowledged Son representing and revealing God.

Let me just give you the other ones that I have jotted down. I probably won't get back to them tonight, but at least you'll know sort of the headings of them at least. The acknowledged Son as representing God to us, revealing God to us.

The approved servant. He is the servant of God above all servants. The approved servant realizing the will of God, that is, bringing the will of God out into realization or effect.

In Psalm 40, he says, I come to do thy will, O God. And then the anointed sovereign, reestablishing the authority of God. He is manifesting what God is.

He is going to be the sovereign. The way God reveals himself in his sovereignty is going to be through the Lord Jesus as the King. And then the other one that I have, the other couple that I have jotted down are as the appointed sacrifice, the redemption and reconciliation of the world, and then as the admirable shepherd.

Now those are five aspects of how he has fulfilled the nature and character of God in fullness. But I want to focus particularly on him as the Son, because as I went through all of these, I realized that his Sonship is key to every one of the rest. He's not just any servant.

He is the Son who serves his Father. He is not just a king appointed by God. He is God's Son who is anointed to be the divine king and so on.

So you go down through each one and his Sonship adds a dimension, adds a significance to every other aspect of what he is and what he does. But in this passage in John 17, he makes this declaration, I have glorified thee on the earth. And then he makes this interesting statement, and now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.

And that would tell us very clearly that the Lord Jesus shares the glory of deity. Before creation existed, before the world was, he was there with God and he is co-equal with the Father. Let's go back to John chapter 1 and we'll see how the gospel introduces him.

John chapter 1, now this is very familiar to most of us, but it tells us in the beginning was the Word and he's revealed as the one who is the expression of God, the revelation of God. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God.

All things were made by him and without him was not anything made that was made. Those are tremendous statements made about this wonderful person. But you come down to verse 14 and it says, and the Word was made flesh, or the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

And then it says, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. And so again, what we find emphasized in this, what's called the prologue of the gospel of John, the introduction of the gospel of John, the character in which he is coming is as an only begotten Son who is coming from beside a Father. That's the character of his coming.

And then it expresses this glory as being full of grace and truth. Now drop down to verse 16 and it says, and of his fullness have all we received, and grace for grace. For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.

No man has seen God at any time, the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him. Now the main thrust of what I'm going to spend quite a bit of time on tonight I could tell you in five minutes. And that's part of the problem with sometimes when we're trying to teach something, is that we can say it very simply, it may not have much impact.

Or we can go into a lot of detail and make it more meaningful and sometimes we just confuse things. So I'm going to try to let you know ahead of time where I'm trying to go with this, because it may seem like a long time before we get back to this point. So what I want you to see in this beginning of the gospel of John is this.

Someone has come from heaven. Someone has come from with God, from with the Father. The expression the only begotten of a father literally is from beside the Father.

So we have someone coming personally from the presence of the eternal God and it says he became flesh, he became visible. We saw him, we observed him, we saw his glory. But the particular character of his glory that he's emphasizing here is full of grace and truth.

Now what I have taken up so far in looking at the glory of God, I spoke of what we call the essential glories of God. That is those attributes or aspects of God that set him apart from anything else that exists. His eternal being, his almighty power, his infinite wisdom and understanding.

These superlative capacities and characters. That is all true of Christ, but what is being emphasized here is more what we have termed his moral glory. What God is personally as a person.

It's one thing to believe in a God. It's another thing to come to understand that he is a person that you can know. And that our personhood, the fact that we are persons, derives from what he is.

And so he comes not as an impersonal force, as a beam of light. He comes as a son from with a father. And the character in which he reveals himself is especially the character of grace and truth.

Now verse 16 says, and of his fullness of all we received and grace for grace. That's a very interesting expression that if you were to look at it literally from the original language it would be a little confusing for you because it means grace against grace. It's a word that means against or instead of.

And that doesn't seem to make sense and that's why it's translated as it is. But the intended meaning of it is in this way, sometimes we use the expression blessing upon blessing. It's like gifts from God.

There are so many gifts that they're just stacked one against another. Well that doesn't mean that they're opposed to each other, it just means they're just jammed against each other. And there's that idea here, grace upon grace upon grace upon grace has been manifested.

God's goodness has come to us in an immeasurable way out of the fullness that is in the Son. And then he says in explanation, verse 17, he now looks at the Bible, what we know as the Bible, the Old Testament and the New Testament and puts it in these two descriptions. For the law was given by Moses.

That was a covenant of God with the nation of Israel, a relationship to God based upon the law. The law was given by Moses, but this full final revelation of God personally has come by Jesus Christ. And then the next verse says, no man has seen God at any time, the only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father.

Now you can't get any closer to a person than to be in that person's bosom. It's the place of affection, of closeness. And he is saying that this one who has come from God has come right from the very heart of God to us.

And he has declared him, he has made him known. Now, what I want to do now is go back to Moses. In the Old Testament, I want to take you back to a very important part at the giving of the law where Moses reveals a character that is a foreshadowing of Christ.

So I'm going to show a really foreshadowing of the Lord Jesus in Moses and at the same time his insufficiency to be that final mediator. Let's go back to Exodus chapter 32. Now in this part of the Bible, we have the history of God's redemption of Israel out of Egypt.

And if you were to go to chapter 19, you would find that they have arrived in the desert at a place called Mount Sinai. And this is where they meet with God and a covenant is established. Maybe I should just read a couple of those verses in chapter 19 because I want you to see the setting very clearly that is here.

Exodus chapter 19, they've come to Mount Sinai and they're camping before the mountain. And verse 3 says, And Moses went up unto God and the Lord called unto him out of the mountain saying, Thus shalt thou say to the house of Jacob and tell the children of Israel, You have seen what I did unto the Egyptians and how I bear you on eagles' wings and brought you unto myself. Now therefore, if you will obey my voice indeed and keep my covenant, then you shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people for all the earth is mine and you shall be unto me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.

So that's the promise that God makes to this people. He says I have carried you, I've delivered you, I've rescued you and I have brought you to not the desert and a mountain, I've brought you to myself. You see God has drawn a people to himself and brought them into a special relationship that he calls a covenant relationship.

Now the best parallel that there is, is of a marriage, of a wedding. God uses this analogy over and over again with the nation of Israel and he actually speaks of it as being the covenant that he established as the parallel of a marriage covenant. Now what happens? Well in the chapters between chapter 20 through to chapter 32, what we have is God gives the terms of the law, the terms of the covenant, the people say we'll obey it, we will be your people.

And the Lord calls Moses back up into the mountain and he is in the presence of God for 40 days. What's the Lord doing there? The Lord is revealing his heart, he's revealing his plans to dwell among his people. The tabernacle instructions are given and God is expressing what is needed to make it suitable for him to live in the midst of his own people.

Now that was to be the glory of the nation of Israel. That is what set them apart from every other people on earth, that God had chosen them and was going to presence himself among them in this special covenant relationship. Which would be like the parallel of a bridegroom who is making up house plans and the dream house that they're going to build and where they're going to live together.

What happens when we come to chapter 32? Down at the bottom of the mountain the people get tired of waiting. Forty days have passed and they say to Aaron, we don't know what's going on, we don't know what's happened to this Moses that brought us out of the land of Egypt, make us gods. Make us gods.

They have just had revelation of God to them and they want to turn back to worship something tangible, a God that they can control. And so as they do this, they have a feast, they have a celebration and they're worshiping this idol and they're committing immorality, having the old style feast and worship that they knew in Egypt among the Egyptians. And the Lord, verse 7, said unto Moses, Go, get thee down, for thy people which thou broughtest out of the land of Egypt have corrupted themselves.

They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them. They have made a molten calf and have worshipped it and have sacrificed thereunto and said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which have brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. And the Lord said unto Moses, I have seen this people.

Behold, it is a stiff-necked people. Now therefore, let me alone that my wrath may wax hot against them, that I may consume them, and I will make of thee a great nation. Now what would you have done if God had given you that kind of an offer? One of the things I want you to think about tonight is what kind of character did Moses reveal in this crisis? What kind of faithfulness to God, what kind of love to the people of God did he show? He's been rejected by the people.

They said, This Moses, we don't know what's happened to him. And Moses' God, we don't want to know him either. Moses could have said, Yes, Lord, it seems obvious they're not worth the trouble.

Let's start over. I think it would be a great idea to make a great nation out of my descendants. He could have thought that was just great.

But instead, he falls down and he beseeches God for compassion for God's people. And here's what he says, Moses besought the Lord, his God, and said, Lord, why doth thy wrath wax hot against thy people which thou hast brought forth out of the land of Egypt with great power? God said to him, The people you brought out, your people. And Moses says, No, they're your people, Lord.

They're your people. This is one of the important things for any of us who have any responsibility among God's people is to know they're the Lord's people. They belong to the Lord.

And our care is to be governed by the fact that they belong to the Lord himself. So Moses pleads the relationship that God himself established, the redemption that God showed to them. And then he says, Now, why should the Egyptians say, Well, he brought them out, but he couldn't bring them in, so he destroyed them in the wilderness.

And then he says, Lord, remember your promise to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. Remember your promises. So he makes this appeal to God.

And the Lord relents. Now, it's one of the most fascinating narratives in the Bible, because it looks like the Lord is so reluctant. It's not just the Lord says, Okay, just forget it.

We'll go back to, you know, building the tabernacle and so on. It isn't that simple. In the first place, he sends Moses back down the mountain.

And what happens when Moses comes down? Well, the interesting thing is when Moses comes down from the mountain, and he sees what God saw, it says this, verse 19, And it came to pass, as soon as he came nigh unto the camp, that he saw the calf and the dancing. And Moses' anger waxed hot, and he cast the tables out of his hands, and break them beneath the mountain. And what are those tables? That's the covenant made between God and Israel.

So now Moses is angry. You know, Moses has this wonderful capacity in this section to be faithful to God, to have the same hold upon reality and truth as God himself. When he sees the idolatry, when he sees the sin going on, his anger is stirred.

And he does some rather interesting things. He burns the calf, he melts that gold, he straws it on the water, and then he makes the people drink it. Now that's just desserts, isn't it? Drink your God.

Eat him. That's all it is. And then what does he do? Well, if you read a little further in the chapter, he calls for judgment.

He asks who is on the Lord's side. And the sons of Levi separate themselves out to him, and he says, now you execute judgment. On who? On your sons, on your brother.

You know, this is a very challenging passage. When there is sin against God, I have to side with God against the sin. Even if it's my own brother, my own father, my own wife, my own son or daughter.

It's a solemn thing. But Moses shows his faithfulness to God in this time of wickedness and sin. Now, but that isn't where it ends.

The next day, verse 30, it came to pass on the moral that Moses said unto the people, you have sinned a great sin, and now I will go up unto the Lord, peradventure, that means possibly I shall make an atonement for your sin. And Moses returned unto the Lord and said, oh, this people have sinned a great sin, and have made them gods of gold. Yet now if thou wilt forgive their sin, and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written.

What is Moses doing here? Moses is here coming into the place that the Lord Jesus has fulfilled in perfection. Moses has become a mediator in the truest sense of the word between God and all his righteousness and holiness, and a people who have sinned against God and deserve wrath. Moses says, I'm going to go and meet with God, and possibly I'm going to make an atonement for you.

What did he have in mind? Was he going to drag a couple of bullocks, some lambs? No, he was going to present himself and offer himself to be judged, to be destroyed in the place of the people. Have you ever loved God's people that much? Have you ever honored God's righteousness and holiness that much, that you would recognize what it would take to bring God and his people back together again? Here is a tremendous expression of godliness, of this man who is so much in tune with God that he actually fulfills what will be in a coming time in the new covenant with Christ. As he says, I will make an atonement, and then as he appeals to God, if you will forgive, if not, blot me out of thy book.

The only other man who comes close to this kind of nobility is the Apostle Paul in the New Testament, who expressed that same kind of willingness to be made a curse for his brethren, the Israelites, in their blindness and unbelief. But now, where does that take us to? You have God, you have a people who are still out of touch with God, and you have a man in the middle who wants to bring them back together again, the mediator. When you come into chapter 33, the Lord says, now okay, you go, you take the people, I'll send an angel, I'll bring you into the land, I'll fulfill my promise, but I'm not going to be in your midst.

I'm not going to be in your midst, lest I consume you. Well, did Moses accept that as a compromise? Well, I guess that's the best we can hope for. Now he keeps working, he keeps interceding.

The next thing that Moses does is he takes the tent of meeting where they were to meet with God, and he moves it outside of the camp. And then if anybody wants to meet with the Lord, they have to go out of the camp to meet with God. Now the New Testament picks up that in Hebrews chapter 13, let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach.

That's where this comes from, from this passage. In a world that is contaminated, in a world that has actually apostatized away from God, there is a call to leave what the world represents, to be in harmony with God. God will never compromise what he is to accommodate what we are.

There is a call to go out to him. So Moses is faithful to what God is. He will not try to just say, Lord, you're just going to have to get used to these people.

You're just going to have to lower your standards to suit what these people are really like. That's not the way he worked. And that's always the challenge we have today in the local assembly as well, the same challenge.

But as we go through this chapter, you'll find that God speaks to Moses. There is communion back and forth. And now we have verse 12 of chapter 33.

Moses says unto the Lord, See thou sayest unto me, Bring up this people, and thou hast not let me know whom thou wilt send with me. Yet thou hast said, I know thee by name, and thou hast also found grace in my sight. Now I want you to notice as we go through this section how many times the word grace is emphasized in the thought of grace.

Verse 13, Now therefore I pray thee, if I have found grace in thy sight, show me now thy way, that I may know thee, that I may find grace in thy sight, and consider that this nation is thy people. And he said, this is the Lord said, My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest. And he that is Moses said unto the Lord, If thy presence go not with me, carry us not a pence, for wherein shall it be known here that I and thy people have found grace in thy sight.

Is it not in that thou goest with us, so shall we be separated, I and thy people, from all the people that are upon the face of the earth. Notice how he says, the Lord says, You have found grace in my sight. And Moses says, If I and your people have found grace in your sight.

He keeps bringing the people in with him in this place of favor and this place of love. Now verse 17, And the Lord said unto Moses, I will do this thing also that thou hast spoken for, thou hast found grace in my sight, and I know thee by name. You see, God could not make a promise based upon the people, but he does make it upon the grace that Moses found in his sight.

So here we have the glimmer of the New Testament truth, that we are accepted in the beloved one. God could not make a promise to us based upon us, but he can upon his Son. And Moses is a glimpse of this.

You have found grace in my sight, and I am going to bring the people in to your grace, to the favor in which I have brought you. And then Moses asks this very strange thing. Now as I said, I am taking an awfully long time to bring you to what I wanted to see in this passage.

Moses makes a very strange request. Here is what he says. And he said, I beseech thee, show me thy glory.

Now if you just read that all in isolation, it may not seem strange at all. But Moses has already visited in the presence of God for forty days and forty nights. He has beheld the glory of God.

He has seen the awesome display of the eternal God. What is he looking for now? What more is he asking for? I think the Lord's answer shows what Moses is looking for. And here is what the Lord answers.

Verse 19, And he, that is the Lord, said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee, and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. And he said, Thou canst not see my face, for there shall no man see me and live. Now you notice the emphasis here? It's not upon his blazing glory as a consuming fire.

It is his grace. That is what Moses is searching out after in God. What he is seeing in God, in God showing his compassion to an undeserving people.

And Moses says, I beseech thee, show me your glory. He says, I will make my goodness pass before you. Now let's look at chapter 34 where the Lord descends and presents himself before him.

Now the Lord asks him to make another set of stones, tables of stone. And then in verse 5, And the Lord descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. And that's the name Jehovah.

And the Lord or Jehovah passed by before him and proclaimed, Jehovah, Jehovah, the Eternal, the Eternal, God merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation. And Moses made haste and bowed his head toward the earth and worshipped. And he said, If now I have found grace in thy sight, O Lord, let, my Lord, I pray thee, go among us, for it is a stiff-necked people, and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for thine inheritance.

So in this revelation of God to Moses, we are seeing God manifest himself in his moral glory, of his forgiving compassion. And the expression that I want to link with John chapter 1 is especially that little expression at the end of verse 6 where it says, Abundant in goodness and truth. I think that is very close to being identical to John chapter 1 concerning the Lord Jesus where it speaks of him as being full of grace and truth.

And I wouldn't be surprised at all if that's where that verse is really derived from, picking up that revelation of God. Now, there's a very significant difference that is seen following this. I'm just going to read it to you.

When Moses comes down from the mountain, verse 29, and it came to pass when Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tables of testimony in Moses' hand, when he came down from the mount, that Moses knew not that the skin of his face shone while he talked with him. And when Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone, and they were afraid to come nigh him. Now, at the end of the chapter you have him putting a veil over his face.

Now again, as you remember, this is taken up in the New Testament, in 2 Corinthians chapter 3, of the veil upon Moses' face. Now, I want to, we might as well turn to that passage, 2 Corinthians chapter 3, because I want to draw a few comments from it. But I want you to to just think for a few minutes about why, why Moses' face was shining coming down from the mountain.

What was different from the first time? When Moses came down from the mountain the first time, there is at least no evidence given to us that his face was shining. Whereas the second time, his face is radiating with the glory of God. And I'm just going to, I can only give this as a suggestion, because I'm not going to say that this is the teaching or the emphasis given in 2 Corinthians chapter 3. There's a different emphasis given.

But I want to suggest to you that what Moses received from God's presence was the revelation of his grace, grace and truth. And Moses personally absorbed that revelation and resulted in glory, radiating. It transformed him.

It changed him. But you see, when he came down from the mountain, he didn't have a new covenant. He had the same 10 Commandments that he was given the first time.

Why? You see, you could almost have compressed the whole Bible just into that one experience, couldn't you? The whole story of the Bible is brought together in that story. Except for one problem. Moses, as great as he was personally, as close as he came in character to the Lord Jesus in that willingness to give himself to save the people, he couldn't do it.

Because he wasn't perfect himself. Neither could he convey from the presence of God that fullness that God wanted to reveal. Because he was only a man visiting in the presence of God for 40 days.

As we learn in John chapter 1, it is the only begotten Son who eternally is in the bosom of the Father, who has the capacity to bring to us the final and full unveiling of what God is like, and that fullness characterized as grace and truth. What is grace? Well, at its core it is undeserved kindness. It is God intervening, God at work.

The law places a responsibility, a demand upon us, which we were incapable of fulfilling. The law was given through Moses. And although in that which I have emphasized tonight, he draws close to what the Lord Jesus would do, he was not capable in himself to be able to do it, no matter how much he would have been willing to.

God could not have accepted the sacrifice of Moses. It could only be the sacrifice of his only begotten Son. Without sin, a Lamb without blemish, foreordained before the foundation of the world, that could take away human sin.

So when we come into the New Testament, as we look at 2 Corinthians 3 and into chapter 4, what do we find? Well, the Apostle Paul is speaking about the glory of the ministry of the New Covenant. It is called a ministry of life, in contrast to the giving of the law, which in verse 7 is called a ministration of death, written and engraven in stones. And it says it was glorious.

It came in glory, so that the children of Israel could not steadfastly behold the face of Moses, for because of the glory of his countenance. Which, and the word glory is in italics, and I think it probably should rather be the covenant that was to be done away. How shall not the ministration of the Spirit be rather glorious? For if the ministration of condemnation or judgment be glory, much more does the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory.

So now we are brought into the fullness. What is now available to us today? And let's look down the chapter where it says in verse 17, he's been speaking about the power of God that is at work today, even though we are only human vessels, human instruments, we are conveying a message that has God's power in it. You know, you can have the simplest uneducated Christian tell some other person about the Lord Jesus Christ and that person can receive eternal life.

And the most highly educated professor at the most prestigious university in the world can teach the rest of his life and he'll never create eternal life. He'll never confer that blessing that comes only in the ministry of the Spirit of God. We are nothing in ourselves, but as Paul says, our sufficiency is of God.

It is of the Spirit of God. There is a power of God that not only can bring a revelation of God to the people, but it can transform the people, which could never be done under the law according to the covenant of the law. And so it says the Lord is that Spirit and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.

But we all with open, and that's literally unveiled face, beholding as in a glass, the glory of the Lord are changed. And that's a present progressive thing. We are being changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.

What is he getting at? What he's getting at is this. We may not look like anything, and what we are involved in may not look like anything on the outside, but there is something invisible going on that has eternity in it. As we gaze, as we look at the glory of the Lord, how do we look at the glory of the Lord today? Well, it is through the Word of God.

It is through the revelation that has come to us through the Scriptures. God's heart, God's mind, God's will is made known to us. The glory, the greatness of God, and that has come to us through the Lord Jesus especially.

Let's look down a couple of verses into the chapter 4, and he says in verse 3, But if our gospel be hid or veiled, it is hid to them that are lost, in whom the God of this world has blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel. Now that can also be put in another way of expressing it as, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake.

For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, has shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. The Old Testament was characterized by a Moses with a shining face, but the covenant, the revelation that he brought down from the mountain was something that could only ultimately condemn the people and keep them at a distance from God. In contrast, when we look at Christ, and sometimes as I've looked at this passage I have thought of the stark contrast, Mount Sinai and Mount Calvary.

What would you see at Mount Calvary? You would see the face of a man, brutally tortured, dying on a cross. What is there to look at there? Who would ever dream that there's anything of eternal glory or power in that face? But that's where God's glory is to be manifested for eternity. The Lord Jesus is the complete, final outshining of God.

If you want to know God, you need to know Christ. Concentrate on Christ and you'll be looking into the heart of God. Those of us who have come to know the Savior, we have come to know the very mind and heart of God.

And that is proven to us at Calvary in the one who was willing to make atonement, to be the sufferer, to die for the sin of the people, so that God's love to be poured out upon us. The light, as he says here, of the gospel of the glory of Christ. When you grasp that the one who died on Calvary was the eternal Son of God, who possesses all the glory of the eternal God, and yet he came to save you.

This is where the wonder of God's grace, the wonder of love, has its infinite measure. You see, along with that, it's not just a historical event. It's something that lives today.

And there is a living power of God in the world today, in the Spirit of God, who is communicating this revelation. And wherever it is embraced, wherever it is acknowledged, there is a new life begun. And just as it says, in the same way as the eternal God, in the beginning, commanded light to shine out of darkness, no one has ever been able to give a scientific explanation for light.

We don't even understand it, let alone know how it could ever originate out of darkness. It demanded a supernatural origin. And every person who is saved has a supernatural origin.

You and I could never make it happen ourselves. But God commands light and life in the heart of the individual who accepts Christ as the glory of God, as the one come to be our Savior. Now, I see that my time is pretty well gone, but what I wanted to just touch on in closing is this.

Not only is this final, complete unveiling of God coming to us in his Son, in the character as the Son, in relationship to God as his Father, but it is also what defines for us the blessing that we have come into. A Christian has a tremendous inheritance. We can't measure it, but it fundamentally comes down to this.

I am God's Son. You are God's Son or Daughter. God, in saving you, created you as his child.

And he is going to pour all his love and goodness and care into you in this relationship, not just as one of his creatures, that's true, but as his child. And the ultimate goal is that we are going to finally, one day, be the absolute perfection that he sees in the Son, with no character defects, with no failings, with no falseness, with nothing corrupt, conformed to the image of his Son. That's our destiny.

And that's really Romans chapter 8. So our blessing is defined by this revelation of God in his Son, saving us, making us his sons, to know God in this personal, very intimate way. Well, that's wonderful, isn't it? Isn't it wonderful that God has drawn so close, made himself so knowable in his Son? And as we come to the end of this chapter, we learn that all of our experiences of life are encompassed in this working of God. And this is what he says in verse 16, for which cause we faint not.

He says, I'm not going to give up and be discouraged with life, because even though our outward man perishes, yet the inward man is renewed day by day, for our light affliction, which is but for a moment, works for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. What he's really telling us here, as Christians, everything that we go through has a value for us spiritually. Even the things that are naturally against us are actually working for us in his eternal equation.

And so he calls it light affliction, which is only for a moment. It's working for us something that is eternal. We have a great God who has made himself known in the person of his Son.

And his Son was not only willing, like Moses, but able to be that mediator that could stand between God and man and bring us to God. Shall we pray? Our Father, we draw near to thee. We acknowledge that our Lord Jesus alone could look up into heaven and say with completeness that I have glorified thee on the earth.

I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. Our Father, we bless thee for the perfection, the completeness of our Lord Jesus, that when he came he was determined to fulfill all of thy counsel, all of thy will. And in doing this he became that sacrifice that answers for our need before thy face forever.

We think of how faithfully Moses interceded and threw himself into the breach, was willing to be sacrificed that the people might be spared. And yet even if he had done so, it would not have changed the people. It would not have cured their sin.

It would not have been an eternal relationship. But we thank thee, our Father, for the efficacy, the completeness, the effectual working of the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus. And we bow tonight to acknowledge we could not have saved ourselves, we could not have cured ourselves, but we thank thee for the one who has saved us.

And we thank thee that we now have the privilege of gazing upon thy glory as we contemplate our Lord Jesus, as we meditate upon him and as by thine own spirit within us we understand and are drawn towards what thou art. We pray that thou would graciously continue thy work of changing us.