Whose Glory

We may think that these valleys of defeat and loneliness that we all have to go through at times are dangerous. We know how we can get so low that we just want to throw in the towel and give up. I can't make it.

I'll never make it. It's too hard. I don't have the strength.

I just might as well quit now. But there's a stretch of road that's far, far more dangerous than these valleys of defeat that we have to go through. It's when you're cruising along up there and people are complimenting you and admiring you, speaking well of you, looking to you as the person with the answers, that you are tempted to allow your head to just become slightly turned.

Almost every soul that ever bites the dust down there in the valley of defeat was inwardly destroyed long before he ever got down there. His soul was corrupted when things were still going well and his friends were still with him. But he doesn't find it out until all the props for his ego are ripped away.

It's when you have to, without any admirers, without any successes, and without any congenial circumstances, that you soon find out what's going on in your heart. And how many times when all these admirers and all these successes and all this stuff is taken away, people fall apart in five minutes. The trick is to be able to walk through the valley of defeat and still keep singing.

Your friends are gone now, and all your achievements and all those tranquil circumstances are burned up in blazing flame and black tempest, and you still keep going because your eye is on God, who you know is still there. And that's all you need. Now to be able to live like that, the mind of Christ.

The mind of Christ is a mind that is free from every desire for glory for itself. And without that mind, we don't get anywhere. Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself.

He emptied himself of his glory, glory that was rightfully his. The word by whom the worlds were made, who commanded light out of darkness, who spoke the blazing stars into existence, who clothed this planet with light, empties himself of his glory, disappears from the halls of heaven, and takes on human form. When that baby is born, it's not superhuman, it's not half man and half God, it's a true son of man, just as dependent upon air and warmth and its mother's milk as any other baby that was ever born.

And all through his life of flesh and blood, Jesus was never anything other than a man. And every temptation which is common to man, he knew. Now today we see him traveling along the most difficult stretch of roads he has to go all through his life.

He's riding on his donkey through crowds that admire him, cheer him, sing to him, praise him, practically worship him. Hosanna to the son of David, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Now if Jesus, the son of man, permits the slightest trickle of glory to leak into his own heart, his mission is destroyed.

Somehow he manages to go praising crowds, allowing the praises to just fly by him and sweep over him, while he remains utterly untouched by them, you know, unspoiled. You know, his heart doesn't beat any faster, his blood pressure doesn't go up or down. When he gets off that donkey and climbs the temple steps, he's the same meek, lowly, obedient, God-fearing man he was when he started out.

Now you think the raising of the dead is a heavy miracle, and it is. Or the feeding of the 5,000 with five loaves and two fish is marvelous, and it is. But the most astounding thing that Jesus ever did in his whole life up to that moment was to ride through those praises, those songs, that adoration, and still remain unspoiled.

Could you do it? Now Jesus is able to do this because his eye, all during this time as he's riding through these praising multitudes, is on one thing. I have not come to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. And the will of the Father who sent him was that he was to lay down his life for the sins of the world.

And because his eye is so completely on that cross, there's only one kind of glory that interests Jesus, and that's the glory of his Father. What should I say? Father, save me from this hour, but for this cause came I to this hour. Father, glorify thy name with his eye on his cross.

And when the admiration stops, as it always does, and when the hosannas turn to jeers and sneers and cries for his blood, as they always do, and when he finds himself utterly alone and without a friend, traveling through that valley of defeat, he keeps right on going. Because Jesus is driven from within by an urge that has nothing to do with human praise or blame. His only desire is to get to that cross so that his Father could be glorified.

And when he gets there, hangs there with nothing but shame to crown his head, when it appears to all his closest disciples that he's been ruined, defeated, that he's a failure, when his bruised, marred, bloody head drops limp to his chest, then the glory of God comes down upon him as at no time in his life. But notice, it's not man's glory, it's God's glory. Now the Spirit of the living God searches our hearts today with one question.

Each of us, we ask, whose glory are you seeking? It is impossible to follow Jesus and at the same time somehow be trying to get some glory for yourself. But if we allow this urge to get glory, which is in every single one of our hearts, to do its thing, then when we're riding up there on that ridge of admiration, we get all puffed up, even though we don't realize it. And then when we have to walk through the valley of defeat, we fall apart.

If there's anything that we need to be delivered from, every single one of us with no exceptions, and continuously, it's this craving for glory. Now it may be that we've never been a big success, and we may think that, well, no, it's not much danger that anybody's going to be shouting hosanna to us. But there still exists in every single one of us this craving that reaches out and grabs hold of every little straw of human praise that blows our way.

And that, my friends, is why today Jesus offers us the cure. He says to each of us, here, take hold of this. Hold on to it, and you'll be delivered from the thirst for glory.

It looks very much like the one that I carry, but it's not. It's your cross. It's the cross that the Father wants you to carry.

If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me. And when do you think Jesus took up his cross? A lot of people think he picked up his cross when it was laid on his shoulder outside Pilate's judgment hall, but that's not true. Jesus picked up his cross when he was out there in the wilderness.

Before he ever preached one word, before he ever worked one miracle, he picked it up. And every single day of his life from that point on, he picked up his cross again and carried it. Every day, the Son of God, now in human flesh, has to remind himself the one reason for which he came, to lay down his life.

Here I am, Father, to pour myself out. That was his cross. And what a blessed change comes over your life when you begin to carry your cross.

When you carry your cross, not somebody else's cross, your cross. Your destination, as far as the world is concerned, is failure. And this sets you free, right off the bat, from the success syndrome.

What's going to happen to you when you get to your destination with that cross? Are they going to come and have a party for you? Are they going to cheer you? Are they going to come with TV cameras and do a documentary on you as you die a hero's death? They're going to shake their heads and they're going to spit in your face. They're going to pull up their collars and turn and walk away from you. If our Lord's cross was a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks, do you think your cross is going to impress them? So then, knowing this, you can get on with the business and forget about trying to convince your friends that you really are a success, if they only knew it.

That you're not a fool. Don't waste your time. They'll never believe you.

Secondly, when you carry your cross, you will find that your joy is no longer your own glory, but God's glory. Somehow the very holding of that cross delivers you, sets you free from yourself, so that now your joy is to please your Father and bring glory to His name. And every time those thoughts of your own glory come sneaking back into your mind, instantly you recognize them for what they are.

They're cheap, false, sick lies of the evil one. And you will find yourself saying to your heart time and again, but I haven't come here to seek my own glory. Father, glorify Your name.

And you will rejoice every time God's will is being done by any human being, no matter who it is, even if it's the person who was once your worst enemy or may still be in your mind. You know, if you discover that some fellowship on the other side of town is prospering and growing in God's will and power, a fellowship that doesn't necessarily, let's say, hold to your doctrinal position, you won't get jealous of them. You'll rejoice.

You'll be glad. You'll praise God. And if some man or woman comes along with the words that you didn't have to reach that person, and that person is now reached through somebody else's witness, finally, when you carry your cross, you are thereby set free from the fear of man.

How can you be afraid of man and what man can do to you when you're on your way to your own crucifixion? Now, if they kill you before you get to what you thought was to be your Golgotha, praise God. And if they spit on you and mock you and insult you all along the way, praise God if they did it to your Lord. Are you any more important? And if your friends turn and leave you and treat you as a fool sooner than you thought it should have happened in your script, praise God for that.

If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow me. Now notice, Jesus does not take that cross and shove it on you. He doesn't chain you to it.

He doesn't take a whip and beat you and make you carry it. If you want to, you can let the cross just be there, but if you do, you will find yourself. If you want to be free from this lust for glory, then of your own will you're going to take hold of it.

There are people in this gathering right now who haven't even touched their cross yet. There are people here who carry it every once in a while on special occasions. But our Lord says if we want to follow him, we're going to carry it.

May God help us. Before we leave this place, to pick up that cross, take hold of it, hold on to it, carry it, and follow Jesus with joy that will still be ours, even after the hosanna. Lord, you know how many of us are trying to be Christians without a cross.

You know how many of us are trying to be disciples without pain. Lord, you know how many of us want to be yours and also be successful in the eyes of the world. We want to be Christians and we want to be looked upon as wise by all our friends.

We want to have God and man. We want your glory and our glory too. And we just pray, beginning at this very moment, Lord, that you'll be dealing with us in this.

Come down with that double-edged sword into our very hearts and help us now to let go, oh God, of this damnable desire to be somebody. May the glory all be yours. We ask it, Father, in Jesus' name.