Sermon Tone Analysis

!! Living in Light of God’s Glory - Isaiah 43:7

Preached by Phil Layton at Gold Country Baptist Church, 2~/4~/07

www.goldcountrybaptist.org

What is your aim in life?

What do you want more than anything else?

Is your goal to be successful, or happy, or to be liked by people?

Is it to be a good parent, an excellent businessman, or even the best Christian you can be?

Is it to see your children do certain things or turn out a certain way?

What is the goal or motive behind what you do?

What is the reason we exist?

What is our purpose on this planet?

Have you ever gazed at a starlit sky and asked the ultimate questions as to why we’re here?

The Westminster Shorter Catechism asks its first question this way “what is the chief end of man?”

 

Isaiah 43:7 is one of those passages that gives us the answer.

5 “Do not fear, for I am with you; I will bring your offspring from the east, And gather you from the west.

\\ 6 “I will say to the north, ‘Give them up!’

And to the south, ‘Do not hold them back.’

Bring My sons from afar And My daughters from the ends of the earth, \\ 7 Everyone who is called by My name, And whom I have *created for My glory*, Whom I have formed, even whom I have made.”

\\ \\

The answer to the question what is the chief of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.

I want to focus on verse 7 today and especially that phrase that says God’s people are created for God’s glory.

We were not just created to breathe some air, take up space, have a good time, and make friends and a family, buy a house or succeed in life -- we are created to glorify God!

And this is so practical - when we don’t glorify God we’re defeating the whole purpose for our existence and what could be more futile than that!

In Isaiah 43:7, this creation is described with 3 words: “created … formed … made”

 

“The three synonyms bring out the might, the freeness, and the riches of grace, with which Jehovah called Israel into existence, to glorify Himself in it, and that He might be glorified by it.

They form a climax, for /[create]/ signifies to produce as a new thing;, /[form] /to shape what has been produced; and , /[made] /to make it perfect or complete” (Keil & Delitzsch, /Commentary on the Old Testament, /7:425)

 

This passage was written originally to Israel, promising them a future, and restoration after their captivity, and reminding them that God called them and has a plan for them.

But the phrase “I have created for My glory” extends beyond just the original readers and we see it is the purpose of all created humanity.

In Daniel 5:23 the Lord rebukes the even unbelieving King Belshazzar with the words:

“you have exalted yourself against the Lord of heaven … But the God in whose hand are your life-breath and all your ways, you have not glorified.”

\\ \\

The rebuke against all humanity in Romans 1 is that they did not glorify God and in Romans 3 it’s that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. 

 

/What does glory mean?  /

 

In verse 7 and many contexts it is somewhat synonymous with honoring God or pleasing God.

It is difficult to define “glory” in a few words, many works do not include it as one of the attributes, some see it as the sum of all God’s attributes.

In the dictionary, the Hebrew word for glory (/kabod) /comes from a root meaning heaviness, or weightiness, thus gravity, importance, honor.

This is a message in America that has been largely lost.

David Wells: “It is one of the defining marks of Our Time that God is now weightless … he has become unimportant … Those who assure the [analyzers of opinion polls] of their belief in God’s existence may nonetheless consider him less interesting than television, his commands less authoritative than their appetites for affluence and influence, his judgment no more awe-inspiring than the evening news, and his truth less compelling than the advertisers’ sweet fog of flattery and lies.

That is weightlessness.”

(/God in the Wasteland, /88)

P. G. Ryken adds: It is the weightlessness of God, more than anything else, that explains the failings of the evangelical church.

It is because God is so unimportant to us that our worship is so irreverent, our fellowship so loveless, our witness so timid, and our theology so shallow.

We have become children of a lightweight God.

One of the best ways for our knowledge of God to regain some weight is by contemplating his attributes.

The proper place to begin is with God’s glory, for that is what “glory” means: the weightiness of God … However weightless he may seem in the postmodern church, God himself is heavy.

In other words, he is glorious.

[Ryken, /Discovering God in Stories from the Bible, /p.

15]

 

! Broader Context within overall flow of Isaiah

READ ISAIAH 40:1-10

-          The comfort in v. 1 is found in having a high view of God

-          Isaiah 40-48 doesn’t directly deal with all the felt needs of the Israelites who were going to face terrible difficulties in captivity – instead their real need is addressed, to be God-centered, to remember who their glorious and magnificent God is, because that will be anchor that holds them fast during the waves and storms ahead

-          Before the glory of the Lord is revealed in v. 5, the high things must first be brought low as verses 3-4, the way needs to be cleared by humility, repentance (this is a prophecy of how John the Baptist would pave the way for Christ)

-          The glory in v. 5 is God’s revealed or manifested glory, which is His shining forth of His attributes, often associated with light, splendour, dazzling beauty

-          The comfort God gives is not boosting people’s egos or esteem by telling them how special and wonderful they are, verses 6-7 remind them that we are just like grass.

The REAL comfort is not found in man, it is found in God and His Word (v.

8).

-          Verse 9-10 commands the herald of God to proclaim strongly and mightily and fearlessly “Behold your God” – to call His people to look to Him, His might, His power.

That’s what I want to do today.

I began by asking what is your aim in life, what do you want more than anything else, and what is the goal or motive behind what you do.

I now want to ask, what is God’s aim?

What does God want more than anything else?

What is the goal or motive behind what God does?

What is the chief end of God?

Here’s something to expand your thinking - what was it like before God created anything?

Have you ever just thought about God and what it’s like to have no beginning, to not come from something else?

What was it like before Genesis 1:1 and why did God choose to make this world at a certain point in eternity?

Did God /need/ to create a universe, did He need creatures to praise Him, was He lonely, was He unfulfilled without our companionship or worship?

To answer yes is close to blasphemy - God doesn't need us at all, the Bible tells us we are the ones who need God and can never add to Him in His essence.

God doesn't have to depend on His creatures for anything – but we have to depend on him for EVERYTHING.

God has no needs or incompleteness and is unchanging in all His attributes.

Isn't it amazing to think that for all of eternity past, God was all by Himself, self-existent, self-satisfied, self-sufficient, and self-Supreme, never unhappy, deficient or lacking in anything?!!

And we’re not talking about just for a little while (a day, a month, or a few years) – God has been that way from everlasting to everlasting.

If he really needed any of us or anything at all He would have created it billions of ages ago.

It was only for a tiny portion of all of eternity that He has created this time & space world.

it's only the past few thousand years that mankind has even been here - we're just an itsy bitsy chapter in eternity, and God has always been everything He is now for aeons before anything was created. 

 

A.

W. Pink in his classic book on God’s Attributes thought this topic was important enough that He put it on the very first page of his book and devoted his whole first chapter to this reflection.

What is the most important and ultimate goal of God in everything He does?

If we can speak in these terms, what is God passionate about?

Think about that for a moment.

To put it another way, who or what does God care about the /most /of all?

I’ll give you a hint: it’s not us.

I'm not saying that God does not care about us at all or that we are not any part of His plan - but I am saying that there is something so much greater, there is something or someone else that is God's ultimate goal and primary purpose, there is something or someone God loves MORE and is more passionate about than us.

Jonathan Edwards wrote a whole book on this subject and it was an extremely influential time in his life, and this text we're going to read is central to His conclusion.

His book is called /The End for Which God Created the World/, and reading it has had a huge impact on my life too (it's not easy reading, but it is refreshingly God-centered and has revolutionized my thinking).

Read scripture again “whom I created for my glory”

 

There are not many passages that speak of God’s goal in creation, but this is one that gives His central and ultimate purpose statement.

God's design or motive in creating humanity, according to verse 7, is His own Glory.

God’s glory is not just the reason He created humanity, but also all His creatures

 

Look at v. 20 of Isaiah 43 – “*The beasts of the field will glorify Me; *the jackals and the ostriches; Because I have given waters in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.”

The animals were created to glorify God.

And they do!

All of the creatures God created for one primary purpose – to glorify Him.

Not only do his living creatures glorify him, but all of the created universe glorifies God.

Ps 19:1 “*The heavens declare the glory of God, the skies proclaim the works of His hands” *

 

Look at *Isaiah 43:21*  “The people whom I formed for Myself will declare My praise”

Col. 1:16 says “all things were created by him and *for Him*” - - not for us

!!! Heb.

2:10 says all things are for him, also talking about Jesus

Prov.

16:4 says “The Lord hath made all things for Himself” (KJV) [or “for its end”]

Rev. 4:11 says “Thou art worthy O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure [or will] they are and were created” (KJV)

 

We are created for God.