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God Is Glorious

September 13, 2020 Speaker: Mitchel Kirchmeyer Series: Good News!

Passage: Matthew 10:26–33

God is glorious, so I don't have to fear others.

I went to a small school growing up. In elementary school, our gym was also the cafeteria. And once a year it became a concert hall filled with chairs where we put on a Christmas concert. The night of the concert, we’d make our way onto the stage and find our spot. If you’ve been part of one of these concerts, what’s the first thing you usually do? You look out in the crowd to find your parents and other family members. You look for the people who have come to see you perform. When your eyes meet, they might give you a little wave and you might wave back excitedly or just smile. Or maybe you’d be too nervous.

There’s a sea of faces and this concert is for all of them. They will all clap but each kid has specific people for whom they are performing. Those are the people they really want to be there, to watch them, and to tell them how they did.

Imagine your whole life is being lived on a stage in front of an audience. Whose face are you looking at in the crowd to see if they are watching? After you perform, whose opinion matters the most to you?

Take a moment right now and write down whose opinion matters most to you. Whose approval is most important? Whose rejection would be most crushing?

Series Introduction
We are in our sixth week of a sermon series called Good News! with an exclamation point. This series is focused on the gospel: the good news about who God is and what he’s done through Jesus Christ. Our world has changed; who God is and who we are because of him hasn’t.

Two weeks ago, we started covering the 4Gs. These are four truths about God that tell us how we’d live if we believed them. They are:

  • God is great, so I don’t have to be in control.
  • God is glorious, so I don’t have to fear others.
  • God is good, so I don’t have to look for satisfaction elsewhere.
  • God is gracious, so I don’t have to prove myself.

If we believed the truth about God at the beginning, the fruit in the second part is what we’d see in our lives. Today, we are going to focus on “God is glorious.”

Let’s pull out the fruit-to-root tree and map this statement onto it. God is glorious, so I don’t have to fear others. Let’s start on the left side - the sick, unhealthy tree with bad fruit.

1. Bad Fruit

Look at the top of the tree under number 1 where it says “bad fruit.” The main fruit here

Fruit to Root

 is that we are afraid of people. We are afraid of what people think about us or what they can do to us. What does that fear look like in our lives? What sort of actions do we take because of that fear?

We are worried and anxious about what others think - it’s on our minds all the time. We work hard to impress people because we care a lot about what they think of us. Usually that means we are managing our image. We are putting on a mask or persona that others will like. We are hiding our true self because we aren’t sure people will accept, approve of, or like the real us. So we do what others will like. If we are afraid of other people, we are usually trying to read their minds to predict what they want us to do so they won’t be upset with us and will like us and approve of us.

Because of all this, we are not doing what God wants. We are doing what pleases other people. We are people pleasers.

What does this show we believe about ourselves?

2. Who I Am

Since we put so much value on what others think of us, we are going to other people to find out who we are. We define ourselves by saying: I am what others think of me. That’s where our value, worth, and significance comes from. If they think good things about me, then I am worth something. If they don’t, then I’m worthless. Or if they don’t accept me, I don’t know who I am. If I’m rejected from their group, then I’ve lost my sense of self. Or if I lose a relationship or a job, I don’t know who I am anymore. Our identity comes from what others think of us. What are you trying to be known as with other people?

Fill in the blank here: If only [this person] approved of me, loved me, respected me, liked me, noticed me, then I would feel secure, happy, fulfilled, valued, worth something. Think about the power that person has over your life. You are giving them the power to tell you who you are. You are letting them control your sense of worth, value, significance, happiness, and fulfillment. You are giving them authority over how you think, feel, and act.

Why do we let people define us like this? Why do we let people have so much power and authority over us? Let’s turn to Matthew chapter 10 to see.

3, 4, 5, & 6 - Who God Is and What God Does

The Bible calls this “the fear of man” and God’s Word has a lot to say about “the fear of the Lord” versus “the fear of other people”. When you look in the Bible, there is a spectrum of different types of “fear” responses to God. On one end of the spectrum, people respond with terror-fear from his power or fear of punishment due to sin. On the other end of the spectrum, they respond with worship-fear that’s motivated by love and a desire to honor him. In between terror and worship are responses of dread, trembling, astonishment, awe, reverence, devotion, and trust.

If you think about it, you can be on that same spectrum with other people too. You can have a terror-fear of someone where you live in fear of what they are going to do to you and you want to hide every time they are around. You can also live in worship-fear of someone because you idolize them and look up to them. And you can live everywhere in between.

Jesus addressed the issue of fearing God versus fearing other people many times. When Jesus began his ministry, he had a mission. His main goal was to proclaim the good news about God’s kingdom and while doing that he also healed people and cast out demons. In Matthew 10, Jesus began preparing his twelve core disciples to go out on their own to do the same.

Jesus warned them to expect persecution and told them he was sending them out as sheep among wolves. That’s not very reassuring. Wolves eat sheep. He said some people won’t like their message and will oppose them. Jesus said people will pressure them to stop doing what they are doing, reject them and talk bad about them, bring them before government officials, threaten them, physically harm them, imprison them, and family members will hate and reject them. Do you think they might fear people along the way of completing their mission?

Today, we have similar fears as we live for Jesus. Many of the moral teachings of the Bible are not welcomed by people today. If you tell someone that God says marriage is between one man and one woman, you might be hated and rejected. If you say gender is a gift given by God that we don’t choose, you might be hated and rejected. If you speak up when someone is using racial slurs or making racist jokes, you might now get made fun of. Those are the big topics. But you could be looked at weird and made fun of simply by refusing to join in on gossip or laugh at a dirty joke. You could be fired for refusing to lie or bend the rules. So if you want to live in line with God’s values, you will have many situations in which you might be afraid of others.

We also have fears about telling people about Jesus. If you tell someone that Jesus is the only one way to know God and be saved, you might be hated and rejected. People might think you are narrow, exclusive, bigoted, and hateful. How can you say everyone else is wrong?

We have the same problems Jesus’ first disciples had. In a world that has rejected God, if we are living for God we need to expect opposition. People will oppose us, reject us, talk bad about us, stop associating with us, and maybe even threaten us. That puts us in a situation where we might be afraid to live for Jesus and talk about him.

Jesus gave his disciples a message of God’s glorious grace to announce to people in desperate need of good news. Jesus gave his disciples a mission of eternal importance. If you call yourself a disciple of Jesus today, you have that same message and you have that same mission. Are you silent about that message because you fear other people? I know I too often am. Are you holding back on living your mission because you fear other people? I know I do sometimes.

Jesus had something to say to his disciples then and to us as his disciples now. He says “have no fear” three times. There’s a book on the topic of fearing others called When People Are Big and God Is Small. I’m going to use that title to make Jesus’ three points.

First, belonging to Jesus needs to be bigger than belonging to others. In verse 26, he says:

26 “So have no fear of them, for nothing is covered that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. 27 What I tell you in the dark, say in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops. (Matthew 10:26-27)

Right before this in verses 24 and 25, Jesus told them that if they belong to him, they will be treated the same way as him. If people don’t like Jesus, they also won’t like those who follow Jesus. He says, “If they call me the devil, how much more poorly are they going to treat those who follow me?”

But then Jesus says in verse 26, “So have no fear of them.” Wait, why? Jesus is telling them, “Have no fear when people hate you and mistreat you. They are doing it because you belong to me.” There’s two reasons this is comforting to us as we live for Jesus. First, Jesus is the one they really hate, not us. They don’t like Jesus. They are rejecting us because they have rejected him. Second, we belong to Jesus. We belong to his household. We belong to his kingdom. What does that mean? Jesus loved us and gave his life for us. Jesus saved us. Jesus brought us into relationship with the Father. It’s because we belong to this amazing Person and his kingdom that people don’t like us. Jesus doesn’t want us to forget the privileged position we are standing in when people reject us. He doesn’t want us to forget all that we’ve gained. We don’t stand alone; he stands with us.

He goes on to say, “Have no fear because nothing is covered that will not be revealed or hidden that will not be known.” Jesus is saying that in the end, their actions will be shown for what they are: a rejection of the Son of God, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He is telling his disciples: “You belong to me and in the end those who reject me will have to answer for it. So don’t be afraid.” Then he tells them in verse 27 to be bold and shout the gospel from the rooftops!

One of the fears we have is losing our belonging with people. We don’t want to be outsiders. We don’t want to lose our place in a friend group, with our coworkers, in our family, in a friendship, or wherever. We don’t even want to lose our belonging with strangers - we don’t want people to think we are weird. We want them to think we are just like them. We fear people because we see belonging to them as big and belonging to Jesus as small. Belonging to Jesus needs to be bigger than belonging to others.

Jesus’ second point is that rejection by God needs to be bigger than rejection by others. Look at verse 28:

28 And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. (Matthew 10:28)

We sometimes do everything we can to avoid someone rejecting us. We’ll say all the right things and do all the right things so that someone will accept us and approve of us. We will avoid saying anything or doing anything that might offend them all so they will like us. We won’t stand up for the values of God’s kingdom because they might think we are weird or uptight. We won’t mention Jesus because they might get offended. But Jesus says, “Don’t fear the consequences of their rejection; fear the consequences of God’s rejection! It’s way worse.” Jesus says that anything a person can do to us is nothing compared to what God can do to us. The rejection of a person is temporary; God’s rejection is eternal. If you get people’s acceptance but lose God’s acceptance, you have not made a good deal.

What’s Jesus’ point? It’s not that people can’t hurt us. It’s not that people can’t do bad things to us. But he’s saying those bad things should not lead us to abandon Jesus because facing God without Jesus’ blood bought forgiveness will be far worse. If we trade our loyalty to Jesus for acceptance with people, we have believed the lie that people are more powerful than God and that their rejection is worse than his. We fear people because we see their rejection as big and God’s as small. Rejection by God needs to be bigger than rejection by others.

Lastly, Jesus shows us that value from God needs to be bigger than value from others. Jesus says in verse 29:

29 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. 30 But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. 31 Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows. (Matthew 10:29-31)

Sometimes we may think God has bigger things to worry about than us. He doesn’t care about our fear of people. But Jesus is pointing to the smallest things here to show how involved God is with us.

Sparrows were the cheapest meal you could buy in the marketplace. Look at the sparrows, Jesus says. You order them off the dollar menu but not one falls to the ground apart from your heavenly Father. Think about the hairs on your head. Have you counted them all? God has. How would a Father count the hairs on their child’s head? By holding them close in their arms. Therefore, Jesus says, don’t be afraid. God values you. He’s looking after you.

This of course doesn’t mean that nothing difficult will happen to them because Jesus has already said it will. But it means they can trust God with the final outcome of their life. And when bad things happen to us, we quickly wonder: “Does God love me? Does God care? Has God abandoned me?” Jesus is telling them, “Your heavenly Father loves you very much and has not abandoned you. You are doing his will and that is why you are suffering.” We fear people because we see value from them as big and value from God as small. Value from God needs to be bigger than value from others.

Belonging, acceptance, and value. These are three desires we have from people. When we fear people and we say “I am what others think of me”, we are afraid of losing these things: we are afraid of losing belonging with others, we are afraid of others rejecting us and judging us, we are afraid of losing value in other people’s eyes. But Jesus ends with this warning in verses 32 and 33:

32 So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, 33 but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven. (Matthew 10:32-33)

To acknowledge Jesus means to profess our loyalty to him. It means to pledge our allegiance to him. It means we are willing to make it public that he is our Lord and Savior; he is our King and he is whom we follow. We do that by living for his kingdom, his values, his priorities, and telling people about him. But Jesus says if we will not profess our loyalty to him in front of other people, he will not profess his loyalty to us before his Father in heaven. If it’s more important to us to find our belonging, acceptance, and worth from people rather than from God, then in the end that is what Jesus will give us. We will find no belonging, acceptance, or worth in God’s eyes.

Jesus is making the case that we should not fear people. But so often we do. People feel big to us. They loom large in front of us. As we go across the stage of life with the audience of people out there watching, we look out at the sea of faces and God is not the first one we look at. We look at other people to determine how we are going to act.

Glory in the Bible is about someone’s importance, significance, and weightiness. To “glorify” someone means to give evidence to their importance, significance, and weightiness. It means to make much of them. We were made to glorify God but when we live in fear of other people, we let them determine our actions which means we are doing their will and not God’s will. We are doing what pleases them. By doing this, we are making much of them. We are making ourselves into a living display of their majesty, greatness, power, worth, significance, and importance. We are becoming a living display of their glory. We are pointing to them as the reason we are who we are and the reason we do what we do. We are glorifying them and not God. They are more glorious to us than God and we are essentially worshiping them because we fear them above God.

When we are living this way, we are saying doesn’t impress, he doesn’t inspire awe, and does nothing worthy of worship. At least he doesn’t do enough to make him more impressive, awesome, and worthy of worship than the people we fear.

We are saying God is not glorious. God is small. God is unimportant. If you really want to get clear, think about the person or people that you are always worried about and complete this sentence with their name: God is less important than [blank]. That’s what’s really true about how you are living.

We need to repent of putting people above God in determining how we live and what we talk about. When we die, we won’t stand before any human to be judged. We will stand before a holy, almighty God who knows everything we have ever done, everything we have left undone, and everything we have ever thought. He made us and it is to him we are accountable.

The famous story in Isaiah 6 when the prophet Isaiah saw a vision of God will the experience of us all if we don’t have Jesus. He saw God high and lifted up and the train of God’s royal robe filled the temple and the heavenly beings were crying out, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.” Isaiah didn’t pose for a quick selfie with God and the heavenly beings. He basically said, “I’m a dead man! I’m a sinner in the presence of a holy, almighty God!” That’s all of us without Jesus. God is far more terrifying than any person.

But what has God done? What’s the gospel? In God’s glorious presence, we cannot impress him. We cannot hide our true selves. We can’t put on a mask to make him think we are better than we are. We can’t show him our good parts and hide our bad. He sees it all.

We all need to come to a place where we feel exposed in the sight of God. It’s the only way to become a Christian. Because it’s the only way to be truly forgiven and accepted and loved and free. Otherwise you are just trying to give God a fake version of yourself and hoping he’s fooled just liked you’re doing with everyone else.

When we look at the cross, we see what we deserve for all of it. In God’s holy presence we deserve death. But we see it paid for. God knows it all and has taken care of it all. Without Jesus, we will stand in God’s presence and suddenly be fully aware of all the ugliness of our sin and cry out, “I’m dead! I am a wretched sinner in the presence of a holy God!” But with Jesus, God has paid for it all. Grace means God loves us apart from our works. God saves us apart from our works.

And you know what else? God gives us the Spirit to do his will and to please him. You can live your whole life trying to please everyone around you. But God didn’t give you the Holy Spirit to please them. The gospel is that God did give you his Spirit so you can please him. Isn’t that amazing? You can please God. You can’t please everyone; but you can please God.

7. Who I Am

What does this mean is true of us? Instead of saying “I am what others think of me”, we say “I am what God thinks of me.” “I am what God says is true of me.” What does God think of me? What does God say is true of me?

We stop living for what others think of us and we start living from what God thinks of us and what God says is true of us. If you are living for what others think of you, it will always be a question: “Am I a good mom? Am I smart? Am I loved? Am I worth anything?” Never “I am.”

If you live from what God says of you, it’s already been settled because it’s not based on what you do; it’s based on what he’s done. It’s given to you and received. You don’t earn it. You live from belonging with God that he gives to you. You live from acceptance with God that he gives to you. You live from value and worth with God that he gives to you. You don’t deserve it and you don’t earn it. It’s freely given to you.

When we trust in Jesus, God looks at us and loves us, cherishes us, treasures us, delights in us, and rejoices over us. You don’t have to wear any masks with God, you don’t have to manage your image with God, you don’t have to hide with God, you don’t have to impress God. He knows it all and he still loves you. That’s freeing.

8. Fruit

If we live like that, the fruit in our lives is that we will become people who don’t make others work for us to love and enjoy them. We can also be connected with people without having your reactions and behavior determined by them.

In closing, I want you to think about people in your life. Do you know anyone in your life who lives in fear of what others think?We are sent to tell people what God has done for us. The 4Gs are an easy way to tell people about God. This week, watch and listen for someone in your life who is afraid of others. You can easily say to them, “I struggle with that too then I heard something this week that was really helpful to me. Do you mind if I share it with you?” You can share your story with them and share a 4Gs card with them.