To Glorify the Father
Some quotes from Sunday's sermon, and some that didn't make the cut...
“Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.’ Then a voice came from heaven: ‘I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.’”
“Moses said, ‘Please show me your glory.’ And he said, ‘I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name “The LORD”‘”
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth … For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known”
“Before we can ever get a right idea of the love of Jesus, we must understand his previous glory in its height of majesty, and his incarnation upon the earth in all its depths of shame. Now, who can tell us the majesty of Christ? When he was enthroned in the highest heavens he was very God of very God; by him were the heavens made, and all the hosts thereof, by his power he hanged the earth upon nothing; his own almighty arm upheld the spheres; the pillars of the heavens rested upon him; the praises of angels, archangels, cherubim and seraphim, perpetually surrounded him; the full chorus of the Hallelujahs of the universe unceasingly flowed to the foot of his throne: he reigned supreme above all his creatures, God over all, blessed for ever. Who can tell his height, then? And yet this must be attained before we can measure the length of that mighty stoop which he took when he came to earth to redeem our souls. And who, on the other hand, can tell how low he descended? To be a man was something, but to be a man of sorrows was far more; to bleed, and die, and suffer, these were much for him who was the Son of God; but to suffer as he did—such unparalleled agony—to endure, as he did, a death of shame and a death of desertion of his God, this is a lower depth of condescending love which the most inspired mind must utterly fail to fathom. And yet must we first understand infinite height, and then, infinite depth; we must measure, in fact, the whole infinite that is between heaven and hell, before we can understand the love of Jesus Christ.”
“[Jesus’] motive in dying for us was not to restore our ruined reputation but to uphold the great worth of God’s glory.”
“Jesus’ stated concern in dying for sinners was to glorify the Father by showing that his goodness, culminating in his display of mercy, was valuable enough to die for, so that the injury sinful people had inflicted on it by questioning God’s trustworthiness might be overcome and God’s glory displayed in the earth.”
“A helpful picture to have in mind is that of Jesus’ descending a winding staircase stretching for a very long distance from the glory of heaven above far down into a world of wretched misery. Each downward step in leaving this glory increased the pain Jesus underwent to pay for our sins, and so a good part of the severity of the punishment Jesus suffered for us consisted in coming down this staircase, whose length cannot be exaggerated, since it spanned the infinite distance between the Creator and the creature.”