By Simon ManchesterSunday 8 Sep 2024Christian Growth with Simon ManchesterFaithReading Time: 1 minute
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Transcript:
Our loving Father, we thank you for your great love shown to us at the cross. And now we pray that in your love and power you would cause this part of your word that we think on this morning to bring honour to you and do good to us. And we ask it in Jesus’ name, Amen.
This is our fourth Sunday looking at one verse in the New Testament. But the verse that we’re looking at has four mighty words. The verse is Romans chapter eight and verse 30 the four words are predestined. We looked at a few weeks ago, called – a couple of weeks ago, justified last week and today the subject of being glorified.
The message of today is that the believer in the Lord Jesus will one day be glorified.
Glorification found in Jesus
I want you to give your mind to this this morning because we’re talking about a huge subject, something which is gonna last for a very long time. That is, if the Bible is telling the truth. There’s gonna come a time where you and I are enjoying and experiencing what it means to be glorified.
And these four words they really must impact us. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not yelling at you to go and be impacted by them. I’m saying, if you’ve been predestined, well, you’ve been changed. If you’ve been called by God and your life turned around and say you follow Jesus, you’re not the same person.
If you’ve been justified, you’ve been washed of sin and robed in the righteousness of Christ as we would sing and you now stand before God clean, fit. And if you’re going to be glorified, that is an absolutely huge and magnificent future for you. Now I’ll give you a feeble illustration. This is the best that I could come up with. I want you to imagine a waitress working in one of the restaurants in Sydney. She’s sweeping the floors.
She gets a phone call. She suddenly realises that one of the customers over the last weeks or months has been watching her, and now he’s called her and she answers the phone and he explains who he is. He’s a film producer, he’s the most famous film producer in the world, and he’s asking her to come for an audition, and he’s going to use the wardrobe department to get her ready for a part in a film.
And he wants her to be in Vienna in two weeks time for a huge budget film. Now, you cannot be impacted by that as you’re on the phone. Or as you’re thinking about what’s just happened, you have to say to yourself, how long was that guy watching me? Why did he pick me? And, uh, what was that phone call like? And am I really in his cast? And am I going to Vienna in two weeks time? Everything’s affected or impacted. Now multiply that by a billion times and you come to the gospel.
Is it possible that the God of the universe would have picked you? Noticed you, arrested you from before the foundation of the world and then called you. Turned your heart either transformed you or made you realise the faith. And now, of course, brings you to the point of believing. So you put your faith in Jesus and he justifies you, and you find yourself washed and clean before God. And then he makes this promise that you will be glorified and you’ve got to scratch your head at this point and say that has totally impacted my life.
Now non-christians never really grasp what has happened to a Christian. That’s why non-christian report when people get converted and they say so and so has found God. So and so has found religion as though they just made a little decision.
But of course, the Bible tells us that God has found us Christians also fall into the trap every now and again of missing the significance of what’s happened to them. You may find yourself thinking, Gee, you know, did I just choose this Christianity? Did I make a mistake? Is it just my upbringing? Am I deluded?
And then you go back to the Bible and you find a verse like Romans, Chapter eight, verse 30 that tells you that God, before the foundation of the world predestined you and then called you and then justified you and will glorify you. So that’s what we’re gonna look at this morning, and I want to, um, ask a couple of questions, CS Lewis says in his book, Mere Christianity.
Hope means a continue looking forward to the eternal world. It does not mean that we’re to leave the present world read history and you’ll find the Christians who did most for the present world were those who thought most of the next and then his famous sentence. Aim at heaven and you’ll get Earth thrown in aim at Earth and you’ll get neither.
Predestined, called, justified – glorified
Romans, Chapter eight, verse 30. Predestined, called, justified, glorified. Glorified is our subject. Today I want to ask two questions. What will it mean in the future to be glorified. And second, what does it mean today? That we will be glorified. So those are the questions. What will it mean to be glorified?
And what does it mean today that we will be glorified? First of all, what will it mean now? This is a very difficult thing for me to do this morning. Because if you think that I think that I can describe heaven to you, you must think again. And I must think again because, uh, I once gave um a series of talks at Katoomba at the summer school in the evening on the subject of Hope, and I got to the fifth and the last, which was to be hope realised, and I attempted for half an hour to speak on the subject of heaven, and it was absolutely pitiful.
My words could not capture really anything to excite those who are present. It was a real anti climax, sadly to the series. And so today I’m not attempting to describe the future to you. I just want to provoke you to think about the future. I’ve not been to the future, but I’m just going to take up some of the strands of what the Bible says to be glorified for the Christian to be glorified means that God will have achieved his goal.
I don’t know if you remember those desk games that used to be around quite a lot. 10 or 20 years ago, it was a series of, um, silver balls like ball bearings hanging from strings. Do you remember those things? And you’d pull one back and it would hit the second, the third and the fourth. Do you? Do you remember what I’m talking about? Now? If there are four steel balls hanging in Romans 8:30 that God predestines it then strikes the next and the called takes place. It strikes the next, and the justification takes place. It strikes the next and the glorification takes place.
God, you see effortlessly finishes the sequence. He achieves what he started, what he began, what he’s continued, what he preserves, he will complete. He will achieve his goal. And the goal, as we know from chapter 8:29 is that believers would be like his son, the Lord Jesus. And so God will complete what he started, John tells us in his letter what we will be. We cannot say, but we know we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.
The second thing about being glorified is that our salvation will be perfected for a long time. Believers have been free of the penalty of Seddon because Jesus died and took the penalty away. And for a long time believers have been free from the controlling power of sin so that it’s not totally dominated us.
But there’s gonna come a day where we will be free from the very presence of sin. And there’s a lot of believers who can’t wait for that when all the traces of sin will be gone from the human heart and all the traces of sin will be gone from the environment in which we live. I remember interviewing Clifford Warne when he turned 71 of the, um, saintly members of our church some years ago. And I said to him in the interview, uh, what are you looking forward to now that you’re 70?
And he said immediately thinking of heaven, I’m looking forward to not having a sinful nature. Seemed a surprising thing to say at the time. But, uh, I think more and more I understand what he meant. What a great thing to be rid of the sin that, uh, dogs us and plagues us. And it’ll be a great miracle, won’t it?
To find that, we have been perfected in holiness by God. Not that we suddenly have the status of the Lord Jesus, but we have the character of the Lord Jesus. And so the family that we’ve been brought into, we suddenly have fitness, real fitness for the family.
Some have wondered why the Apostle doesn’t talk about sanctification in this verse. You see, it says predestined call justified. And then you’d expect it to say sanctified, made like the Lord Jesus and then glorified but, uh FF Bruce in his little commentary very helpfully says that sanctification is really this Perfection begun and glorification is really the perfection completed.
So they’re really saying the same things. One is the start, and one is the finish. And therefore there’s probably no need except to say that God will finish the process of making us like the Lord Jesus. Glorification also means, thirdly, that we’ll be resurrected.
There will be a new body to go with the new Christian life that we have. We’ll be safely brought through death. We’ll be safely brought through judgement. Just as Noah and his family sailed safely through the through the flood in the Ark, the believer will sail through the judgement in the Lord Jesus, and we’ll find ourselves with a new body in a new creation.
If you want to read about the new body, read one Corinthians 15, we won’t be a kind of a vapour or a spook or a soul floating around, and we won’t have a cloud for a home. We will be a physical person in a physical world, just as Jesus demonstrated in his own resurrection and more to do the impression you get from the New Testament is that there is a literal worship to be done in the new creation, which doesn’t just mean singing. It means living for Christ and the parables that talk about the return of the master handing over the rewards for those who have been faithful with a few things to do more things gives the impression that there will be great stimulus in the new creation. We mustn’t fall for the cartoons that we’re given of heaven.
They are terrible. More like hell, really, aren’t they? Those cartoons and the glorification which is to come, also means that there will be more grace to be enjoyed. We’ve received Grace to believe We receive grace every day and there’ll be more grace. When we see the Lord Jesus, it will unfold incredible dimensions of grace still to be revealed.
Now, this is very special because we gave God no glory by nature. Romans, Chapter one, we would not give him glory. And now we discover through the Lord Jesus that he is going to give us glory.
And then, of course, in Romans three, we fell short of the glory of God.
But because of the Lord Jesus, we will not fall short of the glory of God, we will arrive at the glory of God and we realise that we will do this because the Lord gave up his glory in coming into the world and then gave up his real fellowship with the father in order that we might have fellowship with the father. So everything about the future is built on what Jesus did in the past.
He’s made it a certainty, and one writer says we’ll always be grateful. We’ll look back and we’ll see more and more that we’ve become what we are by no act of our own, but that Grace came to us, took hold of us, drove us, led us so that without losing our decisions, we experienced salvation. We did not do it.
Peter says in his first letter, Chapter one, that we are to set our hope fully on the grace that is to be revealed when the Lord Jesus comes. Think about that up ahead, the unfolding of immeasurable grace to come.
Now, The last thing to say about this future glorification is that it is future. Some of you will think this is a very obvious point, but if you look at Romans Chapter eight, verse 30 you’ll see that the word glorified is in the past. It’s in heist. It’s a verb which has to do with the past. And, uh, the writer says, we’ve been predestined. We’ve been called, we’ve been justified. We’ve been glorified.
And so we have to scratch your head and say, how can the possible possibly say that we’ve been glorified?
And there’s only two possibilities. One is that we’ve arrived and this is it. And we’re now perfect and I’ve met you, and I know that’s not true and you’ve met me and you know that’s not true. And the other possibility is that the Apostle Paul is speaking from the perspective of God’s effective purposes, and he is speaking in the language of certainty.
And that’s what he’s doing. He’s speaking with the language of guarantee. In the present, says the apostle, we have lowly bodies fading and weakening, but then we will have glorified bodies. In the present, we experience suffering Romans eight, but in the future it will be glory without sufferings.
Now the creation is in bondage. Romans eight, then it will be free, and now we do not see Christ, but then we will see him face to face. It’s impossible, isn’t it? To read Romans Chapter eight and not realise two things. One All the glory is in the future. And yet there is a sense in which God’s plan is so clear, so sure, so certain, so guaranteed, that the Apostle Paul can say he’s glorified us. It’s that certain.
That’s the way he speaks. So some thoughts on the future and now some things to think about in the present. What does it mean for us today? As we move out of this building and as we head into Monday and then Tuesday, what does it mean? That we will one day be glorified?
First of a few quick points? We are to be secure.
Knowing the future is based on the promises of God and the work of the Lord Jesus. We’re to be secure, but we’re also to be careful. That’s the first thing secure and careful.
The language is so strong, it is as if God is making himself a walking stick. He sees a branch on a tree. He picks it, he cleans it. He varnishes it. It’s done. He sees a person who he wants to have in his glory. He picks them. He calls them. He justifies them. He does it. It’s a an effective work. We are very secure people because of his purposes and his plans. But at the same time, we’ve got to be very careful.
We have got to be people who walk, knowing that there are many warnings in the New Testament, the Bible’s full of promises to comfort, but it’s also full of warnings to guard us in the New Testament. We’re told no one will pluck you from Christ’s hand. And he who began the good work in you will complete it and nothing shall separate us from the love of Christ.
And then it also says that many will say Lord, and he will say, I don’t know you and some of the seed we remember fell on the rocky ground, produced no fruit and seemed to be dead. And then there are the warnings in the Hebrews letters and other places which remind us that we must be very careful now. How do we fit this together?
Because the question of assurance is a very big question and the genius of God is that he speaks to real people in the real world, real disciples in the real world. And he at the same time comforts us. And he warns us, and we need the two.
If you are fearful, go to the promises. If you’re in a flippant mood, go to the warnings. The brilliance of God, you see, is that he won’t reduce the Christian discipleship to one bumper sticker because he knows that we are people who need to be given promises and warnings at the same time. And we can’t go forward without the two.
Our sinfulness brings doubts which need promises, and our sinfulness brings stupidity, which need warnings. So don’t try and live the Christian life just with the promises. Like some of those sentimental calendars that we’re given. We need warnings as well. And don’t try and live the Christian life just with fearful warnings. We need the very encouraging promises, and God combines them beautifully in the Scriptures.
If you want a little ditty, which I read, uh, during the week in one of the books, um, which has to do with whether eternal life can be lost or not, I thought this was very clever, the writer said. If we have eternal life, we never lose eternal life. If we lose eternal life, we never had eternal life.
If we have eternal life, we never lose eternal life. If we lose eternal life, we never had eternal life. And that, I think, is a very nice way of steering through the question of being secure. But careful.
The other thing about the present knowing that we will one day be glorified is that we are to be genuinely excited. There is an anticipation about the future, which some of our hymns capture for us. I don’t know if you think this every now and again when you’re singing a hymn, but it occurs to me that the hymn writer is saying things which are more mature and more thoughtful and more passionate and more believing that I’m capable of.
And so I find myself singing things which are kind of beyond me. They stretch me, they’re expressing things that I’m perhaps not up to, and I think that’s good for us because we need to be stretched to take seriously what others have perhaps taken more seriously than we have the excitement of the future to come. But we’ve also got to stay humble.
And so the Scriptures tell us enough that is about the future so that we can almost scratch our head and wonder if it’s too good to be true. And then we go back to the faithfulness of God and we remember that it’s true and too good to miss that we’ll one day be in the presence of Christ. We will see Christ face to face.
It’s not certain that you will die. Christ may come. It’s not certain that you’ll pay your taxes this year, but what is absolutely certain is that you’ll be face to face with the Lord Jesus and for the believer that will be the most wonderful moment in eternity.
To suddenly find yourself face to face with your Saviour and your king, the person who loves you more than anyone else and gives you a welcome which is going to be breathtaking.
And don’t forget that if you’re thinking about heaven, Christ is central. It’s a very helpful question to ask whether heaven for you can be heaven and Jesus is not there. If your ideas of heaven have to do with people and perfection, but not Jesus. Go back to the New Testament. He’s central to heaven. He’s the light, the lamp of heaven. He’s the reason that all the enemies and dangers are removed. And he’s the reason that all the blessings and the good things are present.
He’s the key to heaven. And many writers have tried to capture the excitement of what it will be to be face to face with the Lord Jesus. One of the old creeds, which came in 1561 from Belgium, says the faithful shall be crowned with glory and honour.
The son of God will confess their names before God. All tears shall be wiped away. And their cause, which is now condemned, will be known to be the cause of the son of God. And for a gracious reward, the Lord will cause them to possess such a glory as never entered the heart of man to conceive.
Don’t fall into the trap of thinking. This is on the humble side that the world to come is going to be more of a vapour than the present world.
It’s a great mistake to think that we’re going to move from a solid world to a sort of a mystical world. The Bible is very clear that God is a god of a physical body in the resurrection and a physical heaven and earth. And in many ways we’re going to move from a very fragile world to a very enduring and permanent world.
And this new creation is going to be a renewed creation.
Just as you are perhaps a renewed person because Christ has entered your life, the creation is going to be renewed and purified and removed of all its impurities and all its traces of sin and made into a magnificent creation. And all your plans to, uh, go 1000 places before you die and see 1000 movies before you die and visit 1000 paintings before you die and read 1000 books before you die. Forget it.
Don’t try it before you die. Do it all after you die. It’s plenty of time to come
And don’t import your weedy ideas of heaven into heaven because, you know, if you think that endless praise means you’re gonna be singing forever in a pew, well, nothing could be worse.
What could be worse than singing the same chorus for eternity? But of course, when the Bible talks about endless praise, it’s praise without boredom. It’s, uh, joy without tedium.
And, uh, therefore, we must be very careful. We don’t arrogantly import into our views of heaven, something which has more to do with our own distortions. The last thing is that glorification, which we are to live in the light of today, is to make us grateful and generous. What a thing it is to be part of God’s plans at the expense of the Lord Jesus. What a thing it is. It’s just incredible.
And, uh, God has given his word on this. And the Lord Jesus has shed his blood on this, and our part is to gratefully take what Christ has done and what God has promised.
There is a marching forward, you see. And, uh, we are to be truly grateful people. Somebody sent me a little sentence or two, which I found very helpful, which says that the seed of God’s purpose has in it the stem of his call, the foliage of his justification and the fruit of his glory. The seed of God’s purpose has in it the stem of his call, the foliage of his justification and the fruit of his glory. And you see, we’re up to the foliage in terms of time. We’re up to the foliage. There’s just the fruit to appear now. Don’t keep this to yourself. We’re to be grateful, but we’re also be generous. The world, as you know, is in free fall. Everybody is falling towards the Judgement Day.
In Australia. It’s possible to enjoy the fall quite a bit because it looks as though it’s completely happy and harmless for many people. But there’s going to be an end to the fall where people will come face to face with the Lord Jesus, and their only hope of coming face to face with the Lord Jesus safely is if they faced him and embraced him before they meet him.
And that’s what people must do. And we must help them. And what people really need is the Lord Jesus. They may need some money. They may need some supplies. All of those things are important. But the most important, uh, they need is the Lord Jesus. So let me close today with some famous words of CS. Lewis from his essay ‘The Weight of Glory’.
It’s hardly possible to think too often or too deeply about our neighbours. The load or weight or burden of my neighbour’s glory should be laid on my back. It’s a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may 1 day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you’d be strongly tempted to worship or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.
All day long, we’re in some degree helping people to one or other of these destinations. So there are no ordinary people you’ve never met, mere mortal nations, cultures, arts, civilizations. These are mortal, and their life is to ours is the life of a Nat.
But it is immortals whom we joke with work with marry, snub and exploit immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. We must remember, as we think about the work which God is doing that predestining calling, justifying and glorifying, which he has graciously, wonderfully given to believers – it is a gift, which he gladly gives to those yet to hear the call. Enjoy the justification and then the glorification. May God help us to be part of that process.
Let’s pray. Let’s bow our heads.
Our heavenly Father. We thank you today for what you’ve recorded for us in your word, extraordinary, wonderful, humbling and exciting truths. And we pray that you would cause these truths to be written on our mind and heart and then to be lived out in the way we carry on. We thank you so much, our Father, for this remarkable predestining calling, justifying and glorifying.
And as you have kept us in the world to be your representatives, we pray that you would use us to extend the call and then one day in your glory to see many. We pray, father, that you would fill us with gratitude and also that you would help us in service. Amen.