Do You
Glorify The Son - By Mervin Yoder
In John 12, Jesus tells his
disciples that "The hour is come that the Son of man should be glorified.
Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and
die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit."
Many people today are riding the
wave of glorifying the Son. They use the glory of Jesus for their own gain. But
the Bible says that when it was time for the Son to be glorified, he first had
to die.
When man wants to be glorified he
looks for a platform, not a grave. He looks for an advertisement and a big
name. Not so with Jesus. "He that loveth his life shall lose it,"
Jesus continues in verse 25. "And he that hateth his life in this world
shall keep it unto life eternal."
If we are to serve Jesus, we must
follow him into death, the passage says. The idea of Jesus' glory being coupled
with his death continues: "Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say?
Father, save me from this hour: but for this cause came I unto this hour.
Father, glorify thy name." Jesus wants to escape this painful hour, yet he
realizes this hour is what he came to earth for. His death will be his ultimate
achievement.
I wonder--how many of us are running
to the grave? When we run to the altar, we hope it's a platform, a high place,
a place of glory. But the key to Christianity isn't the place of glory but the
grave. Only what dies and is buried can God raise up. It's not what man can
prop up in his own feeble effort; it's what God can raise up from death and
infuse with his great gift of life.
When Jesus prayed for God to glorify
his name, God thundered from heaven, "I have both glorified it, and will
glorify it again." Then, again Jesus went on to talk about his death and
what it will accomplish: "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will
draw all men unto me." So dark was the hour of Jesus' death: the skies turned
black, the earth shook, and God turned his back on his Son. Yet that was the
moment of Christ's glory, when he could draw all men unto himself.
We look at that terrible moment of
death and cringe under it. We want Jesus to be a kind Jesus, a nice Jesus who
takes away our sin and makes us feel better but doesn't ask anything from us.
We want a Jesus who will give us a power in our life that lets us float along.
But the only way we will ever know the life of God is through the resurrection,
and there can never be a resurrection unless first there is a death.
In John 3, Jesus also talked about
being lifted up on a cross: "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the
wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up." The story Jesus
refers to is in Numbers 21. Because the people had murmured and complained, God
sent fiery serpents among them, killing many. The people repented, and God
instructed Moses to make a serpent of brass and set it on a pole so that
whenever someone was bitten he could look upon the serpent and live.
So the serpent raised up on the pole
became a means of saving the Israelites from sin and death. Jesus drew on this
powerful story in foretelling his own death.
However, as the years went by the
Israelites began to worship the pole instead of the God who had sent the
deliverance. It became an idol to them. King Hezekiah, one of Israel's greatest
kings, set out to rid the land of idols, and he broke in pieces this brass
serpent Moses had made.
In his wisdom, Hezekiah knew what
Jesus taught many years later: God is a spirit, and they that worship him must
worship in spirit, in the Holy Spirit, and in truth. Too many of us want to
look to the past, to some great experience God gave us, instead of looking to
God himself. All we have are some poles sticking around from the past that we
point to and boast, "That's what happened to me." Jesus is alive
right now. The Holy Ghost is for right now.
You see, when a seed falls into the
ground and dies, it is raised up into new life. It grows day by day; it lives
and bears fruit. The focus ceases to be the planting of the seed and becomes
instead the living plant.
Don't do to Jesus what the
Israelites did to the brass serpent. Don't put him on a pole of history and
remember only his work of salvation. He's not a piece of brass or an old tent.
He is God, the Holy Ghost who lives in his people and walks in his church, a
present testimony.
When we give a testimony we remember
when we were baptized in the Holy Ghost. "Yes, God, I know you gave me
your Spirit," we say. Then it's back to work we go. Back to a dead
marriage, back to our lusts, back to our fear of witnessing. Is that experience
in the Spirit only an old serpent on a pole somewhere that we bow down to?
Hezekiah, full of God, took that old
serpent down from its high place and smashed it. I imagine people got mad that
day. How could Hezekiah have the audacity to destroy something Moses had made?
Moses had talked with God face to face and had built that serpent for the
people's deliverance. It was hundreds of years old. But Hezekiah saw the
problem clearly. The serpent was preventing the people from coming to a living
God.
Jesus said when the Holy Ghost came
he would lead men to repentance and be the fire that would burn the chaff out
of the church. He would be a river that would flow out of the throne of God and
make the city of God glad. He would be a stream for people to drink from.
Indeed, many of you have known the Holy Ghost in all those ways. But do you
know him that way today?
The greatest question that can be
asked of the world is, "Have you ever believed on Jesus Christ? Have you
been saved?" But what do you think is the greatest question that can be
asked of the church? Some of you might point to worldliness. Have you gotten
rid of your television? Some might point to obedience. Have you put a covering
on your head? Those are important questions, but I believe the greatest
question that can be asked of the church was asked by Paul in Acts 19 to some
believers on the upper coast of Ephesus: "Have you received the Holy Ghost
since you believed?"
Many times people get offended when
we talk about the Christian walk after salvation, about our needing something
more of the Holy Ghost. "What do you mean I don't have the Holy
Spirit?" they ask. He may have regenerated you and directed you, but there
is more he wants to do. Some of you are like those Ephesus believers. You
haven't even heard about the baptism of the Holy Ghost and his filling in your
life. You need that initial experience. Others of you have to ask if you are
continually being filled by the Holy Ghost since your baptism.
Something stirred in Paul as he
listened to those disciples in Ephesus.
Paul wanted to know if the believers were living a daily life in the
Spirit.
When the Spirit fills our lives, he
gives us a call and he gives us gifts. He calls us to work, to exercise those
gifts. He enables us to live pure and holy lives. We struggle with temptations
toward bitterness and pride and lust. In our effort to overcome those
temptations we read our Bibles and have our devotions and find someone to be
accountable to. Those are good activities. But I tell you those moments when I
find victory over sin are the moments I am full of the Holy Ghost. There is
nothing that has burned the chaff out of my life more than the Holy Ghost.
Some nights I have walked across the
yard among the hemlock trees and cried out to God, "I need the Holy Ghost.
Lord, you baptized me. I know you did. You called me. But I am dry. I need the
Holy Ghost in my life." For the first half hour or so I am worried that
the neighbors are going to hear me, but finally I start breaking through to
where heaven meets my soul and again the Holy Ghost becomes a fire in my life.
That's when I don't worry about lust any more and find no attraction to videos.
That's when I quit wanting to harbor bitterness or talk about other people.
Jesus has to be lifted up. We have
to die to our sins and our comfortable ways of doing things, not by looking
back at our old experiences but by giving ourselves entirely to God at this
moment.
In Acts 10, Peter preached in
Cornelius' house and the Holy Ghost fell on all who heard the word. The Jews
were astonished that God's Spirit would fall on the Gentiles. Have you ever
seen the gift of the Holy Ghost poured out on somebody? It indeed is
astonishing. Too many of us are content to pray a nice prayer and have a nice
feeling that everything is okay, and we walk back home and try to hold onto
that nice feeling, though nothing has happened that we can see. When the Holy
Spirit fell on the Gentiles, everyone could see.
What if we as a church would wait on
God until something happens that we can see? Until we know that the Holy Ghost
has come down? Some people might be frightened, but I tell you what the church
needs again is the Holy Ghost to break down our comfortable lives and change us
from the heart out. What would happen if Hezekiah walked among us today and
tore down some of those things we cling to in place of Almighty God?
Sometimes we get scared of what the
Holy Ghost has us do. He called men to go out to different coasts and preach.
He led others into prisons, away from friends and families. God doesn't call us
to a life of comfort but a life of holiness and sacrifice.
Peter's friends in Jerusalem were
upset that he had been with Gentiles until they heard that the Gentiles had
received the Holy Ghost. Then they glorified God.
In the early days of our churches if
someone wanted to come in and be a part of us, one of the questions we asked
was this: have you been baptized with the Holy Ghost, or are you at least
seeking to be so? I wonder if that question is being asked any more.
"You have such a nice youth
group." That wasn't the question. "I like that your wives wear
veilings." That wasn't the question. "I like that you don't have a
written standard." That wasn't the question. The question was, "Have
you received the Holy Ghost and do you live in him continually?"
All of our teachings and doctrines
are precious, but they are not the life of the church. Only the Spirit gives
life, and we must worship him in spirit and in truth. We can't turn anybody
from sin or find healing without the Holy Ghost. Without His presence, we have
only a dry and lifeless place.
In Matthew 24, the disciples brought
Jesus to the great temple and said, "Look how lovely and beautiful the
stones of this temple are!" Jesus said in three days he would tear it
down. The temple represented God and pointed to Jesus, but when men started
revering the thing itself, staring at the dead stones and extolling them as a
monument to the past, then God was willing to kick it over and destroy it, even
though he had birthed it in the beginning. He would destroy it so his people
would know a living God, a God of power.
Oh for the days when men again would
get out of their houses at night and start walking down the corn rows calling
on God. Today we want to find God through a cassette tape or a book or a
seminar. That's not how I received the Holy Ghost. Most of us were out in a
corn field or walking through the trees somewhere with an emptiness in our
hearts that needed to be filled.
If only we could see God again. If
only Jesus was lifted up the way he needs to be lifted up. Some of our hearts
would break, some of our nice meals would go uneaten, and some of our
activities would be left unattended. "Oh, God, search me," we would
cry. "I need to go again back to the fire and back to the water where I
know you are living in me."
We are satisfied with the past, with
replicas. The fad today is antiques, and I believe that is the fad in the
church. Get hold of something old and just sit it on the shelf. Never use it,
don't scratch it, and don't let the children play with it. Just set it there,
marvel over it, and see if people can guess what it's worth. It's worth
nothing, because it can have no effect on your life.
When God poured out manna on the
children of Israel, he commanded through Moses that they gather only enough for
today. But many people, full of unbelief, went out and gathered enough for
tomorrow and the next day. When they woke up the next morning it had turned to
worms.
God is a God of today, not a God of
yesterday. You can't gather enough of the Holy Spirit in one day to last into
another. You must take God's daily provision. Thank God for what he did, but
where is he in your life right now? When I am full of the Holy Ghost, I become
a man of prayer and know the conviction of God. When I am full of the Holy
Ghost, I am not tempted with the call of the world around me. When I am full of
the Holy Ghost, I am not tempted with the praise of men but boldly speak God's
truth. When I am full of the Holy Ghost it is easy to forgive those who wrong
me.
When I am full of the Holy Ghost it
is living manna, but when I am not it is a dry and lifeless land without the
Glory of the Son.
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