Latest / Reformed Thinking / The Beauty of Christ, My Joy: Living for the Glory That Never Fades

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The Beauty of Christ, My Joy: Living for the Glory That Never Fades · Reformed Thinking

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So imagine it is your final day on Earth.
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Oh man. Yeah, you are looking back over
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the decades of your life, right? And you know, you didn't commit
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any Major Crimes. You paid your taxes on time.
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You bought a nice house. You took some decent vacations.
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The standard American Dream stuff.
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Yeah, but what if, and this is the kicker, what if, according
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to the actual architecture of the universe, you completely and
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utterly wasted your existence? I mean, that is just a
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terrifying thought it. Really is so welcome to reform
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thinking. I'm your host, and with me is
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our resident theology expert. Today we are taking a deep dive
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into this immense stack of theological, historical, and
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philosophical sources. And we have a very specific
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mission today. We do.
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We are trying to answer staggering question, what
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actually constitutes a wasted life?
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Which is a huge topic. It is, and we are looking at how
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it is possible that the pursuit of your own maximum mind blowing
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joy and the display of God's objective glory are well, they
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have the exact same pursuit. And jumping right in that
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initial question you asked the listener, it's the single most
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terrifying question a human being can face.
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Totally. You were right to frame it that
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way because it haunts everyone. You know, yeah, it's that
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creeping dread that hits you at like 2 in the morning.
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Yes, the feeling that we might be spending our brief vapor of
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an existence on absolute trifle. Just chasing stuff that doesn't
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matter. Right, the human soul was not
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designed for the accumulation of plastic monuments or just
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chasing transient self referential comforts.
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But we live in an age that constantly pushes us toward that
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right? It feels like a calculated
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assault on objective significance.
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It really is. People are tempted every single
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second of the day to trade the eternal weight of glory for like
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the thin broth of immediate gratification.
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OK, so to really get to the bottom of how we fix this, we
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first have to figure out how we got here.
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Right, the historical context. Yeah, because reading through
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these sources, it is clear that this crisis of meaning did not
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just fall out of the sky yesterday.
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No, not at all. There is a specific cultural
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sickness that drained meaning from the modern world, and the
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sources point us to the mid 20th century as Ground Zero for this
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intellectual earthquake. Yeah, think about the Western
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mind after the sheer devastation of two world wars.
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Which is just unfathomable trauma on a global scale.
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Absolutely. You had all these old
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Enlightenment promises, right? The idea that human reason and
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scientific advancement would just inevitably create a utopia.
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Precisely. And then suddenly those promises
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are literally buried in the rubble of bombed out cities.
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The optimism was completely shattered.
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Yeah, because when human progress proves itself capable
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of engineering industrialized slaughter, you are left with a
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massive vacuum. A nature of horrors, of vacuum.
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It does, and rushing into that vacuum in the mid 20th century
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were the existentialist philosophers.
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People like Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Kimmu.
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Right. They looked at the carnage and
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basically argued that the universe is fundamentally
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absurd. Which, looking at the wreckage
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of Europe, you can almost understand why they felt that
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way. Oh for sure, But the core tenet
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of their philosophy, the phrase that really caught fire in the
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culture, is existence precedes essence.
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OK, wait. I want to make sure I grasp that
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because it sounds like, you know, thick academic jargon.
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It does sound like that. But the sources show it is
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actually a devastating idea. Existence precedes essence.
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Does that basically mean you are just dropped onto the planet
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randomly and there is no blueprint for who you were
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supposed to be? That is precisely what it means.
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Think about the reverse. If essence precedes existence,
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it means there is a creator. A creator who designed you with
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a specific purpose in mind before you were ever born.
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So your essence, your purpose was established first.
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Right. But Sartre flips that
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completely. He says no, you exist first.
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You are born into a cold, silent void.
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With no inherent design. No design, no creator.
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Therefore, any meaning you possess, any purpose at all,
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must be forged entirely by you. Through your own radical
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autonomy. And sheer willpower.
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I mean, that sounds exhausting. It is incredibly exhausting.
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It is like trying to build a massive brick house in midair
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but with 0 ground underneath. That's a great analogy.
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You are just laying bricks on top of nothing, you know, hoping
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gravity looks the other way, right?
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Think about the burden of that. How exhausting must it be for
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French philosophers to wake up every morning and realize they
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have to invent the fundamental meaning of the universe before
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they can even justify eating a croissant?
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It's absurd, and the question we have to ask is, if there is no
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objective reality outside of ourselves, doesn't all human
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striving just dissolve into a swamp of absolute subjectivity?
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It absolutely dissolves, yeah. Everything becomes just an
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opinion. And this philosophical disease,
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it didn't stay confined to smoky French cafes, No.
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Across the ocean. It did.
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It started leaking directly into the theological institutions of
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North America. Which is wild.
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But we can trace the root of this even further back to
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Friedrich Nietzsche in the 19th century.
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Ah, right, the parable of the mad.
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Yes, Nietzsche wrote that famous parable where the madman runs
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through the marketplace in the morning with a Lantern declaring
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the death of God. And the people in the
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marketplace just mock him. They do, but the madman is
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terrified. He understands the implications.
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Because he knew that if you remove God, you wipe away the
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entire horizon. You unchain the earth from its
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sun. You remove the foundation for
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all meaning, logic and morality. And Fast forward to the 1960s.
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Nietzsche's prophecy hit the mainstream in a shocking.
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Yeah, April 1966. Time magazine ran that infamous
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cover. It was pitch black with bold,
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stark red characters asking, is God dead?
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I can only imagine what it felt like to see that cover seeing in
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a dentist's waiting room. Or at a grocery store.
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Check out in 1966. It was a total cultural
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bombshell. And the historical data we are
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looking at in this deep dive details how radical theologians
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of that era, specifically the Christian atheists like Thomas
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JJ Altizer, actually tried to answer that question.
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They attempted this bizarre theological suicide.
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That's a good way to put it. They wanted to keep Christian
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ethics right, the nice moral teachings of Jesus, the Golden
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Rule, love for neighbors. But they wanted to discard the
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living God, who is the sole foundation for those ethics.
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Which is intellectually impossible.
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Completely, because without the lawgiver, the law is just a
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subjective suggestion. Right.
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If there is no objective God, who is to say loving your
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neighbor is better than crushing your neighbor?
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Exactly. It is just your preference
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against mine. And at the same time, this
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epistemological rebellion infected how people actually
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read the Bible. Yeah, this is where it gets
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really practical. Scholars like Rudolf Boltman and
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the new Orthodox movement began to argue that the historical,
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objective details of Scripture were just embarrassing.
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Things like the miracles, the physical resurrection.
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Right. They thought those things were
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irrelevant to modern people. They had this snobby idea that
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since modern man has electricity and radios, he cannot possibly
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believe in a physical resurrection.
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So Boltman's solution was to demythologize the text.
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Meaning he wanted to strip away the objective history.
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Yes, to find some inner existential kernel of meaning.
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And because of this, a Bible study completely changed.
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It shifted from an objective investigation of divine
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revelation into this highly subjective therapeutic exercise.
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It became entirely about the existential encounter.
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So people stopped asking what did God actually speak in
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history? And they started asking what
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does this text mean to me in my feelings right now?
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The text just becomes a lump of clay.
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Yeah, you just mold it to fit whatever anxieties or desires
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you brought into the room with you.
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But here is the massive problem with that.
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What's that? If meaning was declared dead and
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reading the text became just looking in a mirror for self
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affirmation, how do we fix the mirror problem?
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Because a mirror cannot save you.
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No, we have to figure out how to recover objective truth.
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So to understand the recovery, we have to look at the pushback
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that happened in the late 1960s. OK, let's look at that.
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The sources focus on a literary theorist named Edie Hirsch.
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He published a massive paradigm shifting work in 1967 called
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Validity and Interpretation. And Hirsch established a
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principle that honestly, should be obvious to any sane person.
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But it had been completely lost in academia.
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Right. He argued that a text possesses
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A singular, stable and discoverable meaning.
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And that meaning is determined strictly by the author's intent.
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I love the decal the sources point out here regarding the
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absolute hypocrisy of academic subjectivism.
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During this era. You had professors teaching in
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university classrooms that language cannot convey objective
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reality. Right, they would look students
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in the eye and say the author is dead.
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Any interpretation you feel is valid?
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But then those same professors would leave campus, go home, and
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demand literal, objective adherence to the authorial
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intent of their own bank statements and legal contracts.
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It is a stunning double standard.
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Totally. Imagine calling your mortgage
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lender and saying, well, my subjective existential
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interpretation of this monthly statement is that my house is
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completely paid off and actually you owe me money.
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You would lose your house so fast.
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Instantly no one uses reader response criticism on a credit
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card bill. Yet people were treating the
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eternal Word of God with less respect than a financial
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document. Which is terrifying it.
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Is because if the objective meaning of Scripture is up for
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grabs based on our feelings, the Church has no standard by which
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to distinguish a life of holy obedience from a life of wasted
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rebellion. Which means we have to respect
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literary context. The Bible is not a collection of
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isolated strung pearls. Or magic spiritual talismans.
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Right. You can't just pluck a verse out
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of context, print it on a coffee mug, and use it to make yourself
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feel better. The verses are links in an
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unbreakable logical chain. Yes, and the historic method of
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reading, which was utilized heavily by the Puritans and
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later systemized by scholars like Daniel Fuller, insists on a
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severe discipline of reading. You have to trace the logical
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cumulative arguments of the authors.
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Because the Holy Spirit did not inspire disjointed aphorisms.
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He inspired coherent, rigorously argued books.
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And within those books you see this beautiful objective dynamic
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between indicatives and imperatives.
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Let's define those terms for the listener, because they are
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crucial to this whole deep dive. OK.
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An indicative is a statement of fact.
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It's something that is. And an imperative is a command,
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something you must do. And in the New Testament,
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ethical imperatives are always firmly grounded in prior
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objective indicatives of the Gospel.
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Meaning you are never commanded to obey so that you might
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convince God to love you. Never.
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You are commanded to obey because he has already redeemed
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you at infinite cost. The structure of the text
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matters. Now hold on, I have to stop you
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there and push back on this slowly.
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OK, go ahead, because if I am going through a brutal tragedy,
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let's say I just lost my job, or I got a terrible medical
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diagnosis, and someone tells me I need to analyze Greek grammar
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and trace logical chains to find comfort, I'm going to throw a
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book at them. I get that.
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It sounds incredibly cold. How does a strict academic
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literary approach actually help a grieving person?
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Doesn't it turn reading the Bible into a rigid homework
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assignment? That is a very natural reaction,
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and it is a reaction driven by pain.
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But think about the nature of true comfort.
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If your comfort is based on a subjective misreading of a text,
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if it is just an illusion you created in your own mind to
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soothe yourself, it will shatter the moment the tragedy gets
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worse. Because sentimentality fails in
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a crisis. Exactly.
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True comfort can only come from a reality that exists outside of
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your own fragile emotions. Because my emotions in a crisis
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are currently lying to me. They are telling me everything
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is hopeless. Right when you do the hard work
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of tracing the author actual intent, you anchor your soul to
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the bedrock of divine truth. You find out what the Creator
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actually promised, not what you wish he promised.
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And that objective reality will hold your weight when your
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feelings completely collapse. So it is a difference between
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clinging to a piece of driftwood you painted to look like a boat
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versus chaining yourself to the mast of a massive steel ship.
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That's spot on. Comfort based on a fantasy is
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useless. In the end, we need the concrete
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reality of what God has actually said.
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And that moves us directly into the objective core of the text
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itself. Now that we have established
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that we have to read objectively, we have to look at
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the ultimate reality the text points to.
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Which is the glory of God? This is the gravitational center
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of the entire universe. Look at the structural
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architecture of verses like Romans 11.36.
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For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things.
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God is the source, the sustainer, and the absolute goal
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of creation. Or take First Corinthians 10.31.
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Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the
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glory of God. Human actions are empty.
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They are a wasted life unless they are directed toward the
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cosmic magnifying of the divine character.
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Let's slow down and examine that word glory, because we toss it
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around all the time in modern religious.
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We do, but the historical linguistic data gives it a very
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specific physical weight. Yeah, in.
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Greek. The word is doxa.
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Which in classical literature often meant mere human opinion
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or passing fame, like the fame of a politician or an athlete.
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But the biblical writers used daksa to translate the ancient
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Hebrew word kabad. And kabad literally means
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weight, heaviness or gravity. That physical definition changes
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everything about how we view the universe.
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It really does the. Glory of God is not a light,
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fleeting, sentimental feeling, It is the infinite objective
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weight of His divine perfections.
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So to glorify God is to treat Him as the absolute weightiest
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reality in. And sin, conversely, is treating
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God with lightness. It is taking his infinite
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massive value and exchanging it for the cheap, weightless
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trifles of this world. So what does this massive weight
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mean for God's actual nature? We run into this theological
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term in the sources aseity ASEITY the.
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CD comes from the Latin AC, meaning from oneself.
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It means God's absolute self-sufficiency.
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He is the uncaused 'cause. He does not depend on anything
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outside of himself for his existence, his power, or his
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happiness. So he does not have a needs
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column in some cosmic spreadsheet.
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He is never lonely. Never.
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He is completely self-sufficient within the eternal, joyful
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fellowship of the Trinity. This completely shatters the
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modern therapeutic assumption that God created humanity
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because he was lonely and needed some friends or needed our
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validation. Right, because if God needed us,
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he would be dependent on us. And a dependent God is not God.
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To suggest God needs our worship is a massive insult to his
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independence. Wait, if God does not need us
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and we cannot add anything to him, how do we actually glorify
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him? If he's completely
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self-contained, my worship seems kind of redundant.
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That is the crucial distinction we have to make.
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Glorifying God does not mean adding to His essential weight.
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OK, explain that. Think of the word beautify.
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If you beautify a room, you take a plain ugly room and make it
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better than it was. You add fresh paint.
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You bring in nice furniture. But you cannot beautify God.
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He cannot be improved upon. You cannot, cannot add to his
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perfection. Right, because adding to
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perfection implies he was lacking something before.
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Exactly. So if we cannot beautify him,
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what are we supposed to do? This leads to an analogy in the
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source material that completely cleared this up for me.
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The microscope versus the telescope.
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Yes, if you use a microscope, you are taking a tiny
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insignificant speck and making it look bigger than it actually
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is, right? If we try to magnify God like a
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microscope, we are basically telling the world that he's
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actually very small, but our worship artificially inflates
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him to look impressive. Which is absolutely insulting.
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God is not a speck that needs our PR campaign to look big.
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Instead, we are called to magnify him like a telescope.
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A telescope takes a massive, unimaginable cosmic reality,
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like a distant Galaxy. That looks tiny to the naked eye
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because of her vantage point. And it brings it into sharp,
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clear focus so a Dark World can actually see how huge it is.
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That is the exact calling of a human life.
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Our lives are designed to act as spiritual telescope.
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We are meant to adjust the lenses of our daily actions so
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that the people around us can peer through our lives and see
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the staggering infinite perfections of the Almighty.
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And when we fail to do that, when we live for ourselves, we
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leave the world with a tiny, shriveled, distorted view of
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God. That is a very definition of a
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wasted life. OK, so if the goal of my life is
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to function as a telescope, how do I actually adjust the lens?
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Do I just sit around being very stoic and serious all day?
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Because acting as a piece of optical equipment sounds
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incredibly dry and robotic. That brings us to the most
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radical paradigm shift in this entire discussion.
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The way you act as a telescope, the way you magnify God, is
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through the pursuit of your own maximum mind blowing joy.
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Wow, this is where we hit the collision of duty and delight.
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Yes, in the historic Protestantism, the Westminster
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Shorter Catechism asks in its very first question, what is the
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chief end of man? And the answer is famous man's
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chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.
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Notice the singular nature of that answer.
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It does not say our chief ends are to glorify and enjoy like
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they are two separate tasks on a checklist.
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It treats them as one unified end.
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Which leads to the breakthrough concept often referred to as
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Christian hedonism. God is most glorified in us when
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we are most satisfied. In him that completely blows up
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the secular philosophy of how morality.
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Works. Let's examine why that blows up
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secular philosophy. Because we have been trained to
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think about morality in in a very specific way.
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We have to talk about Immanuel Kant here.
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Kant was an 18th century philosopher who argued that an
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action only possesses moral worth if it is done out of a
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grim sense of duty. Completely free from any desire
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for personal happiness. He believed that if you get any
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pleasure out of doing a good deed, it ruins the morality of
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the deed because it makes it selfish.
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So under Kant's rules, if I help an old lady across the street
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because it makes me happy to help people, it does not count
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as a moral good? Nope.
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I have to do it through gritted teeth, hating every second of
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it, wishing I was somewhere else for it to be truly moral.
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That sounds miserable. And frankly, it sounds like how
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a lot of modern churches operate, people serving in the
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nursery or volunteering for committees out of sheer guilt.
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Totally burning out because they think duty requires misery.
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It is a massive psychological toll that dry legalistic
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philosophy poisoned how people view religion.
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It created a framework where serving God is done out of
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slavish fear. But the theologian Jonathan
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Edwards completely shattered this error.
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Edwards demonstrated that God's passion for his own glory and
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his passion for our joy are not warring enemies.
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They're the exact same passion. It is like if I bring my wife a
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bouquet of flowers for our anniversary.
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OK, I love this analogy. I hand them to her.
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She is thrilled and she asks why did you do this?
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If you answer using Khan's philosophy of grim duty, what do
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you say? I would pull out our marriage
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certificate and say Section 4, Article 2 stipulates mandatory
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floral gifts On this date. I'm getting no personal joy out
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of this transaction. It is purely my legal obligation
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as a husband. You'd be sleeping on the couch.
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That wife would be crushed and very much insulted.
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Right, but if you answer using Edward's framework, you say I
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bought these because nothing brings me more joy than seeing
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you smile. Spending time with you is the
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absolute best part of my life. In that scenario, my pursuit of
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my own joy in her actually makes her look supremely valuable.
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You are not being selfish. Your delight honors her.
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That is a perfect illustration. Grudging Dewey makes God look
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like a harsh, boring taskmaster. True delight makes him look
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infinitely valuable. We have to realize that self
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exultation by humans is grotesque pride because we are
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planning people to ourselves and we do not have the capacity to
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satisfy their souls. But God's self exultation is the
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highest act of love. Because He is pointing us to the
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only reality in the universe that can eternally satisfy us.
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I want to ask you, listening right now, have you ever felt
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guilty for enjoying your faith too much?
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Have you ever assumed that true obedience should feel like hard,
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miserable labor? We are being challenged to see
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that pursuing joy in God is not a luxury, it is an absolute non
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negotiable duty. If you do not delight in Him,
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you are not glorifying Him. If words of praise do not
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express genuine, joyful sentiments of the mind, they are
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useless hypocrisy. The pursuit of maximum happiness
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in God is the prerequisite for authentic worship.
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So if this joy in God is so massive and satisfying, if it is
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literally the greatest pleasure available in the universe, why
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doesn't the whole world immediately embrace it?
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Yeah, why do people reject it and chase after money, status or
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mindless digital distractions? It seems irrational.
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That question requires us to pivot to the problem of
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spiritual darkness. Which the Apostle Paul addresses
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directly in Second Corinthians chapter 4 verses one through 6.
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Paul explains that the human problem is not a lack of
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information. It is not that people just have
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not heard the right arguments. The problem is a supernatural
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blindness. He writes that if the Gospel is
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veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing.
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Because the God of this age has blinded the minds of the
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unbelievers. The God of this age, meaning
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Satan operating within the present evil order.
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And he is actively blinding minds to keep them from seeing
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something very specific. The text says he blinds them
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from seeing the light of the gospel, of the glory of Christ,
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who is the image of God. This phrase, the Gospel of the
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glory of Christ, is vital. The Gospel is not just a set of
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historical facts about how to get your sins forgiven so you
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can go to heaven when you die. No, the actual content of the
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good news is the majestic, beautiful display of the glory
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of Christ. He perfectly reveals the
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invisible God. If you are blind to Christ, you
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are blind to God. If the problem is literal
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supernatural blindness, what is the remedy?
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Because you cannot argue a blind person into seeing.
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The historical analysis points out a direct echo of Genesis 1
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here. In creation, the universe was
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dark and void, and God simply spoke, let there be light.
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Yes, the God of Genesis is the God of regeneration.
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Paul writes that the God who said let light shine out of
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darkness has shown in our hearts.
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Conversion is not a natural improvement of a person's
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religious interest. It is a supernatural act of
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divine illumination. God commands gospel light into
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the darkened heart with the same absolute sovereign authority He
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used to ignite the sun. Let's dig into the specific
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Greek words the sources highlight here, because the
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contrast is striking. The word for light in this
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passage. Is Fetizmos.
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Fetizmos is incredibly rare in the New Testament.
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It does not just mean a passive glow like a night light.
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It denotes an active explosive life giving radiation of beauty.
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When God regenerates a dead soul, he does not just download
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cold data into the intellect. He visually awakens the
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spiritual eyes to behold the irresistible beauty of Christ.
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And we have to contrast this with the Greek word for
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pleasure, hedon, right? Hedon is almost universally used
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by biblical writers to describe sinful, fleshly, superficial
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desires. That is where we get the word
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hedonism in the secular sense. But that is not what is
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happening here. Instead, you see words like Kara
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meaning joy. Or egaliasis, which mines wild,
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exultant, transcendent joy. Christian joy is a holy
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affection anchored in the majestic character of God.
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Where do we see that character most clearly?
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The text says this glory is seen concretely in the face of Jesus
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Christ. It is not an abstract
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philosophical concept floating in the ether.
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The face of Christ refers to His personal presence, supremely
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seen in His incarnation, His suffering and His triumph.
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The Cross is the blazing center of divine glory.
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This is where the doctrine of justification finds its
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historical anchor. On the cross, the absolute
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justice of God, which demands punishment for sin, and the
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infinite mercy of God, which desires to save His people, met
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in a perfect cosmic embrace. The face that was despised,
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bruised and crowned with thorns. The world looks at that and
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calls it utter foolishness. But to the illumined heart, it
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is the highest display of beauty.
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Because it's the only place a guilty Sinner can see the
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terrifying holiness of God and not be instantly incinerated.
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Yes, Christ fulfilled the law's righteous demands as our penal
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substitute. He absorbed the divine wrath so
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patiently His perfect righteousness could be imputed,
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credited to us. That makes him our all deserving
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treasure. I have to bring up a massive
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challenge here based on this reality, specifically aimed at
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modern church methods. Oh, this?
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Is a big one. We see an absolute obsession
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today with pragmatic, seeker sensitive tactics.
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You have churches relying on market research, clever
25:14
branding, smoke machines. And carefully manufactured
25:17
atmospheres to draw a crowd. But if unbelief is a literal
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supernatural blindness inflicted by the God of this age, then all
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of those methods are utterly useless.
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Why do? We try to cure blindness with
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better graphic design and laser lights.
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It is a massive category error. If people are spiritually blind,
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softening the sharp edges of the truth or putting on a better
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rock concert will not give them sight.
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The only cure is the sovereign shining of God through the
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unadulterated gospel. The apostle Paul explicitly
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renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways he refused to
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tamper with God's Word. He did not preach himself, he
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preached Jesus Christ as. Lord, when the preacher's
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personality becomes the main attraction, or the Church
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gathers around human charisma, we are abandoning the Apostolic
26:02
pattern. The minister is just a servant,
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A fragile jar of clay pointing to the treasure.
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And understanding this mechanism of how conversion works should
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actually bring immense comfort. If conversion relies on God
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saying let there be light, it takes the massive pressure off
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our performance. It makes evangelism less about
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slick salesmanship and entirely about honest proclamation and
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dependent prayer. We declare the objective truth
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of Christ, and we plead with God to shine in the hearts of the
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hearers. OK, my head is spinning with
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these massive cosmic realities. We are talking about objective
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glory, supernatural blindness and explosive divine.
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Light, but let's bring this down to earth.
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I have to wake up and go to work tomorrow.
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How does this dictate our everyday actions?
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How does a normal person actually live this out?
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This is where we look at the exhaustive application of 1st
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Corinthians 10.31. Whether you eat or drink or
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whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.
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This command refuses to let us compartmentalize our lives.
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We cannot reserve God's glory for Sunday morning songs and
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then live secular, self-centered lives the rest of the week.
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To understand how we apply this, the historical theology brings
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in a concept known as the third use of the law.
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Let's break that down. The use of didacticus in
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historical Protestant theology. The moral law of God has three
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primary uses. The first use is civil.
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It acts like a bridle for a wild horse, restraining evil in
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society through the threat of punishment.
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The second use is pedagogical. It acts like a mirror, showing
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us our sin and driving us to Christ for salvation because we
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cannot keep the law ourselves. But the third use is for the
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person who is already a believer.
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Yes, the third use acts like a lamp for our feet.
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It serves as a guide for grateful obedience.
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It shows the redeemed person what pleases the Father.
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So it is not a ladder we climb to earn our salvation, but a
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path we walk because we have already been saved.
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Right. It refutes both legalism,
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obeying out of slavish fear to earn favor, and antinomianism.
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Which is discarding the law entirely and doing whatever you
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want because you are under grace.
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True of obedience is driven by the overflowing delight of a
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child who loves their father and wants to reflect his character.
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Let's talk about the physical parables of everyday life.
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The text specifically mentions eating and drinking.
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How do I actually eat a sandwich or drink a cup of coffee to the
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glory of God? It sounds absurd on the surface.
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You do it by receiving the physical gift with conscious
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Thanksgiving. When you bite into an apple and
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enjoy the crisp flavor, or you feel the nourishment of a cold
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drink on a hot day, you recognize that God specifically
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engineered those sensations. You do not just thoughtlessly
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consume them. You enjoy them as physical
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parables of the spiritual sweetness and total satisfaction
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you find in Christ. The physical joy points your
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mind up the beam of light to the Creator.
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What about work? Because the secular world views
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labor as a necessary evil, just a grinding way to accumulate
28:58
wealth so you can retire. And the therapeutic mindset
29:02
views work as a platform for personal self actualization and
29:05
ego building. But the biblical view of work is
29:08
vocatio, a holy calling. Let's say you are a middle
29:12
manager stuck in a cubicle. Your boss is frustrated, your
29:15
inbox is flooded, and you have a massive spreadsheet to finish.
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How is doing that spreadsheet accurately an act of glorifying
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God? Because God is a God of order,
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truth, and excellence. When you refuse to cut corners.
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When you treat your annoying coworkers with patients.
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When you do your tasks with absolute integrity, you visually
29:34
display the character of your creator to a chaotic world.
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I ask you, listening right now, how can you turn your mundane
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workplace into a visible display of the Creator's excellence this
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week? You do not need a pulpit to stop
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wasting your life. You do not need to move to a
29:48
monastery. Quiet faithfulness and ordinary,
29:51
frustrating tasks is a massive display of glory.
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And we have to apply this to the darkest moments of life as well
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human suffering. When the violent storms of
30:01
Providence hit, when a terrifying disease ravages the
30:04
body, or when a sudden economic disaster wipes out your savings,
30:07
the moralistic prosperity gospel completely fails.
30:11
Because the prosperity gospel tells you that God exists to
30:14
make you comfortable. It treats God like a cosmic
30:17
bellhop. So when you were no longer
30:19
comfortable, your faith shatters because the bellhop didn't do
30:22
his job. But within the framework of
30:24
Christian hedonism, suffering takes on a distinct redemptive
30:28
function. Think about how this works.
30:30
When all your earthly comforts are violently stripped away, and
30:33
you are left with nothing but Christ, and you still rejoice in
30:36
Him, you prove to the watching world that God Himself is your
30:39
sufficient portion. You show that he is supremely
30:42
valuable, not because he makes your life easy, but because he
30:46
is infinitely better than everything you just lost.
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That is a staggering thought. If you praise God when you get a
30:52
promotion, the world might just think you love the promotion.
30:55
But if you praise God in a hospital waiting room, the world
30:59
is forced to reckon with the fact that your God is a treasure
31:03
beyond human comprehension. And if he is that valuable, it
31:06
naturally overflows into a relentless zeal for global
31:09
missions. A wasted life ignores the
31:13
unreached nations. If we have tasted this
31:15
transcendent joy, we are compelled to spend our
31:18
resources, our time, and sometimes our very lives to send
31:22
the light of the gospel to the darkest corners of the earth.
31:25
So others can join us in delighting in Him.
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That is the goal, the greatest possible number of people from
31:30
every tribe, tongue and nation, magnifying the massive weight of
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God's glory through their own sovereign joy in Him.
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We have covered incredible ground today.
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We really have. Let's summarize the core thesis
31:40
of this deep dive. A life is only unwasted when it
31:43
stops looking in the mirror of subjective self esteem and
31:47
starts functioning as a telescope.
31:48
Our mission is to focus our entire existence on the heavy,
31:51
objective glory of God, seen most clearly in the face of
31:55
Jesus Christ. The argument here is that we
31:57
actually have to abandon this dry mercenary religion that
32:01
treats duty and delight as enemies.
32:03
We have to banish the pragmatic mindset that treats the Almighty
32:07
as a tool to get what we want. The call is to find your
32:10
absolute maximum happiness in Christ, because that is how He
32:14
is most glorified. As we wrap up, I want to leave
32:17
you with one final challenging idea to consider as you go about
32:21
your day. We talked about how God's glory
32:24
is an infinite weight and our joy is found in discovering it.
32:27
If eternal life is defined by the ongoing, ever increasing joy
32:31
of exploring God's infinite majesty, then perhaps the
32:34
greatest tragedy of holding onto our tiny, self-made kingdoms
32:37
today is not just that they will eventually crumble to dust.
32:40
The tragedy is that those tiny kingdoms are actively starving
32:43
us of the very ecstasy we were created to experience right now.
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What small weightless Kingdom do you need to abandon today to
32:50
actually start living?