This is the Easter Season of the Church year, when we celebrate in the glorious resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ from the grave. He has conquered death by rising from the grave to reign victoriously at the right hand of God Almighty. In the lesson this morning from the Revelation to John we have a glimpse of the majesty and splendor of that time when the Lamb of God will return for his Bride the Church. In all the readings the word "Glory" appears again and again.
Acts: And when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and glorified the word of God; and as many as were ordained to eternal life believed.
Psalm: I will ponder the glorious splendor of your majesty and all
your marvelous works.
Revelation: Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God.
John: Now is the Son of Man glorified, and in him God is glorified; if God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself, and glorify him at once.
This talk of glory and power has been added to the end of the prayer that our Lord taught his disciples.
"For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever and ever."
The glory of God [Greek: doxa or doxazo; Hebrew: Kabod] is the dignity or honor we give to God, or the praise and adoration we give him. So, when we say, "We give you all the glory, O LORD" we are worshipping him to the maximum extent that we are able to achieve. He is above all and so we worship him above all else. When Jesus spoke of his glory with the Father that he had from the beginning of time he meant he would return to the Father and receive all the praise and worship and adoration that he had before. The Gloria in Excelsis means just that, Worship and praise belongs to God TO THE MAXIMUM!! I will throw my entire being into the worship that I give to my LORD and God. Because when it comes to giving him the glory and praise that he is due as the creator of all that I am, then there is nothing less that I can do. The irony of the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus is that he had to suffer a very inglorious, demeaning, degrading, violent and painful death to regain the glory that was his from the beginning of time. Is not that a paradox that to gain glory he had to be degraded? That is incredible, the Son of the Most High, the Almighty God had to be shamefully treated to be ultimately glorified before all the world. It is very hard for us to understand that train of thought. Obviously, we do not understand what glory is and what power is in the eyes of God. This is consistent with what he has said through his prophet Isaiah;
"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor your ways my ways, says the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your
thoughts." (Isaiah 55:8-9)
The Apostle Paul tells us that what is weakness to us is power to God.
"Three times I besought the LORD about this, (Thorn in the flesh) that it should leave me; but he said to me. "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."(2 Cor.12: 8-9)
What therefore we perceive as weakness is a powerhouse, a dynamo for God. When Jesus stood before Pilate, beaten and apparently deserted by everyone he was standing at the apex of God's supernatural power ready to become the center of the most paradoxical, incredible event in the history of the world. He was about to be nailed to an instrument of Death and turn it into an instrument of Salvation. He was about to lay down his life that we might live forever. He was about to achieve glory through an ignominious death. How in the world to you gain glory through dying? I wondered about a movie I saw as a youngster, it was called "They Died With Their Boots On". It starred Errol Flynn as George Armstrong Custer. All through the movie he talked about this glory that the 7th Cavalry is going to attain. At the end of the movie, there was all the Sioux Indians in the world surrounding them and killing them. While they were being slaughtered, he turned to Arthur Kennedy and said", now you know what glory is!" At the time, I could not understand what he meant by gaining glory through dying.
In the musical JESUS CHRIST-SUPERSTAR, the disciples sang that Jesus will get the Power and the Glory because the crowd is on his side and they will win back their land from the Romans. Jesus sings that the disciples, the scribes, the Pharisees and the crowd do not understand what Glory is and they do not understand what Power is. If you want to conquer Death you only have to die. Do we have to physically die to attain to the glory of God?? Or are we to die, spiritually, to self to be raised to a new life in Christ to truly attain to the glory of God? If we would glorify God, worship him and praise him in spirit and truth then we must die to self and follow the Love command of Jesus. In the gospel reading this morning He said, "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."
That passage becomes a reality for me whenever I serve on the Kairos Prison Ministry team. On one Kairos weekend, after the Saturday night forgiveness service, one of the inmates stayed up most of the night writing letters to some of us on the team. He thought that we were staying in some hotel, but when he learned we were sleeping on the floor of Marvin Methodist Church’s gym, he felt compelled to write us. In the letter he explained how he had completely overcome by the love he had received. In my service on Kairos teams I have come to realize the overwhelming power of Forgiveness and Love. The Parable of the Prodigal Son, which should be renamed the Parable of the Forgiving Father is where we find the clearest definition of what the Gospel message is all about. Brothers and Sisters, Forgiveness is so powerful it brings new life where once there was death. I've seen men who hated each other enough to want and try to kill each other reconciled through the forgiving Love of Jesus Christ. Once we come face to face with Jesus and his Command to Love each other, forgiveness must and should flow or we stand in disobedience and rebellion to his command. This is not a suggestion from Our LORD, this a direct order, as we are fond of saying in the military. It is matter of our willfully loving God, our neighbor and one another. By one another I mean those Brothers and Sisters of the household of faith that claim to be Christian. Our LORD had previously discussed with a lawyer the Great Commandment of the Law; that we are to Love God with all our heart, soul and mind and we are to love our neighbor as ourselves.
This new command is pointed directly at those who would be his disciples. We must discipline ourselves to willfully love each other. And according to my Strong's Concordance the Greek word for Love that John used is Agapao. Love that is associated with God and Jesus, a sacrificial love. Jesus wants us to love one another with the same kind of love that he first loved us. That is really going to be some kind of hard thing to do. Like the Father in the parable who ran to meet his son as he was returning home. He meets us with a Love and Forgiveness that surpasses anything that we can muster. Our Father gives us a chance to learn and practice the Agape love that he wants us to have. He puts us in families where we have the opportunity to learn and practice the kind of love that he has shown us.
In Paul's letter to the Colossians, he tells us:
“Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, and patience, forbearing one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the LORD has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love [Agapao], which binds everything together in perfect harmony.” (Colossians 3: 12-14)
A little further on in the letter to the Colossians and in his letter to the Ephesians Paul tells us Husbands that we should love [Agapao] our wives as Christ loved the church. Jesus laid down his life for the church. We have the opportunity to set the example in the household and family for sacrificial love. God has given us the awesome responsibility of being the head of the family, just as Christ is the head of the church.
When we can EXHIBIT that kind of Love in the family it will become easier for that kind of Love to flow into the church and into the world around us. For they will know we are Christians by our Love. It’s not a wimpy or apathetic kind of Love but a strong Love that comes out in force, that is not afraid to show its care and concern. This is really evident in how we treat those who have mistreated us.
Now we can look at this command as something we can take or leave but that would be foolish because it a sovereign claim by a sovereign LORD on our lives if we want call ourselves Christian. The early church took this command to heart and made it a hallmark of its corporate life. Pagans would say, "Look at those Christians, see how they love each other." The new commandment is to love one another. It is possible to obey this command only because Christ loves us as the Father loves him and Jesus teaches us how to love. This love is possible because of the new life we have been given as the result of Christ's death and resurrection. On the cross, Christ put to death the power of evil. We are baptized into his life and into his way of Love [Agapao].
One of the songs we sang at Cursillo and at Kairos is called “They will know we are Christians, By our Love.” Can they really say that about us today?
B. DOCTRINAL POINTS
1. ONCE JUDAS DEPARTS, JESUS THROWS LIGHT ON THE MEANING OF HIS
DEATH.
Throughout his ministry in the first part of the Gospel of John [Book of Signs] Jesus revealed the Glory of God. Now as he prepares for his departure, we see his Glory fully revealed. The glorification of the Son of Man occurs when the Son returns to the Father’s presence.
2. GOD’S LOVE FOR THE WORLD IS MADE FLESH IN JESUS AND IT’S NEWNESS IS MANIFEST IN JESUS’ SUPREME ACT OF LOVE IN LAYING DOWN HIS LIFE.
The disciples are given a new commandment to love one another so that the one who accepts
Jesus accepts the very love of God in the intimacy of mutual indwelling.
3. JESUS IS THE BOND BETWEEN HIS DISCIPLES. The affective bond of indwelling love and the effective act of sacrificial love is the glue that will do the job of bonding after his
departure from this world
C. APPLICATION/DISCUSSION:
a. The Glory of God will be manifested: This "Glory" will be shown in the events to take place shortly in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Isn't that a paradox that God will be glorified in the death of his Son? In the Old Testament the Israelites saw the "Shekinah" glory of God as he led them through the wilderness, in the pillar of fire and cloud. He was also present to them in the "Holy of Holies" of the Temple. God's glory meant his presence to them. Jesus' death will enable his presence to be with his followers forever.
b. He will depart from them, they will look for him but will not find him: These stark words must have shocked them; he didn't pull any punches with them. He introduced them to the reality and then trusts them to cope with it.
c. He is commanding them to love each other: This is no advice or suggestion but a COMMAND! The love with which he has supported them though out their training period with him will not disappear. All they have to do is exhibit that love amongst themselves and he will be there also. When they do that everyone will recognize that they had been with Jesus because will be present and will be manifested and glorified
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