If the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever, then surely we would conclude that the man, Christ Jesus, must be the supreme exemplar of that chief end. So, then, what does the example of Christ Jesus teach us? In this sermon, Paul White will show how the Son of God incarnate seeks the glory of God as the chief end of His work as our Mediator. 

Well if you will turn with me to John's Gospel chapter 17. John chapter 17. I want to read verses 1 through 5. The focus of our attention will be verse 4, but I'll reference some of these other verses in this section as we go through it. So let's read together and then I'll pray one more time.

When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that the Son may glorify you, since you have given Him authority over all flesh to give eternal life to all whom you have given Him. And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now Father glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.

This is the Word of God. Let's pray one more time. Father we ask that you would come and bless us with your presence and we simply want to echo the prayer of our great high priest. Would you please glorify your son in our midst that he may in turn glorify you and that we may also learn to glorify and enjoy you. It's in his name that we pray the name of Jesus.

Amen. So I want to give a little bit of an edit to the title that you have in the brochure. The title that I'm using is The Chief End of the man Christ Jesus. I think you have glorifying God in the man Christ Jesus something to that effect. When you hear those two things you might say they sound like you're saying the same thing.

For me in preparing a message I could go in very different direction. But we will actually come back to that idea at the end. But I want you to get this in your mind. The chief end of the man Christ Jesus or to put it in a catechetical form, the form of a catechism. And this will be one of four catechism questions that I'm going to give this morning.

What was the chief end of the man Christ Jesus? We've been learning about our chief end. Thank you. What was his chief end? I would answer the chief end of the man Christ Jesus was to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

My goal For the next several minutes is that we would all just be able to fix our minds on Jesus Christ I'm not really going to give any specific applications. The whole conference is the application. I Will get done early you will not be rushed you have nowhere to be I just want us to rest and to just spend a few minutes thinking about Jesus Christ and that He had this as His chief end to glorify God. And that should infinitely elevate that chief end for us. If that was His chief end, then how glorious is it that we would be able to come and be invited into that same way of living and adopt that same purpose for ourselves.

I want you to understand the basis of everything that you have heard and will hear. Because apart from understanding the chief end of the man Christ Jesus, you cannot understand your chief end, nor can you fulfill it until you understand Christ, until you've looked at Him and what He was doing in His ministry and His perspective towards His God. Until you've done that, you cannot begin to strive after your chief end. You can't enjoy God until you have seen that this is what Christ Himself strove after. So that's what I want you to do.

I just want to think about Him. And I want to give you a word about my method. In honor of the theme of the conference, I want to open up this passage, just one verse, using three headings And then beside each heading I'm going to give a catechism question. In other words, this is a catechism revolving around John 17 four. And hopefully that doesn't confuse the matter.

Hopefully when we get done you'll understand the text and you'll understand more about Christ and what was His purpose in life. So then, I want to look at John 17 for, let me read it again. This is where we'll spend our time. I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. The first thing that I want us to consider is the subject of this verse.

The subject. Anytime you're dealing with the Godhead, Father, Son, Holy Spirit in Scripture, and especially when we're dealing with the man Christ Jesus, true God and true man. In the text we have to be very careful of how we handle the details of what's being said because if we're not careful we can veer very quickly into error concerning the Godhead. So I want to focus on the subject and take our time here. Here's the first question, not the first catechism question, but the first thing I want to ask of the text.

Who is the speaker in John 17 4? Now it might sound redundant if you if you have a Bible if you're a Christian if you know that we're reading the high priestly prayer, it might sound like something that goes without saying. Don't think that way. We think that way too often when we read the Scriptures. Every bit of it is valuable.

Who's talking here? Who's speaking? Look at verse 1. When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, so the speaker is Jesus. Think about that.

This is the baby that was born to Mary. The baby that was laid in a manger. The baby that was celebrated by angels. The baby that was sought out by the magi. The baby that was hunted down by Herod.

That's who this is speaking. This is the boy who had the favor of God upon him from his youth. This was the boy that amazed the bystanders in the temple when he was 12 years old at his wisdom as he discussed the Scriptures, I'm assuming with them. He was baptized by his cousin in the River Jordan. He traveled the countryside as a preacher and he never had a home of his own.

One time when he was wore out from traveling, he stopped and rested by a well in Samaria. We know that story well. Another time when he was tired from traveling he just laid down in the bottom of a boat and went to sleep in a storm. Earlier in the week that we're reading of in the Gospels He rode into Jerusalem on a borrowed donkey, and just before this, if you're reading John's gospel, just before this, he put a towel around his waist and washed the feet of his disciples. That's Jesus.

That's who we're talking about. That's who's speaking. So Jesus, that Jesus is praying and the disciples are able to overhear His prayer. So it's Jesus. But He also says in verse 1 again, Father, the hour has come.

Glorify your son." Now that tells us that we cannot stop with merely thinking of Jesus as the baby, the young boy, the preacher, the man. We have to go on to consider Him as He is the very Son of God. This is the Son of God praying to God, and He calls Him Father. He speaks to the Father. The disciples, other than hearing Him pray, had probably never heard anyone pray like this.

He spoke of Himself as your Son. So this is the Son of God. The Son that in verse 3 we see was sent into the world by the Father. And in verse 5 we read that this Son had a glory with the Father prior to the existence of the world. Back in chapter 10, if we just walk backwards through John's gospel, in chapter 10 he says things like, I know the Father and the Father knows me.

The Father loves me. In chapter 5 verse 20, he said, the Father loves the Son. And in chapter 3, he said that God loved the world in this way, that He sent His Son into the world. Not to condemn the world, but to save the world. You know who this is, right?

This is the Son of God. This is the one that John started speaking about in chapter 1, verse 1. He just picked him up and he's been running with him all the way through the gospel. In John 1, 1, John says, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. So this is the Son of God, we often will say, the second person of the Holy Trinity.

That's who's speaking here. So we ask, obviously, how can it be that the same One who's one with God in eternity. He's known by the Father. He's loved by the Father. He had a glory with the Father prior to the existence of any created thing.

How can that same One also be? The baby born to Mary laid in the manger, sleeping in the bottom of a boat, riding on the foal of a donkey. How does that work? Well, in verse 14 of John 1, he tells us that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory. Glory as of the only Son from the Father.

This is the Son of God speaking. This is Jesus, the only begotten Son of the Father, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, who is of one essence with the Father, truly and eternally God, after having assumed to Himself the nature of a man..." I heard this, this is the way I like to say it, "...so that he is in this picture just as much man as if he were not God at all. And yet he is just as much God as if he were not man at all." And yet here he's praying. Jesus, the Son of God, is praying, but there's more. Because back up in verse 3, we read these words, Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.

So there he mentions that given name again, Jesus. His mother gave him that name by the command of the angel. He mentions that he was sent forth from the Father, but he also adds that title, Christ. Christ. That's not his last name.

It's a title, an official title. It means the anointed one. So this is the final climactic prophet, priest and king sent from God to the people of God. In the Old Testament, the prophets, priests, and kings were anointed. That was to show that they were to fulfill that office or to hold that office.

This is not an anointed one, this is the anointed one. The Christ. The one that they all pointed to. So this is the Son of God, enfleshed as a man, serving in his role as the promised Messiah, the mediator between God and men. A prophet for our ignorance, a priest for our sin, a king for our care and our comfort.

That's who's speaking. Now having gotten in view that figure, we need to nail down the specific scope of the reference that Christ is making of Himself here. Remember, we're not dealing with somebody that's like us. This is not like us. He's completely other than.

We're dealing with one who is at one and the same time God and man. So this one could say, before Abraham was, I am, speaking according to his divine nature. But then he could also say, concerning that day and hour, not even the sun knows." Speaking of his human nature. We read statements like that and that's hard for us to wrap our minds around because he's not like us. So what is the scope here?

Pay attention to the details. How are we to understand the scope of what he's saying? Well notice he says, back to verse 4, I glorified you on earth. So here he's referencing specifically what we would call his humiliation. His time on the earth.

Now, a lot can be said under this topic of how Christ glorified God, how He continues to glorify God, but I want to keep our thoughts narrowed to the time between His incarnation and His ascension. Between the time when He was conceived in the womb of His mother and the time when He was taken up in the clouds of heaven, the time on earth. So then what is our subject? We have here a reference to the only begotten Son of God, the second person of the Holy Trinity who is truly and eternally God, after having taken unto Himself our nature, the nature of a man, during his humiliation, that's important because this very moment he still has the nature of a man, as we've heard previously. During his humiliation, or the time between his incarnation in the womb of the virgin and his ascension to the right hand of the majesty on high." That's our subject.

So here's question number two. Catechism question number two. What do we mean by the title the man Christ Jesus in this passage? Answer, we mean the Son of God having assumed our nature during his time on earth. So now you have two questions.

What is the chief end of the man Christ Jesus? To glorify God and enjoy Him forever. What do we mean by the title the man Christ Jesus? We mean the Son of God having assumed our nature during his time on earth. Second heading.

Let's consider the goal that is achieved in this verse, John 17.4. When we read this verse, we can clearly see that he is alluding to some activity of his and some achievement, some accomplishment, something he has performed. So what is that goal? What did he do? Well, when we read the words we see basically two achievements.

One of them is supreme, one of them is secondary. And we've already heard about chief ends and subservient ends to that ultimate chief end. The supreme goal, the supreme chief end is in the words, I glorified you on earth. That's his chief end. And then secondarily or the subservient end, the end that acted like a raft to carry the other end along to bring it to its conclusion, the subservient end is having accomplished the work that you gave me to do.

Now we'll deal with that part in the next point. I just want to deal with that first supreme goal of Christ. I glorified you on earth. What does it mean when the Lord Jesus Christ, speaking to his Father, says, I glorified you? What does that mean?

Well first we have to understand God's glory. The glory of God if we're thinking the way this can be divided up is internally and externally. Internally, in God, the glory of God is, simply put, just God. Just who He is. It's all that God is in himself.

Or we could tease that out and say, it's all of the infinite perfections in God which are really just God himself. So God's glory in himself is just, we could say, his Godness. I think it was Dr. Beekie who said the word glory means weight or value or worth. That's what the word means.

So when we bring that to God, what is it that makes God valuable? Well it's His Godness. It's just who He is. Now we break that up. We study God's attributes.

But ultimately it all comes back to God. He's God. That's His internal glory. God himself. But typically when the Bible speaks of glory and especially the glory of God, it's actually talking about something coming out of God, something external, Something even visible.

The external glory of God is that internal majesty or beauty of all of the perfections that are in God Himself coming out from God in some visible manifestation or some communication of God's goodness to the creature. Typically it's a cloud or a pillar of fire or a bright light. The way I like to explain it is you have a light bulb that is tangible and you can touch a light bulb but when you plug it in and turn it on there is a a radiance that comes out the light fills the room we don't fill the room up with light bulbs we put in one bulb and turn it on and and the effulgence of the bulb fills the room we can't we can't touch the effulgence but we can see this is sort of This is what we mean by the glory of God. We can't touch God. It's not like we can get our hands around Him or see Him, but the glory of God is all of his infinite perfections coming out in some way that very often to the creature is just blinding light.

This is, I believe, is synonymous with that unapproachable light which God dwells in. A sort of created thing that manifests God to the creature, his Godness. And when we see it, it's just blinding. And you see throughout Scripture when God reveals himself, men just fall. That's His glory coming out.

The external glory of God is God manifesting His God-ness to creatures. And again, read the scriptures, they're never able to endure it. Ever. Even in a a creaturely condescension like light. We've seen bright lights.

We don't like the new headlights on cars. Nobody likes those. They're coming at you. It's too bright. We don't like it.

In Scripture when God manifests His glory, John fell at his feet as though dead. Like it just floors people. But this is God manifesting Himself and that's even in a creaturely concession unapproachable to men. His glory. So then what is it to glorify God?

Simply put, I would say it's to display or to exalt or to manifest, to point to that infinite splendor in some way. The infinite splendor of God's perfections. To magnify God's glory. If I just stood here for an hour and I just talked about the immutability of God, just one attribute, that would be a creature's attempt to glorify God. I just want you to look at it.

I just want you to see this perfection. That's what it means to glorify, to put on exhibition the untold and immeasurable excellencies of God Himself. And so we read, our Lord has just said, I glorified you on earth. I glorified you on earth. The incarnate God-man, nearing the end of his ministry, describing the entire period between His incarnation in the womb of the Virgin and His soon to come ascension into the heavens, He says in so many words, Father, I have put on an exhibition.

I have manifested or I have displayed, I have exalted every one of your immeasurable excellencies and perfections before the eyes of men in a way and in such creaturely concession and condescension that no one was even blinded by it. That's humiliation. That's condescension except for three men on the Mount of Transfiguration when the veil was pulled back just a tad. And they were... You read the scene it was like they were so dumbfounded they didn't know where they were, they didn't know what was going on.

Peter wanted to build tents because he didn't know what he was talking about. They couldn't even Think straight. They saw a sliver of the glory of God manifested in the man Christ Jesus. That's what he's saying. I glorified you on earth.

I showed the world who you are. I made you known to men. Father, if anybody saw me, they saw you. They saw you, Father. That's what he said to Philip.

So then, third question. What do we mean when we say the man Christ Jesus glorified God? Answer, we mean that during his time on earth, the Lord Jesus Christ displayed and magnified all divine perfections. Or you could say, He showed us God. What is the chief end of the man Christ Jesus?

It is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. What do we mean by the title the man Christ Jesus? We mean the Son of God having assumed our nature during his time on earth. What do we mean when we say the man Christ Jesus glorified God? We mean that during his time on earth the Lord Jesus Christ displayed and magnified all divine perfections.

He showed us God. Now you might think, well I don't remember seeing the immutability of God. Well go back and read it again. You'll find it. I just want to push you that direction.

It's there. Find it. I don't remember seeing the oneness of God or the spirituality of God. Go back and find it. He showed every infinite perfection of God in His time on earth.

Number three. I want us to consider the means by which this goal was achieved. The means by which this goal was achieved. I said earlier that in this verse there are actually two achievements. One is the chief end, the supreme end, and the other is subservient.

The other, this means, this raft is the way that Christ got to that chief end. The chief end, the supreme achievement was to glorify God. He showed us God. Okay? What was the secondary means?

By what means did Christ glorify God? Notice what he says. I glorified you on earth having accomplished the work you gave me to do." Or you might have it in two separate sentences. I glorified you on earth. I have finished the work you gave me to do.

And grammatically this is not just disjointed statements. There's a correlation between these two things. A correlation between his having glorified the Father and his having accomplished or finished the work. His glorifying of the Father we could say was by way of finishing the work. Or having accomplished the work or having completed the work in that way, He glorified God.

He showed every divine excellency by finishing the work, by completing the work. Again, it's two achievements. Chronologically, he finishes the work and thus glorifies God. Logically, in order to glorify God, he had to complete the work. The one achievement serves the other.

If he had not completed the work, then he could not have said, I glorified God. But seeing that he did accomplish the work, he succeeded in glorifying God, in putting on an exhibition of every infinite perfection in God. So we can say that glorifying the Father or glorifying God was the chief end of the man Christ Jesus and he achieved that end by accomplishing the work. So what was the work? That's the great question.

Surely you agree. Hopefully I've gotten you to the point where you would agree if I say this is kind of a big deal. Whatever this work is, it's a big deal. What we're saying is that Jesus Christ, what he's saying and what we're deducing from the passage, is that Jesus Christ during his time on earth showed us God. He made known to men and all creation God in such a way that God had never before been made known to creation and has never been repeated since.

How? By accomplishing the work. What was the work? I want to know what the work was. You might say or somebody might ask you, tell me what God is like.

I want to know God. I want to see God. Well, this text seems to imply that you are allowed to answer that by saying you don't need to look any further than Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Now you will look further. I hope you will look further.

But what he's saying is I have put on an exhibition of all of the divine perfections on the earth by accomplishing the work. In other words you could say to them look at the man Christ Jesus. You want to know what God is like? Look at the man Christ Jesus. Now there are many things contained in the Gospels that teach us something about God.

We can see God's goodness in the fact that He would even think of sending His Son to have a conversation with us. Let alone take on our nature and walk in our place. God is good. We can see God's wisdom as we see Jesus teaching with authority. And people said, nobody ever spoke like this man.

We have nothing to compare it with. A new teaching, they said, with authority. We can see God's power and that He does things like calming the storm or raising the dead. We see God's compassion as He heals the sick and the blind and the lame and the mute and lepers. And from all of that we can deduce that God is good, God is wise, God is powerful, God is compassionate.

Or we could go to the other side and we can say that God's glory is displayed simply in the existence of the person, Jesus Christ, because He is God. He's God. All of the fullness dwells bodily in the man Christ Jesus. He is the radiance of the glory. He is the shining effulgence of the glory of God, we read in Hebrews.

And Paul tells us the glory of God shines in the face of Jesus Christ. So we could just say, He's God. You just look at Him. You're seeing God because that's who He is. Those things are all true, but I would argue that even all of that, what Christ did in those other works and even the unity of the divine and human nature in the person of Christ, I would argue that all of that is meant to funnel into what is the real great work, the real accomplishment.

What was the work? I wish somebody would just say, what was the work? Tell us. I'll say it very briefly and then I'll expound. What was the work?

What was the work that Christ accomplished that we can look at and we can point anybody to and we can say that's God. That's how you can know God. Look at that work. Very simply, He saved sinners. That's the work.

He saved sinners. All of the infinite, incomprehensible, resplendent effulgence of the eternal God-ness of God, all the various streams of beautiful truth that we know about God. We could go around the room and talk about God all day. We could all name wonderful truths. All of that that we know, all that we've ever seen, all that has ever been done in the earth, all that ever will be done in the earth, all that will ever be done into eternity.

All of that, every bit of it, is meant to be brought down into a white hot laser beam of goodness, power, and wisdom in this one person, Jesus Christ, accomplishing this one work, saving sinners. You want to know God. I'll tell you about God. This is what you need to know. God saves sinners.

Somebody comes to you and they say, Who is Jesus Christ? You say, Oh, that's God saving sinners. What was the motivation for the Son coming into the world? To save sinners. What was the end goal that he had in mind, that he had envisioned in coming into the world?

That sinners would be definitely, finally, certainly saved. That's why he came. A few more details and even this could be, this is the whole life of the Christian ministry. I have to say it in a paragraph. How are sinners saved?

Sinners like you and me are saved by the coming of the Son of God and taking our nature and living his whole life in perfect personal and perpetual obedience to the commands of God, then taking our sins upon himself, suffering the penalty of God's wrath for those sins in his death, And then being raised from the dead, and as we heard last night, taking that glorified human nature, your nature, my nature, into the heavens, and He sat it down beside God, exalted. No creature, no creature has that position. The human nature is the only nature. The nature of angels has not been assumed and then sat down at the right hand of God. No, that's our nature.

That's the work. His life, his death, his resurrection. He took flesh and blood because we are flesh and blood. He lived a holy life because we are unholy. He suffered God's judgment because we are by nature children of wrath.

He poured out his blood because only life can ransom a life. He triumphed over death because that was our greatest enemy. None of these were his problems. He wasn't a sinner. He wasn't unholy.

He wasn't a child of wrath. He didn't need to be ransomed. He had no enemies. Death had no power over him. He did it for us.

He entered into heaven with his own blood in our nature so that we too might enter into the presence of God knowing that we have been reconciled to God by the death of His Son. And this glorifies God. This is the astonishing thing. God could have done a million other things and said, I'm glorified in that. But he chose this work.

This is what shows us God. He could have destroyed everything from the very beginning and said, see, there I am. But none would be saved. He chose to save. And then say, see, there I am.

Through saving sinners. This is This is what God wants us to know about Himself. That Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. That there is one God and there's one mediator between God and men and that is the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all. God's perfections are displayed in saving sinners through Jesus Christ.

All the attributes of God, I wish I could do it, Maybe I will someday. All of the attributes of God on the cross. I just want to preach that series. Let's look at the cross and just do a study of the attributes of God as He hangs there on the cross. But that's what we see.

God's saving sinners. So here's catechism question number four. Question, how did the man Christ Jesus glorify God? Answer, by saving sinners through his voluntary humiliation, holy life, substitutionary death, and resurrection. By saving sinners through his voluntary humiliation, holy life, substitutionary death, and resurrection.

In accomplishing this work, and saving sinners, Jesus Christ shows us God. This is God. What does Paul say in Ephesians 1 as He surveys our salvation from the beginning to the end in Christ's blood. Three times, to the praise of His glorious grace, to the praise of His glory, to the praise of His glory. We would say, make another waterfall, make another rainforest, make another mountain range.

Wouldn't that give you more glory? And he says, No, I'm going to save sinners to the praise of my glory. That's what he's done. When Christ was hanging on the cross, God was being placarded before the eyes of men. That was Christ Himself, the Son of God, saying, You want to know what God is like?

Look here. Look at me. See Him crushing His Son for you. That's God. That's what God wants us to see of Himself.

Now where do we see all this? I'll give you some scripture proofs. John 12 as Christ looked at the cross, His mind is going immediately. He knows it's time and He says, now is my soul troubled. Now we would say, now is my soul troubled.

How can I get out of this? Now is my soul troubled and what shall I say? Father save me from this hour? Get me out of this? But for this purpose I've come to this hour.

Father, glorify your name. Glorify your name. What's his purpose? What's his chief in? To glorify God by going to the cross and thus drawing all men to himself.

In Mark 10 45 he said the Son of man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. So we ask, why did he come? To give his life as a ransom for many sinners. In John chapter 10 he says, I've come that they may have life. Why did you come, Jesus?

Why would you condescend so far? That they may have life and have it more abundantly. The Good Shepherd, He said, lays down His life for the sheep. Why did you come? I came to ensure that dead sinners might live.

And I'm going to ensure that that happens by laying down my life for them. Later on in John 10, For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, But I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down. And I have authority to take it up.

This charge I have received from my Father. It is as if the Father said, Go. Lay down your life and take it up again in order to save My people. And the Son said, Oh, I will go. I go freely.

I go gladly. This is My joy that You would appoint Me to this. And then the Father responds by saying, Oh, Son, I love you. I love that you would do this, that you would glorify me in their salvation. This is what has happened.

He came willingly. He came gladly. It was his chief end and his chief joy. See, for us there's very often a division between these two things in this life. I want to glorify Him but sometimes it's hard to do what I know glorifies Him and also enjoy Him and I want to enjoy Him but sometimes it's hard to enjoy while I recognize that in all of my glorifying there's sin and there's taint and I can't accomplish it.

I can't fulfill it perfectly. So we struggle. For Christ there's no distinction. It's one and the same. I think John Piper's right.

He glorified God by enjoying him. And he enjoys him by glorifying him. They're one and the same for him. He came gladly and it was his joy. And even though we read in Scripture that he was in the world a man of sorrows, it was always his joy to glorify his father.

That was what carried him through, was the joy of the work. As we read in Hebrews, the joy that was set before him. So then let's review. Question number one, what is the chief end of the man Christ Jesus? The chief end of the man Christ Jesus was to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

Number two, what do we mean by the title the man Christ Jesus? We mean the Son of God having assumed our nature during his time on earth. Number three, what do we mean when we say that the man Christ Jesus glorified God? We mean that when during his time on earth the Lord Jesus Christ displayed and magnified all the divine perfections he showed us God. Number four, how did the man Christ Jesus glorify God?

By saving sinners Through his voluntary humiliation, holy life, substitutionary death, and resurrection. And since he is God, as we've heard, we must conclude that this was God's chief end. God's chief end was to glorify himself and enjoy himself. How? By being God.

What is he like? Look at Jesus Christ. Saving sinners. That's who he is. And I agree with what Scott said.

I think our brother Jonathan Edwards was correct when he said this is the end for which God created the world. Why a world? Why stars? Why a solar system? To glorify myself to the salvation of sinners through the humiliation and death and resurrection of my son.

So then coming back to that other title that you have, glorifying God in the man Christ Jesus. And when I read that I think, how can I glorify God in and through the person of Christ? In other words, now this might come... I think of this as application. What do I do now?

I think the answer is make use of Him. Make use of Him. That's what Christ is for. There's no need for a Christ except that we come and make use of a Christ. As a prophet, as a priest, as a king, as a mediator, a lord, a comforter, a shepherd, go to Him.

If you're not a Christian, you say, I don't know if I'm ready yet or I don't know if he'll really accept me." No, that's who he is. That's why he came is to accept sinners. You say, well, I'm already a Christian, but you're still a sinner and you still sin and you know. I said this the other day, how slow we are to even bring our sins to him. That's why he came.

That's why he exists. Is so that when we sin we would say, I've sinned. I must go to Christ. I must go to God through Christ. As the old writers would say, go to God carrying his son in your arms.

And You're always allowed in in that way. He's not going to cast out any who bring to Him His Son. Make use of Him. Glorify God through what Christ has done as your mediator. Let's pray together.

Father, we trust that your name has been exalted, that your Christ, your son, has been exalted, And I pray that you would help all of us to take what we've heard and live as we should. Thank you for sending us a Savior. What a mighty God you are. What a mighty Savior we have. I pray for my brothers and sisters here who maybe are still struggling to be quick in their repentance.

Lord would you help them to see that you stand ready and waiting. I pray for those in here who are not yet Christians. Lord would you help them to see that you stand ready. You even went through the trouble of waking them up today and bringing them a preacher and bringing them to this room so that they would hear what you have done for them in Christ. Lord, wake them up out of their drunken stupor and save their souls.

Go with us and bless us and I do want to pray for the other men that are preaching and will be preaching today. Lord, please continue to feed our souls. In Christ's name we pray, Amen.