Summary
Pastor Safrit walks through Psalm 145, emphasizing the core value of glorifying God. He explains that glorifying God means recognizing His greatness and works, which should be reflected in our lives and actions. The sermon challenges listeners to choose between glorifying God or self, highlighting that our obedience and intentional living can impact those around us, ultimately leading to a greater recognition of God's glory.
Welcome and Announcements
Thank you for listening to Pleasant Grove Baptist Church Sermon Audio. For more information, please visit our website, pgbcronda.com, or visit on all social media platforms. Thank you, choir.
Substitute teacher is still here. And so if you have a child that wants to go to Children's Church, you're more than welcome to dismiss them at this time. We're going to be in Psalms chapter 145 this morning. If you want to turn there, I'm going to drink a water real quick.
Psalm 145, we're going to look at the first half of this psalm this morning. And the psalm we just sang, Christ Be Magnified, goes with the theme of what we're talking about, glorify God. It's one of our first core values. Many people have asked about our new church logo.
And so I want to explain it just a little bit. As you can see, if you look at the logo, the very first thing that you see, the first thing your eye is drawn to is a cross.
It looks like a tree. And that is because the center of everything we want to do here is about the gospel. It's about the cross. It's about what Jesus did. And there are four branches to that cross.
And those four branches are going to be our four core values of our church. Last week, we talked about our mission of the church to preach the word, to promote hospitality, and to proclaim the darkness, to penetrate the darkness in our community.
And so what we want to do is we want to now see how we can practically do those three things in and through our church. And so we've come up with four core values. To glorify God, to grow together,
to go and serve, and to give generously. And over the next couple of weeks, we're going to be preaching through these four things and give some practical applications of how we can glorify God, how we can grow together, how we can go and serve, and how
we can give generously. And everything we want to do through our church is with these four core values in mind of how we can do these things. And so today, the thought over the next couple of weeks will be glorify God. How can we glorify God?
What are we going to do, and why is it important to glorify God? And so if you have your Bibles and you're there, I'm going to be reading out of, I normally read out of the King James. I'm going to read out what's called the MEV.
I'm going to have it on the screen as well. It's one of my preferred versions to go to. It's just a modern English version.
It reads just like the King James. They just updated it a little bit. And so if you would stand with us, the words will be on the screen if you want to follow along.
Glorifying God's Greatness
But Psalms 145. The Bible says, They shall speak of the might of your awesome acts, and I will declare your greatness. They shall abundantly declare the fame of your great goodness, and shall sing of your righteousness.
The Lord is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger, and great mercy. The Lord is good to all, and his compassion is over all his works. All your works shall praise you, O Lord.
And your Godly ones shall bless you. They shall speak of the glory of your kingdom and talk of your power. To make known to the people of his mighty acts and the glorious majesty of his kingdom. Lord, we thank you.
Lord, I pray that you'll be with this reading, be with this words this morning as I preach your glory. As I preach what so great you have done to us. Lord, you gave your son to die for us.
Lord, the only thing we should be able to do is glorify your name. I thank you for the singing and the choir and the church as we sing together in worship. I pray that you'll be with this time of preaching. In your name we pray. Amen. You may be seated.
I'm a history buff. If you didn't know that, I like history. My wife has been doing a lot more reading lately. And we'll go to one of my favorite bookstores called McKay's Books. And I go to two sections. I go to the theological section.
And I see what people have donated their old libraries, maybe commentaries that I may be wanting or needing. And then I'll go from the theological side, and I know exactly where it's at. And I'll go down a couple of rows. And on the left is the historical side.
So it'll be from the Civil War, American history, the revolution, all the way up to World War I, World War II.
And I'll just go through. And I'll say, man, that's a good. Never even thought of that book. Never even thought of that person. And they're like three or four bucks a book. So I'll grab a book. And I'll come home.
And I'll begin reading through it. And I've got a history section in my library of just historical books. And my wife tells me, how can you read it? Like, it just puts me to sleep. She likes mystery thrillers and other different books like that.
So history is one of the things that I just love reading after. Killing Lincoln, Killing Kennedy by Bill O'Reilly.
I just love some of those historical accounts. And I began to think about this thought because I heard someone make a statement. And it really intrigued me. And I'm going to use this statement this morning. And it may shock you when you hear it.
And so I want to preface all that by saying that in 19... I'm sorry. Since 1515, there's been mainly one country in all of the entire world landscape that's been a neutral site.
When it comes to fighting and wars, they don't engage in any external wars. They sort of keep to themselves. And the reason for this was in 1515, there was a devastating loss in the country. And they almost became non-existent.
And they decided from that point on they were going to abandon all forms of expansion. And they were only going to focus on self-preservation.
This country, a small country, you might want to take a guess at what that country's name is. Switzerland.
Switzerland is the neutral site. Even throughout history, through World War I, World War II, they traded with both the European army and they also traded with the Nazis. And they had a lot of backlash because why would they do that?
Why would they trade with an enemy? Why would they do this? And their thought was, we are only going to serve the purpose of Switzerland.
Our defense is only going to be that. It's going to be defense. It's not going to be an offensive army. And so they never chose to take us out of war. And since 1515, they are the longest neutral site in the world. And oftentimes in our Christian journey, we want to say,
I just want to be a Switzerland. I just want to be neutral.
I don't want to go one way or another. I just want to be a neutral site. And the statement I'm going to say this morning, it's going to be hard. It's going to be hard to take your time. But there is no such thing as a Switzerland in our spiritual journey.
If you choose to be a Switzerland,
Choosing to Glorify God
you are choosing to serve self. And therefore, you are glorifying Satan. We have to make a choice this morning, church. Are we going to glorify God?
Or are we going to glorify self? And in order to glorify self and to take the needs of my own self and take care of it, ultimately, you are abandoning what needs to be glorified to God. And you're only glorifying Satan.
And you may say, Pastor James, I'm not worshiping Satan. Trust me, I'm not. Like, I love Jesus.
But there's just some things that I just want to, you know, take care of me, right? In the world of Oprah, you just do you. In that statement, we are simply glorifying ourself and we are not glorifying God.
And so I want to begin by having a sort of a definition of what does it mean to glorify God? What does it mean to glorify, period?
And I picked this specific psalm because it goes through and talks about how we can exalt ourselves or we can exalt God our King. And the first three verses begin to talk to this. And a good definition, this is in your notes.
I'll get to that at the very end of this part. But to mean that the word glorify literally means to make glorious or to give glory. Glorify itself means to carry weight or to have importance.
What you have weight to, what you see as important, you are going to glorify. One person described it like this, one definition, is an appropriate amount of attention, adoration, or even thanks.
To glorify something does often mean to worship something or to praise that thing. As we go through life, we all glorify a lot of things. We all worship a lot of things. We give a lot of things weight.
And sometimes these things that we give weight to are not necessarily bad things. They're just not the best things. So we have to begin to process in our mind, what is it that is important in my life? What is it that I'm showing value to? Let me explain it like this.
Every one of us give importance to certain things, right? If I were to go to a Ford guy, how many of you here like Fords? A couple people. If I were to go to them and I would say, you know, I really like this new Chevy truck. They're going to say, well,
I don't know if I'd buy a Chevy. Chevy's going to break down. I really like my Ford.
If I go to a Jeep guy and I say, you know what? I'm thinking about going out and buying the new Bronco. Well, I wouldn't spend that money on no Bronco.
I'd go buy a Jeep, right? Let's go into the sports world, right? Marty in the back there, he's a Cowboys fan. They're going to play today. Okay? Cowboys haven't won a championship since 1995.
Okay? But yet he thinks they're the greatest team that's ever existed. Right? And if I were to go to him and I were to say, Marty, I don't know. I don't know. Listen, listen. They've won some good things. He's going to begin to define why they're the greatest. They've won championships.
They've had some good quarterbacks. They begin to do it all along and on. They're going to begin to tell me and persuade me why they're the greatest. Okay?
It would be the same for me if you came to me and you were to talk about the dolphins. I would still, I still back them. Even though we lost yesterday, even though I'm in mourning in my spirit, I'm still going to back them.
Defining Glorification
Right? And so what does it mean to glorify something? One way to put it is this, to put above all of the things and to place value upon it. And in your notes today, I put it like this. When you glorify something, you're thinking about it,
you talk about it, and you brag about it. When we glorify things in our life, it is what you continually think about. It is what you continually talk about. And ultimately, it is what you are going to brag about. Right?
We brag about our kids and our grandkids. And our kids make a game-winning basketball shot or they make that touchdown to win the game in overtime. And we brag on them.
And there's nothing wrong with that. But in the same way, do we brag about God in that way? God answers a prayer we've been praying for 10 years.
Do we put a video out and we say, oh, I've been praying for this and God answered my prayer? Do we hold the same value of weight to what God does versus what we seem important in our life? God continues on in this passage in verses 4.
I'm sorry. Really, verse 3, the end of verse 3 through verse 9. And it begins to talk about why we should glorify God. Look again with me at the end of verse 3 if you have your scripture there. It says, and his greatness is unfathomable.
One generation shall praise the works of another and shall declare his mighty works. So why this morning should we glorify God? Why is it important that we glorify God? Why is it important that other people see us glorify God?
Well, the easy answer here is because of his great works. Verse 4 and 5 begins to talk about how from one generation to another, they're going to praise his works.
And one is going to declare his mighty acts. And I will speak of the glorious honor of your majesty and your wondrous works. We see over and over again where God's works should be glorified.
And when we begin this year, church, as we begin to think through this, and we begin to analyze our life, and I'm sure that's not even a word. I just made it up as I was thinking.
And when we begin to think through this, we begin to recognize the workings of God in our life.
You truly just begin to sit back and you begin to ask yourself, as we talked about this morning Sunday school, about how we take steps of faith. And we step back and we begin to see those steps of faith.
And we see how God was working in this situation, how God was working in that situation.
And when we take a step back, we begin to see his works in our life, and we should be celebrating those works. As believers, at one point or another, we have seen it. We've seen in the world around us and in other people where God has done incredible things.
Maybe it's the saving of a lost loved one. Maybe it's someone who was battling a disease or a cancer, and we prayed, and we got on our knees, and we begged God for him to work in a mighty way. And we saw it happen, and we saw his prayers answered.
It could be in other ways where we began to say, God, I need to heal this person. And maybe they don't get the healing that we so desired.
But yet when we look back, we can see God's working over and over again. That's God's work in action.
You see, we can all begin to think about ourselves, and we begin to see the realness of who we are, how we're a sin-depraved person, and how God delivered us from that.
And we begin to say that, I know I'm a sinner. I know I've done wrong, and God purchased me from that. He redeemed me from that.
We begin to glorify God in that way. Psalms 86 says it like this. Just listen to this psalm, verses 8 through 13. Among the gods,
little g, there is none like you. O Lord, neither are there any works like unto your works.
All nations whom you've made shall come and worship before you. O Lord, we shall glorify thy name.
For thou art great, and you've done wondrous things. You are God alone. Teach me the way, O Lord, that I walk in truth. Unite my heart to fear your name, so I will praise you.
O Lord, my God, with all my heart, I will glorify your name forever. For great is your mercy toward me, and you have delivered my soul from the lowest hell. You see, God's work is great, and because his work is great, we should glorify his name.
Not only is his work great, but he deserves it. He deserves it.
Look at verses 6 through 9, if you will, again. It says, They will speak of your mighty awesome acts, and declare your greatness. They will abundantly declare your fame. All throughout, they'll sing righteousness. The Lord is gracious and full of compassion, slurred of anger, and great mercy. God deserves our glory.
No other person deserves the glory that God gets. It's robbing God of who he is when we glorify someone above God. You see, not only is, I'll put this underneath there, it's our obedience. Right?
It's because what God has told us to do in creation itself is to glorify him. We see, all throughout scripture, I'm just going to read a couple of scriptures. Isaiah 43, 7. You see, God, in creation,
as Scott was talking about this morning, how he created the heavens and the earth, and he created the plants and the animals. He did all of that and rested on the seventh for one ultimate reason. To have communion with man and for us to glorify him. And man sinned. Man destroyed that.
And God, in his sovereignty, said, I'm going to redeem you. And even though you messed up, I'm going to redeem you. It was all created for his glory. Look at 1 Corinthians, if you want to write it down. 1 Corinthians 6, 20.
For you were bought with a price. And so that you were bought with a price, so glorify God with your body.
Creation's Purpose to Glorify
See, the reality is all creation exists to give glory to God. We are created to give glory back to God. And when we fail to do that, because we will, we only glorify ourself.
And so we have to begin to ask ourself, who is the person that's giving way to my life? Who is the person that I'm glorifying?
David says like this in Psalms 19, 1, the heavens declare God's glory, and the expanse proclaims the work of his hands. You see, it's not just the living that pay tribute to God. It's the non-living, the creation itself. Jesus said it himself in Luke 19, 14.
He said, we are created to glorify him. And if we fail to glorify him, then the rocks are going to cry out to God for the glory of who he is. You see, church, God doesn't need us to glorify him.
He's created a creation that will. He's created us so that we will glorify him, so we'll have a desire to glorify him, so we'll have a desire to go closer and closer to who he is and what he has done for us.
And the closer we get to God, the closer we get to who he is, the more we just can't cease to talk about what he's done for us. We can't cease to brag about who God is. We can't cease to think about what he's done.
We're riding down the road in our car, and we just begin to get overwhelmed with who he's done for, what God's done for us. I don't know if this has happened to you before. It's happened to me multiple times.
I'm on the road a lot. I drive a lot, so I'm in my car a lot, and I'll turn in some worship music, and I have a, on Apple Music, they have what's called Your Station.
And so they just put a compilation of things that you've listened to in the past. And so I'll hit that, and different songs, just I've never heard before, begin to play.
And the song will come on like Christ be magnified a couple of months ago. I heard it for the very first time.
And I'm driving in the road, and I literally had to pull over because tears were in my eyes because Christ be magnified in my life. I want to read that part as I was thinking about it, that bridge that we read. I won't bow to idols.
I'll stand strong, and I'm going to worship you. If it puts me in the fire like the three Hebrew children, I'm going to rejoice because you're there too. I won't be formed by my feelings. I won't hold past what is true. And if the cross brings transformation, which it will,
then I'll be crucified with you. Because death is just a doorway to the resurrection of life.
And if I join you in your suffering, then you're going to join me when I rise. And when you return in glory with all the angels and the saints, my heart will still be singing, and my song will still be the same. Christ be magnified.
Because when we begin to obey God, and we begin to give him the glory, all of a sudden, everything around us begins to go into the shadows. And it's only Christ be glorified.
As much as I want to glorify myself and glorify my kids and glorify my family, it's not about that. It's about Jesus. And it's about worshiping him for what he has done for us. It's our obedience this morning, church.
But not only is it our obedience, but look with me in verses 8 and 9.
It impacts the world around us. The Lord is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger and great in mercy. You ready? The Lord is good to all. And his compassion is over all his works.
It's over everything. His compassion is for everyone. Because when we begin to glorify God, because he deserves it, out of our obedience, it begins to impact the world around us. People will have no other thing to say than, why are you acting that way? And you can simply say, it's all about Jesus.
It's all about what he's done for me. It's all about what he's began to work in my life. And it's what I'm thinking about, and it's what I'm doing. And I can't get away from what he's done for me. Because it impacts the world around us.
Peter was writing to the church that was in a massive amount of conflict, a massive amount of persecution.
Nero had the objective to eradicate Christianity. And so Peter is writing to a group of people who were under oppression, and under persecution,
and under a radical government. And this is what Peter said to his church in 1 Peter 2.12. Conduct yourself honorably among the Gentiles.
Why do you want to conduct yourself honorably? So that when they slander you as evildoers, they will observe your good works, and will glorify God on the day that he visits. Right? This is how we impact the world. People are going to slander us.
People are going to talk bad about us. They're going to talk about how the church isn't good, and how religion isn't good, and how can someone go to church, look at what they've done to me in the past, and all we do is glorify God in that situation.
And they begin to ask questions.
Faith and God's Glory
And it says that they will begin to glorify God on that day. Because we have faith in him, and we give God glory by having faith in him. All throughout God's word, it talks about God's promises, promises of hope and eternity, promises for comfort and joy, promises for provisions.
And Jesus says yes to all those things. But when we glorify God, by putting him first and trusting in him, it impacts the world around us greater than any promise that we can ever give them. Because the only promise that's going to change the world is Jesus Christ.
And by telling them about that news, it impacts the world around us.
Church, this morning, we've got to get back to glorifying God. We've got to get back to impacting the world around us. And so practically, as I close, I'll give two main reasons, and then we're going to continue this all over the next couple weeks of how do we glorify God.
Verses 10 through 12 begin to lay out a couple of things. How do we glorify God?
It says here, all your works shall praise you, O Lord, and your godly ones shall bless you. They will speak of all the glory of your kingdom and talk about your power to make known the people whose works and acts and the glorious majesty of your kingdom. How do we practically glorify God?
By the way we live. By the way we live. All of your works.
See, the Bible's full of instructions of how we should live our life, how we should conduct our life with love, with sharing grace. We are different from the world, and because we're different, we have an opportunity to share something radically different with them.
And the world should look at us, and they should say there's something different about them. Right on game day,
I like to wear my Dolphins apparel. I had one on yesterday. If you were at the community center, I had my Dolphins t-shirt on. If someone came in and they were a Kansas City fan, you would clearly be able to see that we were two different fans. Right?
Does anyone here think that red and teal are the same color? No, they're different.
People are going to look at them and say, well, that person doesn't like the same team that guy likes. And how often is it that people walk into our work, people walk into our job, and they say, well, they look like the same person. They look like they're doing the same thing.
They can't tell us apart from the world because our actions are the same as the world.
You see, we must be a people that are different, that are set apart, that the world says there's something different about what they do.
And when we take time to pray, when we take time to worship, when we take time to love others, the rest of the world has to take note. The rest of the world will take note and say there's something different about them.
As the rest of the world is busy running through their day, we have to be the ones taking time to love people. We have to be the ones taking time to say, I care for you. I know life is busy.
I know times are hard, but can I just pray with you? I'll share a practical story. I shared this a couple of years ago,
but when I was in high school, so this was 15 years ago and 16, probably even longer than that. I don't know if time goes away from us.
I was junior in high school, I believe junior or senior, and I forgot about the story, but this young lady reached out to me on Facebook about six or seven years ago.
And I was running through the courtyard as most middle or high school students do, and they're busy, and they're trying to get from one class to another, and it was between lunch, and I like to eat, so I'm
eating, and I'm running through the courtyard with a couple of my friends, and there's a girl that was sitting
on one of the benches there in the courtyard, and she was just sitting here, and just, you could tell she was in distress. She was crying. She was upset at something.
I don't know what it was, and so as I'm running through there, the Lord just spoke to me.
I stopped, put my arm around her, and I said, Anna, I don't know what's going on, but I'm going to pray for you, and I hope the Lord works in your life. I don't know what it is.
I said a quick three-second prayer. I got up, and I continued to roam with my friends and didn't think another thing about it. And six or seven years ago, she reached out to me, and she said, James,
I don't know if you remember this, and she reminded me of the situation, and I said, I don't remember it at all. She said, but you stopped that day, and what was going on was my boyfriend was breaking up with me, right, because girlfriends,
girls in high school never have a boyfriend break up with them, right,
and so she said, it was a hard time, and I didn't know what I was going to do, and she said, everybody was running by, and no one stopped that day but you. She said, you were the only person that stopped and said a small encouraging word.
I don't even know what you said, but you encouraged me that day.
She said, I don't know what I would have done. I don't know what I was going to do that day, but I do know this. You changed whatever I was going to do, and I thought,
that was like three seconds of my day, and I don't even remember it, but yet she still remembers it eight, nine years later. See, church, we can make a difference if we just sit and sit around people and we live wholly set apart. I'm going to say this, weird lives.
No one says, this is what we should do in normal times because it's weird. People don't do that.
People don't just stop out of the middle of their day and stop and pray with people, but when we just take the time to do those things, through the way we live, we begin to glorify God. We do this with intention.
Our Purpose in Glorification
Verse 11, they shall speak of your glory, of your kingdom, and talk of your power. We have to understand that this is our purpose, to handle ourselves accordingly with intention to bring honor and glory to God.
You see, the word and the will of God working hand in hand is a willingly thing that sets us apart and sets the stuff inside of us aside that says, I'm going to invest in others. I'm going to work on others. I'm going to intentionally
correct the things in my life. I'm going to be willing to adjust my thoughts. I'm going to be willing to adjust my desire to realign with what God has for me. this is the intentional part of it.
And then as time gets away from us, verse 12, without recognition, we get to this point where we make known the people, his mighty acts, and the glory of his majesty and of his kingdom.
It's not about me. It's not about you. It's not about what we can do, but it's about what Christ has done for us. Psalm 115, one says this, not us, Lord, not to us, but to your name, give glory because of your faithful love because of your truth.
You see, it's nothing that I can do. It's nothing that you can do, but it's only through what Christ has done through us are we able to work in other people's life.
Paul Washer, a famous speaker, a famous preacher in our era, in our day right now, he said it like this, and as Terry comes and plays, I'm going to conclude up.
He says this, how is this, is God glorified by a rose that he plants in the forest? You ever thought about that?
God's creation, there's a rose in a forest and no man's ever going to see that.
Maybe an angel would never even see that either. He said this, he is glorified because God sees it.
How is God glorified by the servants who are hidden from all notoriety and all fame? Because he sees them, he knows their way, and God rejoices in what they do.
How can God get glorified by a small town of Clingman and Ronda of a group of believers who are trying to work and trying to do the glory of God and trying to impact the world around them?
How is God going to be glorified because God looks down and he sees us and he says, that's my people. That's my son. That's my daughter.
That's who I sent my son to die for and I love what they're doing. I love that they're giving out tracks. I love that they're telling other people about him. It's not about what we're doing but it's about God being lifted high and God being glorified.
Paul Tripp, I'm reading a book with Stephen right now, said it like this, we are in one big glory war. Every situation, every location, every relationship is fighting for what you glorify.
he said this that radically changed the way I thought about this a couple weeks ago. We must shape our hearts around the glory of the Lord
and everything about our service this morning was done with intention of changing our focus on who God is.
You see, the world may be wrapped up with the election and protest and what's going on all across the world but God is calling us to put his focus, our focus back on him to give him the glory and to give him the honor. Our focus this year starts here.
It starts by saying what am I going to focus on this year?
Any glorious thing in creation was given for the glory of God so that it would function as a finger pointing to the one that should rule our heart.
Questions for Reflection
So I want to ask you two questions this morning. What is ruling our heart? What is directing our heart? What is guiding our heart in everything we do? Which ultimately leads to our second question what are we glorifying? Are we just simply glorifying self?
And we need to say no, James, no pastor, no God, I don't want to glorify myself anymore. I want to realign my heart to glorify God this morning.
Or are we glorifying God when you say God allow me to be more intentional. Allow me to work in my life even more so than what I already have in giving you glory and honor.
Lord, I thank you for this day. Lord, I pray that you would work in our lives the way that you've worked in me as I've been studying this how we can glorify you. Lord, I pray that you would help us to
humbly approach your throne this morning and say, God, help realign our hearts.
Help realign who we are and what we are purposed to do. We thank you for this day. We give you the honor and praise for everything that happens. In your name we pray. Amen.
Thank you again for taking your time to listen to the sermon audio of Pleasant Grove. Please subscribe to get our latest sermons each week.
Auto-generated transcript · 5,941 words. May contain errors. Select a timestamp to play from that moment.
More from Core Value #1
View all
Core Value #1 - Glorify God - Part 3
Core Value #1 - Glorify God - Part 2
Listen to this sermon