DEVOTION TO DIVINE
HONOR AND GLORY OF GOD
Intimately connected with the spirit of self-denial is supreme devotion to
the honor and glory of God. From the formation of the first angel of light
down to the period when the heavens shall pass away as a scroll, the Creator
of the ends of the earth had His eye steadfastly fixed on the same grand
object. As all things are of Him, so all will be to Him (Rom. 11:36). He who
made all things for Himself cannot fail to pursue the end for which He made
them, and to obtain it at last. When the proceedings of the last day shall
have been closed, when the assembled worlds shall have entered upon the
unvarying retributions of eternity, when the heavens and the earth shall
have passed away and a new heaven and a new earth, the Holy City, the new
Jerusalem, shall have come down from God out of heaven, He that sits upon
the throne shall say “It is done; I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and
the end!”
In the winding up of the scene, it will appear that God Himself is the first
and the last, not merely the efficient, but the final cause of all things.
The vast plan which has for its object nothing less than the brightest
manifestation of the Divine Glory has an unalienable right to the most
unreserved devotedness of every intelligent being. To the advancement of
this plan, God therefore requires every intelligent being to be voluntarily
subservient. All the strength and ardor of affection which we are capable of
exercising must be concentrated here. Every faculty, every thought, every
volition, every design, must be devoted to this great cause. The injunction
is explicit: “Whether therefore you eat, or drink, or whatever you do, do
all to the Glory of God” (I Cor. 10:31).
Now the heart of depraved man is obstinately averse to such a course of
feelings and conduct. Instead of being supremely attached to God and the
good of His Kingdom, men are by nature lovers of their own selves. And here
lies the controversy between man and his Maker. God requires men to regard
His glory as the great end of their existence, but they disregard His
requisitions and prefer their own will and ends to 50 His. This is the
disposition of every natural heart; hence the mortification of this spirit,
and the supreme devotion of the heart and life to the service and glory of
God, is evidence of a radical change of moral character. It was the
character of Jesus Christ that ‘He went about doing good.” God is served and
glorified by a life which is actively engaged in seeking the good of others.
Where the heart is seriously and intensely interested in the service of God,
it cannot be satisfied without accomplishing something for the cause of God
in the earth. Our Lord alludes to this evidence of discipleship when He
says, “Herein is my Father glorified that you bear much fruit, so shall you
be my disciples” (John 15:8).
The true Christian possesses such impressions of his absolute dependence and
has such view of God’s entire right to him that he feels that all be is and
all that he has belong to God. And hence his heart in the first place is
devoted to the service of God. He has a sacred relish for the duties and
designs which he knows every creature of God ought to accomplish. The
service of God is no irksome employment, but one in which he feels heartily
and cheerfully engaged. There is nothing to which his affections are so
strongly attached and in which he takes so much delight as in doing good. He
loves the work of pleasing and glorifying his Redeemer, and of doing good to
his fellow men. “My food,” says the Lord Jesus, “is to do the will of him
who sent me, and to finish his work” (John 4:34). And the disciple, though
far from coming up to the high standard of his Master’s example is in this
respect like his Lord. There is a pleasure, a satisfaction of soul he enjoys
in the service of God which no other employment can impart. No matter what
position he may occupy in the world, he may be a minister of the Gospel, an
officer in the church, or a private Christian; he may be a magistrate or a
subject, he may be rich or poor, he may be a legislator, a lawyer, or a
physician, he may be a farmer, a merchant, a mechanic, or common laborer; he
may be a seaman or a landsman, a master or a servant; and if he is a child
of God, his heart will be bound up in the work of doing good and in pleasing
and serving God.
With his heart, he will also give his thoughts to this interesting concern.
This is the ultimate end which will absorb his attention. His thoughts are
not indeed always immediately on this object because this is impossible. He
is like a man who sets out on a journey. The place of his destination is not
in his thoughts every foot of ground he passes over, but it is the point to
which his thoughts are perpetually recurring, and from which they are with
difficulty diverted and toward which all his course maintains an habitual,
if not an invariable tendency. The Christian habitually carries the great
object of his existence into the whole course of human life. In seasons of
relaxation and seasons of business, it rests upon his mind. He thinks, and
studies, and contrives, and consults how he may, in the best manner and with
the greatest success, accomplish his Master’s work. With his thoughts, he
will also consecrate his time to the service of God. All his time belongs to
God, and though it may be his duty to devote the most of it to secular
pursuits, he considers it all as consecrated time.
No child of God can be habitually idle, or waste his time in empty
relaxation and vain amusements. Show me the man who lives at his ease, and
feels that he has time enough for anything and yet devotes it to nothing,
and if to anything, to that which is foreign to the business of a creature
who is the possessor only of one short life, and that redeemed by the blood
of Jesus, and for which he is shortly to give up his last account, and I
will show you a man who is a Christian only in name. The professed Christian
who attends the dance and assemblies and parties of pleasure, whose precious
time is consumed and killed in the perusal of novels, romances, and plays,
who is nowhere so happy as at the theater, the horse race, or the card table
is a miserable deceiver and more miserably deceived. But it is not the mere
omission of crimes of this aggravated sort which constitutes a Christian
improvement of time. The state and growth of grace in his own soul, the
spiritual condition of his family, his friends, his neighbors, the church,
and the world, together with the ignorance, the immorality, the vice, the
want, and suffering of his fellow men, these will redeem his time from
idleness from amusements, and often from secular labor. There is one portion
of time which every Christian holds dear. The Sabbath is his delight. He
anticipates it, he enjoys it, he reflects upon it as the “sweetest day of
all the seven.”
There are no hours of which he is more frugal, none which he turns to better
account than the hours of the sacred Sabbath. With his time, the true
believer also devotes his property to God. If there be those who have no
property to devote, they form an exception to this remark. But while I say
this, I would not forget that our Lord once passed a high estimation upon a
“poor widow,” because she helped the cause of sacred charity by throwing
into His treasury “two mites” when it was literally “all her living.” Even
the poor may give to the Lord and trust in Him who has promised that those
who love Him “shall not lack any good thing” (Psalm. 84:11).
But what shall be said of men who are blessed with competency, men who are
blessed with abundance, and have nothing to spare for Christ; men who can
behold a world lying in wickedness and pagan and Christian lands famishing
for the bread of life, and withhold the light of the great salvation; men
who can see the woes and hear the lamentations of hard-working people in
poverty, without a liberal heart and a communicating hand; but that the love
of God dwells not in them. Christian liberality is one of the indispensable
characteristics of true religion, and whenever it is lacking, there is a
mournful measure, if not an entire absence, of the love of God in the soul.
Professed Christians sometimes avoid the rigid application of this truth by
persuading themselves that covetousness is their besetting sin. And has it
come to this, that the child of God has any sin so besetting that the love
of duty does not gradually diminish and eventually subdue its power? What
besetting sin ever bore such sway in the bosom of a child of God as to exert
an influence habitually paramount to the love of Christ? What would be
thought of a professed Christian who should say that the worship of idols is
his besetting sin, or the lust of the flesh, or the love of wine, or
bitterness to his neighbor, or dishonesty, or theft is his besetting sin?
Would this convince you that an idolater, an adulterer, a glutton, a
drunkard, a liar, or a thief is a Christian? No more is a man who makes an
idol of his gold (Col. 3:5-6). “You cannot serve God and mammon (Mat. 6:24).
The love of God and of duty in the mind of a regenerated man obtains and
habitually preserves the ascendancy. Where gold and not duty determines the
choice and the conduct of men the religion of the Gospel is too hard a
master to be submitted to. And shall I not say that with their heart, their
thoughts, their time, and property, the disciples of Christ consecrate their
influence and prayers to God? Yes, the cause of God is with them the grand
pursuit. If you would warm and animate their minds, if you would awaken
their resolution, fortitude, and zeal, if you would excite their souls to
fervent importunity in prayer, it must be by presenting to their thoughts
some concern that has a discernible connection with the honor and glory of
God. Whatever may be the life of others, theirs is devoted to Him, who loved
them and gave Himself for them. Whatever may be the design of others, their
purpose is to glorify God in their bodies and spirits, which are His.
Whatever may be the enjoyment of others, they account not that to be living
at all which is not devoted to the great purpose for which life was
bestowed. As to the motive of such a life, it has been incidentally
sufficiently developed. The deceiver thought that a man might be devoted to
the service of God from motives of self-interest, and yet give no evidence
of piety. “Does Job serve God for nothing?” (Job 1:9).
“There is,” says Dr. Witherspoon, “certainly in every renewed heart a sense
of duty independent of personal and selfish interest. Were this not the
case, even supposing a desire of reward or fear of punishment should dispose
to obedience, it would plainly be only a change of life, and not a change of
heart. It is beyond all question indeed, that our true interest is
inseparable from our duty, so that self-seeking is self-loosing; but still a
sense of duty must have the precedence, otherwise it changes its nature and
is no duty at all.” We entreat you then, in inquiring into the evidence of
your salvation to ask yourselves whether you are supremely devoted to God?
Is it the first and highest desire of your soul to honor God? Is it incited
by the hope of reward, or the love of God and duty? Is the glory of God the
end of your conduct? And do you pursue it, not from regard to yourself, but
from regard to God. Do you find your highest happiness in your duty?