Blessed Satisfaction: The Sin-Slaying, Soul-Staggering Glory of Christ

0:01 Thank you so much for ministering to me with your singing. I love to sing with God's people. So J.I. Packer wrote, John Owen is by common consent not the most versatile, but the greatest among the Puritan theologians. For solidity, profundity, massiveness, majesty, and the exhibiting from Scripture God's ways with sinful mankind, there is no one to touch John Owen. In an age of giants, he overtopped them all. So next to Jonathan Edwards, I love John Owen.

1:01 The first volume of his collected works with Banner of Truth has three essays in it on the glory of Christ. Christologia, or a declaration of the glorious mystery of the person of Christ. One, meditations and discourses on the glory of Christ. us too, and meditations and discourses concerning the glory of Christ applied.

1:38 Applied. Those of you who weren't here in the first hour, you don't know why I'm laughing. A whole book of application, which is just chock full of doctrine about the glory of Christ. And I suppose that volume has done more to increase my understanding of and admiration of the glory of Christ than anything else I've ever read besides the Bible. Except maybe for the sermon by Jonathan Edwards called The Excellency of Christ.

2:15 So I encourage you to read Owen on the glory of Christ. that's what we're going to focus on that's my topic is the glory of Christ in this message the music playing in the background of my head as we talk will be the music of John Owen and every now and then I will let the strains of that music come out so I share Owen's conviction because it's biblical, that the more clearly we can see the glory of Christ, the more intensely we can savor in our hearts with the tongue of our hearts. I get that from taste and see, taste and see that the Lord is good. The heart not only has eyes, it has a tongue. Taste and see that the Lord is glorious, he's good.

3:12 And the more you see him and the more you taste and are satisfied with him, the more you will enjoy triumph over temptation. Owen based that conviction on 2 Corinthians 3.18, which says, beholding the glory of the Lord, we are being transformed. There's not a more important verse in the Bible on sanctification than 2 Corinthians 3.18. beholding the glory of the Lord we are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another that's just an amazing verse beholding we are becoming So here's what he said about that verse. Owen, I'm talking about.

4:07 Herein would I live in beholding the glory of Christ. Hereon would I dwell in my thoughts and affections to the withering, like a plant that withers, to the withering and consumption of all the painted beauties of this world, unto the crucifying of all things here below, until they become unto me a dead and deformed thing. No way meet for affectionate embraces. That's so good. It's just so good. The more you dwell upon and see and savor the beauty of Christ, the more the painted beauties of this world shrivel up and wither and die and become something you don't want to touch.

5:05 I remember, I don't know what other Puritan it was, but he prayed, oh God, put my tongue out of taste with the bait of the devil. That's just so right to change our taste buds so that lust or greed or fear just don't have any attraction anymore. That's what happens according to 2 Corinthians 3.18, if you see Christ for who he really is and savor him for the sweetness that he is. So the path to holiness, Owen says, and the Bible teaches is clear views of the superior beauties of Christ that lesser sinful attractions wither and die.

6:01 Owen was always, I mean, the Puritans were always combining high, high theology, high views of Christ with practical holiness. they never were in this realm that didn't touch this realm and they wouldn't sink down here without that he said this Owen said this no man can by faith take a real view of Christ's glory but virtue will proceed from it in a transforming power to change him into the same image. You're just not seeing Christ if other things are pulling you away with greater attraction. You haven't seen him. And pastors, this is our job. This is our job to portray Christ, portray God, portray the Spirit, portray salvation, portray our hope, portray all of scripture in such a way that we cause the other cravings of our people to drop in their intensity.

7:16 So I have a picture in my mind of the glory of Christ like the sun, S-U-N, the sun at the center of the solar system of your life. This is my picture. The massive sun, so 333,000 times greater mass in the sun than in the earth. It holds all the planets in orbit. And they've been spinning around that sun for thousands of years, and it holds them perfectly by its mass. It's just massive and bright and beautiful and glorious and heavy. And even that little tiny non-planet called Pluto, way out there on the end that we used to think was a planet, is held right where it belongs, what, 3.4 billion miles away from the sun, held there in perfect orbit by the mass of the sun. And that's the way I feel about the glory of Christ in the Christian life.

8:22 If it has its proper, shining, bright, massive, weighty, central place in your life, the orbits of your sexuality and desires, the commitments and beliefs, the aspirations and dreams, the attitudes and convictions, the habits and disciplines, the solitude and relationships, the labor and leisure, the thinking and feeling. All these planets of your lives are going to circle around this central reality in perfect harmony. And if he moves from the center, everything's going to fly away and crash into each other and things go very, very bad. we were made to know and enjoy Christ's glory as it really is, as he really is.

9:23 We were created to comprehend as a creature can, as much as a fallen, justified, being sanctified creature can. can, we were created to comprehend, know, and not just, of course, with a disinterested knowing, but with admiration and wonder and awe and intimacy and ecstasy and embrace the glory of Christ. We are made to see and savor with everlasting satisfaction the glory of Christ. So John 17, 24, Jesus prays for this. Here's what he says. He's asking the Father, and he says, Father, I desire that they also whom you have given me may be with me where I am to see my glory.

10:23 I loved it this morning when it was you, Kevin, who was in the Sermon on the Mount, and some people treat the Sermon on the Mount as nice moral teachings, except for the fact that Jesus claims to be the judge of the universe there. And here, nobody prays like this, who's not insane. I mean, just imagine me up here saying, oh, Father, grant that these people would see my glory. And yet that's the way Jesus prayed. The best thing he could be or do for his people was to reveal himself to them. That's why you ought to preach a sermon every now and then, is Jesus an egomaniac?

11:16 Which is one of my favorite sermons that I like to preach, but that's another conference. Here's what Owen said. on this verse, John 17, 24. Such a manifestation of his glory unto his disciples doth the Lord Christ here desire as might fill them with blessed satisfaction forever. So when Jesus prayed, oh Father grant that they would see my glory, Owen takes that to mean grant that they would be given blessed satisfaction forever. That's what you get when you see the glory of Christ. And it is such a blessed satisfaction, such a glorious satisfaction that it has the power to sever the root of sinful satisfactions.

12:21 That's the way sanctification is supposed to work. So my prayer for this conference, for this part and all of the other parts has been, is now, that one by one, each of you would see and savor the glory of Christ. maybe I need to do this. Would that work?

12:50 See the glory of Christ in such a way that whether married or single, whether male or female, old or young, devastated by disordered desires or walking in measures of holiness, all of you would behold and embrace the glory of Christ in such a way that he would be the blazing center of the solar system of your life and all the planets of your desires would be circling in their proper place. Oh, that the risen Christ, the living Christ, would come to us even now. Father, I just ask one more time that as we come up to the outskirts of your glory, the glory of your son, that you would do a work.

13:49 Paul prayed for the eyes of our heart to be enlightened, that we might know our hope, our inheritance, your power. And so I know that's a miracle and I join Paul in asking for it now. Because I'm sure there are folks right now listening to me pray for whom this language is foreign. It's just a foreign language. Seeing and savoring the glory of Christ is not part of their vocabulary and it's not part of their experience. And I plead with you that it would become part of their experience and then their vocabulary. I ask this in Jesus' name. So may God reveal to us the glory of his deity, Jesus' deity, one with God the Father in all his attributes, the radiance of his glory, the exact imprint of his nature, infinite, boundless in all his excellencies. may he reveal the glory of his eternality that makes the mind of man explode, makes my mind explode with the unsearchable thought that Christ never had a beginning.

15:16 Just sheer reality. Just there forever and ever and ever. Nothing before. Nothing made him what he was. He was just there from all eternity. causing everything else to be fragile, contingent. May we see the glory of his never-changing constancy in all his virtues, all his character, his commitments, the same yesterday, today, and forever. The glory of his knowledge that makes the Library of Congress and the British Library look like little matchboxes that makes all the information on the internet look like a 1940s farmer's almanac that makes quantum physics seem like a first grade reader. The glory of his wisdom that has never been perplexing to him at all.

16:12 Nothing has ever perplexed Jesus. Nobody's ever counseled Jesus. the glory of his authority over heaven and earth and hell without whose permission no man, no demon can move one inch who changes times and seasons removes kings, sets up kings does according to his will in the hosts of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth so that none can say to Jesus what have you done? The glory of his providence without which not a single bird falls to the ground in the furthest reaches of an Amazon forest or a single hair of any one of you turns black or white. The glory of his word that moment by moment holds the universe in existence.

17:08 Molecules, atoms, subatomic particles that nobody's even dreamed of, yet he holds them all in being by his word. the glory of his power to walk on water, cleanse lepers, heal the lame, open the eyes of the blind, cause the deaf to hear, storms to cease, dead to rise. One single word or even a thought causes everything in the world to come to pass. The glory of his purity. He never sinned. He never had one millisecond of a bad attitude. or an evil thought or a lustful thought, the glory of his trustworthiness never to break his word or let any promise fall to the ground, the glory of his justice to render in due time all the moral accounts of the universe settled, every account settled, either in hell or on the cross, nothing left undone or outstanding by way of injustice.

18:17 The glory of his patience to endure our dullness decade after decade and to hold back his final judgment on this world so that many might repent. The glory of his sovereign and servant obedience to his father's commandments perfectly to embrace the excruciating pain of the cross willingly, the glory of his meekness and lowliness and tenderness that will not break a bruised reed or quench a smoldering flax, the glory of his meekness, the glory of his wrath that will one day explode against this world with such fierceness that people will call out for rocks to fall upon them rather than face the wrath of the Lamb. The glory of His grace that gives life to the spiritually dead rebels like us, wakens faith in hell-bound haters of God, justifies the ungodly.

19:23 The glory of His love that willingly dies for us even while we were sinners and frees us for everlasting joy. the glory of his own inexhaustible gladness in the fellowship of the Trinity. The infinite power and energy that gave rise to the universe. It's my understanding of how the universe came into existence. It's the overflow of God's happiness in God. And if he should grant us to know him like this,

20:02 it would be but the outskirts of his glory. Time would fail to speak of the glory of his severity and invincibility and dignity and simplicity and complexity and resoluteness and calmness and depth and courage. If there is anything admirable, if there is anything worthy of praise anywhere in the universe, it is summed up supremely in the glory of Jesus Christ. He is supremely glorious in every admirable way over everything. Over galaxies and endless reaches of space, over the earth from the top of Mount Everest, 29,000 feet up, to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, 36,000 feet down, in the Mariana Trench.

21:04 He's supreme over all plants and animals, from the peaceful blue whale to the microscopic killer viruses, over all weather, movements of the earth, hurricanes, tornadoes, monsoons, earthquakes, avalanches, floods, snow, rain, sleet, and yes, wildfires in California. Over all chemical processes that heal and destroy, supreme over cancer, AIDS, malaria, flu, all the workings of antibiotics, and all the thousands of healing medicines exist because of him, and he's supreme over them. He is supreme over all the countries, all the governments and armies supreme over the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, ISIS, Hamas, Hezbollah, the terrorists and kidnappings and suicide bombings and mass murders.

22:00 He is supreme over them all, over Putin and Zelensky and Trump and Xi Jinping and Netanyahu. He is supreme over all the rulers of the world. He's supreme over all the politicians and elections, over all the media and news and entertainment and sports and leisure. He is supreme over all education and universities and scholarships and science and research. He's supreme over all business and finance and industry and manufacturing and transportation. He is supreme over all the internet and information systems and all the artificial intelligence. And though it may not seem so now, it is only a matter of time that he will be revealed from heaven

22:52 in flaming fire, giving relief to those who trust him and righteous vengeance on those who don't, according to 2 Thessalonians chapter one. Oh, that the mighty God would help us see and savor the glory of his Son. Give yourself to this study. Cultivate this passion. Eat, drink, sleep this quest to know the glory of Christ. Pray, ask God, ask him to show you these things, to show you the glory of Christ in the word of God. Owen said, thinking about the word of God now, this. Owen said that the main motive for contending for the scriptures and resisting those who would take it from us, the main motive for that is it would take from us the only glass wherein we may behold the glory of Christ.

24:11 you take away the book you do not have another source where with any sense of clarity authority, certainty, accuracy you can see the glory of Christ but here it is radiant so swim in the ocean of the Bible every day and with all your getting whatever it takes get an all-satisfying sight of the glory of Christ as the center, the sun at the center of your life. So this is the blazing sun. The glory of Christ is the blazing sun at the center of the solar system of your life. All the mental health that you will enjoy will be owing to the centrality of the glory of Christ at the center of your life. Make it, to shift the metaphor, make it the ballast at the bottom of your boat so that it keeps your boat from tipping over in the waves of temptation and deceit in this world. Make it the foundation that holds up the building of your life.

25:28 So blazing sun, ballast in your boat, foundation under your house so that the planets don't fly apart and the waves don't overwhelm and the building doesn't fall flat when the waves and the wind come. Now just one last question to ask that will center it on the cross.

25:54 What stands in the way of your seeing and savoring the glory of Christ with deep satisfaction and life transforming sight. And cut to the chase, ultimately the worst obstacle standing in the way is the absolutely just and holy wrath of God. Which may sound like an odd answer. I don't think it is. We cannot know Christ in our sin because the wrath of God rests on us in our sin. What we deserve from God in our fallen sinfulness is not the knowledge of Christ's glory but the judgment of God's wrath. That's what we deserve from God. And since we are cut off from the knowledge of Christ by the wrath of God.

26:58 We are cut off from holiness without which we will not see the Lord, neither now or later. God doesn't owe us holiness. He owes us punishment. Therefore, we are hopelessly depraved and condemned. and God's condemnation over us because of our depravity is the ultimate problem that has to be overcome. So there's one solution. Everybody in this room deserves to be punished in everlasting ruin. If you minimize your sin and say, I'm just not that bad, you don't understand the Bible, you don't understand the glory of God, you don't understand the nature of sin, you won't understand the cross. and there is good news and the good news is that Christ has become for us a curse to bear God's wrath and the righteousness to meet God's demand.

28:08 That's the heart of the gospel. Christ becomes a curse to bear his wrath and he becomes a righteousness to fulfill his demand And in doing that, the glory of Christ reaches its apex. So he manifests his supreme glory in providing an access to his glory. Galatians 3.13, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, as it is written, cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree. God has done what the law weakened by the flesh could not do by sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin he condemned sin in the flesh.

29:07 Romans 8, 3. God canceled the record of death that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. Of this saving work of Christ, Owen said this,

29:29 an unseen glory accompanied Christ in all that he did, in all that he suffered. Unseen it was unto the eyes of the world, but not in his who alone can judge of it. For him who was Lord of all universally, thus to submit himself to universal obedience, carrieth along with it an evidence of glorious grace.

30:08 So what could be more glorious, more beautiful, more amazing, more wonderful than God himself in Christ enduring the condemnation of his own wrath so that every thought of the infinite God, every affection of the infinitely holy, omnipotent God toward us in Christ would be designed for our happiness. so infinite in holiness wrath ready in justice to be poured out on us in our sin sets Christ forth to absorb that wrath meet his demands so that henceforth for all eternity all the mind of God all the heart of God all the energy of God and the wisdom of God is poured out in every conceivable way to make us happy in him through the sight of the glory of his son.

31:17 He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? That's my favorite verse in the Bible. That's Romans 8, 32. Because the logic of that verse is the logic on which all my hope depends. He didn't spare his own son, and therefore, because of that, he will not spare any omnipotent effort to give me everything I need for all eternity to be fully happy in him and fully glorifying to God. The greatest gift, you should test yourself now, what's the greatest gift that the glorious sufferings of Christ purchased for you?

32:20 What's the greatest gift that the sufferings of Christ purchased for you? It is not the forgiveness of sins. It is not eternal life. It is not the imputed righteousness of Christ.

32:42 The greatest gift is the all satisfying seeing and savoring of the glory of Christ himself. I think one of the greatest tests you can give in your church, or for yourself, is to ask a person, why do you want to be forgiven? Because they say, of course I want to be forgiven. But why?

33:12 And the way you answer that question will tell whether you've understood the best news of the gospel. What makes the gospel good news? And if you answer, well because I don't like having a guilty conscience, or I don't want to go to hell, or I want health, wealth, and prosperity now and forever, or I want to be restored to the relationships with my mom and dad who are in heaven, all those are bad answers. So let's just use this illustration. Suppose I get up in the morning and I trip over something my wife has left on the floor, stub my toe, and I get angry and something very unkind comes out of my mouth while she's lying there in bed.

34:12 and there is now ice in the air. The relationship is broken. and I get dressed, and she's now down in the kitchen, standing at the sink. She's sitting right over there. You can tell whether this ever happened or not. She's standing at the sink with her back manifestly toward me, and I know what has to happen here. I sinned. This is on me.

34:52 I need to be forgiven. Why? And if I say, because if I don't get forgiven, she won't make supper? That's like saying health, wealth, and prosperity is why I want to be forgiven by God. Or I don't like going through the whole day with a guilty conscience. that's not the reason you want to be forgiven. You want to be forgiven because you want her to turn around and be your wife again.

35:34 Smile at you again. Welcome you again. Be whole in the relationship again. Be your treasure again. And that's the meaning of forgiveness with God. So it really makes a huge difference how you answer the question of why do you want to be forgiven or why do you want to be a Christian? And the answer is because the best gift, the ultimate gift, the all satisfying eternal gift is the glory of Christ. That's why Jesus prayed that they would see his glory. So the glory of the cross achieved the enjoyment of the glory of Christ. I want you to get this connection.

36:32 The glory of Christ, the beauty of Christ, came to its climax, its highest point, at the cross. That was the most beautiful thing he ever did, or God did in and through him. And at that moment, what he bought by performing the most beautiful, glorious act was a site of his glory forever. So the glory of Christ is at the center of his achievement and it's the goal of the achievement. That's the point I'm trying to make. Christ is the price and Christ is the prize of the price. His glory shone most rightly in paying the price price and his glory will be enjoyed most fully forever. To close, let me circle back to where we began and recall the connection that Owen made between the glory of Christ and practical holiness. He said that the reason Jesus prayed for us in John 17, 24, and we should see the glory is this.

37:55 If we see the glory of Christ the way Jesus prayed that we would in John 17, 24, that will fill us, Owen says, with blessed satisfaction forevermore. The reason that is so is because we were made for this. We were made, we were created, and the universe was created to reveal the glory of Christ, and hearts were created. Human beings, unlike all other beings, are created to receive the glory of Christ as its supreme treasure. And when we do, that satisfaction, that supreme blessed satisfaction forever is the key to holiness right now. Tonight in your hotel, whether you look at pornography or not.

38:52 will happen according to how brightly he shines. what happens when Christ is not big and beautiful and full and satisfying, what happens is that the soul which was made for that begins to shrink.

39:17 And in a shrunken soul, little lusts have great power. The soul, as it were, contracts or expands to encompass the magnitude or the minuteness of its treasure. And if Christ is not the expansive treasure of your heart, the heart is shrinking down until this crummy, little, brief, orgasmic lust has massive power. When it's just this little teeny firecracker, blast us like that, and it totally dominates. Because Christ is small. The great warfare of your life is to be satisfied in Christ, for Christ to be great and beautiful.

40:18 The great task of the pastor is to help that happen week after week. Make it big, make it big, so that the men and the women walk out so full of an expansive Christ that this little firecracker of greed or lust or fear, when it pops, has no power anymore. That's what you want. You want freedom for your people. Now, I thought a lot about how this works in my own life. That is, the sense of an expansiveness of the heart, that when it's large with God, the small temptations lose their power. I know that there's a natural dimension to this. For example, starry skies. Oh, my.

41:11 I remember driving in 1968 from Chicago to Los Angeles, straight through. I never stopped to sleep. It's a long way. And I got on the top of a mountain in Utah, just got off at a rest stop and just walked up in the mountain away from all the lights, and I had never seen the Milky Way like this. I mean, I've heard Milky Way, like it's like a sheet of light, which looks like one big sheet, and it's billions and billions of stars. And I looked, and I thought, how could I ever yield to lust again? That's the natural effect of, it's beautiful. It's so much more. It's so much greater than anything that sinful temptation could offer. So I know there's a natural dimension to how this works in your heart. Or I remember three years later, now I'm married and driving with my wife across Montana on our way back to Chicago and then South Carolina, And we stopped, and Montana is as flat as you can imagine for thousands of miles.

42:37 I mean, not really thousands, it's just hundreds of miles. It's flat. And what happens when you're looking across flat lands or hundreds of miles without the slightest rolling hill is that clouds flow in about four different directions at one time. I'd never seen this before. Low clouds of the sky, next to the air going like this, next to the air going like this. That's incredible. And I had one of those huge heart-expanding experiences again. It happened one other time on the edge of the Grand Canyon. You know what the Grand Canyon is. It's about a mile deep. It's just vast and amazing. And standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon, as everything falls away before you, you have the sense of being small and physically insignificant, but oh, how the heart swells.

43:34 So I'm aware that there's this physical, natural dimension to this dynamic of how Christ sanctifies by becoming our fullness, but in spite of all those natural things, nothing, nothing can replace the glory of Christ. Jonathan Edwards said this. This is why I go back to Edwards over and over. Who says things like this? Well, other Puritans do, but Edwards said, just let this sink in. If you embrace all creation, so that's like the starry sky, the clouds, the Grand Canyon, all the galaxies, if you embrace all creation with goodwill but not Christ, you are infinitely parochial. You may not even know what that means.

44:37 I mean, parochial means you're just happy to live in your 10 square feet with people like you doing the same thing every day in your little teeny, teeny little world. And he says, if you embrace the whole world, minus Christ, you are infinitely parochial. Oh, that was glorious. I mean, few sentences have made the bigness of Christ just blow my mind like that sentence. That's right. Which means that all my being moved by the clouds and the stars and the canyon are totally inadequate. They will never suffice. I am not made for that alone.

45:28 I mean, don't get me wrong. I am glad God made the universe. I'm glad for clouds I'm glad for stars I'm glad for canyons I'm glad for human beings you're amazing you're not monkeys you're absolutely amazing I mean seriously your eyeballs are amazing your inner ear is amazing every organ in here is just amazing everything's amazing I'm glad the universe is amazing it's nothing we are infinitely parochial without him he made it with his finger I mean Psalm 8 says that you made them with your fingers not your hands not your arms he made the stars they are the work of his fingers pinky this is a pinky in English That's true.

46:30 I think I'm done. Let me see here. So my conviction is, I get this largely from Owen and Edwards and Paul and Jesus, that one of the main reasons the world and the church are awash in lust and pornography is that our lives are disconnected from the infinite, soul-staggering grandeur for which we were made, the glory of Christ.

47:15 You know, I never had a television. John Fulmer asked Sinclair Ferguson, how do you get ready for the weekend? If you had asked me that question, I would have said don't buy a television I think part of the secret of my 40 years of ministry is that I didn't have a television. And here's why I even bring that up. It's not a sin to have a television, okay? Everybody's got a television, it's in their pocket, right? This is a television. The reason I bring it up is because I'm not talking about sex and violence. I'm talking about silliness.

48:04 I mean, I like to watch professional sports. The Vikings just got knocked out of the playoffs. That's sad. But here's the deal. When I watch professional sports, I get to see advertisements, which is what people see by the thousands of hours. and they're all not just sexually titillating, they're stupid.

48:27 Grown men acting like idiots. Men who make millions and millions of dollars selling hot dogs or perfume or something and acting like stupid little children. And the reason I say that is because it just drags you down. It makes humanity feel so small, so ridiculously foolish. It's not glorious. It's not like Jesus. So the pettiness and triviality and banality and silliness of the world is, I think, what shapes the heart of so many in the church. And we pastors need to help our people expand their heart and they are expanded by seeing the glory of Christ. The deepest cure to our pitiful addictions is to be staggered by the infinite, everlasting, unchanging, all satisfying glory of Christ.

49:33 This is what it means to know him. Christ has purchased this gift for us at the cost of his life, and therefore I close by saying with Hosea, Let us know and enjoy, let us know, let us press on to know and savor the glory of Christ.

49:56 Father in heaven, please work miracles in this room. For the rest of today on into this evening, in worship tomorrow, and then into the rest of their lives, Grant, I pray, that hearts would have the God-given expansiveness to see and savor the glory of Christ. And so push sin, push sin out of our lives, I ask in Jesus' name.