All to the glory of God!

[AI translation] This Scripture emphasizes even more what we heard in last Sunday's sermon, that we need to become one-centered in our lives. The whole of the Christian life can be summed up in these three words: serving the glory of God. It is indeed a rule of life that can guide us in all matters, and by keeping it in mind we can always find the right way in everything. Everything for the glory of God: this is our duty, our vocation, our purpose in life. To increase the glory of God in everything, at all times! This may sound very abstract, but in fact it is the most practical thing in the world. It is as practical, as real and as concrete as eating and drinking or doing any other everyday thing. The problem is that our service of God's glory is not usually expressed in something so practical and concrete, but in a very abstract and spiritualised way.Let me take up again the problem of last Sunday, when we talked about the fact that there are areas of our lives in which we more or less allow Christ to rule, but there are also reserved areas of our lives from which we exclude and do not claim His power. In the words of our Word now, we might say the same thing: there is eating and drinking that we do for the glory of God - such as eating and drinking the bread and wine of the Lord's Supper - but there is also eating and drinking that has nothing to do with the glory of God: for example, what we eat at the restaurant table in convivial company, or in the factory kitchen. And it is the same with many of our other actions. There are sacred and there are secular pursuits. And one of the most catastrophic divisions that has ever occurred in the life of Christianity has been the separation between the sacred and the secular. We have divided life into sacred and secular, we have sacred and secular vocations, sacred and secular days, sacred and secular buildings, sacred and secular books. We thought we were preserving both, but when we did that, we made them both poor. The secular life has become material and the sacred element ethereal, ethereal: in short, empty and insubstantial. A French writer says: "Do you know what makes man the most unhappy of all creatures? It is that he has one foot in the finite world and one foot in the infinite world, and is consumed between these two worlds." This limping in two directions cannot be done for long. Two-centered living can't be sustained for long.
Every person's life - mine and yours - is like a cinema picture: it is made up of many little stones, many different colours, which are put together to form a single picture, a whole. The divine artist wants to express something beautiful, something big, through the many little coloured tiles. Even the smallest tile is an element of the sublime design that its creator wants to depict in the mosaic. Taken individually, the little stones are worthless fragments, but taken together, in obedience to an overriding principle of order, they form a beautiful picture. The events and happenings of our lives: mosaic pieces, small and large colourful details, which present a very confused picture as long as they are not arranged according to a single principle. And that unified order is what our Word says: "Work all things to the glory of God." But the problem is that the pieces of the mosaic are arranged according to the most diverse principles. In business, the principle is profit; in our social life, it is validation; in our love life, it is pleasure; in our eating and drinking, it is well-being; in our work, it is making money; and apart from all of that, in our life of faith, it is perhaps God. We have lost the ordering principle, the centre of our lives. That's why our lives are as confused, unclear and meaningless as a disjointed movie set.
But what are we to do if this is the way life is? It is an undeniable fact that there are holidays and there are weekdays, there are churches and there are factories, in one there is the organ and in the other there is the hum of machinery, in one there is devotion and calm, in the other there is sweaty work and feverish pace. There is worship and there is laughter, there is communion at the altar and there is fellowship at the table - and the same Christian man is in one world and in another. And that's not a bad thing, it's only natural, but it's important that the principle that governs our actions and our whole attitude remains the same in all these different situations: "Do everything for the glory of God." Even in the most diverse areas, keep your life one-centred!
Look at Jesus, who also knows what it means to live with one foot in a finite world and one foot in an infinite world. It could not have been easy to live for thirty years in a village among boring people, working in a carpentry workshop and supporting a widowed mother and her family. But at the same time, to feel the calling of the living God in her heart, to know that she had the one treasure this sad world needed. Jesus stood with one foot in the oppressive everyday life of Nazareth and the other at the centre of God's redemptive plan. Two starkly contrasting worlds! Was he not grinding between them, unhappy? No, because the two worlds were made one. He brought the infinite into the finite and the finite into the infinite. In his planing, too, was the recreation of the world. That is why he could do the planing well, worthy of the Saviour of the world. Our worship of God is worthless if we then lock God up in the temple and go out into the world without Him! Nor is our Bible reading worth anything if we then thrust Jesus into our Bible like a pressed flower and rise without Him. Our prayer is worthless if we have closed our communion with God with our prayer. This is the division against which our Word warns, "Work all things to the glory of God."
Someone once asked a girl in the Balkans who was sewing: does she not tire of sewing day after day? The stitches were no longer ordinary stitches, for they were connected with something great. Why shouldn't our dull tasks, our dull, sweaty hours, or our merry amusements and pleasures be connected with something even greater: the glory of God?! And so the sacred and the profane become one, the ordinary is no longer ordinary, but shines with meaning and divine purpose. One can serve God by making shoes and keeping boring accounts! It is possible to mop floors and wash dishes in a way that makes the presence of Jesus practical, real. Even the most professional and material work can be done with a sense of holiness, like pastoral care for a pastor. "All things to the glory of God" means: we are here today, as servers in this shop, as workers in this workshop, as teachers or students in this classroom, as housewives in this kitchen, as day laborers on this piece of earth, to be the embodiment of the spirit of Christ in this situation. We must put His will and His spirit into practice in our dealings with things and with people.
Just as Peter offered his boat to Jesus so that he could teach from it, so I offer him my boat: my life, so that from it he can teach those around me what His kingdom means. Someone might say: but this world is so different, so bad, so alien from the holy world of God that it is impossible to live in it for the glory of God! If the world were different, perhaps it would be possible to realize that everything is for the glory of God... Well, it is not the world that would have to be different, but us. Not a changed world, but a changed heart to glorify God in this present world. Jesus said, "Father, the hour has come, glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you." (John 17:1) He said this in view of the coming of the hour of His death. Jesus glorified God by sacrificing himself for us. It is in His redemptive death that God is glorified on earth. God can be glorified in us only in what is given to us in Christ's death. It is given by accepting Christ's redemptive death for us, accepting it as a substitutionary atonement for our sins, and giving our own selves into that death. It is as if we are living this death. We are freed by redemptive death from the great Self that usurps the centre of our lives. By accepting and embracing the death of Christ, we are freed to let the principle of God-centeredness, rather than self-centeredness, now rule our whole life. A person renewed in Christ's death can glorify God.
Now, in practical terms, how does the glory of God which is given in Christ's death apply to our lives? In the miracle of self-sacrifice. In the sacrifice of self for others. For Jesus says: "If you have done this to someone, if you have given him food and drink, if you have clothed him, if you have visited him, if you have comforted him, you have done it to me.
A missionary, immediately after arriving at his missionary post, was carried on a palanquin through dirty, narrow, crowded streets. Everything in the missionary's heart rebelled against the foreignness and impurity of the city. God, how can I live among people if I have no love in my heart? His old self rose up and protested against the many inconveniences that awaited him. What could he do? Either he could let his old self take over and then carry the burden of his ministry like a terrible cross, gnashing his teeth, or he could accept the death of Christ for his old self and give himself wholly to the loving ministry of Christ the Saviour. He chose the latter. And from then on he forgot the narrow streets, the impurity, the strangeness, and saw only people for whom Christ died. Rather than limiting his attention to himself, love drew him out of his own circle into amazing creative service for the people he loved.
There can be situations in life where we feel: this is not good for me, not rewarding, not comfortable. But let us think that it may be good for others that I am here - and in Christ's death I am given the power to make it really good for others that I am here. And then it is good for me! Very good! For wherever and whenever I put my self into the redemptive death of Christ, I am serving the glory of God!
So let us continue our worship after the amen, after the blessing, beyond the church door, so that whether we eat or drink, whatever we do, we do everything for the glory of God!
Amen
Date: 30 May 1954.