Gladness and Joy - Day 7

John 12:27-29
“Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. 28 Father, glorify your name!”
Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and will glorify it again.” 29 The crowd that was there and heard it said it had thundered; others said an angel had spoken to him. (NIV)
 
               Jesus had a laser-focus on His purpose.  He was to glorify the Father.  He entire life was to bring glory to the Father, not Himself.  This is interesting since it is by faith in Jesus Christ that we are saved.  Our whole belief system is certainly based on the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Yet, it was Christ who came and Christ who lived without sin, and Christ who died and rose again.  But Jesus said, “Father, glorify Your name.”
               In other places such as John 17:1, Jesus says, “Glorify the Son that He might glorify the Father.”  Throughout Jesus’ life, though He was God, remained submissive to the Father and came that the Father might be glorified.  And if He, Jesus, was going to be glorified, it was only so that the Father might also be glorified through Him.  What happens when we focus on the Son to the neglect of the Father. 
               It was the Father who sent the Son (John 3:16).  He did it out of love, but He also did it out of mercy.  In Isaiah, we see that it was the Father who inflicted His punishment on the Son:
Isaiah 53:4
Surely he took up our pain
and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
stricken by him, and afflicted (NIV)
               So, God struck Christ.  He did this by allowing Satan to have His way during this hour when darkness reigned (Luke 22:53).  The Father allowed the Son to be lied about, abandoned by those who loved Him, flogged, beaten, spit upon, and crucified.  And Jesus’ take is that the Father must be glorified.  Ok, what in the world?   I can see the Father being glorified for sending the Son, but as we glorify the Father for sending His Son, we are also glorifying the Father for being the punisher of the Son for our sins.  But what if we didn’t glorify the Father?          
               The Father is the Judge.  The Father developed this system by which Christ would need to suffer and die in order to reconcile the world back to God.  Why did He do it?  It is His nature.  He is holy and He is just.  Sin must be punished.  The Father does this as a means of discipline.  The wages of sin is death, yet He gives people time.  He gives time and mercy to people that I would not put up with even for a moment.  He is gracious, but it is His law and holiness that causes us to need mercy.  Holiness leads to abundant life.  The Father loves us so much that He gave His only Son that we might have eternal life.  But the Father also reveals to us the path to abundant life is found through holiness.  Jesus died because God doesn’t allow for any sin.  Why?  Sin destroys.  Sin hurts.  Sin kills.  And the Father doesn’t want any of this for us.  He doesn’t want our relationships to be destroyed.  He doesn’t want our blessings to be forfeited.  He doesn’t want us defeated by the works of the devil.  He wants us to be victorious.  He wants us to have a joy unspeakable, a peace beyond understanding, and a life increasingly abundant.  The Father, through the death of the Son, makes clear the path that brings joy and fulfillment.  We glorify the Father not only because He sent Jesus, but because He has made clear that He wants us to experience every blessing and the tiniest of sin steals a blessing.  We glorify Him for His strictness.  But He is strict because He wants the very best for us.  He doesn’t want us to miss even one drop of the ocean of blessing He has planned for our life.  Let us glorify the Father as the Son has glorified the Father.  We glorify Him for His mercy, but also for His desire for us to experience the full measure of His goodness.
Isaiah 35
The desert and the parched land will be glad;
the wilderness will rejoice and blossom.
Like the crocus, 2 it will burst into bloom;
it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy.
The glory of Lebanon will be given to it,
the splendor of Carmel and Sharon;
they will see the glory of the Lord,
the splendor of our God.
3 Strengthen the feeble hands,
steady the knees that give way;
4 say to those with fearful hearts,
“Be strong, do not fear;
your God will come,
he will come with vengeance;
with divine retribution
he will come to save you.”
5 Then will the eyes of the blind be opened
and the ears of the deaf unstopped.
6 Then will the lame leap like a deer,
and the mute tongue shout for joy.
Water will gush forth in the wilderness
and streams in the desert.
7 The burning sand will become a pool,
the thirsty ground bubbling springs.
In the haunts where jackals once lay,
grass and reeds and papyrus will grow.
8 And a highway will be there;
it will be called the Way of Holiness;
it will be for those who walk on that Way.
The unclean will not journey on it;
wicked fools will not go about on it.
9 No lion will be there,
nor any ravenous beast;
they will not be found there.
But only the redeemed will walk there,
10 and those the Lord has rescued will return.
They will enter Zion with singing;
everlasting joy will crown their heads.
Gladness and joy will overtake them,
and sorrow and sighing will flee away. (NIV)
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