For the Glory of God

Come to the Waters is a year long devotional I put together of the sermons and writings of James Montgomery Boice. Here is today's devotion taken from his last talk given to his congregation at Tenth Presbyterian Church.


For the Glory of God

1 Chronicles 16:23-30

For great is the Lord and most worthy of praise (1 Chronicles 16:25).

A number of you have asked what you can do for me in my illness. You can do what you are doing, which is to pray. For what should you pray? Should you pray for a miracle? Well, you’re free to do that, of course. My general impression is that the God who is able to do miracles—and he certainly can—is also able to keep one from getting the problem in the first place. So although miracles do happen, they’re rare by definition. A miracle has to be an unusual thing. I think it’s far more profitable to pray for wisdom for the doctors and then also for the effectiveness of the treatment.

Above all, I would say pray for the glory of God. If you think of God glorifying himself in history and you say, where in all of history has God most glorified himself? He did it at the cross of Jesus Christ, and it wasn’t by delivering Jesus from the cross, though he could have. Jesus said, “Don’t you think I could call down from my Father ten legions of angels for my defense?” But he didn't do that. And yet that’s where God is most glorified.

If I were to reflect on what goes on theologically here, there are two things I would stress. One is the sovereignty of God. That’s not novel. I have always talked about the sovereignty of God. God is in charge. When things like this come into our lives, they are not accidental. It’s not as if God somehow forgot what was going on, and something bad slipped by. God does everything according to his will.

But what I’ve been impressed with mostly is something in addition to that. It’s possible, isn’t it, to conceive of God as sovereign and yet indifferent? God’s in charge, but he doesn’t care. But it’s not that. God is not only the one who is in charge; God is also good. Everything he does is good. And what Romans 12:1-2 says is that we have the opportunity by the renewal of our minds—that is, how we think about these things—actually to prove what God’s will is. And then it says, “His good, pleasing, and perfect will.”

Is that will good, pleasing, and perfect to God? Yes, of course, but the point of it is that it’s good, pleasing, and perfect to us. If God does something in your life, would you change it? If you’d change it, you’d make it worse. It wouldn’t be as good. So that’s the way we want to accept it and move forward.

Now our call to worship: I am going to read from 1 Chronicles chapter 16…

(James Boice’s last words to his congregation.)