A Sermon by C H Spurgeon
John 12:28. Father, glorify Thy name.
- Now we will apply our text to believers. May the Holy Ghost direct us in so doing. I pray that this text may be our prayer from this time forth: “Father, glorify Thy name”. Have you, dear hearers, ever prayed this prayer? I trust I am addressing many to whom it is a very familiar desire, and yet I question if any here have ever presented it so earnestly as those from whom it has been forced by suffering and grief. God’s birds often sing best in cages; at any rate, when they have been loose a little while and their notes grow somewhat dull, He tunes their pipes again when He puts them away for a while and clips their wings.
(1.) Whenever we can use this text, it indicates conflict ended. Sometimes we are in such a condition that we do not know which way to turn. We are in great affliction; it may not be so much outward trouble as distress of mind, which is worst of all. The water has leaked into the ship, and that is worse than an ocean outside. The vessel begins to fill, you use the pumps, but cannot keep it under. At such times you cry, What shall I do? What shall I say? Where can I look? I am oppressed and overwhelmed.
But there is an end of the conflict when you turn round and cry, Father, Father! A child may have lost its way and it may be sobbing its heart out in its distress, but the moment it sees its father it is lost no longer. It has found its way and is at rest. Though there may be no difference in your position or change in your circumstances, yet if you catch a sight of your heavenly Father, it is enough; you are a lost child no more. When you can say, “Father, glorify Thy name,” there is no more question, “What shall I say?” You have said the right thing, and there let it end.
Now concerning this next year on which we are entering, I hope it will be a year of happiness to you. I very emphatically wish you all a happy new year. But nobody can be confident that it will be a year free from trouble. On the contrary, you may be pretty confident that it will not be so, for man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward. Each of us have some dear faces in whom we rejoice; may they long smile upon us. But, remember, each one of these may be an occasion of sorrow during the next year, for we have neither an immortal child nor an immortal husband nor an immortal wife nor an immortal friend, and therefore some of these may die within the year.
Moreover the comforts with which we are surrounded may take to them-
1The final section of a sermon taken, with editing, from The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, vol 24. The first head looked at what the text teaches about the Lord Jesus Christ.
selves wings before another year shall fulfil its months. Earthly joys are as if they were all made of snow, they melt and are gone before we conclude our thanksgiving for their coming. It may be you will have a year of drought and shortness of bread; years lean and ill-favoured may be your portion. And perhaps during the year which has almost dawned you may have to gather up your feet in the bed and die, to meet your God.
Well now, shall we grow gloomy and desponding about this approaching year and its mournful possibilities? Shall we wish we had never been born or ask that we may die? By no means. Shall we instead grow frivolous and laugh at all things? No, that would not be appropriate for heirs of God. What shall we do? We will breathe this prayer, “Father, glorify Thy name”. That is to say, if I must lose my property, glorify Thy name by my poverty; if I must be bereaved, glorify Thy name in my sorrows; if I must die, glorify Thy name in my departure.
Now, when you pray in that fashion, your conflict is over, no outward fight or inward fear remains: if that prayer rises from the heart, you have now cast aside all gloomy forebodings, and you can thoughtfully and placidly pursue your way into the unknown tomorrow. Still proceed into the wilderness of the future, which no mortal eye has seen, for yonder cloudy pillar leads the way and all is well. “Father, glorify Thy name,” is our pillar of cloud and, protected by its shade, we shall not be smitten by the heat of prosperity; “Father, glorify Thy name,” is our pillar of fire by night; nor shall the darkness of adversity destroy us, for the Lord shall be our light. March on, pilgrims, without a moment’s delay because of fear. Tarry not for a single instant, this being your banner and your watchword, “Father, glorify Thy name”. Torturing doubts and forebodings about the future all end when the glorious name is seen over all.
(2.) Our text breathes a spirit of submission. When a man can truly say, “Father, glorify Thy name,” he begins to understand that saying of the Saviour concerning the corn of wheat falling into the ground and dying, for that prayer means, Lord, do what Thou wilt with me. I will make no stipulations, but leave all to Thee. Remember that I am dust, and deal tenderly with me, but still glorify Thy name. Do not spare me, if thereby Thou wouldst be less glorious. Act not according to my foolish wishes or childish desires, but glorify Thy name in me by any means.
The prayer means: I am willing to be made nothing of, so that Thy will may be done. I am willing to be as one dead and buried, forgotten and unknown, if Thou mayest be magnified. I am ready to be buried and sown because I believe that this is the way by which I shall grow and bring forth fruit to Thy praise.
This submission includes obedient service, for our great Master goes on to say, “If any man serve Me, let him follow Me”. True self-renunciation shows itself in the obedient imitation of Christ. “Father, glorify Thy name,” means waiting the Lord’s bidding and running in His ways. If the petition is written out at length, it runs thus: Help me to copy the Saviour’s example; help me to follow in His blessed footsteps. This is my desire: to honour my heavenly Father passively by bearing His will, and to glorify Him actively by doing His will. Lord, help me to do both of these, and never let me forget that I am not my own, but wholly my Lord’s.
The prayer appears to me to be most properly used when it is made a personal one: “Father, glorify Thy name in me. I have received so much mercy; get some glory by me, I pray Thee.” I think you must have noticed that, in this world, the man who really lives is the man who more than his fellows has learned to live for others and for God. You do not care for the preacher whose object is to display his own powers; you go away dissatisfied after hearing his best orations; but if any man desires only your soul’s good and God’s glory, you will put up with much eccentricity from him and bear with many infirmities, because instinctively you love and trust the man who forgets himself.
Now, I beg you to try and consider in yourselves what you thus see in preachers. If any of you are living for yourselves you will be unloveable; if you act even under the ambition to be loved you will miss your mark; but if you will love for love’s sake, if you will seek to be Christlike, if you will lay yourselves out to glorify God, to increase His kingdom, and to bless your fellow men, you will live in the highest and noblest sense. Do not seek your own greatness, but labour to make Jesus great and you will live.
Christians live by dying. Kill self and Christ shall live in you and you yourself shall most truly live. The way upward in true life and honour is to go downward in self-humiliation. Renounce all and you shall be rich; have nothing and you shall have all things. Try to be something and you shall be nothing; be nothing and you shall have; that is the great lesson which Jesus would teach us but which we are slow to learn. “Father, glorify Thy name,” means, Let the corn of wheat be buried out of sight, to lose itself in its outgrowth. Self, you art a dead thing, be laid deep in the sepulchre. You rotten carcase, you are an offence unto me. Do not poison my life; mar my motives, spoil my intentions, hinder my self-denials and defile the chastity of my heart. You prompt me to make provision for the flesh: away with you! “Father, glorify Thy name.”
(3.) In our text, a new care is paramount. The man has forgotten self, and self is buried like a grain of wheat, but now he begins to care for God’s
glory. His cry is, “Father, glorify Thy name”. If you can get rid of self, you will feel at your heart a longing, intensified each day, to have the name of God glorified. Do you not sometimes feel sick at heart as you gaze on this generation? My soul is often pained within me when I see how everything is out of joint. Everything is now denied which, from our youth, we have regarded as sacred truth.
The infallibility of Scripture is denied; the authenticity of one portion is challenged, and the inspiration of another is called in question, and the good old book is torn to pieces by blind critics. Eternal verities against which only blaspheming infidels used to speak are now questioned by professed ministers of Christ. Doctrines which our forefathers never thought of doubting are now trailed in the mire by those who profess to be teachers of God’s Word. “Father, glorify Thy name,” comes leaping to our lips because it is burning in our heart – holy wrath against the treachery of men. Indignation arises from our jealousy, and our eager spirits cry, O that God would glorify His name! To many of us this is our heaviest care.
We desire the Lord to glorify that name in ourselves by keeping us from impatience in suffering and from faintness in labour. We beseech the Lord to destroy our selfishness, to cast out our pride, and to overcome every evil propensity which would prevent Him getting glory from us. Our soul is even as the clusters of the vine which belong to the owner of the vineyard; our whole nature is as the fruit for which the great Vinedresser waits.
Here fling me into the wine vat; let every cluster and every grape be gathered and pressed. Great Lord, cast me into the wine vat of Thy service and then express from me every drop of the essence of life. Let my whole soul flow forth to Thee; let the juice burst forth on the right and on the left; and when the first rich liquor of my life is gone, then let me be pressed even to the utmost lees, till the last drop of the living juice which may bring glory to Thee shall have come forth from me. Fling all away that will not turn into Thy glory, but use all that can be used. To the utmost glorify Thy name, O Thou great Father of my spirit. The care of Thy child is to glorify Thee, for if Thou be a father Thou shouldst have honour of Thy children. “Honour thy father”, is the first commandment with promise and it is precious in our eyes. From our inmost hearts we say, “Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come.”
See how that care is divested of all sorrow when we cast it upon God. The prayer is not, Father, help me to glorify Thy name, but it is “Father, glorify Thy name”. Thy glory is too much for me to grasp; do Thou glorify Thyself. In thy providence so arrange my position and condition as to glorify Thy name. By Thy grace so sustain me and sanctify me that I may glorify Thee.
I cannot do it, but Thou art able, and the care which I was glad to feel I am glad also to bring by faith to Thee. “Father, glorify Thy name.”
Now if you can pray in that fashion, your confidence will come back to you; if you have been greatly distracted, calm peace will visit you again, for now you will say, I will bear the Lord’s will, and will be content with it. I cannot quarrel with my Master’s dealings any more, for I have asked Him to glorify His name. And as I know that He is doing it, I cannot murmur. How can I struggle against what is really glorifying my Father?
Your heart will cease to question and to quake, and will nestle down beneath the eternal wings in deep and happy peace. Filled with patience, you will take the cup which stood untasted, and grasp it with willingness if not with eagerness. It is to glorify God, you say; every drop of this cup is for His glory. Therefore you put the cup to your lip and drink straight on and on and on, till you have drained the last drop and find that “it is finished”. I know you will not fail to do this if your soul has really felt the power of this prayer: “Father, glorify Thy name”.
Why, sometimes it seems to me that it were worth while to pray to be burned at a stake, quick to the death, if by martyrdom we could glorify God. I could not desire such a death, and yet from one point of view I have often envied martyrs those ruby crowns which they cast at the feet of their dear Lord. How honourable in them to have glorified God by so much suffering. Surely he is the grandest creature God has made who glorifies Him most. And who is he? Not the highest archangel, but the most insignificant nobody who has lain long on her bed of weariness, and there has praised the Lord by perfect patience. She, though apparently the least, may be the greatest glorifier of the Father. Perhaps the tiniest creature God has made will bring Him more glory than leviathan, that makes the deep to be hoary and causes the waters to boil like a pot. May God, of His infinite mercy bring us to care for His glory only. Strive after it by the power of the Holy Ghost.
One word to those of you who will have no sympathy with this sermon. You know the lines in which the enquirer asks, “If I find Him, if I follow, / What reward is here?” and the answer is: “Many a labour, many a sorrow, / Many a fear”. Very discouraging this, is it not? You who look for mirth and selfish pleasure turn away in disgust. Yet the lines are very true. Jesus Himself said, “Whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after Me, cannot be My disciple”, But mark, the day will come when those who were willing to suffer for Christ will be counted the only sane persons who ever lived, and when those who looked to the main chance and cared for self, and who disregarded God and faith in Christ and love for their fellow men, will be regarded as having been mere idiots.
Hear this parable. It is spring time, and yonder is a farmer walking the furrows and sowing his seed. Those who know nothing of husbandry mock him for his wastefulness with his grain. He is far too prodigal of good food. He is the wise man, is he not, who locks his granary door and preserves his corn? Why should he go and fling it into the cold, thankless earth? But wait till the end of June, when the bloom is on the wheat; wait till July and August have brought the months of harvest, and you shall see that he who gave his wheat to die shall, amidst the shouts of “Harvest home”, be seen to have been wise and prudent – while he who kept the door of his granary bolted, through his sluggishness and selfishness, shall then be seen to be the madman, for he has no harvest save a mass of tangled weeds.
Scatter your lives for others! Give yourselves up to Jesus. He who in this respect hates his life shall find it, but he that keeps it shall lose it. Still, you ungodly ones, if you live to yourselves, God will yet have glory, even out of you. You shall not rob Him of His honour, nor tear a jewel from His throne. God will be glorified by you and in you in some form or other. Your everlasting lamentations, because of your great selfish mistakes, will vindicate the wisdom and the justice of God to all eternity. In a future state, though you gnaw the flesh of your right arms for very anguish and sorrow and passion, you will be obliged to own that the warnings of the gospel are true and that God is just. Your well-deserved griefs shall help to make up the burden of that song which shall eternally celebrate the wisdom and goodness of God, for you will have to confess that Jesus was right and you were wrong, that to believe in Him and to be His disciple was the right thing, and that to despise Him and to live to yourself was what He told you it would be: destruction and ruin.