We have been going through things that are utterly necessary for the Church to seek God. We have been through prayer, things of the heart, unconverted people in the Church, and the necessity of the Gospel. One thing that permeates all of those things and all else is an exalted view of God. The Gospel is really the Gospel of God which is the Gospel of His glory shining in the face of Christ. There is no Gospel of Jesus Christ apart from the Gospel of God. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the Gospel of the glory of God that shines forth in Christ and is the glory of the grace of God. Whenever the Church steps away from a true focus on God and His glory it is a step away from the Gospel as well. The preaching of the Gospel cannot be done apart from an exalted view of God and how He shines His glory in Christ. So if a church is going to be turned back to God and the Gospel, it must be turned back to the God of all glory. If a church is going to preach the true Gospel, it has to be a Gospel of the glory of God or it is not the Gospel. We can be as nice as people can be and we can do all sorts of nice things for others, but if we are not preaching the Gospel of the glory of God in Christ we are not preaching the Gospel to people at all.
Mark 1:14 “Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God.”
Rom 1:1 “Paul, a bond-servant of Christ Jesus, called as an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God.”
Rom 15:16 “to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles, ministering as a priest the gospel of God.”
2 Corinthians 11:7 “because I preached the gospel of God to you without charge?”
The Church can be caught up with many good things, but unless it returns to a thorough God-centeredness it will not return to God. The poor are to be fed, but not from a mere sense of duty and self-righteousness. We are also not necessarily feeding the poor if we just indiscriminately give food out to those who want it. But instead, as Matthew 5:16 teaches us, we are to “Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.” We cannot simply return to a way of religion or even a stricter way of religion, but we must return to God Himself. “Our Father in heaven” is the only source of grace that there is. The Lord Jesus is the only path of grace that there is. The Holy Spirit is the only One that can apply grace itself to sinners. Human beings have no source of grace in themselves and do not know the path of grace apart from Christ. We also have no way of applying grace itself to ourselves. There is no wisdom, no salvation, and no sanctification apart from Christ who is the shining forth of the glory of God’s wisdom and salvation by grace to human beings.
The problem with Israel over and over again was that they left God. It was not that they always did what we would call wicked things, and it was not that they always left off their religious activity. But they left God and their hearts were turned to other things. Hosea 5:4: “Their deeds will not allow them To return to their God. For a spirit of harlotry is within them, And they do not know the LORD.” Hosea 14:1: “Return, O Israel, to the LORD your God, For you have stumbled because of your iniquity.” The prophets would call to them to repent of their sins and return to God. The way of Christianity and the way of Jesus Christ is not learning some things about the Bible and then to have some form of moral reformation, but it is to know God through Jesus Christ. Salvation itself is being reconciled to God and to know God: “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent” (John 17:3). The people who are going to be strong and grow are those who know God: “By smooth words he will turn to godlessness those who act wickedly toward the covenant, but the people who know their God will display strength and take action” (Daniel 11:32).
What follows is a quote from A.W. Pink. It is this God that we must bow in utter awe and reverence before if we are going to see a true revival. It is not that we can work up this awe and reverence, but we must begin to pray for the desire and then to pray that the Lord would grant this desire. God only opens up the eyes and hearts of human beings to His glory by grace. He also only gives them Himself by grace. Let us pray for the grace to know Him and to “behold your God.”
“In the beginning, God” (Genesis 1:1). There was a time, if “time” is could be called, when God, in the unity of His nature (though subsisting equally in three Divine Persons), dwelt all alone. “In the beginning, God.” There was no heaven, where His glory is now particularly manifested. There was no earth to engage His attention. There were no angels to hymn His praises; no universe to be upheld by the word of His power. There was nothing, no one, but God; and that, not for a day, a year, or an age, but “from everlasting.” During a past eternity, God was alone: self-contained, self-sufficient, self-satisfied; in need of nothing. Had a universe, had angels, had human beings been necessary to Him in any way, they also had been called into existence from all eternity. The creating of them when He did, added nothing to God essentially. He changes not (Malachi 3:6), therefore His essential glory can be neither augmented nor diminished. God was under no constraint, no obligation, no necessity to create. That He chose to do so was purely a sovereign act on His part, caused by nothing outside Himself, determined by nothing but His own mere good pleasure; for He “worketh all things after the counsel of His own will” (Ephesians 1:11).
That He did create was simply for His manifestative glory. Do some of our readers imagine that we have gone beyond what Scripture warrants? Then our appeal shall be to the Law and the Testimony: “Stand up and bless the Lord your God forever and ever: and blessed be Thy glorious name, which is exalted above all blessing and praise” (Nehemiah 9:5). God is no gainer even from our worship. He was in no need of that external glory of His grace which arises from His redeemed, for He is glorious enough in Himself without that. What was it moved Him to predestinate His elect to the praise of the glory of His grace? It was, as Ephesians 1:5 tells us, according to the good pleasure of His will.
We are well aware that the high ground we are here treading is new and strange to almost all of our readers; for that reason it is well to move slowly. Let our appeal again be to the Scriptures. At the end of Romans 11, where the apostle brings to a close his long argument on salvation by pure and sovereign grace, he asks, “For who hath known the mind of the Lord? Or who hath been His counselor? Or who hath first given to Him, and it shall be recompensed to him again?” (vv. 34, 35). The force of this is, it is impossible to bring the Almighty under obligations to the creature; God gains nothing from us. If thou be righteous, what givest thou Him? Or what receiveth He of thine hand? Thy wickedness may hurt a man as thou art; and thy righteousness may profit the son of man (Job 35:7,8), but it certainly cannot affect God, who is all-blessed in Himself. When ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants (Luke 17:10)-our obedience has profited God nothing.
Nay, we go further: our Lord Jesus Christ added nothing to God in His essential being and glory, either by what He did or suffered. True, blessedly and gloriously true, He manifested the glory of God to us, but He added nought to God. He Himself expressly declares so, and there is no appeal from His words: “My goodness extendeth not to Thee” (Psalm 16:2). The whole of that Psalm is a Psalm of Christ. Christ’s goodness or righteousness reached unto His saints in the earth (Psalm 16:3), But God was high above and beyond it all, God only is the “Blessed One” (Mark 14:61, Gr.).
It is perfectly true that God is both honored and dishonored by men; not in His essential being, but in His official character. It is equally true that God has been “glorified” by creation, by providence, and by redemption. This we do not and dare not dispute for a moment. But all of this has to do with His manifestative glory and the recognition of it by us. Yet had God so pleased He might have continued alone for all eternity, without making known His glory unto creatures. Whether He should do so or not was determined solely by His own will. He was perfectly blessed in Himself before the first creature was called into being. And what are all the creatures of His hands unto Him even now? Let Scripture again make answer:
“Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance: behold, He taketh up the isles as a very little thing. And Lebanon is not sufficient to burn, nor the beasts thereof sufficient for a burnt offering. All nations before Him are as nothing; and they are counted to Him less than nothing, and vanity. To whom then will ye liken God? or what likeness will ye compare unto Him?” (Isaiah 40:15-18). That is the God of Scripture; alas, He is still “the unknown God” (Acts 17:23) to the heedless multitudes. “It is He that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in: that bringeth the princes to nothing; He maketh the judges of the earth as vanity” (Isaiah 40:22,23). How vastly different is the God of Scripture from the god of the average pulpit!
God Loves... Himself 
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