All Roads Lead to God's Glory
As Pastor Chris mentioned a few weeks ago, the Westminster Shorter Catechism begins with the question, “What is the chief end of man?”1 It goes on to state that “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him for ever.”1 As believers, we adopt this as a goal for our lives. We strive to glorify God in everything we do. But what about everyone else? What about when the difficult times in life come? Life can be messy at times. It is full of injustices, tragedies, and all kinds of sorrows. It can cause us to wonder how these difficult times fit into God’s plan. Maybe you have even heard an unbeliever justify their unbelief by saying something like, “How can a good and loving God exist when all this evil happens?” It’s a good question, so how do we as unbelievers understand these things?
A good example of where this question can come from can be found in Exodus 14. In that chapter, Moses recounts how God parted the Red Sea so that Israel could escape their Egyptian adversaries. God’s deliverance was miraculous and displayed His sovereign power, but Moses records in verse 30,
“Thus the LORD saved Israel that day from the hand of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. (Exodus 14:30 ESV emphasis mine.)
As Christians, we celebrate this as God’s deliverance provided for His people. It is a foreshadowing of what Christ would do on the cross to deliver us from our sins. However, some point out that the army of Egypt was wiped out, and that reflects how we worship an angry God who is unloving and unfair.
We must then ask why the Egyptians met their fate. In the verses before, God repeats one phrase three different times. He says in verses 4, 17, and 18 that He,
“…will get glory over Pharaoh and all his host, and the Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD…” (Exodus 14:4 ESV).
The whole point is that God will be glorified even through the Egyptians and their disobedience. This has been a consistent point throughout Exodus to this point. God repeatedly states that He will be glorified through Pharaoh’s disobedience in letting the people go. The result is that
“…the people feared the LORD, and they believed in the LORD and in his servant Moses” (Exodus 14:31 ESV).
God is glorified, and the people believed in Him as a result of what He did through the Egyptians. Even a prostitute in the city of Jericho has heard of what YHWH has done by the time Israel comes to conquer the land (see Joshua 2:10). Even in their judgement the Egyptians fulfilled their chief end. They glorified God by being judged for their sin.
Why am I telling you this? As believers, there are times when we must come alongside fellow believers in the midst of tragedy to comfort them. Every one of us will inevitably bash against the effects of a sin-cursed world and will need our brothers and sisters to comfort us. In those moments, we can question what God is doing. I believe we can be comforted knowing that in some way, somehow God is glorified through our struggles. That is why Paul can say,
“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28 ESV).
We praise God that, unlike the Egyptians, we glorify Him as His redeemed, and that even in our darkest hour, God is glorified. If God is glorified, we can sing, “It is well with my soul.”
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1 The Westminster Standard, “Westminster Shorter Catechism,” The Westminster Standard, March 10, 2016, https://thewestminsterstandard.org/westminster-shorter-catechism/.