The Glory of God is what??
Sept 16, 2012
Intro:
What actually is “the glory of God”? It’s a familiar phrase, we read it in Scripture, it shows up in our songs, sometimes even in our language or our prayers we hear ourselves using that language – “the glory of God”. But do we know what it is we are actually talking about? What is “the glory of God”?
Last week many of us were at a church retreat. We appreciated James leading us on Saturday, and (among a number of other things) one of the statements that stood out for me was when James said “we need to experience the glory of God”. Let me put it in context – we were working through Is 43:19, our theme verse for the weekend and a key part of the whole section of Is 40-44 that we have been studying together for the last month or so. Beginning in vs 18: “18 “But forget all that—
it is nothing compared to what I am going to do.
19 For I am about to do something new.
See, I have already begun! Do you not see it?”
We led through a bit of work thinking about the past and letting it go – particularly the harmful, hurtful things, so that we could then turn our attention to what God wants to do next – the “I am about to do something new…” part. And a key part of that begins with that line that James used that grabbed hold and resonated within me: “we need to experience the glory of God.” And we did begin to experience that together throughout the weekend, we did see God beginning new things, we did hear testimonies of God revealing His glory and His healing, and we rejoice in that together.
So then, in my preparation for our Sunday morning service at the retreat, I felt God take me back to the beginning of our section, Is 40, and bring these lines to life:
“3 Listen! It’s the voice of someone shouting,
“Clear the way through the wilderness
for the Lord!
Make a straight highway through the wasteland
for our God!
4 Fill in the valleys,
and level the mountains and hills.
Straighten the curves,
and smooth out the rough places.
I shared about how I read those lines, which are supposed to be filled with hope and power and optimism and excitement about the anticipated coming of God – He is coming!! Get ready!! Prepare the way!! God is about to show up in power to save and redeem and restore!! And I read those lines and just felt really tired. I saw them not from the end result, which is amazing and incredible and restorative and life-giving, but rather I saw them from the perspective of how much work it is. Clearing paths, building highways, filling valleys, leveling mountains, that is a lot of work!
So, as with any huge project, we have to keep the end goal in mind. And the very next verse tells us what that goal is:
5 Then the glory of the Lord will be revealed,
and all people will see it together.
The Lord has spoken!”
There it is again – “the glory of the Lord.” It will be “revealed”, and we will all get to see it “together”. Notice it is a communal thing, not an individual thing. But again, what actually is it?
Is “the glory of God” some bright blinding light that will someday appear in the sky?
Is “the glory of God” an unapproachable fire that will consume and destroy us if we get close?
Is “the glory of God” a state of awe induced by nature?
Is “the glory of God” the outward manifestations of the presence of the Holy Spirit (think miraculous healings, exuberant singing and dancing, tongues and prophecies and words of inner healing)?
Is “the glory of God” the coming to faith of someone who was far from God but turns towards God and experiences forgiveness and restoration?
Is “the glory of God” a church of people who love one another deeply through all the everyday messiness of life this side of eternity?
If we are to work really hard clearing a path, making a nice straight highway through the wasteland, filling valleys and leveling mountains and straightening curves and smoothing out rough places, and that is all so that “the glory of the Lord will be revealed”, then wouldn’t it make sense to have some idea of what “the glory of the Lord” actually is?
We aren’t going to figure it all out this morning. It is going to take a little longer than that… but we can get started.
And I want to get started with a blast to the brain. I’m quite sure we will not be able to fully grasp the glory of God this side of eternity, “now we see as through a mirror darkly”. And I know that the point is not just a more-full intellectual understanding of the glory of God – in fact far more powerful is, to again use James’ phrase from last Saturday, “experiencing the glory of God”. So this is a starting point, perhaps a bit of an outline for some of the things we will see in the weeks ahead, and I offer it with the hope and expectation not that you will grasp it all, but rather that the Holy Spirit would ignite one or two phrases or ideas and nurture you with those.
This material is by John Piper, a pastor and theologian who has much to teach about the glory of God and what it means for our enjoyment of life and eternity. He bases much of his understanding on Jonathan Edwards, an 18th century American preacher and revivalist.
From http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/articles/gods-glory-and-the-deepest-joy-of-human-souls-are-one-thing
Jonathan Edwards writes:
God in seeking his glory seeks the good of his creatures, because the emanation of his glory . . . implies the . . . happiness of his creatures. And in communicating his fullness for them, he does it for himself, because their good, which he seeks, is so much in union and communion with himself. God is their good. Their excellency and happiness is nothing but the emanation and expression of God's glory. God, in seeking their glory and happiness, seeks himself, and in seeking himself, i.e. himself diffused . . . he seeks their glory and happiness.
Thus it is easy to conceive how God should seek the good of the creature . . . even his happiness, from a supreme regard to himself; as his happiness arises from . . . the creature's exercising a supreme regard to God . . . in beholding God's glory, in esteeming and loving it, and rejoicing in it.
God's respect to the creature's good, and his respect to himself, is not a divided respect; but both are united in one, as the happiness of the creature aimed at is happiness in union with himself.
In his book, God's Passion for His Glory: Living the Vision of Jonathan Edwards (with the complete text of The End for Which God Created the World (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 1998), John Piper offers fifteen implications for the truths cited above.
1. God’s passion for his own glory and his passion for my joy in him are not at odds.
2. Therefore, God is as committed to my eternal and ever-increasing joy in him as he is to his own glory.
3.The love of God for sinners is not his making much of them, but his graciously freeing and empowering them to enjoy making much of him.
4.All true virtue among human beings must aim at bringing people to rejoice in the glory of God.
5.It also follows that sin is the suicidal exchange of the glory of God for the broken cisterns of created things.
6.Heaven will be a never-ending, ever-increasing discovery of more and more of God’s glory with greater and ever-greater joy in him.
7.Hell is unspeakably real, conscious, horrible and eternal – the experience in which God vindicates the worth of his glory in holy wrath on those who would not delight in what is infinitely glorious.
8.Evangelism means depicting the beauty of Christ and his saving work with a heartfelt urgency of love that labors to help people find their satisfaction in him.
9.Similarly Christian preaching, as part of the corporate worship of Christ’s church, is an expository exultation over the glories of God in his word, designed to lure God’s people from the fleeting pleasures of sin into the sacrificial path of obedient satisfaction in him.
10.The essence of authentic, corporate worship is the collective experience of heartfelt satisfaction in the glory of God, or a trembling that we do not have it and a great longing for it.
11.World missions is a declaration of the glories of God among all the unreached peoples, with a view to gathering worshippers who magnify God through the gladness of radically obedient lives.
12.Prayer is calling on God for help so it is plain that he is gloriously resourceful and we are humbly and happily in need of grace.
13.The task of Christian scholarship is to study reality as a manifestation of God’s glory, to speak about it with accuracy, and to savor the beauty of God in it.
14.The way to magnify God in death is by meeting death as gain.
15."It is a Christian duty, as you know, for everyone to be as happy as he can." (C. S. Lewis)
Obviously there is a lot there, and again I don’t expect us to grasp it all but rather to be introduced to the vastness of the attempt to understand the glory of God, and to be grabbed by a phrase or two that maybe you most need to hear today.
So from that overview, let me next just put some Scriptures up that speak of the glory of God, and again just listen, soak in them, allow the Holy Spirit to speak. Let’s read these together:
Ex 24
15 Then Moses climbed up the mountain, and the cloud covered it. 16 And the glory of the Lord settled down on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it for six days. On the seventh day the Lord called to Moses from inside the cloud. 17 To the Israelites at the foot of the mountain, the glory of the Lord appeared at the summit like a consuming fire. 18 Then Moses disappeared into the cloud as he climbed higher up the mountain. He remained on the mountain forty days and forty nights.
Leviticus 9:22-24
22 After that, Aaron raised his hands toward the people and blessed them. Then, after presenting the sin offering, the burnt offering, and the peace offering, he stepped down from the altar. 23 Then Moses and Aaron went into the Tabernacle, and when they came back out, they blessed the people again, and the glory of the Lord appeared to the whole community. 24 Fire blazed forth from the Lord’s presence and consumed the burnt offering and the fat on the altar. When the people saw this, they shouted with joy and fell face down on the ground.
Psalm 8
1 O Lord, our Lord, your majestic name fills the earth!
Your glory is higher than the heavens.
Psalm 19:1
The heavens proclaim the glory of God. The skies display his craftsmanship.
Psalm 24:7-9
7 Open up, ancient gates!
Open up, ancient doors,
and let the King of glory enter.
8 Who is the King of glory?
The Lord, strong and mighty;
the Lord, invincible in battle.
9 Open up, ancient gates!
Open up, ancient doors,
and let the King of glory enter
Psalm 29:2-4
2 Honor the Lord for the glory of his name.
Worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness.
3 The voice of the Lord echoes above the sea.
The God of glory thunders.
The Lord thunders over the mighty sea.
4 The voice of the Lord is powerful;
the voice of the Lord is majestic.
Romans 3:23
For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God
1 Corinthians 10:31
So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.
Hebrews 1:3
(Jesus) is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,
Philippians 2:9-11
Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
That is a bunch for the mind; let me present it to you slightly differently. Here again is the voice of John Piper, this time his actual voice over the end of a worship song. This might speak it a little more to your emotions, maybe it will seep a little deeper into your heart hearing it this way.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oU-3voObLY&feature=youtube_gdata_player
“You were made for this.”
“Aren’t you glad you exist to display God’s glory?”
“God is as committed to my eternal and ever-increasing joy in him as he is to his own glory.”
“"It is a Christian duty, as you know, for everyone to be as happy as he can." (C. S. Lewis)”
What is the glory of God?
- it is what you were created for
- it is where you and I find the greatest joy imaginable
- it is God, revealing Himself to us, and catching us up into Him – lifting us up out of the ashes and the miry clay and the muck and dung of life and into His presence, where nothing else matters
- it is a new thing God is doing among us.
And it leaves us with some questions. Will you come? Will you change? Will you open up, crack the door, create space for God to really reveal to you how much He loves you? Will you abandon “sin (which is) the suicidal exchange of the glory of God for the broken cisterns of created things.” And live for Him?
A lot of it is all about God revealing Himself to us. It has to be God – I can’t manufacture it, make it happen on demand, or control it. And I don’t want to!
But that’s not all. God has already revealed His glory in Jesus Christ, God has given us His Word which shows us how to live in the light of His glory, He has poured out His Holy Spirit upon us, and God has invited us to respond. So we have a part as well. We have to show up. We have to pray, obey, and seek God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength. We have to seek first the Kingdom of God.
Then God, who began (and is beginning again) a new work within us, will carry it through to completion.
And we will love the ride.
Before you go to coffee, I have several questions I’m going to put on the screen. You can engage them silently by yourself, or gather a few people around you and engage them prayerfully together. The purpose is simple – when you leave this place, having been in the presence of God, what will be different for you and how you live?
1. Can you remember a time when you experienced the glory of God?
2. If you had to explain “the glory of God” to someone in just a couple sentences, what would you say?
3. What keeps you from experiencing more of the glory of God? Are any of those obstacles things that you can do something about?
4. What one thing could you do in the next 72 hours to put into action a seeking to experience the glory of God?
