"THE GLORY OF GOD'

sermon by Pastor John Hollis,,

July 1, 2007

Text: Exodus 33:12-23

There are many ways in which God's glory is manifested. We generally think of His glory as being the honor and praise that is due Him. Sometimes it may mean "preciousness, beauty, cleanness, purity, or even weight or heaviness." Most likely when you read of the glory of God, it will have something to do with the salvation that God provides for His people, especially when it is used in connection with Christ.

Our text is part of the record of the Israelites' journey toward the promised land. God is having some problems with His people as they move toward the land of milk and honey. In Exodus 33:3 we read, "Go up to the land flowing with milk and honey; for I will not go up in your midst, because you are an obstinate people, lest I destroy you on the way." God was unhappy with the conduct of His people, and he was turning their care over to Moses. God would be with Moses and communicate with him in the tent of meeting. "Now Moses used to take the tent and pitch it outside the camp, a good distance from the camp, and he called it the tent of meeting. And it came about, that everyone who sought the Lord would go out to the tent of meeting which was outside the camp." (Exodus 33:7).

When the people went to the tent of meeting, and Moses entered into the tent, the presence of God would stand at the door of the tent in the cloud, and the Lord would speak with Moses. It is recorded here that "the Lord would speak to Moses face to face, just as a man speaks to his friend." We will come back to this later.

Moses is speaking with the Lord about the charge He has given him. Moses wanted to know the ways of God so that he could lead His people through the wilderness. God promises Moses that he will be with him: "My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest." And Moses says to the Lord, "If Thy presence does not go with us, do not lead us up from here." God assures Moses that all will be provided for their journey. It is in this context that Moses says, "I pray Thee, show me Thy glory!" Moses wanted complete assurance that God would be with His people. God said, "I will make all My goodness pass before you, and will proclaim the name of the Lord before you, and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show compassion on whom I will show compassion." (Ex. 33:18-19). Thus, when God showed His goodness He showed His glory.

Earlier God had showed his glory to His people in feeding them with bread from heaven. They were to go out and gather this bread, and God said to them "in the morning you will see the glory of the Lord." (Exodus 16:4-8). And later in their travels, God showed them his glory. When the tabernacle was erected "the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle." (Exodus 40:34-35). When Solomon built the temple and the Ark of the Covenant was brought into it, "the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord." (1 Kings 8:9-11).

God's glory, however, was not limited to the Israelites. His glory was also to be shared with the Gentile nations. The Israelites were those "to whom belongs the adoption as sons and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the Law and the temple service and the promises,. . ." (Romans 9:4). But it was not exclusively for them. Paul asks: "What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? And He did so in order that He might make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared before for glory, even us whom He also called, not from among Jews only, but also from among Gentiles. As He says also in Hosea, 'I will call those who were not My people, "My people", and her who was not beloved, "beloved."'" (Romans 9:22-25). God would not withhold His glory from His people Israel, but He would also share it with the Gentile nations. Vessels of wrath became vessels of mercy, both among the Israelites and among the Gentiles. What a beautiful story this is.

We turn now to God's glory in His people today. Someone once said, "We have met the enemy and it is us." Well, we have seen God's glory and it is us! Listen to God as He spoke through his prophet Isaiah: "Listen to Me, you stubborn-minded, who are far from righteousness. I bring near My righteousness, it is not far off; and My salvation will not delay. And I will grant salvation to Zion and My glory for Israel." (Isaiah 46:12-13). Those vessels of wrath would become vessels of mercy and God's righteousness and glory would be theirs; this would include all Israel as defined by Paul in Romans.

The word glory is translated from the Greek doxa. Vines Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words gives this definition: "of the nature and acts of God in self-manifestations, i.e., what he essentially is and does, as exhibited in whatever way he reveals himself in these respects, and particularly in the person of Christ."

With this definition in mind, we should begin by looking at the nature of God and how it is reflected in our lives. The apostle Peter introduces his second letter with these words: "Simon Peter, a bond-servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who have received a faith of the same kind as ours, by the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ. Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord; seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence. For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, in order that by them you might become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust." (2 Peter 1:1-4). We could spend much time with these words of Peter, but we need to concentrate on the fact that out of the promises of God, God has made it possible for us to become partakers of the divine nature. It was by His own glory that He called us to this relationship with Him.

The apostle Paul suggests to us that partaking of the divine nature allows up to grow in Christ in "the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ." (Ephesians 4:13). I understand the fullness of Christ to be equal to the divine nature in which God by His own glory, what he "essentially is and does," has manifested Himself to the world in Christ. Paul goes on to say, "and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of truth." (Ephesians 4:24). In putting on the new self, we put on the glory, goodness, righteousness of God.

Now if it disturbs some of us to think that we have the goodness and righteousness of God in our lives, then listen to these words: "For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, that we may share His holiness." (Hebrews 10:10). The author is here speaking of the discipline which we received from our earthly fathers as it seemed best to them, but God disciplines us that we might be "partakers of His holiness." Does this disturb you to think that you share the holiness of God?

If this thought disturbs you, then think about this from John: "See how great a love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God and such we are. For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we shall be. We know that, when He appears, we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him just as He is." (1 John 3:1-2). Now there is a problem with some translations of this portion of Scripture. It is not "when He - Christ - appears" that we shall be like Him. The "Him" refers to God - we shall be like God. The Williams translation, I believe, has it correct. "Dearly beloved, we are now God's children, but what we are going to be has not been unveiled. We know that if it is unveiled, we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is." Him is the antecedent of God. What was to be unveiled was the new covenant.

The divine nature and glory of God also includes His righteousness. "I will give thanks to the Lord according to His righteousness, and will sing praise to the name of the Lord Most High," sang David in the long ago.

Earlier we mentioned how that the Gentiles would share in the glory and righteousness of God. This promise of righteousness was first made to Abraham and his descendents. "For the promise to Abraham or to his descendants that he would be heir of the world was not through the Law, but through the righteousness of faith." (Romans 4:13). Peter, no doubt, had in mind this promise to Abraham when he spoke of the great promises of God that leads us to share in the divine nature. And the Gentiles were to share in this righteousness.

"What shall we say then" Paul asks. "That Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, attained righteousness, even the righteousness which is by faith; but Israel, pursuing a law of righteousness, did not arrive at that law. Why? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as though it were by works. They stumbled over the stumbling stone." (Romans 9:30-32). It was the seeking of righteousness by law that caused Paul so much trouble. "I was once alive apart from the Law; but when the commandment came, sin became alive, and I died; for sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, deceived me, and through it killed me." (Romans 7:9-11). Now, what was the problem? Paul was coveting righteousness. But the command was "Thou shalt not covet." So the commandment that was to give life brought death. The very thing that Paul wanted to do he couldn't do - he couldn't get righteousness through the law. He had to be delivered from the body of the law of sin and death through the new covenant righteousness by faith. Read the rest of the seventh chapter.

Paul in writing to the saints at Philippi said his desire was to "be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith." (Philippians 3:9). He hadn't reached that point yet, but he was pressing onward to that goal.

Listen to these words: "Therefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ, and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. . . . He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him." (2 Corinthians 5:17-21). This righteousness cannot be gained through what we do, regardless of what that might be. It is gained only through what God has done for us through Christ. No one could keep the law. But God could make us new creations in Christ. He went to the cross as sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God. What a beautiful story that is.

There is a beautiful scene pictured for us in Revelation 19:7-8."Let us rejoice and be glad and give the glory to Him, for the marriage of the Lamb has come and His bride had made herself ready. And it was given to her to clothe herself in fine linen, bright and clean; for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints." We have emphasized the fact that we cannot do righteous acts to gain the righteousness of God. There seems to be a contradiction here, if the bride is clothed in the righteous acts of the believers. We turn to Paul's letter to the Ephesians to solve this seeming problem. Paul says that Christ had sanctified his bride, "having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word." The righteous acts of the believers were the acts that Christ had cleansed. That white linen in which she was dressed in Revelation was pure and white because of what Christ had done and not what the bride had done. Hear Paul again: "He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit." (Titus 3:5). It is not what we do, but what God does. We become the glory - the goodness - of God by works of grace - God's works.

There are some problems we have with this concept. We seek to do our own righteousness. We do church, we tithe, we serve in many different ways, we do mission work, seemingly to find a good standing with God. Now these are all good things, and there is nothing wrong in doing them, but they will not give us the glory - the goodness - of God. They will not bring us any closer to God.

God spoke to Moses face to "face to face." We know God in a new way. As John said, "Now we are children of God" and "we shall be like Him." Paul says the sons of God will be revealed and "that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God." (Rom. 8:18-21).

We long for glory, righteousness, freedom. It is our now. These belong to the children of God, and "now we are the children of God." This relationship is not about us but about God. It is His righteousness; it is his goodness; it is his grace; it is his compassion; it is his glory. Let us receive these blessings and glory in them.

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