Isaiah 48:11
For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it,
for how
should my name be profaned?
My
glory I will not give to another.
God is jealous for His own Glory, and it is the single biggest
key point in the Bible. Well in all of life I guess, since God is sovereign
over everything. Our sin. Our salvation. Christ’s first coming. The Day of the
Lord. Creation. All of this is to point and magnify God’s Glory. Nothing else
compares to this central theme. Yet I feel like most Christians don’t get it. I
didn’t get it until maybe 2015, and I continue to realize over and over again
just how important God’s glory is. Just like in the Westminster Confession,
“Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.” Jesus
Himself keeps talking about how His mission, His reasoning for coming to Earth,
was to make God’s Glory known. Samuel Zwemer, dubbed the apostle to Islam, said
in his famous line, “The chief end of missions is not the salvation of
men but the glory of God.” That is how important God is
for Himself. God is God, and He will not forsake His own Glory for the sake of
His creation, so let us Christians not belittle or ignore this fact. We come
into God’s presence to give praise and worship to God’s glory. That is why we
worship. That is why we exist. That is why we received salvation in grace
through faith. That is why we are obedient to the Law of Christ. That is why we
have the Holy Spirit in us to teach us how to see His Glory. We basically
obtain the eyes of Christ and the heart of Christ so we can comprehend, even
just a fraction, of God’s Glory. We want to go to heaven not for our sake, but
to see God’s Glory. That is why the angels sing day and night, 24/7, about
God’s Glory while shielding their eyes from that very Glory. We need to
understand just how important this is, and what it means now that we can see
that Glory without dying!
Jesus says this (not so) famous line to rebuke His disciples, “Was
it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?”
(Luke 24:26) He is confirming what His mission was after His resurrection.
Of course what Jesus said right before the Crucifixion cannot be
ignored either.
Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son
may glorify you, 2 since
you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom
you have given him. 3 And this is eternal life,
that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. 4 I glorified
you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. 5 And
now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that
I had with you before the world existed. (John 17:1-5)
And then there is Apostle Paul’s take. As John Piper once said,
the Gospel is the Gospel of the Glory of Christ, taken right from 2 Cor 4:4-6:
The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers so they
cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image
of God. 5For we do not proclaim ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord,
and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. 6For God, who said, “Let
light shine out of darkness,” made His light shine in our hearts to give us the
light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
Worship is the response to seeing Glory of God!
Joy is the deep emotion or essence we feel or embody when we see
the Glory of Christ!
The Holy Spirit is the seal, the deposit, our inheritance, the
witness that gives us access to the Glory of God!
Ephesians 1:13-14
13 In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel
of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy
Spirit, 14 who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession
of it, to the praise of his glory.
2 Corinthians 1:21-22
21 And it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has
anointed us, 22 and who has also put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in
our hearts as a guarantee [deposit].
Romans 8:16-17
16 The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are
children of God, 17 and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with
Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with
him.
2 Corinthians 3:18
And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory,
are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which
comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.
So the questions is this: do I see the Glory of God when I look
into the face of my savior Jesus Christ?
Matthew 28:17a
And when they [disciples] saw him [Jesus] they worshiped him…
http://www.faimission.org/articles/2017/11/13/image-of-the-invisible
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