What Is God’s Glory?
Chapters
0:04:50 What is God's glory?
00:00:00.000 | (Music)
00:00:02.000 | God's glory is a big deal in scripture and that makes it a big deal to us here at Desiring God and over the years
00:00:11.880 | here are just a few ways Pastor John has described the importance of the glory of God. He said things like this,
00:00:18.100 | "The vindication of God's glory is the ground of our salvation and the exaltation of God's glory is the goal of our salvation."
00:00:28.120 | In another place he said this, "God's glory is the goal of all things."
00:00:31.800 | In another place he said this, "God's glory is the unifying goal of all history."
00:00:37.560 | In another place he said, "God's glory is the source and sum of all full and lasting joy."
00:00:44.400 | And on and on. These are strong words, but what exactly is God's glory? What do we mean by that?
00:00:50.520 | It's a question Pastor John sought to answer in his sermon, "To Him be glory forevermore," preached on December 17th,
00:00:57.880 | 2006. Here's a clip of what he said.
00:01:00.160 | Defining the glory of God is is impossible, I say, because it's more like the word
00:01:07.760 | "beauty" than the word
00:01:10.560 | "basketball."
00:01:13.200 | So if somebody says they've never heard of a basketball,
00:01:15.840 | they don't know what a basketball is and they say define a basketball,
00:01:19.640 | that would not be hard for you to do. You would use your hands and you'd say, "Well,
00:01:24.960 | it's like a round thing made out of leather or rubber and
00:01:29.200 | about 10 or 9 inches in diameter." And you blow it up, you inflate it
00:01:34.320 | so it's pretty hard, and then you can bounce it like this and you can throw it to people and
00:01:40.600 | you can run while you're bouncing it. And then there's this hoop at the end,
00:01:44.800 | used to be called, used to be a basket, and you try to throw the ball through the hoop.
00:01:49.400 | And that's why it's called a basket ball. And they'd have a really good idea.
00:01:53.320 | They'd be able to spot one, tell it from a soccer ball or a football.
00:01:58.200 | You can't do that with the word "beauty."
00:02:00.960 | There are some words in our vocabulary
00:02:04.040 | which we can communicate with, not because we can say them, but because we see them.
00:02:11.040 | And that's it. We can point. We can point. And if we point at enough things and see enough things together, say, "That's it.
00:02:17.480 | That's it. That's it." We might be able to have a common sense of beauty,
00:02:22.000 | but you try to put beauty, the word "beauty," into words, it'd be very, very difficult.
00:02:27.360 | Same thing with the word "glory." So how shall I do it? We've got to try, because we just can't
00:02:33.960 | leave it for people to fill up on their own.
00:02:37.720 | So here's the way I'm going to try to do it. I'm going to take it and
00:02:42.000 | contrast it biblically with the word "holy" and
00:02:45.720 | ask,
00:02:47.480 | "What's the difference between the holiness of God and the glory of God?" And in doing that, I think we'll get a little handle on
00:02:55.000 | the nature of
00:02:57.280 | this term, "the glory of God."
00:02:59.320 | So that's the way I'm going to try to do it. In the holiness of God is, I think,
00:03:05.440 | His
00:03:07.280 | being in a class by Himself in His perfection and
00:03:13.240 | greatness and worth. His perfection and His greatness and His worth are of such a
00:03:19.120 | distinct and separated - you've been taught that
00:03:22.760 | "holy" means separate - distinct and separated that He's in a class by Himself.
00:03:29.000 | Infinite perfections,
00:03:31.960 | infinite greatness, and infinite worth.
00:03:35.040 | His holiness is what He is as God that nobody else is.
00:03:42.280 | It's His
00:03:44.120 | quality of perfection
00:03:46.120 | that can't be improved upon, that can't be imitated, that is
00:03:50.400 | incomparable, that determines all that He is and is determined by nothing from outside
00:03:55.960 | Him. It signifies His
00:03:58.960 | infinite worth, His intrinsic,
00:04:02.280 | infinite
00:04:04.160 | value.
00:04:06.160 | Now,
00:04:08.440 | when Isaiah
00:04:10.840 | 6 3 says that angels are crying,
00:04:14.960 | "Holy,
00:04:17.320 | holy,
00:04:18.800 | holy is the Lord God Almighty,"
00:04:20.800 | the next thing they say is this,
00:04:24.480 | "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. The whole earth is full of His," and you might have expected them to say,
00:04:32.200 | "Holiness!" And He doesn't say holiness. He says glory.
00:04:40.400 | "Intrinsically holy, intrinsically holy, intrinsically holy, and the whole earth is full of His
00:04:48.120 | glory."
00:04:50.680 | From which I
00:04:52.680 | stab at a definition by saying the glory of God is the
00:04:58.200 | manifest beauty of His holiness. It's the going public of His holiness.
00:05:04.680 | It's the way He puts His holiness on display for people to apprehend.
00:05:10.560 | So,
00:05:12.560 | the glory of God is the holiness of God made
00:05:16.960 | manifest. Listen to this word from Leviticus 10 3.
00:05:21.560 | God says, "I will be shown to be holy
00:05:27.240 | among those who are near me, and
00:05:31.240 | before all the people I will be glorified. I will be shown
00:05:37.160 | to be
00:05:39.200 | holy. And
00:05:40.720 | among all the people," say it another way, "I will be
00:05:44.840 | glorified." So to see, to apprehend, and to reckon with His holiness and in some sense
00:05:54.200 | perceive it is to see glory. And thus to
00:06:00.160 | glorify Him. So here's an attempt at a definition.
00:06:04.440 | The glory of God is the
00:06:07.800 | infinite beauty and
00:06:10.520 | greatness of
00:06:13.160 | God's manifold
00:06:15.160 | perfections. The infinite beauty, and I'm focusing on the the manifestation of
00:06:20.640 | His character and His worth and His
00:06:24.840 | attributes, all of His perfections and greatness are
00:06:29.680 | beautiful as they are seen, and there are many of them. That's why I use the word manifold.
00:06:37.600 | So here it is in another sentence. The glory of God is the infinite beauty and greatness of
00:06:43.920 | His manifold
00:06:46.680 | perfections.
00:06:48.800 | In the same sermon, Pastor John went on to conclude like this.
00:06:52.200 | The heavens are telling the glory of God.
00:06:56.320 | Psalm 19.1. What does that mean? It means He's shouting at us.
00:07:00.760 | He shouts with clouds. He shouts with blue expanse. He shouts with gold on the horizons.
00:07:08.480 | He shouts with galaxies and stars. He's shouting, "I
00:07:13.040 | am
00:07:15.000 | glorious.
00:07:16.360 | Open your eyes. It's like this, only better if you know me." And
00:07:21.280 | the Bible says,
00:07:23.840 | "Holy,
00:07:25.000 | holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.
00:07:28.320 | The whole earth is full of His glory." If you had eyes to see in this room,
00:07:35.800 | you would see the glory of God
00:07:38.720 | everywhere.
00:07:40.800 | We need eyes.
00:07:42.240 | We need eyes more than we need anything.
00:07:44.240 | The God of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the knowledge of the
00:07:49.640 | glory of
00:07:52.000 | Christ in the gospel.
00:07:54.640 | So I ask,
00:07:56.480 | do you see it? Do you love it? You were made for this.
00:08:00.760 | Deep down in your heart, if you're a
00:08:04.560 | totally disinterested person sitting there tonight, you're just eager for the service to be over, there will come a day,
00:08:11.440 | I hope tonight,
00:08:13.440 | when
00:08:14.960 | enough of the crust is scraped off that you will say, "I'm made for this.
00:08:21.960 | This is why I exist to see that.
00:08:24.880 | Everything is pointing to that. All the glory that I thought was so attractive is going there.
00:08:31.400 | This is all husks and ashes.
00:08:33.440 | He was right. The Bible was right. Jesus was right."
00:08:38.080 | I hope it will not be too late when that happens for you.
00:08:42.080 | That clip was taken from John Piper's sermon, "To Him be Glory Forevermore," preached on December 17th, 2006.
00:08:50.600 | You can find that entire sermon at Zerringod.org. And speaking of God's glory,
00:08:55.160 | it reminds me of an episode of this podcast we recorded titled, "Natural Disasters and Pastoral Ministry," episode number 113.
00:09:02.440 | I asked Pastor John why he chooses to tweet and blog in the midst of destructive natural disasters like tornadoes and hurricanes, and
00:09:09.080 | there he talks about pastoring a church into the glory of God. Check it out in the podcast archive. That was episode number 113.
00:09:16.680 | Another interesting episode on God's glory is titled, "Is God a Needy Vacuum Trying to Suck Praise Out of Us?" That was episode number 293.
00:09:23.960 | There, Pastor John addresses some public criticism head-on.
00:09:27.960 | Specifically, if God is glory-centered, does this create a sort of self-glorifying black hole in New Calvinism?
00:09:34.440 | Thanks for listening to this podcast. I'm your host Tony Reinke, and we will be back tomorrow.
00:09:39.880 | [END]
00:09:42.760 | You
00:09:44.760 | [BLANK_AUDIO]