The Glorious House

“For thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘Once more in a little while, I am going to shake the heavens and the earth, the sea also and the dry land. I will shake all the nations; and they will come with the wealth of all nations, and I will fill this house with glory,’ says the Lord of hosts. ‘The silver is Mine and the gold is Mine,’ declares the Lord of hosts. ‘The latter glory of this house will be greater than the former,’ says the Lord of hosts, ‘and in this place I will give peace,’ declares the Lord of hosts” (Haggai 2:6-9).

I had the joy of speaking during the last session of a women’s conference at our church yesterday morning. We looked at the great contrast between Solomon’s Temple, destroyed in 586 B.C. by the Babylonians, and the second Temple, completed in 515 B.C. At the dedication of its foundation, the weeping of the folks who remembered the splendor of the first Temple blended with the joyful shouts of the young folks, who were excited to be rebuilding the Temple, even if it were much smaller (Ezra 3:10-13). The LORD, aware of the temptation to discouragement, asks, “who is left among you who saw this temple in its former glory? And how do you see it now? Does it not seem to you like nothing in comparison” (Haggai 2:3). He spoke the thoughts of many of them, no doubt. He then gives them a triple “take courage…take courage…take courage” (2:4), reminding them of the promise of His presence rooted in the Exodus itself (2:5). He ends the sermon with a foreshadowing of a greater glory.

That glory is the global Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. I didn’t have time to trace this out in yesterday’s sermon (I was focusing on taking courage for God’s glory), but Haggai’s prophecy here fits into a cover-to-cover theme in the Bible. The “wealth of the nations” will be brought into God’s “house,” and He will fill it with a glory that will make Solomon’s Temple look like nothing. And there, He promises, He “will give peace.”

Let’s go back.

Noah, after the Flood and after his being sinned against by “Ham, the father of Canaan” (Genesis 9:20-24), gives this prophecy:

“Blessed be the LORD,
The God of Shem [father of the Semites, the Jews];
And let Canaan be his servant.

May God enlarge Japheth [the father of the nations],
And let him dwell in the tents of Shem;
And let Canaan be his servant” (Genesis 9:26,27).

The LORD is blessed. His old covenant relationship with the children of Shem (and Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) is foretold (“the LORD, the God of Shem”). Here’s the awesome part: God’s plan to bring the Gentiles into the new covenant is also foretold! God will cause the nations to grow, and will bring them into the “tents” of His covenant people. This is the new covenant, the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It’s the glory described in Ephesians 2:11-22. As Peter the apostle (a Jew) said at the first Church Council in Antioch, “God…made no distinction between us [Jewish believers in Christ] and them [Gentile believers in Christ], cleansing their hearts by faith…we believe that we are saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, in the same way as they also are” (Acts 15:9,11).

The nations are brought into the house of God.

Eleven generations after Noah, Abraham shows the depth of his faith and almost sacrifices his son Isaac on Mount Moriah. After God provides “for Himself the lamb for the burnt offering” (22:8), another Gospel promise is made by the LORD to Abraham: “In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 22:18). The nations will find their blessing “in [Abraham’s] seed.” The apostle Paul will tell us this “seed” (singular) is Christ (Galatians 3:16) – Jesus, Jewish descendant of Shem and Abraham. In Shem’s descendant the descendants of Japheth will be blessed.

That two examples of the beginning of the Book. Let’s go the end of the Book.

“I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. And the city has no need of the sun or of the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God has illumined it, and its lamp is the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. In the daytime (for there will be no night there) its gates will never be closed; and they will bring the glory and the honor of the nations into it; and nothing unclean, and no one who practices abomination and lying, shall ever come into it, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life” (Revelation 21:22-27).

What is brought into the city? The “glory” of “the kings of the earth” (21:24). This is paralleled with “the glory and honor of the nations” in 21:26, but it is not until 21:27 that we get a third parallel that makes clear what this “glory and honor” is. Just as “glory” is brought “into it” (21:24) and “the glory and honor” is brought “into it” (21:26), “those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life” come “into it” (21:27). The “glory and honor of the nations” are the saved from out of the nations, “whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.”

God has brought the wealth, the glory, the honor of the nations into His house, making it glorious. We know that the “house of God” in the New Testament is the Church, the people of God in Christ (1 Corinthians 3:9-17; 6:19,20; 2 Corinthians 6:16; Ephesians 2:19-22; 1 Timothy 3:15; Hebrews 3:6; 1 Peter 2:4,5). Seeing all of this, then, we know that God’s house is global – all believers in Christ throughout the nations. He dwells with them through His Holy Spirit. While Solomon’s Temple was on Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the new covenant House of God covers the planet. It is greater than the kingdoms of this world – God’s shaking of “the heavens and earth” is an overthrowing of kingdoms and their powers during His gathering to “fill this house with glory” (Haggai 2:21,22). Solomon’s Temple was visited by those faithful old covenant Jews who obeyed the pilgrimage feasts, but the new covenant House of God is filled with Jews who believe in Christ and those “from every tribe and tongue and people and nation” (Revelation 5:9).

“Arise, shine; for your light has come,

And the glory of the LORD has risen upon you.

For behold, darkness will cover the earth

And deep darkness the peoples;

But the LORD will rise upon you.

Nations will come to your light,

And kings to the brightness of your rising.

Lift up your eyes round about and see;

They all gather together, they come to you.

Your sons will come from afar,

And your daughters will be carried in their arms.

Then you will see and be radiant,

And your heart will thrill and rejoice;

Because the abundance of the sea will be turned to you,

The wealth of the nations will come to you…

…and I shall glorify My glorious house” (Isaiah 60:1-5,7).

She is beautiful. Rejoice!

Reading Pluto with Piper

“A sad spectacle. If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly. If they be not inhabited, what a waste of space.”

- Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)

While Carl Sagan (1934-1996) paraphrased Carlyle, it is in the movie Contact (Warner Brothers, 1997), based on Sagan’s book, where the quote is most popularly known: “...I guess I’d say if it’s just us, seems like an awful waste of space.”

I think of this whenever something significant happens in our exploration and examination of the universe. This week NASA’s New Horizons probe flew by Pluto, giving us a beautifully clear view of this outlying member of our solar system’s neighborhood. Billions of miles away, Pluto and its five moons have long just been a fuzzy dot on the best of our telescopes. To see so clearly something so exceedingly remote is astounding and exciting to me. I am mindful, though, of the fact that Pluto’s massive orbit and distance from us is a pinprick in size compared the vastness of the rest of the created order.

So, is it a waste of space? Only if we’re the reference point.

John Piper helpfully puts Pluto (and all else above us) in a biblical context that I think is appropriate to quote this week. Several years ago, I led a group of men to read through Piper’s Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ (Crossway, 2004) at a downtown coffee shop. This is what he has to say concerning this remarkable universe (including little Pluto and his moons):

“The created universe is all about glory. The deepest longing of the human heart and the deepest meaning of heaven and earth are summed up in this: the glory of God. The universe was made to show it, and we were made to see it and savor it. Nothing less will do. Which is why the world is as disordered and as dysfunctional as it is. We have exchanged the glory of God for other things (Romans 1:23). ‘The heavens declare the glory of God’ (Psalm 19:1). That is why the universe exists. It’s all about glory” (pg. 13).

Piper goes on to give an example of the vastness of the universe as seen through the Hubble telescope. But let’s consider what the little New Horizons probe has allowed us to do. We see details on a globe smaller than our own moon which is over three billion miles away. It takes light from the sun 5.3 hours to get to Pluto at 187,000 miles per second; it only takes light 8 minutes to get to the Earth from the sun. And we now know that Pluto is merely one of perhaps hundreds of similar worlds that make up the Kuiper Belt (the rural backwoods of our solar system). I got to run part of the Cactus to Cloud 50K last May (I say “part” because I had to drop out at mile 19.5). At mile 10, the race went by the National Solar Observatory near Cloudcroft, New Mexico. Starting at the observatory, there were signs on the road showing the scale of the distance of the planets from the sun. Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars were fairly close to the observatory. Pluto was a long way out. But that little dwarf planet (still a planet in New Mexico according to House Joint Memorial 54 of the 48^th Legislature in March, 2007), which is invisible to the naked eye here on Earth, has now been clearly seen! It’s amazing!

Back to Piper: “Sometimes people stumble over this vastness in relation to the apparent insignificance of man. It does seem to make us infinitesimally small. But the meaning of this magnitude is not mainly about us. It’s about God. ‘The heavens declare the glory of God,’ says the Scripture. The reason for ‘wasting’ so much space on a universe to house a speck of humanity is to make a point about our Maker, not us. ‘Lift up your eyes on high and see: who created [the stars...and Pluto]? He who brings out their host by number, calling them all by name, by the greatness of our might, and because he is strong in power not one of them is missing’ (Isaiah 40:26). The deepest longing of the human soul is to know and enjoy the glory of God. We were made for this...to see it, to savor it, and to show it – that is why we exist. The untracked, unimaginable stretches of the created universe are a parable about the inexhaustible ‘riches of his glory’ (Romans 9:23). The physical eye is meant to say to the spiritual eye, ‘Not this, but the Maker of this, is the Desire of your soul’...the ache in every human heart is an ache for this. But we suppress it and do not see fit to have God in our knowledge (Romans 1:28). Therefore the entire creation has fallen into disorder...we were made to know and treasure the glory of God above all things; and when we trade that treasure for images, everything is disordered...the healing of our soul begins by restoring the glory of God to its flaming, all-attracting place at the center. We are all starved for the glory of God, not self. No one goes to the Grand Canyon to increase self-esteem. Why do we go? Because there is greater healing for the soul in beholding splendor than there is in beholding self. Indeed, what could be more ludicrous in a vast and glorious universe like this than a human being, on the speck called earth, standing in front of a mirror trying to find significance in his own self-image? It is a great sadness that this is the gospel of the modern world. But it is not the Christian Gospel...the Christian Gospel is about ‘the glory of Christ,’ not about me. And when it is – in some measure – about me, it is not about my being made much of by God, but about God mercifully enabling me to enjoy making much of him forever. What was the most loving thing Jesus could do for us? What was the endpoint, the highest good, of the Gospel? Redemption? Forgiveness? Justification? Reconciliation? Sanctification? Adoption? Are not all of these great wonders simply means to something greater? Something final? Something that Jesus asked his Father to give us? ‘Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me’ (John 17:24)” (pgs. 13-16).

Seeing Pluto, Charon, Hydra, Nix, Styx, and Kerberos is just another step in the unending riches of the universe. We’ve discovered 484 planetary systems in other solar systems exponentially further away than distant Pluto. We’ll most likely never see them with the detail the pics of Pluto will have in the upcoming days, weeks, and months. This universe will continue to astound us as long as we keep looking up. Mis-read it, and it is Carlyle’s “sad spectacle” because it refuses to make much of us. May we read this story rightly that the heavens are telling, for “the heavens are telling of the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1). It is the glory of the Trinity, the one true God Who is eternally three Persons.

“In the beginning God [the Father] created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. Then God said [the Son Who is the creating Word, John 1:1-3; cf. Colossians 1:15-17; Hebrews 1:1-3], ‘Let there be light’; and there was light. God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day...then God said, ‘Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years; and let them be for lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth’; and it was so. God made the two great lights, the greater light to govern the day, and the lesser light to govern the night; He made the stars also. God placed them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, and to govern the day and the night, and to separate the light from the darkness; and God saw that it was good” (Genesis 1:1-5,14-18).

We are then meant, with the minds uniquely created for us, to consider the reality to which this universe points. “For God, Who said [in Genesis 1:3], ‘Light shall shine out of darkness,’ is the One Who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves” (2 Corinthians 4:6,7). This is the message of Pluto: we see we are smaller than we thought, and the Creator-God Who made this tiny, far-flung world in all its beautiful detail is even greater in glory than we could previously imagine. This same God is not merely concerned with making cosmic artwork. He has stooped down to us in His Son to save us from our self-centered foolishness and rebellion against Him. This is Good News, and it is truly glorious.

Did you hear Piper? “...there is greater healing for the soul in beholding splendor than there is in beholding self.” Marvel at what He has done, then look to the greater glory of His Son Jesus for your salvation, and find the wholeness you’ve been seeking all your life.

The Person of the Delight of God

"The happiness of God is first and foremost a happiness in His Son. Thus when we share in the happiness of God, we share in the very pleasure that God has in the Son. Ultimately this is what makes the gospel good news. It opens the way for us to see and savor the glory of Christ [which is the Father's glory perfectly reflected]. And when we reach that ultimate goal we will find ourselves savoring the Son with the very happiness that the Father has in the Son" (John Piper, God is the Gospel, pg. 101).

I think I'd tie in Piper's great influence, Jonathan Edwards. In his unpublished essay on the Trinity, he says this about the delight between the Father and Son as it relates to the Holy Spirit: "The Godhead being thus begotten by God's loving an idea of Himself and shewing forth in a distinct subsistence or person in that idea, there proceeds a most pure act, and an infinitely holy and sacred energy arises between the Father and Son in mutually loving and delighting in each other, for their love and joy is mutual, (Prov. 8:30) 'I was daily His delight rejoicing always before Him.' This is the eternal and most perfect and essential act of the Divine nature, wherein the Godhead acts to an infinite degree and in the most perfect manner possible. The Deity becomes all act, the Divine essence itself flows out and is as it were breathed forth in love and joy. So that the Godhead therein stands forth in yet another manner of subsistence, and there proceeds the third Person in the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, viz., the Deity in act, for there is no other act but the act of the will...the Holy Ghost is the deity subsisting in act, or the divine essence flowing out and breathed forth in God's infinite love to and delight in Himself."

While Piper does utilize these Edwards quotes in a footnote (The Pleasures of God, pgs. 44-45), I don't think he makes the application to our lives as he could have. In the one living and true God Who is three Persons, the Holy Spirit is the joy and delight the Father has in the Son (Who is eternally and perfectly reflecting His glory); the Holy Spirit is also the joy and delight the Son has in the Father (Whose glory He eternally and perfectly reflects). The Holy Spirit is the eternal Person of the joy and delight of God. It is not a happiness based on circumstance, but on the unchanging reality of the Father and Son's delight and joy in each other. Nothing in this world or in our lives can change this, for it was the reality before there was space and time. It is eternally unchanging and foundational.

What I wish Piper would have done was make the pastoral application of this truth. This Spirit Who is eternal joy is the same Spirit Who is given to believers. "...the fruit of the Spirit is...joy" (Galatians 5:22). Our reading and consideration of Galatians 5:22 usually leads us to think the Holy Spirit should make us happy - we focus on the emotion opposite depression. This is why I started with the quote I did, though. The Holy Spirit is not a "positive emotion generator" in our lives. He is the joy and delight of the Father for the Son, and the Son for the Father - a delight based on the Son's perfect reflecting of the Father's glory. The Holy Spirit is given to us to seal us in the Father-glorifying Person of the Son. Jesus said of this relationship: "He [the Holy Spirit] will glorify Me [the Son], for He will take what is Mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is Mine; therefore I said that He will take what is Mine and declare it to you" (John 16:14,15).

The joy that is the fruit of the Holy Spirit is not an unfocused joy (a vague, mystical, inexplicable emotion). The joy that is the fruit of the Holy Spirit is not the result of the material, earthly blessings He might bring into our lives. The joy that is the fruit of the Holy Spirit is the result of Him drawing us into the eternal relationship between the Father and the Son, which is all delight and joy in the glory of the Father in the Person of the Son.

The Spirit uses the means of the Word, prayer, the Lord's Supper, and the Christ-exalting fellowship of the Church to draw us closer to Christ, Who is the object of the Father's eternal delight. In turn, we see the Father in the Son (John 14:9) and experience the eternal joy of the Son in the Father's glory. The 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith describes the Spirit's use of means to bring us grace: "...[the grace of faith] is...increased and strengthened by the work of the Spirit through the ministry of the Word, and also by the administration of baptism and the Lord's Supper, prayer, and other means appointed by God" (14.1). The "grace of faith" is the Spirit's bringing us into the joyous relationship between the Father and the Son. He uses the ordinary (continual, accessible to all believers) means of grace as they are observed in the Church.

The Trinity is eternally joy. In the salvation He has graciously given us, we are brought into His eternally delightful fellowship for His glory and our eternal joy. Do not grieve this Person of joy, but increase your commitment, obedience, and involvement in the Scripture-ordained means He uses to draw you into His joy as He helps you see the Son more and more. "Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord Who is the Spirit" (2 Corinthians 3:17,18).

Ezekiel, Glory, and Advent

We’re in the midst of a survey of the books of the Bible in our Wednesday evening service. Last night we looked at Ezekiel. I was struck by a powerful theme that runs through Ezekiel which is very appropriate to the Advent season.

Ezekiel records the glory of the Lord departing from Solomon’s Temple, which had in that day become a haven for idolatry.

“Then the glory of the LORD went out from the threshold of the house, and stood over the cherubim. And the cherubim lifted up their wings and mounted up from the earth before my eyes as they went out, with the wheels beside them. And they stood at the entrance of the east gate of the house of the LORD, and the glory of the God of Israel was over them...say, ‘Thus says the Lord GOD: Though I removed them far off among the nations, and though I scattered them among the countries, yet I have been a sanctuary to them for a while in the countries where they have gone.’ Therefore say, ‘Thus says the Lord GOD: “I will gather you from the peoples and assemble you out of the countries where you have been scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel. And when they come there, they will remove from it all its detestable things and all its abominations. And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in My statutes and keep My rules and obey them. And they shall be My people, and I will be their God. But as for those whose heart goes after their detestable things and their abominations, I will bring their deeds upon their own heads,” declares the Lord GOD.’ Then the cherubim lifted up their wings, with the wheels beside them, and the glory of the God of Israel was over them. And the glory of the LORD went up from the midst of the city and stood on the mountain that is on the east side of the city” (10:18,19; 11:16-23).

Have you ever noticed in your reading of Ezra-Nehemiah that, in the rebuilding of the Temple following the Babylonian Exile, there was no theophany as there was at the dedication of Solomon’s Temple? We have no glory, no cloud, no divine voice, nothing.

The glory of the Lord left the Temple in Ezekiel’s day, the days of the destruction of that Temple. The prophets of the Restoration promise a return of glory (Haggai 2:1-9; Zechariah 2:1-5), but we don’t see it happen in their day. We read Haggai commanding them to build God’s house instead of their own (showing us where their hearts were), and we read Malachi already indicting them for neglecting the worship of God. The Babylonian Exile had taught them little, and certainly hadn’t changed their hearts. The seeds are planted in the Restoration that, over four centuries, become the false religion, the twisting of old covenant Scripture, that Jesus confronts in His ministry.

The Restoration sees the rebuilding of a much smaller Temple, devoid of the glory of God, filled soon with heartless worship. It does not see what Ezekiel promised, a God-given new heart to the people that enables them to obey and love Him from the core of their being.

What about Ezekiel’s Temple in chapters 40-48?

First, let me point out that this Temple is described “in visions of God” (40:2), just like Ezekiel’s eating of the scroll (3:1-3) and the angelic destruction of the idolaters in Jerusalem (9:1-11). We understand both the latter to be spiritual depictions of earthly realities (God’s speaking His Word through Ezekiel and the destruction of Jerusalem at the hand of the Babylonians). Why would the Ezekiel Temple, also given in vision, be any different? Why would we expect this to be a physical Temple, when Ezekiel didn’t physically eat a scroll and angels didn't physically slaughtered the ungodly in 586 B.C.? No, this is a picture of a spiritual reality. What is the earthly manifestation?

Second, notice that the entire Temple vision is conditional upon repentance: “As for you, son of man, describe to the house of Israel the temple, that they may be ashamed of their iniquities; and they shall measure the plan. And if they are ashamed of all that they have done, make known to them the design of the temple, its arrangement, its exits and its entrances, that is, its whole design; and make known to them as well all its statutes and its whole design and all its laws, and write it down in their sight, so that they may observe all its laws and all its statutes and carry them out” (43:10,11).

“If.”

The command to “repent” is the first word of the Gospel in the dawning of the new covenant era (Matthew 3:2; 4:17; Mark 1:15; 6:12; Luke 13:1-5; Acts 2:38; 3:19; 17:30; 26:20). With God’s granting of the gift of repentance to both Jews (Acts 5:31) and Gentiles (Acts 11:18) in the Gospel age, we should expect the building of the true, eternal, spiritual Temple, from which the river of life flows to bring life to the world.

This is exactly what we see. The Church is the Spirit-built Temple of God, and is the only true Temple of God described in the New Testament (Ephesians 2:11-22; 2 Corinthians 6:16).

This is Advent. As we read of the departure of the glory of God from Solomon’s Temple in Ezekiel last night, I couldn’t help but think of the return of God’s glory.

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).

At the marriage in Cana, after He turned water to really good wine: “This, the first of His signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested His glory. And His disciples believed in Him” (John 2:11).

At the resurrection of Lazarus: “Jesus said to her, ‘Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?’” (John 11:40).

“Though He had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in Him, so that the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled: ‘Lord, who has believed what he heard from us, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?’ Therefore they could not believe. For again Isaiah said, ‘He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, lest they see with their eyes, and understand with their heart, and turn, and I would heal them.’ Isaiah said these things because He saw His glory and spoke of Him” (John 12:37-41).

In His high-priestly prayer: “And now, Father, glorify Me in Your own presence with the glory that I had with You before the world existed” (John 17:5).

This Advent season, celebrate the presence of the glory of God through Christ by the Holy Spirit in the Church.

Let’s end with the final phrase of Ezekiel, “the LORD is there” (48:35). The covenant presence of God is fully and finally realized in Christ alone, Who is “God with us” (Matthew 1:23; cf. 28:20; Revelation 21:3).

God bless us this Advent with a clearer knowledge and understanding of the presence of His glory through a deeper illumination of His Word in our gatherings.

Magnificent Theft

I have the opportunity to preach this Sunday at a mission church with which our home church has some connection, so our family made the 8-hour trip a few days early to spend time together. While in this area, we checked off a destination that’s been on our list for over ten years: the Great Sand Dunes National Park in southern Colorado. It’s truly awe-inspiring, and well worth the long wait to see it (I got to summit the second-largest dune in the park – 650 feet tall...amazing and literally breath-taking!).

While waiting in the Visitor’s Center for a summer storm to pass, I saw this sign out on the overlook and ran outside between lightning flashes to get a pic of it:

The sand dunes exist and are remarkably stable through a confluence of geography and weather...just incredible. But “coincidence”? With the addition of the adjective “magnificent,” what we have here is a worship statement exulting in chaos or chance. It is a sad theft. Unsurprising, but sad. Glory has been stolen from the Son of God: “God...in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, Whom He appointed heir of all things, through Whom also He made the world. And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power” (Hebrews 1:1-3).

I say “unsurprising” because, of course, this is exactly what the Scriptures say humanity does: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures” (Romans 1:18-23). This sign at the overlook is a nice, clean, modest example of the willful suppression of “the truth in unrighteousness,” a sign of the present and abiding wrath of God against all who, in seeing an astounding display of “His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature,” steal His glory and give it away to randomness.

When truth-suppressors give themselves to “all his thoughts are, ‘there is no God’” (Psalm 10:4), they set themselves up as the highest intelligent, willful organizing agents in the universe. There is no higher intelligence, so all balancing acts in Creation (like the Great Sand Dunes National Park) are the products of happy chance. We can climb, play, “wow,” but miss the whole point. In the video in the Visitor’s Center, there was more than one clip showing someone sitting high atop a sandy ridge looking meditatively off into the distance. In fact, we saw several people doing just that in person. So close...brought to the edge of the contemplation of truth, but for the most part missing it. Admiring the great signpost, but missing where the arrow is pointing.

This is why we must preach the Gospel. General, or natural, revelation is powerful and helpful, but it does not save the truth-suppressing human soul.

“The Holy Scripture is the only sufficient, certain, and infallible rule of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience. Although the light of nature and the works of creation and providence manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God so much that man is left without any excuse, they are not sufficient to provide that knowledge of God and His will which is necessary for salvation. Therefore it pleased the Lord at sundry times and in divers manners to reveal Himself, and to declare His will to His church; and afterward, for the better preserving and propagating of the truth, and for the more sure establishment and comfort of the church, protecting it against the corruption of the flesh and the malice of Satan and the world, it pleased the Lord to commit His revealed Truth wholly to writing. Therefore the Holy Scriptures are most necessary” (1689 Baptist Confession, 1.1).

This is why Paul, in his last will and testament to Timothy, as he passes the baton to the next generation of the Church, adjures him: “You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work. I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths. But you, be sober in all things, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry” (2 Timothy 3:14-4:5).

We must continue in the Word. We must teach, reprove, correct, train, and work out of the Word. We must preach the Word.

And, when standing before and exploring an unbelievably beautiful signpost to His absolutely wonderful “invisible attributes...eternal power and divine nature,” we must praise Him with great praise for His magnificent glory.

“Worthy are You, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honor and power; for You created all things, and because of Your will they existed, and were created” (Revelation 4:11).

Jeremiah's Turning #3: A Shameful Glory

Following the word “turn” (שוב) through Jeremiah’s prophecy.

“God says, ‘If a husband divorces his wife and she goes from him and belongs to another man, will he still return [שוב] to her? Will not that land be completely polluted? But you are a harlot with many lovers; yet you turn [שוב] to Me,’ declares the LORD. ‘Lift up your eyes to the bare heights and see; where have you not been violated? By the roads you have sat for them like an Arab in the desert, and you have polluted a land with your harlotry and with your wickedness. Therefore the showers have been withheld, and there has been no spring rain. Yet you had a harlot's forehead; you refused to be ashamed’” (Jeremiah 3:1-3).

Jeremiah draws from the foundational Law about divorce and remarriage (Deuteronomy 24:1-4). The covenant people had turned away from God to pursue every other false god they could find. Their idolatry had taken them down a path that caused them to be “seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron” (1 Timothy 4:2).

Twice our prophet tells us that the people’s forgetting how to blush triggered their fall: “‘Were they ashamed because of the abomination they have done? They were not even ashamed at all; they did not even know how to blush. Therefore they shall fall among those who fall; at the time that I punish them, they shall be cast down,’ says the LORD” (Jeremiah 6:15; 8:12). Now, falling, they seek to return to their divine covenant Spouse.

Yesterday I heard someone say, tongue-in-cheek, that they preferred the New Testament since the God of the Old Testament was “mean.” Well, has He changed? No.

The apostle Paul echoes the prophet Jeremiah’s heart-break over a people that claim – in name – to follow the Lord, but are better witnesses to their shameful lifestyles than for Christ: “For many walk, of whom I often told you, and now tell you even weeping, that they are enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose god is their appetite, and whose glory is in their shame, who set their minds on earthly things” (Philippians 3:18,19).

They “glory...in their shame.” I don’t know what you think of when you hear this phrase, but, as a pastor, I’ll tell you what connections I make. I think of teens and young adults (and, come to think about it, older adults) who, while making something of a claim to following Christ, brag about their libertine and lawless deeds, worldviews, and attitudes...some of them I’ve even baptized myself. I join Jeremiah and Paul in the heartbreak...but I know from the Spirit’s testimony through His Word to my own sin-struggle of a life that my heartbreak is nothing compared to the Father’s.

Lord, don’t let us forget how to blush.

Lord, let it be Your glory alone that is our singular and highest passion above all things, at any cost.

Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy.

Finishing the Sermon of Glory

I finished preaching a message yesterday that I left incomplete five years ago. There are moments in the Christian walk where you learn something from the Holy Spirit as you worship in His Word with other believers; these moments are beautiful and exhilarating...and bittersweet, as well. To have said something beautiful from the Word about our incredible God but – at the same time – leave the whole tale untold is heartbreaking. Thank God for His grace in Christ!

Years ago I preached on Exodus 33 & 34 a message called “God’s Glory Is His Character.” Moses, encouraged by successfully mediating between an unworthy group of idolaters in covenant with God to be His people and to be the means of Christ coming into the world on one hand, and a holy God justly offended by their idolatry on the other (Moses foreshadowing how Christ would have to intercede on our behalf today!), makes an amazing request: “I pray You, show me Your glory!” (Exodus 33:18).

Now, the folks at the foot of Sinai would have thought Moses crazy to ask such a thing. After all, God had descended upon the mountain with impressive special effects: “So it came about on the third day, when it was morning, that there were thunder and lightning flashes and a thick cloud upon the mountain and a very loud trumpet sound...Mount Sinai was all in smoke because the LORD descended upon it in fire; and its smoke ascended like the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain quaked violently...the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder...” (19:16-19). And Moses was in the midst of all this up on the mountain! How could he ask to see God’s glory?! Didn’t he have eyes to see and ears to hear all that surrounded him?! Moses had a vision of his knowledge of God that went beyond the special effects. These things, as impressive (and scary) as they were, did not show God’s glory.

God tells Moses he cannot see His face, for “no man can see Me and live!” (33:20). But the covenant God does show Moses His glory (which He also calls “all My goodness,” vs. 19) through almost creedal pronouncements about Himself: “I Myself 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...the LORD, the LORD God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; Who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, Who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations” (33:19; 34:6,7). God’s glory is His character and sovereignty, not the special effects or supernatural sound system.

That was the message I preached several years ago. It’s true and it’s awesome, but that’s not the whole story. Not by a long shot.

This invisible God revealed Himself perfectly and completely when God the Son, second Person of the Trinity (one God in three Persons), added humanity to His eternal and full divinity. The invisible God became visible in His glory:

• “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God...and the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth....no one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God Who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him” (John 1:1,2,14,18).
• “Philip said to Him, ‘Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how can you say, “Show us the Father”?’” (John 14:8,9).
• “He is the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15).
• “God...in these last days has spoken to us in His Son...He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature” (Hebrews 1:1-3).

The Son, through the visibility of His divinity shining forth through His humanity, showed us the invisible Father’s glory. This was a glory the Father and Son shared from all eternity, being the one true God (John 17:5).

This is wonderful and incredible...God’s glory revealed perfectly and finally in His Son Jesus. But even this is not the whole story.

Yesterday afternoon, in the CLD class I help teach for the Southwest Baptist Association, we were covering glorification (described by the Baptist Faith & Message 2000 as “the culmination of salvation and is the final blessed and abiding state of the redeemed,” IV.D). I am thankful I got to finish the sermon left incomplete five years ago.

What is our glorification? Paul tells us. “...those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son...these whom He predestined...He also glorified” (Romans 8:29,30). To be “glorified” is “to be conformed to the image of His Son,” Who is the perfect reflection of the invisible Father’s glory from all eternity. The glorious goodness and perfection of the Godhead in all its unimaginable fullness, shared between the Father and Son perfectly, is applied to us by the Holy Spirit, Who brings us into union with the Son unto eternal glory.

Father and Son share glory. Moses sees glory, of which the Law revealed through him showed all of us to fall short as sinners (Romans 3:23). The Son fully reveals glory. The Holy Spirit applies the saving work of the Son to us, bringing us into union with the Son unto glorification. We are brought into the glory of the Triune God for eternity. A full circle of glory, told from cover to cover in the Bible and made reality in our lives through the preaching of that glory.

We get to share this story, that others might by the grace of God “see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, Who is the image of God...God, Who said, ‘Light shall shine out of darkness,’ is the One Who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:4,6).

Believe in His glory through Christ unto infinitely satisfying union with that glory forever. That’s the whole story.