What is Glory?
The Bible uses the word “glory” in many different ways. It can be used in both a spiritual sense, and a secular sense.
The dictionary definition of glory is
- High honor or renown won by notable achievements
- Magnificence or great beauty, splendor
- To take great pride or pleasure in
These are the secular definitions.
For example, nations have glory. It is their wealth, power, opulence, and abundance.
Matthew 4:8 Again, the devil took Him up on an exceedingly high mountain, and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory.
Revelation 21:24 And the nations of those who are saved shall walk in its light (speaking of the New Jerusalem), and the kings of the earth bring their glory and honor into it.
Glory is also a verb. You can give glory to God, glorify Him. And in that sense it means to praise Him, and to give Him credit for His deeds and works.
Psalms 29:1-2 1 Give unto the Lord, O you mighty ones, Give unto the Lord glory and strength.
2 Give unto the Lord the glory due to His name; Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.
You can also glory in yourself, which is connected with pride. Some pride is OK, like being proud of your children. And you can be proud of your own accomplishments, as long as you don’t try to elevate yourself above others, and you acknowledge God’s hand in your success. Not doing so can have some grave consequences.
Proverbs 25:27 It is not good to eat much honey; So to seek one’s own glory is not glory.
Jeremiah 9:23-24 23 Thus says the Lord: “Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, Let not the mighty man glory in his might, Nor let the rich man glory in his riches;
24 But let him who glories glory in this, That he understands and knows Me, That I am the Lord, exercising lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth. For in these I delight,” says the Lord.
Isaiah 42:8 I am the Lord, that is My name; And My glory I will not give to another, Nor My praise to carved images.
There is the incident of King Herod who gave a moving speech, and the people shouted “The voice of a god and not a man!”
Acts 12:23 Then immediately an angel of the Lord struck him, because he did not give glory to God. And he was eaten by worms and died.
The Glory of God
The glory of God is manifested in many ways. One way is through the majesty of His creation.
Psalms 19:1 The heavens declare the glory of God; And the firmament shows His handiwork.
Have you ever been in magnificent scenery, and felt the presence of God there?
The Hebrew word for the glory of God, kabod, has its root from weight or heaviness. It was very common for people encountering the glory of God to fall on their faces.
The glory of God was often manifested as a bright cloud. The Israelites had a name for it, shekinah. It was the visible manifestation of God’s glory on the earth. It was His very presence.
Dedication of Solomon’s Temple
2 Chronicles 5:13-14 13 indeed it came to pass, when the trumpeters and singers were as one, to make one sound to be heard in praising and thanking the Lord, and when they lifted up their voice with the trumpets and cymbals and instruments of music, and praised the Lord, saying: “For He is good, For His mercy endures forever,” that the house, the house of the Lord, was filled with a cloud,
14 so that the priests could not continue ministering because of the cloud; for the glory of the Lord filled the house of God.
2 Chronicles 7:1-2 1 When Solomon had finished praying, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices; and the glory of the Lord filled the temple.
2 And the priests could not enter the house of the Lord, because the glory of the Lord had filled the Lord’s house.
Moses
Moses had a lot of experience with God’s glory. He would go up into the mountain on Sinai for extended periods of time (like 40 days), walking up into the cloud that covered the mountain, like when he received the 10 commandments. And when he came down, he was saturated with that glory, so that his face visibly glowed. It spooked the people so bad that he had to hide his face under a veil. Of course, after a while, the glow faded.
Moses had a special relationship with God. It was said that they spoke face to face. Now that was just an expression, because Moses never actually saw the face of God. But at one time, he asked to see Him.
Exodus 33:18-23 18 And he said, “Please, show me Your glory.”
19 Then He said, “I will make all My goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before you. I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.”
20 But He said, “You cannot see My face; for no man shall see Me, and live.”
21 And the Lord said, “Here is a place by Me, and you shall stand on the rock.
22 So it shall be, while My glory passes by, that I will put you in the cleft of the rock, and will cover you with My hand while I pass by.
23 Then I will take away My hand, and you shall see My back; but My face shall not be seen.”
Jesus
Jesus was a manifestation of God’s glory in the earth. He did so by doing the works of the Father, in miracles and healings.
John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
John 1:14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
There was the time that the physical manifestation of Jesus’ glory appeared in the Mount of Transfiguration.
Luke 9:29-31 29 As He prayed, the appearance of His face was altered, and His robe became white and glistening.
30 And behold, two men talked with Him, who were Moses and Elijah,
31 who appeared in glory and spoke of His decease which He was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.
And Jesus spoke of the time He would return to the glory He had in heaven, which He had laid down when He became a human being. He wants us to join him in His glory. (John 17:5)
Us
We have a destiny of glory also. Heaven is called “glory”. When we are resurrected, we will have glorified bodies that are like Jesus’.
But Jesus has also given us His glory.
John 17:22 And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one:
Referring to the glory on Moses’ face that he hid under the veil…
2 Corinthians 3:18 But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.
God’s Glory manifested Corporately
In summary, God’s glory is His presence manifested in the earth, and interacting with human beings. As believers, this is something that we seek. We want the heavens to be open, and God to come down.
Facilitating Glory
Is there something we can do to facilitate this? An attitude we can have, an atmosphere we can create, where God will feel welcome to be and move among us?
The answer is yes. There are attitudes we can have, and things we can do.
- Hunger
- Worship
- Sacrifice
- Obedience
Hunger
You are going to have to want it. Badly. Enough to put effort into it to seek after it.
Psalms 42:1 As the deer pants for the water brooks, So pants my soul for You, O God.
What did Jesus say about seeking?
Matthew 7:7 “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.
What is it that we are seeking and hungry for? Is it miracles and manifestations? Actually, yes, but only secondarily. First and foremost we are seeking and hungering for His presence. It just so happens that when He shows up, miracles and manifestations happen.
Jeremiah 29:11-13 11 For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.
12 Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you.
13 And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.
What is something that spiritually hungry people do that are seeking after God? They pray. They tell God what they are looking for.
Worship
A natural outflow of being hungry and seeking after God is worship. This is being enamored of God and expressing your love for Him.
Most often that is facilitated in a church service with music. It was actually King David that established music as an integral part of worshipping God in a congregation, and as a ministry. Music has the ability to set an atmosphere.
Now just because the band plays three or four praise and worship songs at the beginning of the service does not mean that the congregation has been worshipping.
People have to be ready to worship, and truth be told, most people who walk into the doors of the church on a Sunday morning are not immediately ready to worship. They have to be warmed up. And that usually takes some time, and pressing in. And if you only have a 15-20 minute worship set, it’s a good chance many won’t get there.
But if you have a core of hungry ones that are already “up” when they walk in the doors, you can. It’s like there is a critical mass. When you have a critical mass of people worshipping, they will bring the others with them.
When we were pastoring, and more recently when we were at Light the Bay church in Pittsbug, we had a monthly Sunday night meeting called Ignite. My wife Emily led them, usually she did a short teaching for 15 minutes, and then we went into worship for at least 45 minutes. And we always went deeper. There were times when we ended the service but no one wanted to go home because the presence of God was so tangible.
There are reasons why we went to a deeper level of worship in these meetings. First, it was an extra service on Sunday night, and it is generally the hungrier people that go to extra services. Second, we were there for the express purpose of worshipping. Third, we took the time to go deeper.
Sacrifice
Remember how the glory fell when Solomon dedicated the Temple? There was sacrifice involved. First of all, the wealth of the nation of Israel was poured into the building of that Temple, which in today’s money would have cost over a billion dollars. A good portion of that was amassed by David, who originally wanted to build the Temple, but God told him that his son Solomon was to do it.
On the day of the dedication, the sheer number of animals that were sacrificed was beyond extravagance.
There were different purposes for sacrifices in the Old Testament. One was a sin offering. In the New Testament, our sin offering has been accomplished once for all through Jesus Christ. He was the perfect sacrifice that not only covered, but remitted our sin. We never have to be concerned in making a sacrifice for our sin again, beyond having faith in Jesus Christ.
There was the sacrifice of the first fruits, which was the tithe. The tithe went to the support of the Levites and the Temple ministry. We still tithe today.
There were also thank and praise offerings.
Sacrifice is something that costs you. Now we don’t do animal sacrifices under the New Covenant. So what sacrifices do we offer under the New Testament?
Romans 12:1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.
A sacrifice is an offering of something of ours that we dedicate to God. We are to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice (not a burnt offering!).
People think of giving things up when they think of sacrifice. You know, like giving up Starbuck’s for Lent. And there may be that aspect of it. But it is not giving something up just for the sake of giving something up, it is putting one thing aside because you are giving a higher priority to something else.
2 Timothy 2:3-4 You therefore must endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.
4 No one engaged in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who enlisted him as a soldier.
The “affairs of this life” are not things that are wrong. They are things the soldier does not focus on because he has another purpose, of higher poriority.
1 Corinthians 6:20 For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.
Our sacrifice will usually involve putting our flesh down in some way.
That may be showing up an hour early to prayer before the service. That gets you spiritually attuned, so you are one of those that are already “up” when they band starts playing.
Sacrifice of Praise
Jeremiah 33:11 the voice of joy and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the voice of those who will say: “Praise the Lord of hosts, For the Lord is good, For His mercy endures forever”– and of those who will bring the sacrifice of praise into the house of the Lord. For I will cause the captives of the land to return as at the first,’ says the Lord.
Hebrews 13:15 Therefore by Him let us continually offer the sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name.
Giving praise and thanks to God is a sacrifice, and offering. That is especially true when you don’t feel like it. “But it’s not genuine, I’m just going through the motions”. It may start that way, but keep it up, and your feelings will change. If nothing else, you are being obedient to the scripture.
Obedience
Solomon was fulfilling a purpose of His life in building the Temple. And the whole nation was in on it. The Temple was built following the pattern shown to Moses. Obedience. And God filled it with His glory.
We should endeavor to be obedient to God in everything we have light on.
Going where God says to go, doing and saying what He tells us to do and say, will open up a channel for God’s glory to be poured out”.
*For more about this, see The Secret to Jesus’ Power.
