"One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: that 1 may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple”. Psalm 27:4
Last week I wrote about the glory of God. I simply defined glory as the beauty of God unveiled. Glory is all of God that makes God God. Glory is what you see and experience and feel when God goes public with his beauty.
King David longed to see the glory of God.“One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: that 1 may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple”(Psalm 27:4). His desire centered upon what he called the "One thing"; to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord, the incomparable, transcendent, all¬ satisfying, awe-inspiring beauty of God.The wonderful thing about God is that He desires us to see His glory. He wants us to not only see it, but cherish it, enjoy it. God means for us to see His glory with our eyes, know His glory in our minds, and relish his glory in our hearts, and reflect his glory in our lives.
Jonathan Edwards shows that this is the root of worship:
“God glorifies Himself toward the creatures . . . in two ways: 1. By appearing to . . . their understanding. 2. In communicating Himself to their hearts, and in their rejoicing and delighting in, and enjoying, the manifestations which He makes of Himself. . . . God is glorified not only by His glory's being seen, but by its being rejoiced in. . . . When those who see it delight in it, God is more glorified than if they only see it. His glory is then received by the whole soul, both by understanding and in the heart.”
Therefore, God is always manifesting His glory in creation, in providence, in scripture, and Pre-eminently in the face of Jesus (2 Corinthians 4:4). His purpose is designed to evoke breathtaking delight and incomparable joy. God’s glory is what makes Him eminently desirable, attractive, and quickening to the soul that it was made for another world. God has pulled back the curtain on His glory. “Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shines forth” (Psalm 50:2). He has disclosed Himself on the platform of creation and redemption that we might stand awestruck in his presence, beholding the sweet symmetry of His attributes, pondering the unfathomable depths of His greatness, baffled by the wisdom of His deeds and the limitless extent of His goodness and mercy and grace. This is His glory!
Throughout the Psalms we read of David’s passion for God’s glory. Read and catch his “One thing” passion:
Psalm 42:1-2, “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God”.
Psalm 63:1-3, “O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory…Your steadfast love is better than life.” Psalm 84:10, “For a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness.”
Psalm 16:2, 11; “I say to the LORD, "You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you… You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”
For David nearness to God in order to see Him in all his glory was the only experience that would truly satisfy him. Only God could satisfy a heart like David’s and David was a man after one thing: the glory of God. This is what we were created and redeemed for! This is the essence of loving God; as John Piper says, “being satisfied in Him”. Jonathan Edwards understood about the one thing. That’s why he wrote: “God’s is glorified not only in His glory being seen, but by in His glory being rejoiced in.” God’s glory satisfies the heart with joy and delight.
So what happens when we desire to see the glory of God? First, glory satisfies the heart with joy and delight. Secondly, God's glory transforms the soul. The encounter of the human soul with divine glory, is more than merely satisfying and enjoyable, it is profoundly transforming. There is within it the power to change our lives into something radiating God’s own glory!
The apostle Paul alluded to this in 2 Corinthians 3:18 when he said, “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.” The point is what we see is what we be! Or as Jon Piper puts it, “beholding is becoming.” We do not simply behold God's glory: God's glory takes hold of us and challenges the allegiance of our hearts. His glory calls us to reshape our lives and exposes the shabbiness of our conduct. It awakens us to the reality of a transcendent Being to whose likeness of glory we are being called and conformed by His gracious initiative. God's glory has the power to dislodge from our hearts the grip of moral and spiritual ugliness. The soul's engagement with glory elicits love and forges new affection that no earthly power can overcome.
Jonathan Edwards wrote of this transforming beauty in his sermon The Way of Holiness,
“Tis the highest beauty and amiableness, vastly above all other beauties; 'tis a divine beauty, makes the soul heavenly and far purer than anything here on earth-this world is like mire and filth and defilement [compared] to that soul which is sanctified-'tis of a sweet, lovely, delightful, serene, calm, and still nature. 'Tis almost too high a beauty for any creature to be adorned with; it makes the soul a little, amiable, and delightful image of the blessed Jehovah. How may angels stand with pleased, delighted, and charmed eyes, and look and look with smiles of pleasure upon that soul that is holy!”
The supreme manifestation of God’s glory is seen in the person of Jesus Christ. "He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature" (Hebrews 1:3). "He is the image of the invisible God" (Colossians 1: 1 5). The glory of Jesus has nothing to do with how He smelled or looked or the sound of His voice or the strength of His arms or the color of His hair or the way He dressed. Jesus is beautiful because He has a glory, an excellence, a spiritual supreme beauty-that can be self-evidently true. That is to say, when you see Him there is a direct and personal apprehension of the glory that you see. It’s like seeing the sun and knowing that it is light, or tasting honey and knowing that it is sweet. There is a direct apprehension and attraction once you see Jesus that affects your thinking, your will, and your feelings, it goes deep and does something to your very soul. It changes your life. John writes of his experience with Jesus in John 1:14, “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.”
When it comes to the glory of Christ, who can adequately describe glory and beauty that is infinite and is therefore beyond description? There is no one like Christ in this regard.
Spurgeon said it well:
“Hope not, my brethren, that the preacher can grapple with such a subject. I am overcome by it. In my meditations I have felt lost in its lengths and breadths. My joy is great in my theme, and yet I am conscious of a pressure upon my brain and heart, for I am as a little child wandering among the stars. I stumble among sublimity's, I sink amid glories. I can only point with my finger to that which I see, but cannot describe. May the Holy Spirit himself take of the things of Christ and show them unto you.”
What makes Jesus Christ so precious, so beautiful, and so glorious is what Jonathan Edwards calls in his profound sermon series The Excellence of Christ, “an admirable conjunction of diverse excellencies” Christ's attributes work together in harmony. And there is a glory in Christ that exceeds any of His individual characteristics. It is like a rainbow in which the individual colors are beautiful, but their combination heightens the sense of beauty.
The effect of seeing these excellencies is described by Edwards in this way:
“The excellency of Christ is such, that the discovery of it is exceedingly contenting and satisfying to the soul. The carnal soul imagines that earthly things are excellent-one thinks riches most excellent, another has the highest esteem of honor, and to another carnal pleasure appears the most excellent. But the soul cannot find contentment in any of these things, because it soon finds an end to their excellency. Worldly men imagine that there is true excellency and true happiness in those things which they are pursuing. They think that if they could but obtain them, they would be happy. But when they obtain them, and cannot find happiness, they look for happiness in something else, and are still upon the pursuit. But Christ Jesus has true excellency, and so great excellency, that when they come to see him they look no further, but the mind rests there. It sees a transcendent glory and an ineffable sweetness in Jesus! It sees that until now it has been pursuing shadows, but that now it has found the substance. It sees that before it had been seeking happiness in the stream, but that now it has found the ocean.”
How do we see those excellencies of Christ's glory? The Apostle Paul describes this path to discovery in 2 Corinthians 4:6, "For 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.” We can see the preciousness of Jesus through the portraits of Christ given to us in God’s word by reading it and hearing it proclaimed. This portrayal, accompanied by God’s shining in our hearts, appears to us what really is-“the glory of God in the face of Jesus.” Or to put it another way the beauty of Jesus Christ. God shows us that Jesus is beautiful through the word and the work of the Holy Spirit opening our blind eyes to see His beauty.
Oh reader, God invites us to do just what David desires. He has created the longings and satisfies the longings of our soul (Jeremiah 31:33). David gives an astonishing invitation from God in Psalm 27:8, "You have said, "Seek my face. My heart says to you, “Your face, LORD, do I seek.” God invites us to seek His face, to dwell, to see, to gaze, and reflect upon His glory and beauty. How does that affect you?
This is God’s desire for you: “SEEK MY FACE”! This is the central business for your life- to see the glory of God. To get your head into the heavens. To know him for whom he is. He is the main reality.
There is nothing beyond this. Nothing more urgent. Nothing more important. Nothing more satisfying. Another time Edwards wrote:
“The pleasures of loving and obeying, loving and adoring, blessing and praising the infinite being, the best of Beings, the Eternal Jehovah, the pleasures in trusting Jesus Christ, in contemplating His beauties, excellencies, and glories, in contemplating His love to mankind and to us, in contemplating His infinite goodness and astounding lovingkindness…these are the pleasures that are worthy so noble a creature as a man is."
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, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me" (John 17:24). The highest end of the gospel is to see,to savor, and to show the glory of Jesus. You can be sure, dear reader, that the Father is earnest to see that happen for you.
Next week we will look at the effects of seeing the glory of God upon our lives.
Longing to see His glory,
Pastor Bill
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