We’re doing a sermon series called “What’s the
Good Word?”, looking at words we commonly use in church and talking about what
they really mean. As you looked at the hymns we’re singing today, you may
have figured out what our word for today is.
Our word for today is “glory”.
The word “glory” means things like “magnificence”,
“splendor”, “grandeur”, “majesty”, and “greatness”. And obviously those
are all words that we can apply to God.
But just as we’ve said with some of our other words, they’re not the
first words we think about when we think about God. When we think of God,
we think of words like “love” and “grace”.
We think of God as our father, as our friend. One of our favorite hymns is “What a Friend
We Have in Jesus”.
And don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with thinking
of God that way. In fact, it’s a good thing. We need to be able to relate to God. We don’t want God to seem like some distant,
unapproachable, unreachable, uncaring figure. In fact, one of things
Jesus--God the Son--showed us when he came to earth is that God is not
that. One of the names of Jesus is
“Emmanuel”--God with us. We can approach
God. In fact, that’s what we’re supposed to do. We are welcomed into God’s presence. God does care. God does love us. God does want to guide us and help us through
life. It’s important that we know all
that. It’s important that we feel all that.
When the divine Son, Jesus Christ, came to earth, he came
down to our level. And he had to do that, because we could not get up to
God’s level. Again, the only way we can
relate to God is by bringing God down to our level. But while that is a
good thing, we need to remember that, in fact, God is not on our level. God is not anywhere close to our level. God is so far beyond our level that we cannot
really even begin to imagine the level that God is on.
The writers of the Bible were clearly aware of our tendency
to bring God down to our level, because they wrote a lot about the glory of
God. They wrote a lot about how great, how awesome, how incredible God
is. Really, it was hard to pick Bible
verses for today because there are so many. We’ll look at a few of them.
The first passage we read, from Exodus, is when Moses went
up to God to get the Ten Commandments. The glory of the Lord was hidden
by a cloud. Moses entered the
cloud. And we’re told that, to the
Israelites, “the glory of the Lord looked like a consuming fire on top of the
mountain.”
While Moses was on the mountain, in a passage we did not
read, Moses asked to see God in all of God’s glory. And God said he could
not. God said Moses could get just a glimpse
of it, could get to see a little bit, just to get an idea of God’s glory.
But God said that no one, not even Moses, could truly see all of God’s
glory and live. Now, that’s not because
God would kill them or anything. It’s just that, if a human being saw all
of God’s glory, we could not handle it.
It would blow our minds. That’s
how far beyond us God truly is. God’s glory is completely and totally
beyond our ability to understand.
And yet, even with just that little bit of God’s glory that
Moses was able to see and get a sense of, just from that, it had a tremendous
effect on Moses. Not only did it have an emotional and psychological
effect, but it had a physical effect. In
our last reading from Exodus, we’re told that, when Moses came down the
mountain after his conversation with God, his face was radiant. It was
glowing. I don’t think we can imagine
what that must’ve looked like. I mean,
can you imagine if you saw someone you’d known for years, and suddenly their
face had an unearthly glow to it? It’d
look like something out of a science fiction show, you know?
That must be what it looked like to the people of Israel,
because we’re told that when they saw that glow, they were scared of Moses.
They were afraid to come anywhere near him. They made him cover up his face so they could
not see it glowing like that. That’s how
incredible the glory of God is.
And then, in our reading from Revelation, we’re told some
more about the glory of God. We’re given a description of the New
Jerusalem, the Holy City which is going to come down from heaven. We’re
told that New Jerusalem “shone with the glory of God”. Just like Moses’ face when he’d seen
God. The entire city shines with God’s
glory. There’s no sun there, and no moon there. They’re not needed. The glory of God gives all the light that is
needed. And there is no night there. There’s never a time the glory of God is not
shining, and there’s never a place the glory of God is not seen. God’s
glory is always and everywhere.
And so...what? So the glory of God is this awesome
thing. What difference does that really make? Why is it important for us to think about it?
Why can we not just keep God on our level, the level where God is our
friend? Why do we need to think about
the greatness and the glory of God?
Well, again, there’s nothing wrong with thinking of God as
our friend. There are times we need to relate to God that way. And there’s nothing wrong with thinking of God
as our Father. There are times we need to relate to God that way,
too. After all, Jesus was the one who
told us to refer to God as “Father”, so it certainly cannot be wrong to do so.
It’s fine to think of God in those terms sometimes.
But here’s the thing. If that’s the only way we think
of God, we’re making God too small. We’re reducing God to the level of a
human being. And again, there are times
we need to relate to God that way. But there are other times when we need
to relate to God as God.
What thinking about God’s glory shows us is how powerful
God is. And there are times when we need a powerful God. We need a God who is powerful enough to
protect us. We need a God who is powerful enough to help us overcome the
temptations of Satan, just like Jesus did in the desert. We need a God
who is powerful enough to help us overcome our own sinful nature. We need a God who is powerful enough to heal
us when we’re in need of healing. We need a God who is powerful enough to
work a miracle when a miracle is what we need.
We need a God who is powerful enough to be everywhere and at every time
at once. We need a God who is powerful enough to make all things, even
the worst thing we can imagine, work out for good in the end. And we need a God who is powerful enough to
save us from the consequences of our sins and give us eternal life.
And when you think about it, that’s the amazing thing about
God. God is small enough that the smallest child can relate to Him and
understand Him. And yet God is big enough to defeat Satan himself. God is small enough to care about the tiniest
details of our lives. And yet God is big enough to create and rule the
universe. God is all of those things at
once. That’s who God is.
In other words, God is whatever we need God to be.
Now don’t take that the wrong way.
We don’t make God into whatever we need God to be. God is what God
is. God is whatever we need God to be
because that’s how powerful God is. And God is whatever we need God to be
because that’s how much God loves us.
God becomes small enough for a small child to relate to Him and
understand Him, because God loves us that much. And God is big enough to
defeat Satan because God loves us that much.
God becomes small enough to care about the tiniest details of our lives
because God loves us that much. And God
is big enough to create and rule the universe because God loves us that much.
God is what we need God to be because God loves us that much.
So whatever you may be struggling with today.
Whatever you may going through today.
Whatever may be on your mind today. Whatever may be on your heart
today. Give it to God. God can handle it. God wants to handle it. Trust in the
glory of God. There is nothing too big,
and nothing too small, for God.
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