Sermon Tone Analysis

Today we’re in the last week of our series on our theological distinctives, those points of doctrine which are secondary, but which we affirm because a) we believe they’re true; and b) because they have a significant impact on the life of our church.

We’ve covered a good number of controversial topics, so it might be a relief today to end on our last distinctive, which (in many minds) is a good deal less controversial: the relationship between the glory of God and the joy of man.

But while we wouldn’t imagine this would be the subject of much debate, practically speaking, it is.

It’s a difficult subject because of the way we use both words—“glory” and “joy”—and the way we see them relating to one another.

For example, we can affirm that God is glorified in our joy, thinking that if we pray with faith he will give us what we want, to make us happy—the husband or wife we desired, the kids we’ve always wanted to have, that great promotion we’ve been working for, etc.

That kind of thinking is unbiblical and dangerous in the extreme.

On the other hand, we can also reject the idea that God is glorified in our joy, because joy is self-seeking—and an action is only moral when we don’t act out of self-interest, but out of duty (which is what Immanuel Kant said).

We can think that if we really want to please God, we have to serve him without any desire to get anything out of it.

That kind of thinking, perhaps more surprisingly, is also unbiblical and dangerous.

Where we land here depends on the way we understand the meaning of “glory”, and on the source of our joy.

So we’re going to need to take time to see how the Bible uses the word “glory,” and where it commands us to seek our joy.

So that’s what we’ll be doing today.

Let’s start with glory.

The Glory of God

In 1957 Marcel Pagnol published one of my favorite books, his autobiographical novel La gloire de mon père.

It tells the story of how young Marcel, on vacation with his family, grew to appreciate the simple wisdom of his father, a 25-year-old schoolteacher, who also happens to be a very poor hunter.

At the end of the book, his father shoots at a pair of birds, and thinks he has missed.

It’s disappointing, because this was the first time his son had come hunting, and saw the whole thing.

Marcel runs into the brush and returns to see his father and uncle discussing the missed shot.

We read:

I approached them, and saw poor Joseph [the father].

Cap askew, he chewed nervously on a rosemary branch, and lifted his sad face.

So I leapt onto the summet of a rock overlooking the valley and, my body tight as a bow, I cried with all my strength, “He killed them!

He killed them both!”

And in my little bloody fists from which hung four golden wings, I lifted the glory of my father toward the sky, in the light of the setting sun.

Je m’étais approché, et je voyais le pauvre Joseph.

Sous sa casquette de travers, il mâchonnait nerveusement une tige de romarin, et hochait une triste figure.

Alors, je bondis sur la pointe d’un cap de roches, qui s’avançait au-dessus du vallon et, le corps tendu comme un arc, je criai de toutes mes forces : « Il les a tuées ! Toutes les deux ! Il les a tuées ! »

Et dans mes petits poings sanglants d’où pendaient quatre ailes dorées, je haussais vers le ciel la gloire de mon père en face du soleil couchant.

It’s a beautiful book (the sequel, Le château de ma mère, is even better, by the way), and it illustrates well the way we understand the word “glory” today.

“Glory” is, in our minds, recognition of a job well done, or something beautiful that we have seen.

Je m’étais approché, et je voyais le pauvre Joseph.

Sous sa casquette de travers, il mâchonnait nerveusement une tige de romarin, et hochait une triste figure.

Alors, je bondis sur la pointe d’un cap de roches, qui s’avançait au-dessus du vallon et, le corps tendu comme un arc, je criai de toutes mes forces : « Il les a tuées ! Toutes les deux ! Il les a tuées ! »

Et dans mes petits poings sanglants d’où pendaient quatre ailes dorées, je haussais vers le ciel la gloire de mon père en face du soleil couchant.

And that’s not entirely wrong: when the Bible talks about the glory of God, it isn’t less than that; but it is much, much more.

In the Old Testament, the word for “glory” means “heaviness” or “weight.”

A thing’s “glory” is what gives it its mass, its bulk.

It is what makes something what it is.

16  Be not afraid when a man becomes rich,

when the glory of his house increases.

17  For when he dies he will carry nothing away;

his glory will not go down after him.

Eli fell over backward from his seat by the side of the gate, and his neck was broken and he died, for the man was old and heavy.

(Of course the lesson there is that some things which make up our “glory” aren’t really that glorious.)

Eli was, as we know, a big man, and his weight lent gravity the extra push it needed to kill him when he fell.

It was, at least at that moment, what made him what he was: dead.

In the same way, the glory of God is what makes God who he is.

It is all of his splendor, all of his attributes, all of his holy character, put together.

But just saying that isn’t enough, because implicit in the idea of glory is that it has to be seen.

It had already been seen by God himself, for all eternity, in the persons of the Trinity.

Now, in the Old Testament, in , we see God give a vision of his glory to his prophet.

And what he saw was so glorious and so wonderful, he wanted others to see it too.

And what they saw was so glorious that God desired for others to see it too.

So all throughout the Old Testament

Ezekiel describes a vision he received of the throne room of God.

He writes (v.

26):

26 And above the expanse over their heads there was the likeness of a throne, in appearance like sapphire; and seated above the likeness of a throne was a likeness with a human appearance.

27 And upward from what had the appearance of his waist I saw as it were gleaming metal, like the appearance of fire enclosed all around.

And downward from what had the appearance of his waist I saw as it were the appearance of fire, and there was brightness around him.

28 Like the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud on the day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness all around.

Such was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord.

Anon, 2016.

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version, Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

So in Ezekiel’s vision, the glory of the Lord has two basic attributes.

It looks like brightness, and it looks like a person.

You wouldn’t expect the heaviness of God to be described as “light,” but this is what we see all through the book of Ezekiel: the glory of God is a brilliant, shining light, which radiates out and illuminates everything it touches.

Light, by definition, is something you can’t miss.

Not only can you see it, but by it you can see everything else.

“So the glory of God is like radiant light, shining out, enlightening and giving life.

And that is what the innermost being and weight of God is like: he is a sun of light, life and warmth, always shining out.

As the Father gives out life and being to the Son, as the Father and Son breathe out the Spirit, so the Spirit breathes out life into the world.

The glory of this God is radiant and outgoing.”

So there we can get a little closer to what the Bible means when it talks about the glory of God.

The glory of God is all of what makes him who he is, made visible.

When we see God for who he is and what he is like, we see his glory.

But left alone, that would also be hard to grasp, because you can’t see an attribute.

You can’t see holiness.

You can’t see omniscience.

You can’t see goodness.

You can see the effects of these things, but not the things themselves.

That is why the glory of God that Ezekiel saw in the throne room didn’t just look like a light, but also like a person.

In , which is the New Testament counterpart of , John has a vision of the new heavens and the new earth—the final state of the world God will renew.

He describes a city which fills the whole earth, in which there is no more corruption or sin or danger or death.

And after describing the city itself, he says (v. 23),

23 And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb.

This “Lamb”, as we see over and over again in the book of Revelation, is the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ.

Christ is the “lamp” from which the glory of God shines out and gives light to everything.

This could be confusing, because Jesus is a man.

Yes, he is.

But he is not an ordinary man.

He is God himself, MADE man.

The Son took on a human nature, became a human being, to show us who God is and what he is like.

The letter to the Hebrews says ():

Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.

3 He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature...

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is the radiance of the glory of God.

If we want to see everything that God is, made visible, we look at Christ.

In the person of Jesus Christ we see everything God is, every attribute and all of his character, everything that makes him who he is, made visible for us to see.

In the person of Christ, the radiance of the glory of God shines out.