If you want to follow along in
the Bible, you can turn back to John chapter 1. On the one-year anniversary of
his conversion, the great hymn writer Charles Wesley wrote these
words, for a thousand tongues to sing
my great Redeemer's praise. The glories of my God and King,
the triumphs of His grace. Anyone who has been born again
by the Spirit of God who has been given spiritual
eyes to see the Lord Jesus Christ as he is, as the Savior. Not the possible
Savior, the Savior. Not the wants to be your Savior,
the Savior. Anyone who has seen Christ and
experience the grace that comes by him can identify with what
Charles Wesley wrote. The glories of my God and King. There is no subject that gives
the heart of the believer more joy than the subject of the glory
of Christ. Now, we could say that, you know,
it's just Christ. That subject is what gives him
joy, yes, but it is seeing Christ as the glorious one because the Christ that is often
preached up in pulpits, let's face it, he's not very glorious. There's not much about him to
praise him for other than he's a nice guy. For the believer, there's no
message that he wants to hear more than the message concerning
the glory. Or as Charles Wesley put it,
he had to say the glories. So glorious is our Lord that
you can't talk about His glory in the singular, really, and
do it justice. There is no message He wants
to hear more. There is no sight that He wants
to see more. We talk about going sightseeing. I say we talk about it. To be
honest, I don't hear that word nearly as much as I used to,
but you know what it means. I used to live near Washington,
D.C., back when I was, no, we moved there when I was four and
left when I was seven. But if any relatives came, we
could be certain that we were gonna make a trip to Washington,
D.C. and do some sightseeing, because there's lots of sights
to see. Well, here's a sight to see. The Lord himself shall descend
from heaven with a shout and with the voice of the archangel
and the trump of God. When I was a kid, they used to
use statements like that to scare us. Not just us kids. I'm just saying
this was happening when I was a kid. They weren't scared by
Jesus. Come back right now. You better get saved. And we even had one guy, a traveling
preacher, and he came through and all those traveling preachers
had to have one barn burner about the Lord returning. That guy
went so far as to have a big piece of tin behind the pulpit. We couldn't see it. And when
he got to the point about the Lord coming back, he had a hammer
and he whacked that piece of tin to make it sound like thunder
or whatever. And one of the ushers was at the back and turned the
lights off and on, you know, and we were all supposed to be
terrified. And I remember dreading the thought
that the Lord could return. I think it'd be great if it was
today. To finally see Him, who though having not seen Him,
I love Him. To see Him appear in this world
in His glory and be vindicated in the presence The Bible said of those who pierced
him, and of all the world who has
since that time rejected him and mocked him, and exposed him
to open shame. I'd love to see that, and I will
someday. There is no truth that a believer
wants to tell more than the truth concerning the glory of the Lord
Jesus Christ. I have mentioned it before in
articles and radio and sermons. You know, we say we preach Christ
and Him crucify. We echo Paul's sentiment, for
I determined to know nothing among you other than Christ and
Him crucified. That's not because we don't know
anything else. It's not because there's nothing
else that's interesting, nor is it because there's nothing
else in all the world that's useful. Yeah, there's plenty
of stuff out there that's useful, stuff that doesn't even have
anything to do with religion. It's good to brush your teeth. I'm
not going to preach on it. With all that that's available,
the serious political and social issues going on in our day. Isn't that important? Yeah. But
if you've ever seen the glory of Christ, quite literally everything
else pales in significance. And so great is that glory we
could get up here every Sunday and never wear the subject out. So true is this principle regarding
those who know the Lord Jesus. It is safe to say that anyone
whose heart is not captivated by the subject of the glory of
our Lord Jesus Christ. He's probably never beheld the
glory of Jesus Christ. There are some impressive things
which, once they've been seen, you don't have to ever see them
again. In 1989, Bonnie and I and the kids got in our station wagon,
we drove across South Dakota and saw Mount Rushmore. It was
kind of exciting. I'd seen pictures. I honestly
didn't even know where it was until I moved out here and found
out, you know, five or six hour trip, you're there. So we went
and we enjoyed it, took pictures, camped for a few days, went back
home. The next year, let's go again. What a bore. It's like, well,
when I was there the second time, I was talking to the guy camping
next to us, and he said, well, we've been here before and seen
the rock group. That was the way he talked about
Mount Rushmore. Once you see Mount Rushmore,
you don't need to see it again. It's done its thing. But if you've ever seen Christ, you've got to go back. You've
got to see him again. Moses, when he spoke to the Lord,
or shall I say when the Lord spoke to him, and Moses made three requests,
and the third one was this, show me your glory. And in our present state, we cannot
look directly at the glory of God, glory of Christ, and survive. And so the Lord said, no man
can see my face and live, so what I'll do is I'll put you
in this crag, in this split place in the rock, and I'll put my
hand over it when I pass by, and I will declare the name of
the Lord. And so great was the glory of
the Lord, If I understand what the meaning of this is, after
the Lord had passed by, the Lord removed his hand. But even though he had gone,
such was his glory that everything around him was still shining
from that glory. And that, shall we call it residual
glory, The residual glory of the presence of God was so great
that it made Moses' face shine. And shine so much that nobody
could bear to look at it. And he had to put a veil over
his face whenever he'd come out and speak to the people. And
that gives you an idea of the greatness of the glory of God. But I imagine for those next
40 years that Moses led the people in the back of his mind, if not
in the front of his mind. I want to see that again, and
I want to see it face to face. I want to see it in its full
blaze. the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, I can't begin to tell it out,
that's for sure. I'm gonna do the best I can with
it. In fact, you know, Moses said, show me your glory, and
I'm convinced of this, God's the only one that can show his
glory. I can talk about it, And while I'm talking about it, I
hope that I'm seeing it, at least with the eye of faith, and giving
you a measure of an accurate representation of it. But the
truth is, you'll not see it. It will not seem to you as true,
or even if it is true, no big deal. I can't make the glory of God
glorious to you. But as we learned in the Bible
class today, that's not my job. As the Israelites went into the
land of promise, as they approached Jericho, the first of their conquest,
the Lord told them what to do, which was kind of an odd thing
for a military conquest. The priests were to bear the
Ark of the Covenant. The seven priests were to have trumpets
to blow. And the army was supposed to go to Jericho for six days
in a row, going around the city once. And they'd blow those horns. And then it says they'd go back
to camp. And that's how we as believers, we're sent out to
go and declare the truth And then leave it be. On the seventh
day, they went around it seven times, and then they were told
when to shout. And when they shouted, which
I think is a good representation of the preaching of the gospel,
when they shouted, that's when the walls fell. But here's the thing. They marched
around that city six days in a row. They just kept doing it.
And while they did not shout, nonetheless, the trumpets were
the same kind of trumpets as were sounded on the day of Jubilee. To inaugurate that year of rest
and freedom for the captives, a picture of declaring the gospel.
The priests were bearing up the Ark of the Covenant. The gospel
was there. They did what they're told to
do over and over and over again. on the seventh day, which was
God's designated day. That's when the word was made
effective. And so we preach this over and
over again. When I hear someone preach, my
greatest hope is that something of the glory of Christ will come
through. Having been a preacher for over
40 years now, I know what preachers are made of. I know how weak
they are. I know how useless they are in
themselves. I know, you know, the full range
of what they can do. And when it comes to revealing
the essential truth and the glory of the truth, the glory of Christ,
when it comes to that, we don't have a reach. But I sit there and listen to
them. And my greatest disappointment
is when I have to sit and listen to a message and there's nothing
of the glory of Christ in it. And I've listened to some. I wouldn't deny the fact I've
probably preached some. Because we preachers, no matter
how experienced we are, we're still in the flesh, and something
will catch our fancy, and we'll chase it down, and we'll come
up with a very finely detailed sermon, and when we get done,
most of the time, we know it, there wasn't anything of Christ
and His glory in it. I feel bad when I feel I've done
that, and I get real disappointed if I have to listen to a message
like that. So may the God and Father of
our Lord Jesus Christ be pleased to glorify his Son in our presence
this morning, that we might get a clearer revelation of that
glory than we have had before. John wrote, the Word, this is
verse 14 of John 1, the Word became flesh and made his dwelling
among us, and we have seen And that's a good translation. I
do like the way that King James does it at this point. We have
beheld his glory. When we think of beholding something,
we think it indicates something more than merely, oh yeah, I
saw that. You know, sometimes we're driving
along, Bonnie says, there's a car coming up on your left. I say,
I saw that. Well, that's one thing. I noticed it was there.
Took appropriate action. But to behold something. To behold
something means not only that you saw it, but in seeing it,
you were captivated by it and you just stared at it. It held your attention. I think that John, just like
the Apostle Peter, was referring primarily to the Lord's transfiguration. And you know, our Lord came in
the likeness of sinful flesh, says the scriptures. He hid his
glory. And he hid his glory because
people wouldn't have been able to bear seeing much of it. But
evidently, on the night of transfiguration, that glory was unveiled. And
they saw him, at least in a measure of his natural glory. We beheld his glory. And he goes on to say, We have
seen his glory, we beheld his glory, the glory of the one and
only." Or that could be translated, the glory of the only begotten
one. Either way works, and both of
them are absolutely true. The one and only who came from
the Father, full of grace and truth. Our Lord, His glory here is tied
to who He is and where He came from. It says in the first part of
this chapter that our Lord is the eternal God Himself, creator
of the heavens and the earth, creator of everything that has
ever been created. He's the one that created it. Therefore, all the glory that
belongs to God belongs to Him. Now, that's a big statement. And having made it, I can tell
you this, I don't understand one hundredth of the greatness
of it. For who can really fully behold
and comprehend this concept of the glory of God. When it's mere
tokens upon the earth were sufficient to kill a person, what must that
unveiled, unobstructed glory look like? And so saying that our Lord possessed
the very glory of God because He is God, All we've said is he possesses
a glory we can't even begin to comprehend. Even though we have been born
again, even though we've been given spiritual eyes to see,
yet we can't see it all. Just like David said, you know,
such things are too wonderful for me. They're high. I can't
attain to them. We gather like this and we want to know something of
the glory of God. We want to see something of it.
I want to say something of it, but it's always got to be that
something of it, never the fullness of it. God's glory is too much
for us. That glory cannot be perceived
by the natural eye. indeed no one other than Christ
has ever seen it. The one and only who came from
the Father. He has, it says here in verse
18, no one has ever seen God, but God the one and only who
is at the Father's side has made him known to You know, Paul said that in the learning of the gospel, that
God has made the light. And he's speaking there, he's
been setting this whole thing up within the context of that
story of Moses seeing the glory of God. And he said he has caused
his glory to shine into our hearts. the glory of God in the face
of Jesus Christ. The only place, the only way
that we may behold the glory of God and live to tell about
it. is to behold it in Christ. In fact, that's what was pictured
when God put Moses in the cleft of the rock, in that split place
in the rock. The rock is Christ. The split
in it is a picture of his crucifixion. And only from that vantage point
dare we look at anything of the glory of God. We see the glory of God in the
face of Christ in the book of Hebrews chapter 1 in describing
Christ and what a glorious description of our Lord is given there. And
it says, he is the radiance of God's glory, the express image
of his person. He is the image of the God who
is invisible. He is the radiance of his glory.
And I think maybe this is one of the ways we can kind of begin
to understand how our Lord can be the eternal God and yet be
within the framework of time and space and dwell in a body.
The radiance of the sun. What's it talking about there?
Well, the light that comes from the sun. And we feel it. Now, in one sense, the light
that comes from the sun is the sun. It is the sun, and they
wouldn't have exactly known this back then, the physics of it,
but light is actually made of particles, very small particles,
they're units of something called photons, and the sun produces
those, and as it were, the beams of light are just streams of
those photons. So in one sense, It's the Son itself that we see. In another sense, it's the light
from the Son, the radiance. And so it is with our Lord. He
is God, and yet He's the one that came from God, all bundled
into one concept that our minds really can't put together comfortably,
but He who came from the Father. is the full and perfect revelation
of the Father to us. And if we are ever to see the
glory of God, we will have to behold it in the face of Christ.
Nowhere else to see it. So His glory as the eternal word, and as the
word of God sent to man, He is the radiance, of God's glory. Here's another glory that John
mentions here, the glory of his incarnation. Now, incarnation
is, they simply took the Latin word for flesh. If you've studied any biology,
you know that there's herbivores, those are creatures that eat
plants, and you have carnivores, and those are animals that eat
flesh. So when it says incarnation,
when we use that word, all we mean is that he became flesh,
just like this. Flesh like you have. It says he became flesh. Some
think, you know, one of the early heresies of the, or one of the
heresies of the early church thought that Jesus Christ was
really just an apparition. Because God couldn't take on
flesh. The word that John uses there makes it very clear. He
became flesh. The eternal, invisible God became
the time-bound, physical being we call the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, you say, where's the glory
of that? The fact that he would do it. We glorify, I mean, this is just
kind of a human tendency, we glorify that which excels. And the interesting thing is,
and I get tickled by it, actually, the older I get, the more tickled
I get by it, but remember here, what, a year ago, Queen of England
died, and so her son, to whom she would not relent to turn
the crown over to him, Well, he's in his 70s now. Prince
Charles finally got to become the king, and they had his coronation,
and oh, the pomp and circumstance. And when I see things like that,
you know, the powerful of this world, they've got to dress themselves
up in clothes that evoke a sense of glory and, you know, above
everybody else-ness. and there's parades and everyone
around them is dressed in finery and there's gold. Man sees that
and he sees glory. Here's the glory of our Lord.
He didn't descend from heaven, now he will, but he did not descend
from heaven as a glorious being. There was not this great bright
light shining out of Bethlehem that is a physical light. There
wasn't even a halo over his head like they like to draw in the
pictures. If you had walked by the place
where our Lord was born and looked in, you'd say, oh, they just
had a baby. And that's all that it meant.
That's nice, they had a baby. And you'd have moved on. Why
do we see this as glorious? because it shows us something
of the glory of his grace. In Philippians chapter 2, it
says, let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus,
who, being in the, by very nature, God, lowered himself, lowered himself, and took on
the form of a servant. George Washington, whom they would have gladly made
king if he would have allowed it, or Presidente for life, you know. I hear some of these third world
dictatorships, you know, and a leader calls himself President
for life. They would have. But he served two four-year terms,
and he quit. And I believe that it was King
George of England when he heard of it, the king that George Washington's
army had defeated. King George commented, he has
outdone us all. Does King George realize the
natural man seeks this kind of pompous glory and the fact that
a man would let go of that power, let go of all that pomp and circumstance,
and merely reenter life as a citizen? That is to be respected above
anything, he said, that any of us other kings have ever done.
So even King George could recognize something about the glory of
being willing to condescend. But our Lord, by very nature,
God, possessed of all the rights and privilege associated with
being God. What did he do? It says he made
himself of no reputation. He set aside his rights and privileges
as God. Now, he didn't quit being God, but he submitted himself entirely
to the will of God as expressed by his father. He says, I didn't
come here speaking my own message. I speak the message given to
me. I didn't come here to do my own work, I came to do the
work given me to do." At the end of his natural life, he said,
Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. That's submission.
In fact, in the Philippians passage, it says that he emptied himself. That's what the word means there.
He emptied himself, made himself of no reputation, took on the
form of a servant, and being found in the likeness of sinful
flesh. Now think of that. He looked
like a sinner, just like you and me. You know, if I went to visit
a prison, say I wanted to go there either just to visit somebody
or maybe I was sent there to preach, I'm not going to put
on an orange jumpsuit. I'm sorry, you know. I'm not
necessarily going to dress up in a suit or anything like that.
I don't want to look like them. I don't want it to be that you
can't tell the difference between me and the guys that are locked
up there for crimes. That's exactly what our Lord
did. Found in fashion as a man in the likeness of sinful flesh,
He became obedient to death. You might say up to this point,
he had never obeyed anybody. Why? He didn't have to, there's
nobody above him. There was nothing and no one
to submit to. But he takes a position of obedience. Obedience, but not only this,
obedient to death. Not meaning simply that he obeyed
to the point that his obedience cost him his life. He became
obedient to death. Even the death of the cross and
all that that implies. That's what his incarnation means. And I think about that and I'm
blown away. I think about that. You know, I watch videos saying
I can't stand to close doors. There's a lot of videos I click
on that probably would have done me just as good if I hadn't.
Listen to these people blaspheme God. Atheists mock the Lord Jesus. But you know what it tells me?
What it shows me is this. When the Bible says we're spiritually
blind, it's not kidding. read about our Lord being God
in human flesh being willing to take on our flesh be willing
to live here in this cesspool that we've made living here among a people most
of whom were opposed to Him, submitting to death, submitting
to being killed by those He came to save, submitting to be killed
by the wicked, the righteous one killed by the wicked, submitting
to all this. I see that, and I say, what a
man. What a Savior. Bearing shame and scoffing rude,
in my place condemned He stood, sealed my pardon with His blood. Hallelujah! What a savior. The world looks on the Lord Jesus
Christ and sees a rebel rabbi, they'll call him that, a rebel
rabbi who got caught up in the socio-political forces of the
day and became a martyr for a new form of Judaism. They just don't
understand. And what glory is contained in
those words of our Lord which it says he said with a loud voice,
it is finished. All people have said that a lot
of times, but it's never true. We're never finished with anything,
are we? We may get to the point where
we quit. That's as much as I'm gonna do. We've never finished. The Lord did. He came to die and he finished
doing it. You and I, if apart, well, in
ourselves, we never finished dying. The reason hell goes on forever,
they never finished dying. Our Lord did. He accomplished
it. What glory. Now if you'll turn
to Isaiah 63. You know, in the Song of Solomon, part of that story, a little
vignette in that story is where Solomon comes to where the woman
named Shulamith, She's in her chambers, in her home. And in our day, well, he knocked
on the door and she wouldn't answer. And so he left. And when she suddenly realized
what her playing hard to get had resulted in, she went out
and she went out and looked for him. And it says that she bringing to the daughters of
Jerusalem, I believe it was, they were described as. And they
said, what's better about your lover
than any other lover that we should look for him?
But you should ask us to help you look for him. And she said, oh, let me tell
you. And she began to give a piece
by piece description of him. And finished with, he is altogether
lovely. And we read here of our Lord
Jesus in Isaiah 63, who is this coming from Edom, from Basra
with his garment stained crimson? Who is this robed in splendor,
striding forward in the greatness of his strength? It is I, speaking
in righteousness mighty to say, why are your garments red like
those of the one treading the winepress? I have trodden the
winepress alone from the nations no one was with me. I trampled
them in my anger and trod them down in my wrath. Their blood
spattered my garments, and I stained all my clothing. For the day
of vengeance was in my heart, and the year of my redemption
has come. I looked, but there was no one
to help. I was appalled that no one gave
support, so my own arm worked salvation for me. And my own
wrath sustained me. I trampled the nations in my
anger. In my wrath, I made them drunk
and poured their blood on the ground. I will tell of the kindness of
the Lord, the deeds for which he is to be praised, according
to all the Lord has done for us. Yes, the many good things
he has done for the house of Israel, according to his compassion
and many kindnesses, He said, surely they are my people, sons
who will not be false to me. And so he became their savior.
In all their distress, he too was distressed. And the angel
of his presence saved them. In his love and mercy, he redeemed
them. He lifted them up and carried
them. all the days of old. The first
part of that reading is a prophetic utterance concerning
our Lord and casting Him as the Savior of His people. Now, if
we'd have been in Israel 2,000 years ago, we would have seen
what looked, for all intents and purposes, just a normal guy.
Here's what he was. a mighty, conquering, and unconquerable
warrior bent on saving his people. So much so that he said, I looked, there
was nobody with me. All the world was against me.
But for the sake of his people, He says, I trampled the nations
in my wrath. Why? This was all prophetic of the
Jews being taken into captivity. And this is his description of
his salvation. And what he's saying is, because
they touched you, my people, I wiped them out. Because the only way to save
you was to bring them down. I'll do it. I'll do it. In the book of Revelation, it
talks about Babylon, the great, and that it was cast into the
lake of fire. And when you look at why, it
ends with this. For the blood of the saints were
found in her. the martyrs. I want you to think for a minute,
you who believe, that your God is no weakling. He is no sentimental fool. His love for you bore your sin first. But such is his love for you
like the love of a husband for his wife. If anybody dares to
harm you, they will hear from him. Now, I'm not gonna try to glorify
myself with that. I see some people trying to do
that. I'm special, I'm one of God's. Well, that's certainly
a special privilege to be that, but it wasn't because there was
something special about you. To think that the living God
is distressed in my distresses. Most importantly in the distress
my sin brings me. He bore them. He's distressed. that God would tolerate my presence is quite the thing to think of,
but that he would judge the world by how it treats me and the rest
of his people. Why would God have that much
concern for his creatures? Who is a God like that? Our Lord is no wimp being pushed
around. He is the King of the universe,
the Lord of glory. And at least for me, I see His
glory, all the aspects of it exhibited most in this. He is
determined to have this wretched sinner, no matter what it costs. That the high would give himself
for the low. What glory is there? What magnificence that he would be touched by the
feelings of my infirmities, and be determined to save me. That's the Lord. That's his glory. And in time to come, every eye
shall see it. Unfortunately, many who see it
will have to say, I never knew. I should have, but I didn't. But we have been saved. We'll
say, this is what I've been looking for since the first time I saw
it. Because we'll be there with him,
made like him. And it will be because, like
that warrior coming from Basra, he trampled the winepress of
the wrath of God in the work of saving us. Glory be to his
name.