We are going to spend a little time in these remaining
hours with another one of “the unsearchable riches,”
and that is, “the riches of glory.” There are
two passages of Scripture that I want to read. To begin
with, the Letter to the Romans, chapter nine at verse 23,
“That He might make known the riches of His glory
upon vessels of mercy, which He had afore prepared unto
glory.” The Letter to the Ephesians, chapter three
at verse 16, “That He would grant you, according to
the riches of His glory, that ye may be strengthened with
power through His Spirit in the inward man”
(A.S.V.). “According to the riches of His glory.”I think it only needs to be
mentioned for you to call to remembrance that grace and
glory go together very much in the Scriptures. “He
will give grace and glory” (Psalm 84:11), and we are
“to be unto the glory of His grace” (Ephesians
1:6). The glory is the result of the grace; grace is unto
glory.
As to this word glory,
which is not easy to understand, and if I may just remind
you is first of all attached to each Person of the
Godhead, the Triune God. God is spoken of as the God of
Glory. Stephen said, “The God of Glory appeared unto
our father Abraham” (Acts 7:2). Paul in his prayer
said that it was to “the Father of Glory” that
he bowed his knee (Eph. 1:15–17). “The Father
of Glory,” which simply means, the Source of glory,
the very spring and beginning of glory, the Father of
Glory.
The Lord Jesus is more than once referred to as “the
Lord of Glory.” In writing to the Corinthians, the
apostle, when speaking about the folly of the wisdom of
the princes of this world, said had they really had true
wisdom, they would not have killed “the Lord of
Glory” (1 Cor. 2:6–8). The Lord Jesus is “the
Lord of Glory.” If the Father means Source, the Lord
means Government. The government is committed to Him, and
it is upon His shoulders and He will govern all things
with glory in view, which we shall see shortly.
And, then, as to the
Holy Spirit, He is distinctly called, “the Spirit of
Glory,” that “the Spirit of Glory may rest upon
you” (1 Pet. 4:14). So the whole Godhead is
compassed and characterized by this one thought of glory.
It is the Triune God of Glory.
Think again, and you
will see that the whole Bible is horizoned by glory. It
begins with God as the God of Glory, moving into a very
inglorious situation and turning it into a glorious one.
God was able to say, “It is very good” (Gen.
1:31); and whenever it is like that, as again we shall
see, that is glory—when it is “very good.”
The end of the Bible is “the holy city Jerusalem,
coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of
God” (Revelation 21:10–11; A.S.V.). The Bible
is thus bounded by this thought of glory. Christianity is
compassed by this same thing. Its inception was glorious,
and it came in with glory, and the last thing about it is
glory again. The Church is horizoned by glory. It was
born in glory on the day of Pentecost; indeed, that was a
day of glory (Acts 2). And again the last thing about the
Church is in that great burst from the heart of the
apostle, “Now unto Him That is able to do exceeding
abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to
the power that worketh in us, unto Him be the glory in
the Church and in Christ Jesus unto all the generations
of the age of the ages” (Ephesians 3:20–21;
A.S.V.). That is glory in the Church forevermore.
Christ is bounded by glory, although from the earthly
standpoint, His coming into the world was in humility, in
poverty, in weakness. However in heaven, it was “Glory
to God in the highest” (Luke 2:13–14). From
heaven’s standpoint it was a glorious day when God’s
Son became Incarnate, for heaven knew what that meant. He
passes by the way of suffering and sorrow, humiliation
and the Cross, but it is only a circle, or a cycle,
because then it is back up to the glory. Here you have a
bigger view of Him, that He had glory before the world
was, “Father,” He prayed, “Glorify Me with
the glory which I had with Thee before the world was”
(John 17:5). The Son was equal with God in the glory
before this world was founded in its order. And God has
received Him back to the glory and has “highly
exalted Him, and given Him the name which is above every
name,” glorified. Do you see how everything has this
encompassment, this horizon, of glory, and that is the
end, that is the object?
Now we have to stop and
break this up. What is glory? Perhaps this is the most
difficult word to define, and explain, although it is not
the most difficult thing to understand and to know. There
are two aspects of glory: one is its expression, its
manifestation, its effect, its power, for whenever you
come into the presence of the glory, you are affected by
it, and powerfully affected by it. But mainly in the old
dispensation, when things were more sentient than
spiritual, that is, in the realm of the human senses,
when God was dealing with man on that basis of his
sentient life, in that dispensation, it was something
that could be seen. There was a radiance, it was a
breeze, it was a terrific power that men were aware of by
their senses. They could see and feel something in their
souls. The expression of glory was not nebulous and
abstract; it was something to behold. You will recall how
true that was when the glory was manifested, when the
glory appeared, it was often a terrible thing, but it was
always a very powerful thing. However, this was only one
side. It was the expression or manifestation of glory.
Now, it is thought that before Adam sinned and fell,
there was something about his body that was like a robe
of glory, something glorious and beautiful. And when he
fell and sinned, he lost that covering of glory and knew
that he was naked, and God had to cover him with the
symbols of redemption. If you have seen someone really
born again, out of the depths, there is something about
the face that speaks of glory. Or to put it round the
other way, when somebody is living out of touch with the
Lord, that something, that glory, about their face has
gone. Is not that true? You say, “There is something
gone out of their face, it is not there what was there
before, they have lost something.” Put it as you
may, you mean the glory in expression has departed.
Well, this is the
manifestation side, but there is something that accounts
for that. There is the other side, the deeper aspect, and
that is the basis of glory. What is the basis of the
glory? what is the essence of the glory? the reason for
the glory? the very nature of the glory? What lies behind
any manifestation at all of the glory. Glory now or glory
forever? Glory is the expression of the satisfaction of
God’s nature, and that is a definition that you
might well stay with, think about, and dwell upon. And if
you do, much will come out of the Word that will show you
how true that is.
Now glory is the
expression of the satisfaction of the nature of God. God’s
very nature, being what it is, holy and righteous and
true, and everything that the very nature of God is, if
it is satisfied then there is a state of glory. If God
finds that which corresponds to His very being, His
disposition, His nature, His way of thinking, His way of
acting, and all that which is just God in essence, then
there is a state of glory. If God finds that which
answers to Himself, then there is a state of glory. There
is a state of glory when things are as God wills that
they should be, then it is glory.
Earlier, we referred to
the creation, and God had made all things and was able to
say of His work, “It is very good.” It was a
glorious state, a really glorious state. It would really
have been good to be there at that time, dear friends,
for it was such an atmosphere of contentment and
satisfaction and rest and peace and joy. It was
heart-ravishing, nothing present to irritate, to
distress, God was completely satisfied. It was a state of
glory in the creation.
Let us follow that thought through to another of the many
connections of glory—take the Tabernacle. God gave a
precise, meticulous, detailed prescription of the
Tabernacle, for the simple reason that it was not just a
Tabernacle that God had ultimately in mind at all, but it
was His Son. Therefore, the command was: “See thou
make all things according to the pattern which was shown
thee in the mount.” And when it was done, and all
things were so made to a detail, to a thread, to a pin,
then glory came down and filled the Tabernacle. All
things answered to God’s mind, and so there was
glory. Every part of it was glorious, and the whole was
glorious, because in every part it was as God willed it
to be.
The same, of course,
obtains in the case of the priests, the high priest and
his sons. As we are told, they were clothed with garments
of glory, prescribed by God Himself. As to the clothing
everything about them, the material, the colors, the
shape, the size, everything was shown to be of heaven.
And when the priests were so clothed according to God’s
mind, this clothing was called garments of glory,
satisfying God. And what was true of the Tabernacle in
all its parts and its priesthood is true also of the
Temple later.
When David received the
pattern for the Temple, and it is distinctly said that he
did, then he said, ‘everything I have received from
the Lord,’ when the Temple was done, glory so filled
the house of the Lord that the priests themselves had to
go out. All this about the Tabernacle, the Temple, the
Priesthood and everything else that stood approved before
God was leading up to the New Testament, to the One Who
was the fulfillment of all this in His Person. Everything
in the Son was so fully satisfying to God that He could
be transfigured and clothed with glory. His raiment was
white and glistening, glorified on the Mount of
Transfiguration, because at that point He had satisfied
the Father God on every detail (Matt. 17:1–2). If
from that moment He must come down from the mount, go to
the Cross and suffer all its agony and humiliation and
sorrow, that was not because He had disappointed the
Father, but it was in order to bring us to glory, to
bring us to God’s satisfaction.
This is the basis of glory, which is God’s
satisfaction. And you can see, from the afore-mentioned
things, that you get to the point that the glory came in
and filled everything. For that to happen, man had to go
out. And that is basic to glory, the absolute exclusion
of man by nature. Man is the trouble; he is the one that
spoils and limits the glory; it is the natural man who
keeps back the glory. Whenever he takes a place in Divine
things, then the glory is either removed or limited.
However, there is nothing about the Lord Jesus that
corresponds to the natural man. In Christ, that first
Adam, that whole race, has gone out, and has been put out
of the way; and Christ is a new order that answers to God’s
thought about man. And only in the Person of Christ can
man stand in the Eternal Light of God and be in His
Perfect work and, therefore be glorified.
The glory is
spontaneous when God is satisfied; it just happens. It
does not have to be invoked nor implored. It just happens
when God is satisfied. If God is satisfied, there is in
part a spontaneous witness by the indwelling Spirit of
Glory to God’s satisfaction in the sense of
wonderful rest, quietness of heart, and a sense of joy.
This is quite inexplicable in a way and, yet, it is
because the Lord is well pleased. This state of
satisfaction to God and the full pleasure of God and the
answer to the very nature of God is what the Spirit of
Glory is working toward in the Church and its members.
Does not this explain all the activities of the Holy
Spirit in our lives and in the people of God,
collectively? The Lord is working, dear friends, or
trying to work, according to how much we will let Him
work. It is according to how we answer to Him, and obey
the dictates of the Spirit of Glory. The Lord is working
with us and in us as members of His Church, so that in
the end the Church may be presented to Him “a
glorious Church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such
thing” (Eph. 5:27). It is a glorious Church. “Now
unto Him be the glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus
unto all the generations of the age of the ages.”
Yes God’s object is glory in His dealings with us!
We do not always feel
like that do we? It does not always seem like that. Very
often, it seems just the opposite, and yet it is true.
But it is here that we, as the Lord’s people, have
got to have some understanding and recognize and accept
that discipline is a part of the work of glory. Now God’s
glory, the reaching of His glory, the manifestation of
His glory, is only along the line where His glory alone
can have its opportunity and occasion. This means that if
there is any state whatever that limits the glory, spoils
the glory, hinders the glory, then that has got to be
dealt with in discipline, that has got to be put out of
the way. That is a very important thing that we have got
to recognize—that discipline is a part of the work
of glory.
God’s
Glory Is Reached Through Adversity
But another thing that
we have got to recognize in that very connection is that
God’s glory is usually reached along the line of
adversity. Now you take up the Book of the Acts, what do
you call this book? Well, you can call it by different
names, “The Acts of the Apostles, The Acts of the
Holy Spirit,” or simply “The Acts.”
However, I wonder if you have ever heard it called,
“The Book of the Glory of God, The Glory of Christ?”
It does not always look like that, but let us look at it
again, from that very standpoint. We have said that it
begins with the Church being born in glory. There is no
doubt about it, the day of Pentecost was a day of glory,
and heaven came down. The Spirit of Glory descended and
it was a state of glory, a state of joy, a state of life,
a state of new hope and prospect. It was a day that Peter
could say, “Blessed be the God and Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ, Which according to His abundant mercy
hath begotten us again unto a living hope by the
resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Pet.
1:3). That was the very atmosphere and nature of the day
of Pentecost: “Begotten again unto a living hope”
after that terrible despair just a few days before; now
it was a day of glory.
But let us pursue the
course of the glory through the Book of the Acts. It will
not be long before we arrive at the terrible story of the
martyrdom of Stephen, the hatred, the malice, the wrath,
the wickedness, the evil, against Christ, against this
“Way” as they called it, venting itself,
blazing out against this young man Stephen, ending in the
dragging of him outside of the city and stoning him to
death (Acts 7:59). You say, ‘tragedy, defeat,
reverse, set-back.’ Ask Stephen who said: “I
see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at
the right hand of God” (Acts 7:56). “And all
beholding him, saw his face as it had been the face of an
angel” (Acts 6:15). It was glory, and glory so real
and so terrible that the chief witness against him—Saul,
who became Paul—and supporter of his death was
smitten to the heart, stirred to the depths of his being
and forced to redoubt his antagonism to save himself, to
save his own conscience.
However, out of Stephen came Paul. Is this despair? Is
this defeat? God is very ingenious: the Lord Jesus, if I
may use the word of Him, is very clever. Let men and
devil, earth and hell combine against the Christ of God,
the glorified Christ. How does it work out? Do not be too
quick, too soon in drawing your conclusions and passing
your verdict. Look to the end. We are dwelling in this
letter to the Ephesians, the most wonderful document that
has ever been penned by man. It came out of Stephen’s
death, Stephen’s martyrdom. You see, that is the
kind of thing that glory does. And if you think that
still needs strengthening, well, all right, pass on to
the next confrontation.
Herod seized James and
executed him. This seemed to be a terrible set-back, a
terrible set-back. My, the devil has done something now,
successful and triumphant; he has struck at this
apostolic company, and slain one of its members (Acts
12:1–2). But Herod is up against the Glory. And
before you end the chapter in which his act against the
Lord of Glory is recorded, Herod himself is smitten and
eaten of worms, and the next thing in the next verse is,
“But the word of God grew and multiplied” (Acts
12:21–24). See the reaction of the Glory? This is
glory is it not?!
You can see how the glory comes along the line of
adversity, and it is only along that line that you really
do know what the glory is. Well, Herod thought that it
was a good thing he had done when he smote James, because
it pleased the Jews; and so he seized Peter, and put
Peter in prison. Now, if Peter goes, this is going to be
something tremendous. Well, he takes all the precautions
that a man in his position could take to secure Peter.
Oh, he throws him, or has him thrown into the inner
dungeon, his feet made fast in the stocks, and four
quaternions of soldiers to guard the prison. It seems as
though there is no hope for Peter so far as hell and men
are concerned, but what does the Glory say? The Lord of
Glory is interested in this matter, and He simply says to
the whole thing, ‘Oh no, oh no, not a bit of it!’
The angel of the Lord, as you know, visits Peter, and his
chains fell off. He was bidden to gird his garment about
him, and told to follow, and the iron gates opened (Acts
12:7–10). What has happened to the four quaternions
of guards? They are hardly mentioned, they are as though
they did not exist, and out comes Peter.
Now here is something
very strong on the part of the evil powers against the
Lord of Glory, and how simply the Lord of Glory answers
it, for “prayer was made without ceasing of the
church unto God for him.” The Church was
tremendously stirred and concerned that night, giving
itself to prayer in a stretched out way before God. The
word says that “prayer was continually and earnestly
being directed by the Church to God concerning him. The
word ceasing means: “stretched out.”
The Church was fervently praying by the taking of this
matter so seriously. The Lord of Glory moves in and
solves the big problem so simply. Infinite power can work
in such a simple way, as shown in Peter’s
deliverance from the evil powers.
And next, in the Book
of the Acts, Saul of Tarsus in his rage, he calls it rage
himself, a choleric anger, wrath, hatred, like a boiling
caldron overflowing against those of “this Way”
(Acts 9:2; 18:25,26; 19:9,23; 22:4; 24:14,22). Saul of
Tarsus goes to the High Priest and says that, ‘If
you will give me documents of authority, I will go to the
farthest city and I will have arrested all who are of
this Way. I will bring them to prison and judgment and,
if needs be, to death,’ And he obtains the
documents, the parchments of authority, the warrants of
arrest, and starts out on his way to the distant city of
Damascus, where he knows there is a company of these
people of “the Way.” Saul, “breathing out
threatenings and slaughters,” went to Damascus; and
the Lord of Glory stepped across his path. And the Glory
smote him to the ground. (Acts 9:4). Forever afterward,
this man Paul, knew the meaning of the glory and could
speak about it so fully.
Again, the point is that the glory comes along the lines
of tribulation, suffering, and sometimes apparent defeat;
that is, the apparent success of the devil himself and
his emissaries. Sometimes it just does look as though
Satan has done it. Now, he has succeeded, but that is not
the end of the story. And so you go with this man Paul
from place to place, go with him to all these cities
which he visited and see what happens. He later said that
the Holy Spirit had witnessed to him that in every place
bonds and afflictions awaited him. How true it was. We
cannot follow his course, but we call to mind Lystra and
such places, and pick out Philippi. Philippi—he
went, and the reaction of the evil forces of Satan found
Paul silenced in the prison, again fast in chains, backs
bleeding from their thrashings. Surely Satan has won now,
gained the day now, surely this is reverse and defeat.
But we know the story now, the Lord of Glory had an
interest in this matter, and when it is necessary, the
Lord of Glory can create an earthquake and shake a prison
to its foundations and loose all prisoners and save the
jailor and his household and establish the Church in
Philippi, to whom the Apostle Paul will later write,
“My beloved and longed for, my joy and my crown...”
(Phil. 4:1). He would say “crown of glory,” and
remember how it started, the way along which it came. He
referred to this when he said to the Thessalonians,
“We had suffered before, and were shamefully
entreated, as ye know, at Philippi...” (1 Thess. 2:1–2).
“How shamefully,” he says, “How shamefully
I was treated in Philippi.” It was through shame,
suffering adversity, that the glory came.
Now I do not know where
to end all this on the riches of His glory. The whole of
the New Testament has now sprung into life for us. Do we
see the point? The Apostle John has a lot to say to us
about this glory in his gospel right at the very
beginning. There is the marriage of Cana in Galilee and
the failure of the wine. This shows forth an end of all
human resources where man can do nothing. Then comes in
the Lord of Glory, and it says, “This beginning of
signs did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and showed forth His
glory” (John 2:11). Glory is seen where man’s
resources end, where humanly the situation is quite
hopeless. That is the pathway of the glory. And then
Lazarus: “This sickness is not unto death, but for
the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified”
(John 11:4). And to the poor, baffled sisters, “Said
I not unto thee, that if thou wouldst believe, thou
shouldest see the glory of God?” (John 11:40). But
the necessity for the manifestation of the glory was the
utter end of all human hope, where there is perfect
helplessness on the part of man, then the glory comes in.
I wish we could believe it, and always believe it, when
things are so utterly hopeless, when it is quite
impossible for us to do anything at all, we have to take
our hands off and stand back and say, “Only the Lord
God Almighty can handle this situation.” May that
not be the way of the glory?! I wish we really could
believe it. If only we could always believe that these
situations—which seem to be so often the work of the
devil with his complete triumph—are only the pathway
of the glory, that in the end when the full story is
told, it will not be all tragedy, all defeat, but the end
will be glory through grace.
What
Is The Pathway Of The Glory?
Satan was determined to
bring Paul’s ministry to an end by bringing that man
to an end. Over this wide area in Asia, things moved
toward that in churches. The churches, which owed their
existence instrumentally to this man, and owed all that
they had spiritually to him and to the Lord, had turned
against him. In 2 Timothy, chapter one, at verse 15 he
says, “All they which are in Asia be turned from me.”
False brethren betrayed him. And what an accumulation of
evil things gathered and focused upon that prison in
Rome, all saying with their own meaning: Limitation,
curtailment, shortening of tenure, of influence and life.
That is the natural, satanic situation very imperfectly
described and set out.
On the human side, if
looked at just purely as a natural situation, everything
in that prison and those chains seemed to say what the
enemy meant, and what men meant: this is an end! and this
is a curtailment in every way. And yet, looked at from
heaven’s standpoint, and from history’s
standpoint, it is the most glorious triumph over the work
of the enemy. They said, limitation; heaven said,
enlargement. They said, narrowing down, curtailment.
Heaven said, expansion. They said, death, agony. Heaven
said, a new beginning, not only of the man in heaven, but
of his ministry. For it was out of that imprisonment at
Rome, and all that which was set for the ending of that
ministry—his death—out of that has come the
greatest ministry that he fulfilled.
The letters from that prison embrace a fulness of Divine
revelation that can be found no where else, an enrichment
for the Church beyond, beyond our telling. An expansion
of ministry far far beyond the whole range of his
missionary journeys personally. Today, in every country
of this world Paul is known; perhaps not in every spot in
every country, but in every country. From far East to far
West, far North to far South, that man is known and his
ministry has gone forth.
And today, through all
the battle and the controversy over what is called
Paulinism, the theological world, through all the battle
of the years, you know, Paul is on top. They just cannot
cope with this man, they cannot silence him, they cannot
account for him. You probably will not know a great deal
of that battle. Those of us who have read and studied
through many years of this conflict, of ideologies and
philosophies and theologies focusing upon this man Paul,
know how at one point the whole thing became just this
issue, “Away from Paul back to Christ,” back to
Christ, or “back to Jesus” as they put it, away
from Paul. “Paul has betrayed Christianity.”
All this sort of thing is a terrific battle on that
ground. But today, the very schools that were represented
by that position are saying Paul is the interpreter of
Christ, the supreme interpreter of Christ.
You see, this man’s
life started in a blaze of glory. Glory descended and
struck him, as we said earlier, that glory went right
through his life. And he never got away from that glory.
He had seen the glory of the Lord at his beginning; and
although the end of his earthly course seemed naturally
to be so inglorious, so much speaking for apparent
triumph of the forces which were against him,
nevertheless, two thousand years have not quenched that
glory. He shines with it today and we, a little minute
fragment of a very great worldwide whole, are here at
this time together, glorying in the glory which has come
through that man. So, I say that the last chapter of the
Book of the Acts is just the consummate and inclusive
setting forth of the whole book, showing the pathway of
the glory.
What is the pathway of the glory? It has two sides. The
one side is the reduction of the natural, the human
element. It demands that; it will always work that way.
It will always be the reduction, the nullifying, the
weakening, the emptying, the undoing of the natural human
element of man. And running alongside of that, there is
always the positive increase of Christ. This is the
pathway of the glory. On the one side, there is an ever
decreasing and setting aside of the natural man, even as
a Christian, and in the work of the Lord. Consequently,
we must be getting more and more to the consciousness
that it must be the Lord, or there will be nothing at
all. The human factor is increasingly of no account. That
is the pathway to glory.
Now, this is not a very
happy thing, perhaps, to contemplate, if you look at it
on that side alone. But it is true. Here is this man
Paul, naturally and humanly in weakness, naturally and
humanly in limitation, as a man in bonds. However, there
is the other side, the enlargement of what is of the
Lord. There is the mighty, marvelous enlargement of
Christ in this man, so that these letters from the prison
are a matchless setting forth of the greatness of the
Lord Jesus. And in this light, you ought to read your
first chapter of the Letter to the Colossians and see the
place the Lord Jesus is given.
Now you can see this,
and it is well that we do take at least a glance at the
glory, by looking at the opposite. Go right to your
Bible, and you will see that whenever man put forth his
hand upon Divine things, the glory went out. That is a
word written over Eden is it not? The Lord’s
precaution in Genesis was “Lest he put forth his
hand.” The Lord knew quite well that if man put
forth his hand on Divine things, that was an end of the
glory.—And, as we know, that is exactly what
happened.
Right through your Old Testament, you can see this. Case
after case, when man pressed in and put his hand upon
Divine things, the glory went out. You know how Isaiah
says, “The day that king Uzziah died, I saw the Lord
high and lifted up, seated upon a Throne and His train
filled the Temple” (Isa. 6:1). This brings us to the
tragedy of Uzziah. You remember that man,—how he was
one of the greatest kings, even an idol of Isaiah the
Prophet. King Uzziah who reached great dimensions of
power and influence and earthly glory, and then he
presumed upon it and forced his way into the Temple, to
the Sanctuary, to the Altar. Fear came upon men and they
said, “It does not pertain unto you, king Uzziah, to
offer incense,” but he spurned the warning and was
smitten a leper and died in shame with all his own
earthly glory gone. He forced himself into the Temple and
laid his hand upon Divine things; and so far as he was
concerned, and for that time, the glory departed. It was
a great reversing of the situation when Isaiah saw the
Lord on the Throne, for it was no longer Uzziah, but the
Lord on the Throne. Then the glory comes back. When man
usurps the place of God, the glory goes out. That is just
one instance of this thing.
You remember David and
the Ark of the testimony? David had the best of motives
concerning the Ark, and the Ark is always the Ark of the
glory. Remember that it is always the Ark of the glory.
The glory of Israel is focused upon and centered in that
Ark. David with the purest and best of motives thought of
bringing the Ark to Jerusalem, and he mistakenly formed a
new cart after the Philistine manner. Upon this new cart
he put the Ark. This was contrary to the Divine Word on
how to bring the Ark back to Jerusalem; because,
according to the Law of God, only the Levites were to
carry the Ark upon their shoulders. Apparently they were
having a very good time on the road until they reached
the threshing floor. Then the oxen stumbled, and Uzza put
forth his hand upon the Ark to keep it on the cart. So
when he put forth his hand to the Ark of God, and took
hold of it, the Lord smote him there for his error; and
there he died by the Ark of God. Then the Ark was turned
aside into the house of Obed-edom for a period of time (1
Chron. 13:1–14; 2 Samuel 6:1–15; 1 Chron. 15:1–15).
Man had put his hand on Divine things. When the
glory of life, the glory of joy, the glory of spiritual
fulness, the glory of Divine power departs, and comes
under a shadow, or is eclipsed or limited, it is usually
because man’s hand has touched the testimony. Man’s
nature has insinuated itself— that is, his judgment,
his ideas, his thoughts, his will, his emotions—into
this matter. David’s mind got to work, David’s
emotions got to work, and it was a very emotional scene.
David’s will got to work, so that his soul, mind,
heart and will came out to touch Divine things. It was of
man. And whenever it is like that, if our judgments and
our emotions and our decisions lay hold of the things of
God, we will be left without the glory. The glory will
depart, or the glory will be under eclipse, or the glory
will be limited. Yes, it is a long story, as it began in
Genesis: “Lest he put forth his hand.”
Well, that is the dark
side, but it is well that we took a glance at that side,
because that is so largely the trouble today. There is an
absence of the glory, or a limiting of the glory, and our
hearts are crying out for the glory to return. We are
always praying that the glory of the Lord may be
manifested, we are always asking the Lord that the glory
might be known and felt. But, you see, we have got to get
out of the way before that can be. We must give the Lord
all the place in order for that to happen. It has to be
all the Lord.
So, on the one side,
there are the limiting of human abilities and powers of
mind and will. On the other side, through that limiting
or excluding of that natural human element, there is the
coming in of the Lord, the increase of Christ, because
then Christ is our wisdom, Christ is our strength, Christ
is our will, Christ is our all. Dear friends, that is the
pathway of the glory. And that pathway is painful to the
flesh, very painful, because this flesh is very strong,
much stronger than we would believe, yet it is there.
Nevertheless, we must
finish, and finish on perhaps a much happier note. While
we must understand what the glory demands and see the way
of the glory, we do want to have at the end a final look
at the ultimate glory. To do this we remember Peter’s
word, “When the Chief Shepherd shall appear, you
shall receive a crown of glory” (1 Peter 5:4)—“A
crown of Glory,” that is the end. Of course, “A
crown of glory” is a symbolic word. I am not very
ambitious to have a little crown put on my head, and for
the life of me I do not see how I am going to ever have
three crowns on my head, literally; and there are three
crowns mentioned in the Word. It means being crowned,
having your life and your work crowned or capped with
glory. That is the last picture, the crown of glory.
What is it? Well, I have mentioned that there are three
crowns, and you probably know them well. There is “the
crown of righteousness” that we are to receive on
certain grounds. “A crown of righteousness, which
the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give.” Paul
says, “There is laid up for me a crown of
righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall
give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all
them that love His appearing” (2 Timothy 4:8). What
was his meaning? It was this—that at the last part
of his life, in one of his prison letters, which was that
beautiful letter to his beloved and longed for children
in Philippi—he says, “Leaving the things which
are behind... I press toward the mark for the prize of
the of God” (Phil. 3:13–14).
But then he also says, ‘I count not myself to have
attained, neither am I already perfect: but this one
thing I do, if by any means I may be found in Him, not
having a righteousness of mine own, but the righteousness
which is of God through faith.’
The last longing cry of
the apostle’s heart was that the righteousness of
God through Christ should adorn him; that he should
obtain unto it; that is, that he should stand before the
Throne of the eternal One without any qualms, any fears,
any flinchings; that he should stand justified, stand in
a righteousness not his own, but stand perfect in
righteousness. And that is what he meant by “the
crown of righteousness,” to stand at last before the
Eternal Throne of Infinite Holiness, clothed with Divine
Righteousness, with all his own unrighteousness and
imperfection gone forever. “Clothed in
righteousness,” that is what he called the crowning
thing for his life, and the fullest realization of his
ambition, “That I may stand perfect, lacking
nothing. I am not already perfect, I have not already
attained, but if only I can attain to being found in Him,
not having a righteousness of my own, but His
righteousness.” What a glorious end!
That is a crown to
covet, that is a crown to suffer for, a crown to live
for, a crown to be abandoned for. A crown of glory
indeed! That, dear friends, is something that you and I
are in agreement on. If there is one thing we long for
more than any other, it is the full and final escape from
our own sinfulness, from this accursed fallen nature and
all that it carries with it. How we desire to attain unto
the crown of righteousness.
And then there is the crown of life. “Be thou
faithful unto death,” said the Lord, “and I
will give thee a crown of life.” A crown of life—what
is that? “Faithful unto death,” is to be
answered with a crown of life. All right that is
perfectly clear, is it not; the crown of life means that
death has no power. It is robbed of its power, death as a
power is destroyed, and Divine life, Resurrection life,
is mightier than all the power of death. Therefore, we
must stand “in the Power of His Resurrection.”
In that same letter, in
the same part of that letter, as we have quoted, in the
Philippians letter, Paul utters those words so familiar
to us, “That I may know Him and the power of His
resurrection.” The cry at the end of his life is
“the Power of His Resurrection.” That is the
ultimate and final nullifying of death in all its forms
and in its whole power, standing in the good of a Life
which can never, never be touched by death again. You
move over to John into the Book of Revelation at chapter
21, in verse 4 where the word says, “There shall be
no more death,” but “a crown of life.”
And then the third
crown is the one we are speaking about, “the crown
of glory.” You know what we have said about glory.
Glory is the expression of the full satisfaction of God’s
nature. Can that ever be for me, for you, that crown, the
full satisfaction of God’s own nature? That is what
He has called us to, and redeemed us for, and is working
in us unto, and will work to the end for—this crown
of glory. And although perhaps at the end of our longest
life, we shall not have reached the place where we do at
that point utterly, fully, and finally satisfy the nature
of God. Well, in our last moment, in our last breath,
there will still be a lot of imperfection about us; but,
remember, when He takes the responsibility of ending the
process, He makes up all that would have been if He had
not done so.
There is in a moment the twinkling of an eye, and “we
shall be changed.” All that we lack then will be
added. All that would have been if we had lived on and on
and on under His grace, under His power and working, will
be put to our account. “I shall be satisfied when I
awake in Thy likeness.” I go to sleep not altogether
in Thy likeness, but “I awake in Thy likeness.”
It is just that, a mighty thing that God is going to add
to those who are faithful, and faithful to the end; not
perfect, but in the way of being changed into the same
glory, from one degree to another, from one image to
another. The crown of glory is God’s final approval.
It is God’s final approval when He says, “Come,
ye blessed of My Father, enter thou into the joy of thy
Lord” (Matt. 25:34, 23).
And, believe me, the
Lord will never be really joyful over what is not
according to His own nature. But when He says, “The
joy of thy Lord,” He will have got what His heart
had been set upon, for the end will be “a crown of
glory,” which is God’s full and complete
approval, satisfaction. Oh, what a wonderful almost
unbelievable prospect there is along the pathway of
glory.
Well, I must leave all
the rest with you, all the other connections of riches,
and this very very imperfect and limited setting forth of
the riches of His grace and the riches of His glory. May
the Lord Himself just follow on and teach all that we
cannot teach, all that we have yet to know about this
riches of His glory. But may He also use even this for
our help, for our encouragement, in order for us to go on
in the way of the glory, unto the everlasting glory.