Reading: Haggai 2:1-9;
Ephesians 3:20,21; Revelation 21:10-11.
"The
latter glory of this house shall be greater than the
former."
"Unto him be the glory in the church... for ever and
ever."
"The holy city Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from
God, having the glory of God."
It is something of
which we should remind ourselves continually, that the end is
going to be in glory, with glory - the end will be glory.
Sometimes our answer to an interrogation might very well be that
of the people in the time of Ezra, Nehemiah and Haggai: The
present glory is nothing! but "the latter glory... shall be
greater than the former". The end will be with glory. We
must tell ourselves that, when things look anything but glorious,
when the glory seems to be entirely hidden, when there seems to
be no glory at all in our experience and we are passing through a
deep and terrible time of trial and affliction, this is not the
end; it just cannot be the end. Though we think the end has come,
it cannot be identified as the end, because the Word of God says
that the end is glory. This is not glory; therefore it cannot be
the end and we have not arrived at the end yet. We are not going
down in shame, in dishonour, in reproach, in despair. We are
going up in glory, for the end is glory.
The
Glory of Grace
What is this
glory? Well, quite clearly, according to these passages which we
have read, and others, it is the glory of grace. "The latter
glory of this house shall be greater than the former", and
in that very connection the prophet says: "He shall bring
forth the top stone with shoutings of Grace, grace unto it"
(Zechariah 4:7). The words from the letter to the Ephesians -
"unto him be the glory in the church" - are set in a
whole encompassment of grace. The incomparable words concerning
grace are found in that letter: "That we should be... to the
praise of the glory of his grace, which he freely bestowed on us
in the Beloved" (1:6); "According to the riches of his
grace" (1:7); "(By grace have ye been saved) ... that
in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his
grace" (2:5,7); "Unto me", says the Writer,
"was this grace given, to preach among the Gentiles the
unsearchable riches of Christ" (3:8). The last words
concerning grace are in connection with the glory. So it is quite
obviously the glory of grace. The Lord, in order to get the
glory, will see that everything is kept on a basis of grace, that
is, that everything that is not grace will be smitten hip and
thigh by Him. In the end there will be no other element whatever
in the situation. We shall just have to say it is His grace - the
glory of His grace.
The
Battleground of Grace
The enemy is
always trying to get us off the ground of grace. If he cannot do
so by accusation, he will do so by false grace, which is
presumption. In this way he makes grace a way of living as you
like. It does not matter what you do, how you behave, grace will
cover anything. "Once in grace, always in grace", so do
not be troubled with responsibility. So grace is subverted. In
many ways grace is a battleground, not a playground.
Grace a
Power in the Life
The only answer to
these things is this: That while grace is that favour of God
which asks for no merit, no earning, and is freely bestowed on
us, as Paul says, in the Beloved, grace is also a power in
the life. It is a vital force to make us live according to the
good pleasure of God, the grace of God not only manifested in our
acceptance, but in our lives, the acceptance begetting a response
to the pleasure of God. Grace is a character, a nature, as well
as a standing; grace unto glory, His glory, primarily the glory
of what grace has done in our acceptance, in our standing, in our
position, but also what grace has done in conforming us to the
image of His Son, what grace is doing in us. It is a working
thing. The glory of His grace at the end will be the
manifestation of what grace has done.
The
Glory of His Sovereign Wisdom and Power
It will be the
glory of His sovereign wisdom and power. You go back to these
books of Ezra and Nehemiah and you find a people very much in
need of the grace of God by reason of their own helplessness, the
remnant being stripped and shorn of everything, unable to provide
anything at all, so that it must all be of the Lord. And then you
see the enemies, all the enemies. No sooner does God's purpose
come into view, and a people in it, than, as from nowhere,
enemies spring up. You have never heard their names until now,
you never knew anything about them and you did not know of their
existence until now. How these people were beset on every hand by
opposing forces who would make the work to cease by every means!
You know the many forms of opposition in the book of Nehemiah -
the enemy comes in from the deepest subterfuge to the most open
and violent persecution. But there is a wonderful revelation of
the sovereign wisdom and power of God; wisdom in outwitting the
cunning of men and devils; wisdom in finding ways for the
accomplishment of the purpose which men could never find; yes,
and wisdom in turning the very work of their enemies to be
complementary, spiritually complementary. Sovereign wisdom and
sovereign power - and the house filled with glory at the end. The
glory is the glory of that wisdom and power of God. "Unto
him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask
or think", which goes beyond our ability to imagine how it
can be done, or that it can be done at all, "according to
the power that worketh in us, unto him be the glory in the
church". The story of the people of God is just that story
of the power and wisdom of God, finding ways where there are no
ways, finding means where there are no means, outwitting all the
cunning of the enemy and turning the enemy's very work to
advantage.... "I would have you know... that the things
which happened unto me have fallen out rather unto the progress
of the gospel" (Philippians 1:12). The wisdom of God, the
power of God, the glory of that is manifested in the end.
The
Glory of Life
And then it is the
glory of life, the inherent qualities of Divine life being fully
manifested at the end; life with its inherent power of
transcendence, for the supreme and inclusive enemy is death, for
death, while destroyed and defeated in the Cross, is still
allowed to work against the Lord's people. The destroyer is
always on the track of one who has the life of God within. It is
a part of the Divine order and economy to put the Divine life
within and then allow it to be assailed by death and the powers
of death in order to bring out what is inherent in that life. You
and I would never know what we have got until it is drawn out and
forced out by adverse conditions. We will never know what a Lord
we have until we have to prove Him as the Lord of hosts. Notice
that this whole matter of glory and grace is kept closely in
touch with that very phrase, which is almost monotonously
repeated: "The Lord of hosts", "Thus saith the
Lord of hosts". You have to know Him in that absolutely
supreme sense as the Lord of hosts, which means that you
have to come up against other hosts to know Him in that way.
Death is allowed to assail the possessors of Divine life just
with this object of showing what that life really is, and in the
end the glory will be the glory of the absolute ascendancy of
that life in nullifying all the power of death. When it says:
"The last enemy that shall be abolished is death" (1
Corinthians 15:26), it is a very significant statement, because
there are other statements which say that the Lord did destroy
death in His death. He tasted death on the behalf of every man,
and destroyed death in order that there should be no more fear of
death, and yet the last enemy still, yet, to be destroyed is
death. What was done in the Head is going to be done in the whole
Body. The Church is to come into its inheritance, and it is an
inheritance of life. We have within us, in the gift of Divine
life, such a wealthy inheritance, and we know little about it.
The Lord is trying to teach us what we have in hand, what we can
trade with, and in the end it will simply be the blazing forth of
that which has been there all the time.
Progressive
Glory Now
I have said these
things, but my object lies at the end of this. It is the glory of
grace - "Grace all the work shall crown" - the glory of
His sovereign power and wisdom, and the glory of His triumphant
life, but do not let us think of glory as something detached and
given, placed upon, at some future time. We are always using the
phraseology about going to glory, which is imperfect at least. We
are looking forward to the day of glory; we are putting glory on
there. Somewhere in the future, in some realm, it is going to be
glory.
My point is just
this: that, while there is a future somewhere, sometime, when the
glory will be manifested, the Lord's whole object is to bring
about that glory in His people progressively now. That is why He
is so careful to undercut everything that would take from the
glory of grace, for, you see, grace is the great antidote to that
terrible poison called pride. Pride was the ruin of the creation
and it is an abomination with God: "God beholdeth the proud
afar off". The strongest things that can be found in the
Word of God are said against pride in all its forms, under all
its names - arrogance, conceit, and all the rest. God hates
pride, and that is why He will make everything a matter of grace.
You and I can produce nothing and never will produce anything,
and while we try to produce something as a merit in our favour to
give ourselves a standing, God stands afar off and will reduce us
to pulp to bring in the glory of His grace. He will break,
shatter and empty us; and remember that our spiritual progress,
our spiritual growth and our spiritual gain will always be in the
measure in which we are aware that it is only by the grace of God
that we have any place of recognition, or anything else by Him.
God is very near to the humble and to the broken in spirit, but
to the proud He is afar off. We will make progress as long as it
is a matter of grace, and that is altogether contrary to this
human nature in its fallen state. We can even be proud of our
humility. Somehow or other this accursed thing will come up, seep
in, to bring about self-congratulation. It is horrible to God, so
He will have it all of grace.
So remember that
the measure of glory at the end will be the measure of grace now.
God will bring us into many perplexing, bewildering situations
where there is no way through at all for human wisdom and human
strength and power fail us, in order that by His sovereign
wisdom, doing what could not be imagined, and exercising power so
great as to remove the greatest difficulties with the greatest
ease, we wonder that we ever thought the thing so difficult. It
has so easily disappeared. God's power is so overwhelmingly
great, and what we think requires the very moving of heaven and
earth to accomplish is done so quietly that we hardly recognize
it when it is done, and afterward we wonder that we were in such
a state of distraction over that thing. Then we worship and give
glory to God. The glory of His wisdom and His power.
And He brings us
into situations of death - be they physical or be they spiritual;
be they positions that we have to occupy in this world where it
is all spiritual death - in order to show us that there is a life
which is more than sufficient for these conditions. There is
another life which is not dependent at all upon our physical
fitness or upon the situation in which we are placed being
helpful. There is another life which overcomes death, and it will
be the glory of that life in fullness that breaks out. The thing
is going on now, and the glory is already inherent. God is only
preparing in us the glory which shall be manifested in the end.
In the end we shall have to say: 'Well, I was learning all the
way along the grace of God, the wisdom of God, the power of His
life; I see now that that was the pathway of glory and that has
issued in the effulgence; it is that that has led to this glory
at the end.' It is inevitable; it must be because God has placed
our lives upon this basis of the need of grace so utter, the need
of wisdom, the need of strength, the need of life, in order that
His glory should be manifested in meeting that need out from
Himself.
First published in "A Witness and A
Testimony" magazine, Nov-Dec 1966, Vol 44-6