Listen to our Bible Study Discussion at: The Glory of the Lord
The Glory of the Lord
Luke 2:8,9 we read, (9)“Now there were in the same country shepherds living out in the
fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. (8) And behold, an angel of the Lord stood before
them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were greatly
afraid.
What is the glory of
God, and why does He display it?
In Hebrew, the word “glory” is “kabod”
In Greek it is “doxa”
Both definitions denote honor, praise, and worship
The word typically shows
up, in Scripture, when God shows up, and is often followed by that descriptive
qualifier, “of the Lord”.
Occasionally it can
refer to an earthly king.
Some synonyms can include:
majesty, wonder, splendor, awesomeness,
even brilliance as with brightness.
With any usage the
compelling factor is that glory commands attention!
Typically there is an
element of visual manifestation, or quality.
Paul draws out this understanding in I Cor. 15:35-41
41. “There is one glory of
the sun, and another glory of the moon…”
Glory may also be
expressed in an audible fashion as with, “the voice of the Lord”, or at he
sound of “the last trumpet”.
In either case the command
of attention is the compelling factor.
The Bible is a narrative about Jesus Christ. Any great story
teller will allow the reader to drift from the main idea, at times, leading
them down all sorts of rabbit trails.
We know from our personal experiences that we drift
frequently, in the course of our day, from the sense of God’s presence. Our
attention is elsewhere.
Paul colors this in a
bit in II Cor. 5:6, “...knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord.”
Whole cultures can, and
do, likewise drift… Like ours???
When God manifests His glory, it is always to capture, or
recapture our attention as if to say, “pay attention now.
Something important is about to happen.”
He essentially crashes into the narrative, reminding us what
it is all about.
We still have a free choice in the matter. In Jn. 12:28,29
God entered the narrative and spoke. “The people therefore, that stood by,
and heard it, said that it thundered; others said, An angel spoke to Him.”
In today’s Christmas
Scripture, God crashes into the narrative at the
most epic portion and speaks to some very humble folks who couldn’t help but listen.
They were in a position
to listen; undistracted.
Today, we are extremely
distracted; constantly distracted, dangerously distracted.
Heb. 3:15 and 4:7 echo
Ps. 95:7,8, “Today, if you will hear His voice, Do not harden
your hearts.”
Even the sentimental aspects of Christmas are
designed to soften our hearts so that when God breaks into our narrative we
won’t say, “I think it thundered”...May God have mercy on us!
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ADVENT BONUS
As always, we invite all to go to mt4christ.org where we always share insights from prominent Christian theologians and counselors to assist my brothers and sisters in Christ with their walk.
Today we continue sharing from A.W. Tozer’s Advent Devotional – From Heaven, for Day 23, as this current resource series will lead us to Christmas Eve.
As always, I share this information for educational purposes and encourage all to purchase A.W. Tozer’s books for your own private study and to support his work.
DAY 23
LIVING IN BETWEEN
… we wait for the blessed hope—the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.
TITUS 2:13–14
Russia and the United States, the two great nuclear powers, continue to measure their ability to destroy in terms of overkill. This is a terrible compound word never before used in the history of the English language. The scientists had to express the almost incredible destructive power of the nuclear bombs in our stockpiles—so the word overkill is a new invention of our times.
Both the United States and Russia have made statements about the overkill power of nuclear stockpiles sufficient to kill every man, woman, and child in the world—not once, but twenty times over. That is overkill!
Isn’t it just like that old enemy, Satan, to persuade the saints in the body of Christ to engage in bitter arguments about posttribulation rapture and pretribulation rapture; postmillennialism, amillennialism and premillennialism—right at the very hour when overkill hangs over us like a black, threatening cloud.
Brethren, this is the kind of age and hour when the Lord’s people should be so alert to the hope and promise of His coming that they should get up every morning just like a child on Christmas morning—eager and believing that it should be today!
Instead of that kind of expectancy, what do we find throughout His church today? Arguments pro and con about His coming, about the details of the rapture—and some of this to the point of bitterness. Otherwise, we find great segments of Christians who seem to be able to blithely ignore the whole matter of the return of Jesus Christ.
Very few ministers bother to preach from the book of Revelation any more—and that is true of large areas of evangelicalism and fundamentalism, too! We have been intimidated by the cynicism and sophistication of our day.
There are so many apparent anomalies and contradictions in society and in the ranks of professing Christians that someone will certainly write a book about it.
There is the anomaly of the necessity of getting to know one another better in order to love and understand one another better. Millions are traveling and meeting other millions and getting acquainted, so if the premise is true, we ought all to love each other like one big blessed family.
Instead, we hate each other like the devil. It is true that all over the world the nations are hating each other in startling, record-breaking measure.
I will mention another contradiction that is all too apparent. Our educators and sociologists told us that all we had to do was allow the teaching of sexual education in the schools and all of our vexing sexual problems in society would disappear.
Is it not a strange anomaly that the generation that has been teaching and outlining more about sexual practices than any twenty-five generations combined did in the past is the generation that is the most rotten and perverted in sexual conduct?
And is it not strange, too, that the very generation that might expect to be atomized suddenly by overkill is the generation that is afraid to talk about the coming of the Lord and unwilling to discuss His gracious promises of deliverance and glorification?
You may not expect me to say it, but I will: what a bunch of weirdies we are! What a strange generation we are!
God has said that He would place a great premium on the holy, spiritual consistency of the Christian saints, but how inconsistent we are when we allow the devil and our own carnality to confuse and mix us up so that we will be diverted from patient waiting for His appearing!
So, we live between two mighty events—that of His incarnation, death, and resurrection, and that of His ultimate appearing and the glorification of those He died to save. This is the interim time for the saints—but it is not a vacuum. He has given us much to do and He asks for our faithfulness.
In the meantime, we are zealous of good works, living soberly, righteously, godly in this present world, looking unto Him and His promise. In the midst of our lives, and between the two great mountain peaks of God’s acts in the world, we look back and remember, and we look forward and hope! As members of His own loving fellowship, we break the bread and drink the wine. We sing His praise and we pray in His Name, remembering and expecting!
Tozer, A. W. (2016). From heaven: a 28-day advent devotional. Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers.
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