Will you please turn to the Gospel according to John, chapter 1?
John 1:14:
And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us
(and we beheld His glory, glory as of an only begotten from the Father),
full of grace and truth.
The same Gospel, chapter 17, verse 24:
Father, as to those whom Thou hast given Me, I desire that, where I am, they also may be with Me,
that they may behold My glory, which Thou hast given Me;
for Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world.
Second Corinthians, chapter 4, verse 6:
Because it is the God who spoke that out of darkness light should shine,
who has shined in our hearts for the shining forth of the knowledge of the glory of God
in the face of Jesus Christ.
May we look to the Lord in prayer.
Lord, we know that Thou art here. We are standing on holy ground, and we do want to remove our shoes, prostrate before Thee, because Thou art the Lord of glory.
We ask that Thy glory will fill this house as we consider Thy glory. We pray that we may have eyes to see, ears to hear, and hearts to understand.
O Lord, show us Thy glory. In the name of our Lord Jesus, amen.
We have been considering together this very important matter: Thine is the kingdom, and Thine is the power, and Thine is the glory. This is the whole Bible.
We do thank God that the kingdom belongs to Him, power belongs to Him, and glory belongs to Him. Our God is the God of glory. Glory is His; glory subsists in Him and in Him alone. He is the only One who is full of glory.
There is the glory of God as God, which He will never share with another, because He is God. But thank God, He is not only the God of glory; He is also the Father of glory.
And as Father, He is the source, the spring, and the Giver. So He desires very much to share with us a certain aspect of His glory: the glory of His life, His divine nature, His own character, and, together with these, His kingdom and His power.
Now, these are the aspects of the glory of God that He is most anxious to share with His people.
We have to acknowledge that when we touch this matter of the glory of God, it is beyond us. We have no way to define it, because God is infinite. Whenever you define anything, you really confine it to a definite area. But our God is infinite; therefore, His glory is infinite. It cannot be defined.
The way that we know the glory of God is by association. He reveals His glory to us through His name, and by knowing His name, we know something of His character. We know something of His inward being—Who He is and what kind of God He is.
Furthermore, we find that we know a little bit of His glory through manifestation. Through the whole Bible, you find again and again that He manifests Himself to His people.
Now, as a matter of fact, these manifestations probably are not as deep as associations. By manifestation, He gives us an impression of His majesty, His greatness, His power, and His holiness. In other words, manifestation gives us more of an outward expression, but association gives us more of His inward being.
Now this morning, we would like to consider together this matter of: We beheld His glory.
The apostle John, in writing the Gospel, says, “The Word became flesh, and tabernacled among men, full of grace and truth.” But in the parenthesis he puts a sentence: “And we beheld His glory, glory as of an only begotten from the Father.”
Now, brothers and sisters, of course we know that this refers to the glory of Christ. You remember, in John 17, which is commonly called His high-priestly prayer, He Himself, in verse 24, asks the Father. He says, “Father, as to those whom Thou hast given Me, I desire.”
In other words, you find that the Lord Jesus has a desire, and He expresses that desire to His Father. He prays to His Father. He tells His Father what He wants, what He desires; and, brothers and sisters, the Father no doubt hears Him.
And what is the desire? He says, “I desire that where I am, they also may be with Me.” Why? “That they may behold My glory, which Thou hast given Me; for Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world.”
In other words, you find that it is the desire of our Lord that we should behold His glory.
But how are you going to behold His glory? He says, “Where I am, they also may be with Me.” You know, if you want to behold something, you have to be there. You have to be with Him. If you are distant from Him, away from Him, how can you behold the beauty of the Lord?
So the condition is this: the Lord says, “Where I am, they also may be, that they may behold My glory which Thou hast given Me.”
Now, of course, we know that when our Lord was praying that high-priestly prayer, it was on the eve of His being betrayed and later crucified. In other words, He was departing from this world, and then He was going back to His Father. Now, that is very true.
But if we know something of the Gospel according to John, if we know something of the spirit in which John writes this Gospel, we know that John is not a person concerned with time and space. He is more concerned with eternity, with the ultimate. In other words, he is not concerned with the physical; he is deeply concerned with the spiritual.
So, when you read the Gospel according to John, even though He may say, “Where I am, they also may be with Me,” probably we will think that this is heaven, because He is leaving this world and returning to His Father. So that will be the third heaven, the abode of God.
We are far away. Now, if the Lord says, “Where I am, they also may be with Me,” then we would have to wait thousands of years before we could ever behold His glory.
So, to me—I may be wrong; if I am wrong, please correct me—to me, I feel that with the apostle John, even when he uses the word where, which is a place, yet the “where” is spiritual. In other words, where is where? It is the heavenly realm.
Brothers and sisters, you remember Ephesians. Our brother has mentioned already how the exceeding greatness of the power of God was demonstrated in raising our Lord Jesus from the dead, and not only that, but exalting Him on high at the throne of God in the heavenlies.
Then, when you go on to Ephesians chapter 2—as our brother says, there is actually no chapter division; it is a continuation—you find that the power that raised Christ from the dead and lifted Him up, exalting Him into the heavenlies, is the same power that is working in us, quickening us.
It has raised us up with Christ and also seated us with Him in the heavenlies. Now, the heavenlies is a place, but it is a spiritual place. You do not locate it here or there. It is everywhere if you are there.
So here you find, when John says, “Where I am,” the Lord is in the heavenly realm. And by His grace, through His redemption, He has brought us into the heavenlies.
Brothers and sisters, physically we are here on earth. Physically, we are confined to our location. We are in Richmond now—not only in Richmond, but even smaller than that; we are in the University of Richmond. We are here.
And we are limited by time too. We are here now, and if it is now, it is not then; it is not afterward. Physically, we are here on this earth.
In a sense, we say the Lord is not here because He is in heaven. That is true in a certain sense. But, dear brothers and sisters, how much better it is to know that, even though physically we are here, yet spiritually we are in the heavenlies.
We do not belong to this earth. We are not the people of the earth. We are heavenly people. Our dwelling place is in the heavenly realms, where our Lord Jesus is. This is where we are.
And, brothers and sisters, because of this, we can behold His glory even today. You do not need to wait for two thousand or more years—we do not know how long it will be—before you can see His glory.
But thank God, our Lord Jesus’ desire is that we may behold His glory, which God has given to Him, even now, today.
In the same prayer, you find that our Lord Jesus actually mentions two different aspects of His glory.
In John 17:5, He says:
And now, Father, glorify Thou Me with Thine own self
with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was.
Now here the Lord Jesus mentions one glory. He says, “Now glorify Me, Father, with Thine own self, with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was.”
Two thousand years ago, the Word became flesh.
In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
But two thousand years ago, this Word became flesh. In other words, you find that the Word, the Son, the eternal Son, the second Person of the Godhead, He who shares with His Father and the Spirit all the glory that belongs to the Godhead and to the Godhead alone, became flesh.
There is a glory that God will never share with anyone. It is His forever. And here you find that glory is shared only among the three Persons of the Triune God.
There is a glory that God the Son shared with His Father even before the world was, even before there was time, even before there was space. In eternity past, in the beginning, there was God, the self-existing God.
And with God there was a glory—the glory of God. Here you find the Son sharing the glory with His Father from the very beginning. It is His by right.
But He left that glory. He left that glory behind Him when the Word became flesh. And now He was going back, so He prayed, “Father, glorify Me with Thine own self, with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was.”
So what is that glory? The glory is the glory of God as God. And our Lord is going back, returning to the glory that was His.
Brothers and sisters, this is not the glory that He desired of the Father that we may behold. Why? As we mentioned the first time, no one can see God and live. As Brother Sparks said, “The naked glory of God means destruction.”
It is too bright for us, too glorious—impenetrable, unapproachable light. No one can see it. That glory belongs to God and God alone, shared only among the Godhead. And that is the glory to which our Lord was returning when He prayed this prayer.
But then, toward the end of His prayer, He asks the Father, “Father, I desire that those who believe in Me, those who are Mine whom Thou hast given to Me, I desire that they may see My glory.”
Remember, He specifies it. He says, “That they might see My glory, which Thou hast given Me.” In other words, here is a glory that is given to Him.
The glory in verse 5 is His by right, not given. But the glory in verse 24 is given to Him by whom? By the Father.
So one is what theologians call the essential glory. The essential glory is the glory of God as God—His very being, alone, unique, all by Himself, incomparable.
And then you have another glory, which is called given glory. This given glory is given by the Father to His Son because His Son has obeyed Him, has come into this world, has proved Himself to be well-pleasing to the Father, and has accomplished the work that the Father gave Him to do.
Therefore, as the Son of Man, He is given glory. He is given the world as His inheritance, the kingdom as His inheritance. And this is the glory that He desires that we may see. And thank God, we may see that glory.
So, brothers and sisters, when we are considering this matter of beholding His glory—that is, beholding the glory of Christ—actually we are in this second realm. We are not talking about that essential glory; we are talking about that given glory.
Go back to John 1:14:
And the Word became flesh,
and dwelt among us,
full of grace and truth.
The incarnate Son, when He was on earth, was God’s tabernacle among men, full of grace and truth.
In other words, when you see Him, when you hear Him, when you get near to Him, you are touched—maybe quickened, or maybe frightened—by His grace and His truth.
Here is a Man who walked upon this earth. When you touch that Man, you find that He is full of grace. You find that He is full of truth.
But in the parenthesis, if you belong to those in the parenthesis, if you contemplate—in other words, if you are touched by this Man, it is not just an outward touch.
It is not just hearing something of Him. It is not just seeing outwardly of Him. But if you contemplate, if you consider, if you meditate, if by the grace of God you have your inner eye opened, your inner ear opened, and your heart opened, what do you see?
You not only see that here is a Man full of grace and truth, but you see the glory as of an only begotten from the Father. That is what you see.
In other words, the world sees only grace and truth. Some believe; some reject. But so far as those whose eyes have been opened by the grace of God—the Father having revealed the Son in them—what they see is glory, His glory.
What kind of glory is that? He says it is glory as of an only begotten from the Father.
Now, brothers and sisters, we would like to consider together this matter of beholding His glory. What is the glory of Christ that we see today?
First of all, His glory is the perfect representation of God the Father.
You know, God is a God who loves to reveal Himself. In Hebrews 1:1-2, it says that in former days God spoke to our fathers through the prophets in many ways and in many manners—in parts and in pieces, fragments. But in these last days, He speaks to us in the Son.
In other words, throughout the history of mankind, God has tried to reveal Himself. He has tried to speak to men. He has tried to tell man Who He is and what He is like, because unless He reveals Himself, we would never be able to know Him. He is a mystery, and only when the mystery is revealed does it become an open secret—an experience of Him to us.
So you find in human history, from the very beginning in the Garden of Eden, God has tried to reveal Himself to man.
Also, you find that God raised up men and women to represent Him, that through these men and women who knew Him, the world might come to know Who God is.
All these men—Enoch, Abraham, Moses, David, and the prophets—you find that God, because of His love for us and because He wants us to know Him, raised up people to represent Him.
But no matter how they represented Him, it was only pieces and bits, only fragmentary. Why? Because men are so imperfect, men are so limited, and oftentimes we misrepresent Him more than we represent Him.
But thank God, when the Word became flesh, God found a perfect representation of Himself.
So that is why, in the Gospel of John, it says:
No one hath seen God at any time;
the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father,
He hath declared Him.
We do not know what kind of God He is. We do not know Who He is. But our Lord Jesus declares Him. He is in the bosom of the Father. He knows the very heart of the Father, and He declares the Father to the fullest.
If you want to know God the Father, just know Him, and you know all about the Father. That is the only way you can know the Father.
And, strangely, you find that after He had been with His disciples for three and a half years, during His last gathering with them, Philip—who was one of the earliest to come to the Lord—said, “Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us.”
Oh, how it must have grieved our Lord Jesus. The Lord said, “Have I been so long time with you, and dost thou not know Me, Philip? He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.”
Dear brothers and sisters, our knowledge of God, our knowledge of the glory of God, comes to us through our Lord Jesus. He is the perfect representation of God the Father.
In 2 Corinthians 4:6:
Because it is the God who spoke that out of darkness light should shine,
who has shined in our hearts
for the shining forth of the knowledge of the glory of God
in the face of Jesus Christ.
Now, brothers and sisters, how we thank God. The God who spoke has now shined in our hearts for the radiancy of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
In other words, when you see the face of Jesus Christ, you see the glory of God. You receive the knowledge of the glory of God.
We mentioned last time Moses. He was not satisfied with the manifestations that he had experienced of God. He knew something of God’s glory, because from the very beginning he saw the burning bush, and God spoke to him face to face.
And by “face to face,” it does not mean the naked face of God. It means that God appeared in some form. You find that God manifested Himself under the cloud.
So Moses desired to know God, and Moses said, “Show me Thy glory.” And God said, “Thou canst not see My face; for man shall not see Me and live. But I will pass by thee. I will hide thee in the cleft of the rock, put My hand over thee until I pass by, and I will proclaim My name.”
In other words, Moses was allowed to see the backside of God, not the face.
And, brothers and sisters, even that—when Moses came down from the mountain, his face shone. You cannot see the glory of God without being glorified.
How much more glorious it is that today God allows us to see His glory in the face of Jesus Christ.
In other words, it is not just a name. We already mentioned that a name is where the person is absent. That is when the name works. But when the person is there, you see his face.
And how much better it is that you can see, in the face of our Lord Jesus, the glory of God. The face of our Lord Jesus is the face of God.
We have such a privilege—not just the back, but even the face: the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
Brothers and sisters, do you see the face of Jesus Christ? Are you seeing His face every day?
To see a face, you have to be very close. To see His face, you have to turn to Him.
And that is the reason why you find the words of the prophets always calling His people: “Return. Turn back to God, and He will turn to you.”
Oh, how we need to turn to our Lord Jesus. Do not look elsewhere. If you look elsewhere, you do not see the glory of God.
The only place that you can see the glory of God is in the face of Jesus Christ. Look at Him. Gaze upon Him. Behold Him. Stay with Him.
And, brothers and sisters, you see in His face the glory of God—a perfect representation of what God is.
I wonder, if we see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, will not our faces shine also?
I want to quote Brother T. Austin-Sparks again:
God, to be seen nakedly, means destruction. But God manifested in Christ means that something has come between the blazing light to break it into its components and gives us the effect of a prism, so that the blazing white ray is now come in all its manifold hues. The body of Christ was like a prism, breaking up for us the rays of infinite holiness, and we are able to see what God is in Christ.
Now let me read it again, because I feel it is so clear. It really explains to us that God, to be seen nakedly, means destruction. Now we all understand this.
But God manifested in Christ means that something has come between the blazing light. It is a blazing light that would blind every eye—not only blind, but kill every man.
But here you find that when God is manifested in Christ, there is something that comes in between that blazing light and serves as a prism to break the light into its component parts, so that we can see all the different hues. The light is broken into all the different colors.
Now the body of Christ—that is, the incarnate Son—the body of Christ is like that prism, breaking up for us the rays of infinite holiness.
In a sense, you know God is holy. But that infinite holiness is something we can never see. It is too bright for us; it is too holy for us.
But here you find it is broken into the rays of infinite holiness. We are able to see what God is, Who God is, in Christ.
And he says also that His glory is interpreted in terms of grace and truth. He was the glory of God, and through the prism of His humanity, it was the glory of God showing itself through a human life along the lines of grace and truth.
Here you find the glory of God manifested in a human being, and this human being is none other than the incarnate Son.
Because He comes as a human being, His humanity is the prism that breaks the blazing light of God, the impenetrable holiness of God, into something that we can see, hear, touch, contemplate, and even participate in.
And that glory is interpreted in terms of grace and truth.
You know, what is grace?
If you read the Gospel according to John, it tells us of the life of the Lord Jesus on earth, full of grace and truth. But then you turn to 1 John, and there you find the apostle John trying to tell us Who God is.
God is love. That is what God is. God is light, and in Him there is no darkness.
And, brothers and sisters, by His grace, grace is the expression of love. How do we know the love of God? Through the grace of our Lord Jesus.
How do we know that God is light and there is no darkness in Him? Because the expression of light is truth. The Lord said, “I am the truth.”
Our brother mentioned last night the Gospel of John. We know the Gospel of John is the Gospel of the ultimate. You find that there are a number of signs—all the miracles in the Gospel of John are called signs.
They are miracles; they are wonders. Yet John uses the word sign—a signpost. In other words, do not stay with these miracles, but go beyond the miracle and see something else.
Now, in all these signs, they show us that He is full of grace and truth.
Just to illustrate it, the first miracle that our Lord Jesus performed was during the marriage in Cana: turning the water into wine. Now, do not stay with the miracle and hope that all your water will turn into wine. That is not the meaning of it.
You know, our life on this earth—marriage is one of the highlights. Marriage is one of the happiest moments of earthly life. And here the Lord begins with a marriage. It was a very happy occasion. Everybody was happy. Oh, how they enjoyed the feast. How they enjoyed the wine prepared for them.
But then, you know, as usual, all the happiness on this earth always ends up in sorrow, in shame, in despair.
Fortunately, the Lord was there. As our brother said, graciously He turned the water into wine. He made that which was flat into something tasty. He changed sorrow into joy, shame into glory, and lack into abundance.
There were six huge stone vessels full of wine—not just for that wedding time, but probably for their lifetime.
That is grace. And through that grace, you find John says this is the first sign in which He manifested His glory. Remember: His glory—the glory of the grace of God. Our God is gracious.
And then you take the last sign: Lazarus. You remember when the sisters went to tell the Lord, “Lord, behold, he whom Thou lovest is sick.”
And the Lord stayed away for two more days. He told His disciples, “This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God.”
After four days He arrived there, and Lazarus was already in the tomb for four days. Our Lord Jesus raised him from the dead: “Lazarus, come forth!”
Fortunately, the Lord said, “Lazarus.” Otherwise, if He had only said, “Come forth,” all the dead would have come.
And here you find Lazarus coming forth. Brothers and sisters, this is the glory of God: life.
The Lord said, “I am the resurrection, and the life.” This is the truth. This is the eternal truth: God is life, not death.
The Lord is the resurrection and the life. But why? Because He entered into death, robbed death of its power, and came out on the other side victorious. That is the truth.
Brothers and sisters, through grace and truth, if you contemplate, if you think, you see the glory as of an only begotten from the Father.
You find that Scripture uses “glory as of an only begotten from the Father.” It does not use the words “the only begotten from the Father”; it uses an indefinite article. Why?
Now, that does not mean that He is not the only begotten. It simply means that the emphasis is different.
You know, He is the Son, the Son with the Father. But here, the glory that we contemplate is the glory as of an only begotten from the Father.
In other words, it is not the relationship of the Father and the Son that is emphasized, though that relationship is there. It is the representation that is emphasized.
So the glory here is the given glory that we see. Westcott said:
The glory of the incarnate Word is a glory that is of One who represents Another, being derived from Him and of the same essence with Him. The idea conveyed is not that of sonship only, but of mission also.
And I think that explains it.
I have to dwell on this first point more. My time is always up.
Hebrews chapter 1, verse 3:
Who being the effulgence of His glory,
and the very image of His substance,
and upholding all things by the word of His power,
when He had made purification of sins,
sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.
Here you find the incarnate Son, Christ, is the effulgence of God’s glory. Effulgence, in other versions, is translated “brightness” or “radiance.” It is like the light that shines forth from the sun.
Now, you cannot look at the sun, but it is the light that shines upon you. Yet, even in that illustration, you may think that if it is the brightness, the radiance of His glory that comes from the glory of God, it is somehow other than the glory of God.
So immediately, you find that the writer says He is the exact expression of His substance, or the exact image of His substance. In other words, even though He comes forth from God, yet He is one with God. He is the exact image of the substance.
We are told that this word image, in Greek, is character. Character. He is the character of the substance of God. What God essentially is, is expressed by the character.
Now, the word character—Alexander Whyte says that the artists and handicraftsmen of Greece employed this word to describe the etching on the face of a seal, or the engraving on the face of a stamp.
In other words, character is something that is etched. You may use an iron tool or something to etch something on the face of a seal, or to engrave on the face of a stamp.
In other words, it is the exact thing. It is the exact image, just the same as the original. And that is character.
So we find the glory of God is manifested and expressed through His character. Brother and sister, how do we know a person? How do we judge a person? You judge a person by his character.
Now, character—I have a very formal definition here. Bishop Butler has a very solid definition of character. He said:
By character is meant that temper, taste, disposition, and the whole frame of mind from which we act in one way rather than in another way. These principles from which a man acts, when they become fixed and habitual in him, we call his character.
So the Son is the character of God the Father. The Father’s whole character is fully and perfectly expressed and sealed upon His Son.
Our Lord Jesus is the full representation of God the Father. We see in His face the glory of God.
I have to borrow some time from you all, and if you get tired, you can walk out. I will not be offended.
We see the glory of the Lord in His life—in other words, the moral glory of the Lord Jesus Christ.
I want to quote another one, J. B. Stoney:
The glories of the Lord Jesus are threefold: personal, official, and moral. His personal glory He veiled; sometimes faith discovered it, or occasion demanded it. His official glory He veiled likewise. He did not walk through the land as either the divine Son from the bosom of the Father or as the authoritative Son of David. Such glories were commonly hid as He passed on in the circumstances of life day by day.
But His moral glory could not be hid. He could not be less than perfect in everything. It belonged to Him; it was Himself. From its intense excellency, He was too bright for the eyes of men, and man was under constant exposure and rebuke from it. But there it was, whether man could bear it or not. It now illuminates every page of the Evangelists, as it once did every path which the Lord Himself trod on this earth of ours.
There is a moral glory of our Lord Jesus. Brothers and sisters, you never see a man like this Man.
We do not have time to go into it. If you read the Gospel according to Luke, you find that He who was born was called “that holy thing.” When He was born, He was called the holy thing.
When He was twelve years old, He said, “I must be occupied with My Father’s business.” He was devoted to His heavenly Father, and yet He left the temple, returned with His parents, and submitted Himself to them.
What a balanced life that is: devoted to God the Father, and in submission to His earthly parents.
You find that He came to be baptized, not because He needed it, but to fulfill all righteousness.
You find that when He was tempted, He was not like the first Adam, the first man. The second Man, how He denied Himself to the uttermost and obeyed only His Father.
Throughout His walk on this earth, no one could find a single thing in His life. He could challenge His enemies, “Which of you convicteth Me of sin?” Nobody could.
Even the one who betrayed Him confessed that he had betrayed innocent blood. Even the judge knew that He was innocent. In other words, He was the perfect Man.
He was hard on the hypocrites, but He was tender to sinners.
Children liked to flock to Him. He said, “Forbid them not.” He was approachable, loving, and yet He disciplined His disciples.
Righteous, holy, pure, transparent before God and before man—this is the moral glory of the Lord Jesus.
Brothers and sisters, it is something for us to contemplate. The more we contemplate His moral glory, the more ashamed we are.
Even the heavens opened and said, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” God had found His Man.
So far as His own condition was concerned, He had come into this world, walked on this earth, and done the will of the Father. The perfect Man that God had desired from the very beginning was here.
He could easily have ascended from the Mount of Transfiguration, but He did not. He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem, to the cross.
Perfect—the moral glory of our Lord. And in that glory, we see the glory of God.
Not only that; thirdly, we find His glory in His work, in His mission. It is a mission accomplished. “It is finished.”
How He was tempted all the time to depart from that mission, but He obeyed His Father even unto death, yea, the death of the cross.
No wonder Paul said, “I glory in the cross of Jesus Christ.”
We see His glory in His exaltation—how He was exalted by the Father and given a name that is above every name, and at that name every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord.
The apostle John gets a glimpse of it in Revelation chapter 5: the Lamb, newly slain, standing before the throne, taking from the hand of the One upon the throne the scroll, the title deed of this universe.
He is the only worthy One to execute the plan of God, to bring everything back to God Himself. No wonder you find the whole heaven praising the glory of the Lamb.
And, brothers and sisters, there is the glory of His coming again. He came as a King, though not a King that the world knew. But one day He will come back as the King of kings and Lord of lords. What glory that will be!
So, brothers and sisters, He wants us to behold His glory. Why? Not because He wants to display Himself. It is for our encouragement.
It is that we may, by beholding His glory, be transformed from glory to glory.
I do not know how to end this meditation. The only thing that comes back to me—it does not seem to fit that well, but somehow I feel that is the only thing I can conclude with—is Psalm 24:
Lift up your heads, O ye gates;
And be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors:
And the King of glory will come in.Who is this King of glory?
The Lord strong and mighty,
The Lord mighty in battle.Lift up your heads, O ye gates;
Yea, lift them up, ye everlasting doors:
And the King of glory will come in.Who is this King of glory?
The Lord of hosts,
He is the King of glory.
Brothers and sisters, how we need to lift up our hearts, open our hearts, and let the King of glory come in. Shall we pray?
Lord, how we thank Thee that Thou dost desire that we behold the glory that the Father has given to Thee.
Lord, open our eyes. Open our hearts, that we may see Thy glory. In the name of our Lord Jesus, amen.