Not as it is a matter of spiritual capacity that determines how much we can receive. We do pray for enlargement this evening—real enlargement, Lord—that we may be enabled to receive what Thou dost want us to have: not less, not more.
We just pray that it may be Thy measure, Thy measure, Lord. Thou wouldst see to it that it is what Thou Thyself hast desired for us in this hour. So help us, for Thy name’s sake. Amen.
In pursuing the matter which has been before us all day today, I want to call to your remembrance three fragments of the Word in the Letter to the Ephesians, the Letter of James, and the First Letter of Peter.
Ephesians 1:15-17
For this cause I also, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus which is among you, and which ye show toward all the saints,
cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers;
that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him.
James 2:1
My brethren, hold not the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with respect of persons.
1 Peter 4:12-14
Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial among you, which cometh upon you to prove you, as though a strange thing happened unto you:
but insomuch as ye are partakers of Christ’s sufferings, rejoice;
that at the revelation of His glory also ye may rejoice with exceeding joy.
If ye are reproached for the name of Christ, blessed are ye;
because the Spirit of glory and the Spirit of God resteth upon you.
For those who have not been with us earlier, may I just say that we have been led to be occupied with the matter of the end of all God’s works being glory.
We have defined glory as being the expression of God’s full and final satisfaction: God giving out from Himself His pleasure, His delight. Like a heavenly contagion, those who come within its range and its reach are very conscious of the Lord being pleased, satisfied.
You know, He is in one place translated as “the blessed God”; the original says, “the happy God”—the happy God. If you come into the presence of people who are very happy, really happy, you catch it and are affected, infected, by their happiness.
It is possible to go amongst people who are heartily laughing, and you begin to laugh, though you do not know what you are laughing for. You do not know what they are laughing about; you begin to laugh. The atmosphere influences you.
Now, if God is like that—that is, if He is happy, satisfied, well pleased, delighted—and you come within touch of Him when He is like that, you catch something from Him. You feel it: that happiness.
Now, that is exactly the meaning of glory: God being completely contented with a situation, with a life, with a person. If you should happen to be that person, you just take from God something of His contentment and satisfaction. It is a glorious sense of contentedness, of satisfaction, of blessedness. That is the meaning of glory.
So the end of everything that is really of God is that wonderful power of His own personal pleasure. I think there is nothing in all the universe so blessed as to have a sense that the Lord is well pleased—the Lord is well pleased.
It must have been a great day for Abraham, a wonderful day, inexpressible, when God called him His friend: “Abraham, My friend.” And for Daniel, when the messenger of God said, “O man greatly beloved.” What do you want more than that from God? That is glory, is it not?
Well, God is working toward that in all His works—in the universe, in creation, and in the redeemed. Now, you will have noticed from the three passages that we read that we find the triune God—the three Persons of the Trinity—personally related to glory: first, the Father of glory; secondly, the Lord Jesus, the Lord of glory; thirdly, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of glory.
Each member of the Godhead takes character from this very word, glory. Each Person of the Trinity is supremely concerned with glory.
I am opening up a very large door. I am not going to enter that door very far this evening. I leave Brother Harrison to take it up in the future, if he wants to, and show you through the Bible how God as Father, the first Person of the Trinity, is always concerned about glory; how the Lord Jesus, the second Person in the Trinity, is always working under the line of glory; and how the Holy Spirit, all the way along, is operating toward glory, with glory as His governing concern.
I leave that. That is a long, long theme—a very blessed line of meditation. But it is enough for me just now that the Godhead is united around this one thing, this one alone thing: they are united concerning glory. Their interest is one interest. As we call it today, their priority—the priority of the triune God—is glory.
All I am going to do this evening is say a little word about each of these designations: Father of glory, Lord of glory, Spirit of glory. May the Lord give us something in our hearts from our brief meditation.
What does that mean? Well, it means that God is the source and emanation of glory. That is, all that comes from Him is on the principle of fatherhood. The principle of fatherhood is that He is the source, the beginning, and the projector. That is fatherhood.
It means that all that really emanates from God has as its very purpose and destiny glory. We are children of God, but the very object and purpose of our being children of God, in God’s mind, is that we should come to glory.
That is, we should be brought to that position where, at last—oh, wonderful thought, too wonderful for us to grasp—God says, “I am satisfied, perfectly satisfied, content.” Can you imagine God saying that of you? Almighty God, eternal, perfect, holy—everything that is great—looking down upon us and saying, “I am well pleased. Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord, the very satisfaction of My Father-heart.”
Too much for us to grasp just now, is it not, if we know ourselves at all? But that is the meaning of His fatherhood. He has begotten us. He has brought us into being as His children. He is responsible for our coming into being as His children. He has taken responsibility for us as His children, all with this one object: bringing us along the way, the end of which is entering into that unspeakable awareness that He has nothing whatever against us, that He is satisfied to the last possible degree.
Father of glory. Whatever comes from God, whether His children or His creation, really comes out from God as destined for that glory of His perfect satisfaction. The end of the Bible finds things like that: a state of glory, a glorious condition, which just means the outgoing, the emanation, of God’s own perfect satisfaction.
Paul puts it this way: foreordained to be conformed to the image of His Son. And what is that? His Son: “My beloved, in whom I am well pleased.” Conformed to that; to inherit His own attitude toward His Son; to come into that position and condition which His Son occupies, of perfect satisfaction to the Father.
His fatherly dealings with us, you see, are on that line.
My son, regard not lightly the chastening of the Lord,
Nor faint when thou art reproved of Him;
For whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth.
What is it all about, the chastening? No chastening for the present seemeth joyous, but grievous; yet afterward—afterward—it bringeth forth the peaceable fruit of righteousness. What is that? That complete peace in the heart, with God’s sense of righteousness satisfied.
Father of glory. That is enough for the moment.
Our Lord Jesus, the Lord of glory—so James calls Him. A wonderful thing: James, His own brother in the flesh, calling Him that.
There was a time when James, His brother in the flesh, did not believe on Him. “For even His brethren believed not on Him.” We have a very shrewd idea why that was. James and the other brothers of Jesus, after the flesh in those days, were a bit worldly. They had an eye to business, to success, to popular acceptance, and especially to standing well with the authorities. That is the spirit of the world: stand well with the authorities.
And this Brother of theirs, this Elder Brother of theirs, was taking the course that would get Him into trouble with the people who had it in their power to take from Him everything. “We belong to His family, and that means we will suffer because He is taking that line.” Well, I think that is a fairly true judgment of that statement: His own brethren did not believe on Him. They could not accept the way He was taking. It was not going to bring popularity.
But here is this brother of Jesus, these many years afterward, calling Him the Lord of glory. He did not believe on Him once; now he calls Him the Lord of glory. That is a wonderful thing. But what does it mean to call Him the Lord of glory?
Well, if anybody is lord, they have everything under their control. If you should be a lord, you have things under your control, in your power. You dictate how they are going to work out. The Lord is in all situations, and as Lord of glory He is in the position of mastery.
Peter, who at one time denied Him, and denied Him vehemently, later said, “He is Lord of all.” The same thing happened in Peter as in James—in them all.
From the context of Peter’s words, we know that Peter was having to recognize the absolute mastery of the Lord Jesus. Peter was arguing a bit. It is very strange that Peter should at that time have been arguing with the Lord Jesus: “Not so, Lord; for nothing common or unclean hath ever entered into my mouth.” Peter had to succumb to the Master, and he did. Then he said, “He is Lord of all.”
That means that He was in charge both of Peter and of every situation. Being in charge, the situation is going to work out to the end that He intends. When James says, “the Lord of glory,” it means that the Lord Jesus is in charge of everything to make it work out for glory.
You have only to begin the Book of Acts of the Apostles—as it is called, wrongly, I think—and go through it to see the Lord of glory holding the situations, phase after phase, stage after stage.
Take Peter. He is in prison, guarded by four quaternions of soldiers. The doors are closed, inner and outer doors, and Herod has made very sure that that man is not going to escape. This looks a pretty difficult proposition, does it not?
I doubt whether it would have been possible for any man to have liberated Peter that night. Herod had all the forces of this world determined that Peter should not escape. He was a key man, a strategic man, in this new movement—indeed, he was the key man. So, keep him safe. All right: do all you can, all you will. Take every precaution, every measure. Make this secure.
The Lord of glory has other ways. An angel comes, smites Peter’s side—and he is asleep. Oh, wonderful! The Lord Jesus is Lord. You can go to sleep in a situation where tomorrow you are going to be brought out for execution, in the condemned cell, knowing that tomorrow you are going the same way as James, the other James, to be executed. Go to sleep!
Well, that wants a lot of glory to make you do that, does it not? It needs you to be able to say, “Well, the Lord has got this thing in hand. However it turns out, the Lord has the thing in hand. I am going to sleep. I am just going to sleep.”
A man away in the wild days was travelling and came to a shack. It was a perilous place where bears were roaming. He was very tired from travelling all day, but he could not get into the shack and could only rest under the awning outside. So he lay down.
Before he settled down, he read the Psalm: “He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.” He said, “No, no, it is no use to us keeping awake. You say You are going to keep awake all night; I am going to sleep. Have a good night. We will see.” That is trusting the Lord.
Peter went to sleep. The angel smote his side, struck off his chains, and said, “Rise up. Follow me.” Past the guards, out of the cell, out through the first door and then the next, they came to the outer gate, which opened to them of its own accord, and Peter was landed out there in the open.
This circumstance, so seemingly adverse and impossible, was in the hands of the Lord of glory. And the glory? We have Peter’s letters years afterward—wonderful letters, are they not?—and a wonderful life. So much wealth has come to us through Peter’s ministry in those letters. Glory, glory: the Lord of glory.
One more thing in that book. We are in Philippi. Paul and Silas are there because the Lord sent them there. They assayed to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus suffered them not. They assayed to go into Asia and were forbidden of the Holy Spirit. That night, wondering what this meant—why they were not allowed to go this way or that way—Paul saw a man of Macedonia and heard him say, “Come over into Macedonia, and help us.”
And assuredly gathering, Luke says, that they had been called to preach the gospel in Europe, they sailed and arrived in Philippi. I am sure the Lord sent them there. The next thing they find themselves in a dungeon, their feet fast in the stocks, and their backs bleeding from their lashings.
What do you make of this? What are you going to do about this? It seems an absolute contradiction. A big mistake has been made. We have got into confusion over our guidance. No, not a bit. In that condition, they are singing, praising God at midnight.
The Lord of glory has the situation in hand, and before the morning it is proved: the earthquake, the prisoners released, the jailer and his house saved and baptized, and the church in Philippi established. One of the first members was a jailer and his family.
I do not believe they were infants, because it says the apostle taught. You do not put a little innocent baby in a chair and begin to preach the gospel, teaching the things of Christ. They were intelligent, old enough to understand the teaching and preaching of Paul and to accept it, so that they were all baptized as responsible persons.
They were amongst the first members of that church, and we have that beautiful letter from Paul’s own prison years afterward, when he was in Rome: the Letter to the Philippians. We would not sacrifice that letter for a lot, would we? Very precious. The Lord of glory, you see.
That is the Book of Acts of the Holy Spirit, or the acts of the Lord of glory. He is in charge.
I wish we could always believe it when we are in prisons like that, and things are all against us, and we are having a difficult time. We could always just say, “The Lord is the Lord of glory, and He is in charge of this, and the end of this is going to be glory. The end of this is going to be glorious.”
Well, it works out that way, even though He has to say to us afterward, “O ye of little faith, wherefore did ye doubt?” Although we, under the trial, sometimes feel that there is anything but glory in this situation, in our condition, in the end He is faithful. He is faithful, and we find that glory is the end of His strange ways.
He is the Lord of glory. That is, He controls everything with glory in view.
Lastly, Peter calls the Holy Spirit the Spirit of glory—the Spirit of glory. Now, the context is necessary as the background of that very title of the Holy Spirit.
If you read this First Letter of Peter, you see that it is very largely about the sufferings of the Lord’s people to whom he was writing. He says that he is writing to the elect scattered abroad throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father. Then he opens up this matter of the sufferings of these people.
“Think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is among you, which cometh upon you to prove you, as though a strange thing happened unto you.” There is a lot about the sufferings of the Lord’s people in this letter of Peter.
When he has brought up sufferings, mentioned them, referred to them, he has two things in his dealings with that: first grace, and then glory. Grace and glory—grace issuing in glory.
It is very helpful to notice how he speaks of this matter of grace. Sometimes he uses the word properly; that is, he does call it grace. Unfortunately, in our translation there are places where the word is changed in English.
Well, this is what Peter is talking about: suffering, the fiery trial. And he says, grace in that is glory—the Spirit of glory.
The Lord help us. We can say these things, and as I say them, I say them carefully, guardedly. We can be so put to the test on things that we say, you know.
The Spirit of glory can take hold of things which could destroy us, could be our undoing if we had the wrong reaction to them, and can turn them to joy—this suffering, this affliction, this trial, this thing.
Paul said that, lest by reason of the greatness of the revelations he should be exalted, there was given to him a messenger of Satan, a thorn in the flesh. “For this thing I besought the Lord thrice.” Paul besought the Lord—you may take it that he did so very thoroughly. When he did it three times, you may be sure that Paul put himself into it: “Take this away, Lord. Remove this thing, or change this situation. Take this thing that is hindering my life.”
But He said unto me:
My grace is sufficient for thee:
for My power is made perfect in weakness.
“Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my weaknesses.” The Spirit of glory can take all of our trials, if we will trust Him, and turn the hard thing, the painful thing, into glory.
That is, in those things lead us to find God’s pleasure, God’s satisfaction—God saying, “Well done. Well done.” What more glorious thing could we desire than that we should hear Him say, “Well done, good and faithful servant; enter thou into the joy of thy Lord”?
Father of glory, Lord of glory, Spirit of glory. Lord, bless this word to your heart.
Good Lord, we pray, make the Word a blessing. Whether it meets a present need—and undoubtedly it does for some—or whether it is planted to be drawn upon in some day of trial and difficulty ahead of us, keep it alive. Make it a powerful means of help.
May we all come into the full reach of that ultimate glory, and walk in its way unto the day of the fullness of the glory. In the name of the Lord Jesus. Amen.