We are going to stay a little time with the second of the links in the riches: the unsearchable riches, and that is the riches of glory.
There are two passages to begin with: Romans 9:23 and Ephesians 3:16.
That He might make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy,
which He afore prepared unto glory.
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.
According to the riches of His glory. I think it only needs to be mentioned for you to recall that grace and glory go together very much in the Scriptures. He will give grace and glory, and we are to be unto the glory of His grace.
Glory is the result of grace. Grace is unto glory.
As to this word, it is not easy to understand this word glory. May I first remind you that this word is attached to each Person of the Godhead—the triune God.
God is spoken of as the God of glory. Stephen says, “The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham.” Paul, in his prayer, said that it was to the Father of glory that he bowed his knees.
The Father of glory remains the source of glory, the very spring and beginning of glory.
The Lord Jesus is more than once referred to as the Lord of glory. Writing to the Corinthians, the apostle, speaking about the folly of the wisdom of the princes of this world, said that had they really had true wisdom, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
The Lord Jesus is the Lord of glory. If Father means source, Lord means government. The government is committed to Him, and it is upon His shoulder; and He will govern all things with glory in view, as we shall see shortly.
And then, as for the Holy Spirit, He is distinctly called the Spirit of glory: “The Spirit of glory may rest upon you.”
So the whole Godhead is compassed and characterized by this one thought of glory. He 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.” And whenever it is like that—well, again, we shall see—that is glorious. It is very good.
The close of the Bible is the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, having the glory of God. The Bible is thus bounded by this thought of glory.
Christianity is compassed by the same thing. At its inception, 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.
Again, the last thing about the church is in that great cry 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 generations for ever and ever.
You cannot get after that. That is glory in the church for evermore.
Christ is bounded by glory. Although, from the earthly standpoint, His coming into the world was in humility and humiliation, in poverty and weakness, in heaven it was “Glory to God in the highest.” From heaven’s standpoint, it was a glorious day when God’s Son became incarnate, for heaven knew what that meant.
He passed, by way of suffering and sorrow, humiliation and the cross, in a circle or cycle up to glory. We have a bigger view of Him. He had glory before the world was.
Father, glorify Thou Me with Thine own self
with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was.
Equal with God in glory before this world was brought into being, and then God hath highly exalted Him and given Him the Name which is above every name. Glorified.
You see how everything has this encompassment, this horizon. That is the end; that is the object.
Now we have to stop and break this up. What is glory? What is glory?
Perhaps it is the most difficult word to define or explain—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.
Whenever you come into the presence of glory, you are affected by it, and powerfully affected by it.
But mainly in the old dispensation, when things were more sensuous and spiritual things were in the realm of the human senses, God was dealing with man on the basis of his sentient life. In that dispensation, glory was something that could be seen.
Something that could be seen. It was a radiance; it was a blaze; it was a terrific power.
Men were aware of it by their senses. They could see and feel something. 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—always very powerful.
But this was only one side. It was the expression or manifestation of glory.
It is thought—we have not, I think, in the Word, very much of a definite statement to this effect; it is largely deduction and conclusion—that before Adam sinned, there was something about Adam that was like a robe of glory, something beautiful, what we would call glorious.
When he fell and sinned, he lost that covering of glory and knew that he was stripped naked. God had to cover him with the symbols of redemption.
That may be an imaginary conclusion, but follow that through and you will find, in the case of the Lord Jesus and in the case of glorified saints, that there is something about their very person that is glorious.
And I think just the hint of that is found, friends, when God is glorified in a life. There is something right about them, something indescribable even about their appearance.
You have seen the passing of a real saint. So often there is some radiance about the face just afterward. If you have seen someone really born again out of the depth, there is something about the face that speaks of glory.
Or, to put it the other way, when somebody is living out of touch with the Lord, something about their face has gone. Is not that true? You say, “Something got out of their face. It is not there, what was there before.”
Put it as you may, you mean the glory in expression has departed. So 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 it that makes the glory? What is the basis of the glory? What is the essence of the glory, the reason for the glory, the very nature of glory? What lies behind any manifestation at all, now or for ever?
Glory is the expression of the satisfaction of God’s nature.
That is a definition that you might well stay with and think about, dwell upon. And if you do, much will come up out of the Word that will show you how true that is.
The expression of the satisfaction of the nature of God. God’s very nature being what it is—holy, righteous, and true—when everything that the very nature of God is finds satisfaction, when God finds that which answers to His very being, to His disposition, to His thought, to His way of thinking and acting, and all that which is just God in essence, then there is a state of glory.
When things are as God wills they should be, then it is glory.
We return to the creation. When God had made all things, He was able to say of His work, “It is very good.” It was a glorious thing, really a glorious state. It would really have been good to be there.
And then, dear friends, such an atmosphere of contentment and satisfaction and rest, peace and joy—heart-ravishing. Nothing present to distress. God completely satisfied: a state of glory in the creation.
Follow that through in other connections. Take the tabernacle. God gave a precise, meticulous, detailed prescription of the tabernacle, for the simple reason that it was not the tabernacle that God had ultimately in mind at all; it was His Son.
And the command, found and repeated, was:
See that thou make all things according to the pattern
that was showed thee in the mount.
When it was done, and all things were so made—to a detail, to a thread, to a pin—glory filled the tabernacle, filling it until all things answered to God’s mind, and 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, was true in the case of the priesthood. The high priest and his sons were clothed with the garments of glory prescribed by God Himself. As to everything about them—the material, colours, shape, signs—everything was heaven-chosen.
When the priests were so clothed according to God’s mind, they were called garments of glory: satisfying God.
And what was true of the tabernacle in all its parts and its priesthood was true also of the temple later. When David received the pattern, it is distinctly said that he received everything from the Lord. When it was done, glory so filled the house of the Lord that the priests themselves had to go out.
All this leads up to the New Testament: One who was the fulfilment and embodiment of all this—tabernacle, temple, priesthood, and everything else.
Standing before God, He was so approved of God, so fully satisfying, that He could be transfigured and clothed with glory. His raiment was white and glistering—glorified on the Mount of Transfiguration.
Because at that point He had satisfied the Father’s heart in every detail. From that moment, He must come down from the mount and go to the cross in all its agony and humiliation, suffering and sorrow.
That sorrow was not because He had disappointed the Father. It was in order to bring us to glory—to God’s satisfaction.
This is the basis of glory: God’s satisfaction.
And you see, from one little thing mentioned at that point: when the glory came in and filled, man had to go out. That is basic to glory—the absolute exclusion of man by nature.
Here is the trouble. Here is the one thing that spoils and limits the glory: the natural man, who keeps back the glory whenever he takes a place in divine things. The glory is either removed or limited.
That is again a reflection upon the Lord Jesus. There is nothing about Him that corresponds to the natural man. In Him, that first Adam has gone out, has been put out of the way.
He is of the new order, answers to God’s thought about man, and can stand in the eternal light. Christ in Person and Christ in His work: perfect, perfect, and therefore glorified.
The glory, when God is satisfied, is spontaneous. It just happens. It does not have to be brought about by effort; it just happens when God is satisfied.
If God is satisfied in part, there is spontaneously, by the Spirit of glory indwelling, the witness to God’s satisfaction in a sense of wonderful rest, quietness of heart, and joy—inexplicable in a way, and yet it is because the Lord is well pleased.
The Lord is well pleased.
This state of satisfaction to God, the full pleasure of God, the answer to the very nature of God, is what the Spirit of glory is working toward in the church and in its members.
This explains 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 we let Him—so that we may answer to Him.
The Spirit of glory is working with us and in us as members of His church, and in the church, that in the end the church may be presented to Him a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing.
A glorious church. Glory in the church unto all ages for ever and ever. God’s object is glory in His dealings with us.
It does not always feel like that, does it? It does not always seem like that. It seems just the opposite very often. And yet it is true.
But here it is that we, as the Lord’s people, have got to have some understanding and recognize and accept something: that God’s glory, the reaching of His glory, the manifestation of His glory now, is only along the line where that glory alone can have its opportunity and occasion.
Which means, if there is any state whatever that hinders the glory, that has got to be dealt with in discipline, got out of the way.
That is one thing that we have got to recognize: discipline is a part of the work of glory.
Now 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 take up the Book of Acts. Look at 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 Acts—whatever you like.
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 that is what it was.
Look at it again from that standpoint. We have said that it begins with the church born in glory. 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.
It was a state of life, a state of new hope and prospect, so that Peter could say:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who according to His great mercy begat us again unto a living hope
by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
That was the very atmosphere and nature of the day of Pentecost: begotten again unto a living hope after a terrible despair a few days before. It was a day of glory.
But now let us pursue the course of glory through the Book of Acts.
It will not be long before we arrive at the terrible story of the mounting antagonism—the hatred, the malice, the wrong, the wickedness, the evil—against Christ, against this Way, as they called it, and against all of this Way.
All of this vented itself, blazing out against this young man Stephen, ending in their casting him outside the city and stoning him to death.
You say, “Tragedy. Defeat. Disaster. Setback.” Oh, Stephen: “I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God.” And all who beheld him saw his face as it were the face of an angel.
It was glory. And glory was so real and so terrible that the chief witness against him, the supporter of his death, was smitten to the heart, to the depths of his being, and redoubled his antagonism to save himself from his own conscience.
However, out of Stephen came Paul. Is this defeat? Is this disaster?
God is very ingenious. The Lord Jesus—may I use the word of Him—is very clever. Let men and devils, 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 reading in this letter to the Ephesians, and that wonderful document that has ever been penned by man came out of Stephen’s death—Stephen’s martyrdom.
That is the kind of thing that glory does, you see.
And if you think that still needs strengthening, well, all right: Herod killed James and executed him. Terrible setback. Terrible setback.
Why, the devil has done something now—successful and triumphant—plucked out of this apostolic company one of its members.
But Herod is up against the glory. Follow through to the end of 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 that the Word of God grew and multiplied.
See the reaction of the glory. This is glory, is it not? You can see how glory comes along the line of adversity, and it is only along that line that you really do know what glory is.
Herod thought that every good thing he had done was because it pleased the Jews, and so he seized Peter and put Peter in prison. Now it is Peter. If Peter is taken, this is going to be something tremendous.
He takes every precaution that a man in his position could take to secure Peter. He has him thrown into the inner dungeon, made fast with chains, with four quaternions of soldiers to guard the prison. No help 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 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. His chains fall off; he is bidden to gird his garment about him and follow; the iron gates open. What has happened to the four quaternions of guards? They are hardly mentioned, as though they did not exist.
Now here is something strong, very strong, in the pathway of man’s hatred against the Lord of glory, and how simply the Lord of glory answers it.
But it is only that way. The church was tremendously stirred and concerned that night, giving itself to prayer. It says that prayer was made earnestly—stretched out, as the word means—by the church, taking this matter so seriously.
The Lord of glory moves in. The big problem is met so simply. Infinite power can work in such a simple way.
Then Saul passes. In his rage—rage itself—of anger, wrong, and hatred, like a boiling cauldron overflowing against those of this Way, he goes to the high priest.
“If you will give me documents of authority, I will go to the farthest city, and I will have arrested all of this Way, brought to prison, to judgment, and, if necessary, to death.”
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 slaughter, went to Damascus.
And the Lord of glory stepped across his path. The glory smote him to the ground.
For ever afterward, this man knew the meaning of the glory and spoke about it so fully.
Glory comes along the line of tribulation, suffering, and sometimes of apparent defeat—apparent success of the devil himself and his emissaries.
Sometimes it just does look as though Satan has done it; he has succeeded. That is not the end of the story—not the end of the story.
So you go with this man from place to place, to all these cities which he visited. See what happens. He later said that the Holy Spirit had witnessed to him that in every place bonds and afflictions awaited him.
Pick out Philippi. There he went, and the reaction of the satanic forces found him and Silas in prison, again fast in chains, their backs bleeding from the stripes.
Surely Satan had this one now. Surely this was real defeat. But we know the story.
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, loose all the prisoners, save the jailer and his household, and establish the church in Philippi.
To that church the apostle would later write, “My beloved and longed-for brethren, my joy and crown.” He would say, “Crown of glory.” And remember how it started, the way along which it came.
He referred to it: “How shamefully we were treated at Philippi.” Through shame, suffering, and adversity, the glory came.
John has a lot to say to us about this thing. Right at the very beginning, the marriage at Cana of Galilee: the failure of the wine, the end of all human resources, and men can do nothing.
Then comes in the Lord of glory. As it says:
This beginning of signs did Jesus in Cana of Galilee,
and manifested His glory.
Glory where man’s resources end; where, humanly, the situation is utterly helpless. That is the pathway of glory.
Or Lazarus—Lazarus. “This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified thereby.”
And to the poor, bereaved sisters:
Said I not unto thee, that, if thou believedst,
thou shouldest see the glory of God?
But the necessity for the manifestation of glory was the utter end of all human hope—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 fruitless, utterly hopeless, when it is quite impossible for us to do anything, 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 glory? I wish we could believe it—really believe it.
If only we could always believe that these situations, which seem so often to be the work of the devil and his triumph—his apparent triumph—are only the pathway of glory; that in the end, when the true story is told, it will not be all tragedy, all defeat.
The end will be glory through grace.
Glory through grace. There we start.