Sermon Notes: The Glory of the Lord
The Glory of the Lord
Matthew 5:8: Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
· If you want to see God, you must use your heart, your mind cannot help you.
· All of us that are seeking a deeper relationship with the Lord come to the point where we say, like Moses, “Lord, please show me your glory.”
· We all long for the day that we will see Him face to face… but we should also desire more of His Presence now.
· There are truths that can help us enter into to His Presence more effectively.
· Isaiah had such an experience:
Isaiah 6:1-3: In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple. 2 Above it stood seraphim; each one had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. 3 And one cried to another and said:
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
The whole earth is full of His glory!”
· There is a throne in heaven, and the LORD God sits upon it as the ruler of the universe! The throne was exalted, and the train of His robe filled the temple with glory and majesty.
· Surrounding the throne of God are angels known here as seraphim, literally means “burning ones.”
· The seraphim are not even speaking to the LORD God here. They are proclaiming His glorious nature and character to “one another,” in the presence of the LORD.
· Their existence was to give praise and worship and honor of the LORD God who is enthroned in heaven.
· What could we possibly do that is a higher calling than that?
· Shouldn’t we sing with the same passion, the same heart, the same intensity?
· Do those angels have more to thank and praise God for than we do? To say, holy, holy, holy is the LORD is to praise His holiness in the highest possible truth. The whole earth is full of His glory.
· They sang so powerfully the doorposts were shaken!
Isaiah 6:4-5: And the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of him who cried out, and the house was filled with smoke. So I said:
“Woe is me, for I am undone!
Because I am a man of unclean lips,
And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips;
For my eyes have seen the King,
The Lord of hosts.”
· When Isaiah saw the angels praising God, he realized not only that he was unlike the Lord GOD; he was also unlike the angels… he knew what kind of man he was.
· Isaiah saw his sinfulness primarily from what comes from his mouth, his lips. “I am undone” is not a bad place to be.
· I need to be undone so I can be put together again by the Lord, so I can praise Him with my mouth and my lips the way I should.
· Now let’s see the earthly Temple in Jerusalem, shortly before its destruction by Nebuchadnezzar.
Ezekiel 11:21-23: But as for those whose hearts follow the desire for their detestable things and their abominations, I will recompense their deeds on their own heads,” says the Lord God. 22 So the cherubim lifted up their wings, with the wheels beside them, and the glory of the God of Israel was high above them. 23 And the glory of the Lord went up from the midst of the city and stood on the mountain, which is on the east side of the city.
· The glory of the Lord left the Temple in Jerusalem.
· The people were doing detestable and disgusting things, and the Presence of the Spirit of the Lord departed. First to the Mount of Olives, and then up into heaven.
· The Shekinah Glory of the Lord had been the pillar of fire by night and the cloud by day through the desert for the Jewish people… but now had left them because of their desire for detestable things and their abominations.
· I wonder if the people even knew He had departed?
· Did they ever sense His presence at all? Or were they just going along with their religious duties, content with their church going, their traditions, and their holidays.
Hebrews:13:5: Let your conduct be without covetousness; be content with such things as you have. For He Himself has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”
· We have a different New Covenant reality, than those who were under the Old Covenant, “He will never leave us or forsake us.”
· We will always have His Presence as our bodies are the temples of the Holy Spirit.
· He doesn’t come and go as we make mistakes. Hallelujah!
· However, it is essential here to recognize that our “perception of Him and of His Presence” should be the defining characteristic in the lives of the New Covenant Christian, yet so many do not “know” this Presence of God as their reality…partly because their concept of our God… is not worthy of our God.
· In many ways we can be similar to those religious Jews who did not even know that the Glory of the Lord, the Holy Spirit, had even left the Temple because they had no “experience with the Presence.”
Ephesians 4:29-30: Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers. 30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.
· Paul echoes the unclean lips. Here, Paul tells us do not “grieve the Holy Spirit.”
· I believe that one of the characteristics of the modern American Church, is the lack of the “fear of the Lord” and the casualness of our relationship to the Lord.
· I wouldn’t be surprised if the Lord showed up, that someone would slap Him on the back and call Him, “Bud.” His Presence is not the defining characteristic of their lives, or they would not be so casual.
· They come to church and are in a hurry to get back to their worldly lives, so therefore their God is just a caricature of their own lives…and that God is not worthy of our worship. We should refuse to worship anything of our own making.
v Everything we do in some ways reflects our perception of our God, therefore our perception should be worthy of our God and that perception should reflect the truth revealed to us about our God in the Word.
· But if our perception of our God is based on the truth of the Word… we will worship Him in truth.
· Even though He is far above my ability to conceive of His glory and majesty, the Word tells me that I can know Him by faith, not by my intellect.
· Your intellect can help you know about God, but it cannot bring you into a personal relationship with God. Only faith can bring us into a personal “encounter” with God, and can lift us above our “clouds of unknowing.”
John 4:22-24: You worship what you do not know; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. 24 God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”
· I believe that only “worship in truth” for who He truly is, can lead us into an authentic relationship with our Lord…because worship keeps us in proper perspective to our Lord. He’s God, I’m not!
· Jesus is speaking to a gentile woman, a non-Jew, by Jacob’s well. He says, “You worship what you do not know.”
· The Islamists, the Hindus, and all the other pagans worship their idols with a complete reverence, but the Christians in America today seem to lack the kind of worship that the Father is seeking, and I believe that it grieves the Holy Spirit… and keeps us from really “knowing and experiencing our God.”
· Not actually knowing our God will lead us into “misunderstanding our existence” and we will inevitably seek purpose from the world…outside of God.
· Knowing Him transcends all human reasoning, and it will illuminate your way and cause you to walk in His glorious light. Let’s learn more from Jesus:
John 14:6-10: “Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; and from now on you know Him and have seen Him.” 8 Philip said to Him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is sufficient for us.” 9 Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; so how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10 Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on My own authority; but the Father who dwells in Me does the works.
· Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me: This means that Philip had been close to Jesus yet still did not understand Him. The same is possible and true for many today.
· It’s difficult for us to “know God.” So God came down as a man so we could know Him, because He wants to be known on a deeply personal basis. This is fundamental to our faith.
· But I don’t know where I’m going or my purpose, or even how to get to the Father. Jesus is the way.
· If I get confused along the way and I don’t know what to think. Jesus is the truth.
· If I wonder about life and death. Jesus is the life.
· Without the way there is no going; without the truth there is no knowing; without the life there is no living. We can know God because Jesus is God…and through the cross He invites us in. Everything else is a deception.
John 1:14: And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
· This is the truth we celebrate at Christmas; let us come to Him and adore Him and worship Him in spirit and truth. This is truly Joy to the world, our Emmanuel (God with us) has come!