Mission Glory Number 5.
Welcome to welling for your spiritual health and growth, for your well-being and your overflowing. What’s Your Life About? Is the name of our series. We are pursuing the issue of your mission, not only what you do but why you do what you do. We are also looking at all the important questions which allow us to understand the framework and the foundation for our daily existence, for our eternal existence.
Mission, what is glory we’ve already pursued? I’d encourage you to go look at those short videos. Basically, it says that the more weight God has in our lives, the more praise he receives from our lives. The more weight God has in your life, the more great God looks through your life, as both weight, and honor, praise.
My mission is for His glory. It is probably the most foundational truth, the one which is the pumpline to which I can adjust, the ruler of the standard which allows me to be grounded and anchored as a human being, let alone a believer in Christ.
In the last episode, we looked at mission glory to whom. It’s to the one who has a name, not on unnameable abstract principle or an idea, but somebody who named himself all through the Old Testament, they’ve have had some preferred names for God. Two of those names are found in the Psalm, Psalm 8, our main Psalm for this series.
In the very first verse, it says, “Oh Lord, our Lord, for whom is this glory? For whom do you exist? For whom do you have blood still pumping in your veins and the heart still pumping in your chest, for whom?” How many of you have seen the Latin initials, SDG? Some of you know that it’s Latin for soli Deo Gloria, or to God’s glory alone. Latin is not what they speak in Latin America.
It’s because it comes from a particular region of the world who speaks Spanish and Portuguese and French and so on, where Latin America has many of those languages spoken. They’re called romance languages they owe their derivation to the Romans who spoke Latin. I’m sure you know that all languages have romance in them. And that, of course, is a rather dead language. A friend of mine– when I was in my late teens from Trinidad– used to say Latin is the language of dead, as dead can be. First, it killed the Romans, and now it’s killing me.
There are nearly 8 billion people on the planet and not a single one has Latin as its first language. And yet we use Latin every day, especially if you speak English or Spanish or French or Portuguese. You use it every day, as one Latin scholar said without even knowing it. SDG, soli Deo gloria– that is a sense which the psalmist brings to us in the very opening line, “Oh Lord,” and the very last verse, “Oh Lord, our Lord.” Our Lord, It’s a double name. It’s a meaningful nickname for God.
The repetition of the word “Lord,” has both effect and impact, meaning and significance. This one is a super Lord, the lord of lords. You cannot exaggerate or you cannot magnify him too much. Our best attempts to talk about God are all deficient. We grossly underestimate and understate who he is. Now, the divine double name is also spelled differently in some of your Bibles and perhaps on the screen here.
The first one is spelled with a capital L-O-R-D. The second one is capital L, small o-r-d. It sets the tone of the Psalm because he was not only the covenant to God of the nation of Israel, he was not just located or only for personal purposes. He was also the God who created all with plans for all, with programs for all, with corporate, global purposes. And so to this lofty and wide recognition of God, the name in all the Earth, a sovereign God. “Oh Lord, our Lord, the whole Earth is full of your glory.”
Let me give you some dimensions of God’s glory very quickly. These relate to God’s perfection. If anybody was perfect, it’s God. We will always be at a loss in attempting to describe the excellencies of God. Whatever parallels divine glory should be understandable, for humans can only touch the outlines of glory. But let me share with you some biblical guidance and expressions of glory. One, glory connects with presence. If you’ve experienced presence when a glorious person walks in a room and all heads turn, conversations are stilled, people take notice, God has that kind of presence. He wants that kind and demands that kind of attention.
In the Old testament– sometimes called shekinah glory it referred to His Eminence, where this great God above all things establishes his presence among the people. He lives in a high and holy place, Isaiah says, but even with those who are contrite and lowly in spirit. Another word, Emanuelle, which we use to refer to the Lord Jesus especially at Christmas time that demands concentration. It connects Christ’s glory with his presence. It’s OK to give focus attention to him.
Glory is also exchangeable with the light. Shekinah was already connected with the present by brightness of the lumination. In the new Jerusalem, the glory of God is its light, Revelation 21 says the glory of God of course parallels holiness. All of us know the great triad in Isaiah when he sees in the temple and shouts, “Holy, holy, holy. The whole Earth is full of its glory along with the Angels in the heavenly temple. Holiness.”
Of course, glory will have to equal power. I mean creation is powerful, therefore brings glory to God. Providence and circumstance is powerful, brings glory to God. Salvation is powerful, brings glory to God. Glory is God. When Mary and her Magnificat sang, My soul glorifies the Lord. Because nothing is impossible with God. That he’s able to do anything within his character and plans for his glory. God must be glorified. This God then, is to whom we give glory. Give him weight. And to whom we bring glory. We give him honor. Glory be to God. For whom should glory be reserved? To God alone.