Chapter 2: The God of Glory

The God of Glory

The world overflows with unspeakable glory. From the soaring mountain peaks of the Himalayas to the riotous coral reefs of Australia, from the delicatessens of Paris to the pho shops of Vietnam, and from the Great Wall of China to the lofted peaks of Machu Picchu, the world is full of beauty, goodness, and value. Veins of gold lie beneath the ground, and diamonds sparkle in unseen caves. Eagles take to the wing and sweep down from the mountaintops. Muscles ripple down the horse’s back, and majesty lies like a heavy blanket all across the world.

And all of humanity clambers after glory. High-rise condos along the oceanfront, the skywalk at the Grand Canyon, a myriad of zoos and aquariums, and the panoply of eateries around the world are a testament to the human push toward the good. We want to be wowed. We wanted to be delighted. We want to get close to the valuable. Indeed, we want to taste the valuable. Go to a glass tunnel aquarium, listen to the children’s oohs and ahs, and be reminded that we love glory.

And glory is so often personal. We enjoy food and views and art and coffee, but the glorious goodness of people is on another level. We clamber to the theaters to see glorious heroes doing wondrous deeds. We consider our family “the greatest gift (that is to say treasure/value/worth/etc.) that God has given us.” The wedding industry is lucrative for a reason. We lavishly celebrate what we value–two people finding each other. Two human beings finding their greatest earthly good in each other. 

We are awed by sex. There is a reason that Sigmund Freud thought that we could all be boiled down to our sex drives (basically). Sex encapsulates all that we find glorious. It epitomizes the most intimate, pleasurable union of two humans in love. The reason the world is so obsessed with sex is because it thrums so closely to the heart of God and his design for humanity. The perversions of sex tap more deeply into the motivations and machinations of the human heart than perhaps any other thing, even money and power. In other words, we find sex glorious, wonderful, worthy, and valuable. To us, sex is something worth pursuing. For many, it is something worth pursuing ultimately.

A wealth of banks, investment firms, and financial institutions demonstrate the human love of money. We give away 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year (2,080 hours per year), all for money. We consider money to be a worthy repayment for significant pain: “I’d only do that if I got paid enough!” (We always face pain by looking toward some consequent good. The weight of the consequent good determines our willingness to endure the pain. More on this later.)

We are geared toward glory, and the world is full of it. 

God is the most glorious Being in the universe. His glory, worth, value, and beauty eclipse even the brightest goods of this world. Nothing can compare to him in value and worth. And his word shows us his glory.

His Glorious Name

Moses asked God, “Please show me your glory” (Exo. 33:18).

God’s reply is incredible. He tells him, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The LORD.’ And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. But . . . you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live” (Exo. 33:19-20). The LORD will show Moses all his goodness and proclaim his own name. Where does the LORD’s goodness reside, except in the goodness of his name? In the clear proclamation of the name of the LORD, of who he is, all his goodness shines forth.

And his glory is so bright that it would rip the face off any mortal man who would see it in all its stark intensity. No one can see him and live to tell about it. The “appearance of the glory of the LORD [is] like a devouring fire” (Exo. 24:17). God dwells in “unapproachable light” (1 Tim. 6:16). The apostle John would later describe the glory of the resurrected Christ: “His face was like the sun shining in full strength. When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead” (Rev. 1:16-17). God’s glory is so great that clear sight of all that he is, in all his intensity, would kill a man. 

Perhaps we should consider Hoover Dam holding back Lake Mead, which can swell to about 8.5 trillion gallons. Now imagine a plastic water bottle. How does Lake Mead give itself to this water bottle? If it were to pour itself out in its entirety, with all its unimaginable immensity, the water bottle would burst into a hundred pieces in a flash. Small, created, flimsy. Totally unable to take in Lake Mead in one gulp. 

An imperfect analogy, but perhaps an apt one. We can have a true sight of God’s glory, but not all at once. To see the LORD, we would die. Unlike Lake Mead, the LORD is infinite in glory. His glory is 8.5 trillion gallons of water times infinity. We simply cannot bear to see him in all his glory. Like that water bottle, we would burst into a million pieces. 

The LORD will make all his goodness pass before Moses, but he promises to protect him: “Behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock, and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen” (Exo. 33:21-23). He will spare Moses this glory overload. 

After making arrangements for the people and the animals to stay far away from the mountain, Moses comes up to meet with God. What does it look like for the goodness of the LORD to pass by Moses? 

The LORD proclaims his name. He tells Moses who he is. Who he is is his glory:

The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation.” And Moses quickly bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped. (Exo 34:5-8)

God tells Moses who he is. He unleashes the Hoover Dam and pours himself out toward Moses through his word, protecting Moses from disintegration. He is the LORD. He is merciful. Gracious. Slow to anger. Abounding in steadfast love. Abounding in faithfulness. Keeping steadfast love for thousands. Forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin. By no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and children’s children, to the third and fourth generation.

Each element of the self-proclamation of the LORD deserves close examination. This is simply who the LORD is. No one made him this way. No one thought it would be good if he were this way and filed a petition. No human resources department wrote up a list to instruct God who to be. No one and no thing caused him to be. He is the I AM. He simply exists. And this is who he is. This is what he is like. He is himself the source of all that is good and glorious. He is himself the measuring rod of all human goodness. All the good that has ever been evinced in all of human history has been downstream of God, the source of all goodness. God is God. He is who he is. And who he is shines more gloriously than a million suns.

The LORD, Shining and Beautiful

He is a God of incomparable beauty and majesty:

“Splendor and majesty are before him” (1 Chron. 16:27)

“Out of the north comes golden splendor; God is clothed with awesome majesty” (Job 37:22).

“O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens.” (Psa. 8:1)

“Glorious are you, more majestic than the mountains full of prey” (Psa. 76:4). 

“The LORD reigns; he is robed in majesty” (Psa. 93:1).

“Splendor and majesty are before him; strength and beauty are in his sanctuary” (Psa. 96:6). 

“Let them praise the name of the LORD, for his name alone is exalted; his majesty is above earth and heaven” (Psa. 148:13).

“In that day the LORD of hosts will be a crown of glory, and a diadem of beauty, to the remnant of his people” (Isa. 28:5). 

“For how great is his goodness, and how great his beauty!” (Zec. 9:17)

“For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty” (2 Pet. 1:16). 

The Psalmist says that God is his portion and his cup. As he considers the fact that he will inherit the LORD himself, he says, “The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance” (Psa. 16:6). 

 In Psalm 27, the Psalmist has one controlling desire: “One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple.” More than he wants sex or clothes or food or money, he wants to see the LORD in all his beauty. More than he wants to stroll through an art gallery, look down from the Alpine heights, or gaze upon a woman’s beauty, he wants to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD.

 When John sees the LORD on his throne, he sees him in this way: “And he who sat there had the appearance of jasper and carnelian, and around the throne was a rainbow that had the appearance of an emerald . . . and before the throne there was as it were a sea of glass, like crystal” (Rev. 4:3, 6). This speaks of divine brilliance and splendor. And the precious stones (jasper, carnelian, emerald, and crystal) all speak of the glory, worth, and value of the One on the throne.

 All throughout the biblical canon, God testifies again and again to his own incomparable worth. He holds himself out to the world like a shining diamond, saying, “Look at me. See how valuable I am. I am the most glorious and the most worthy.” 

 Jesus makes this clear in his parables. He says: 

The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it. (Matt. 13:44-46)

The kingdom of heaven, with Christ enthroned in the center and above all, is worth losing everything for. Money, sex, fame, reputation, entertainment, and family dissolve like dust in the scales in comparison with the kingdom of God. God is worth so much more. He and his kingdom are the treasure in the field. The “one pearl of great value.” 

Exalted Above All Other Gods

The world is filled with a panoply of gods and religions. Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Shintoism, Atheism, and a million other “religious” gods fill the earth. People sacrifice to them and bow before them. They fear and revere these gods. But the triune LORD is the only LORD. He is the only great one, and he far outshines all of these in glory. In his word, the LORD makes great and repeated boasts against the false gods of the world, declaring that he is far greater than they: 

“Who is like you, O LORD, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?” (Exo. 15:11)

“O Lord GOD, you have only begun to show your servant your greatness and your mighty hand. For what god is there in heaven or on earth who can do such works and mighty acts as yours?” (Deut. 3:24)

“Therefore you are great, O LORD God. For there is none like you, and there is no God besides you, according to all that we have heard with our ears.” (2 Sam. 7:22)

“All my bones shall say, O LORD, who is like you?” (Ps. 35:10). 

“There is none like you among the gods, O Lord, nor are there any works like yours” (Ps. 86:8).

“For who in the skies can be compared to the LORD? Who among the heavenly beings is like the LORD, a God greatly to be feared in the council of the holy ones, and awesome above all who are around him?” (Ps. 89:6, 7). 

The prophet Jeremiah denigrates the false idols of the people, saying that they are nothing in comparison with God: 

Every man is stupid and without knowledge; every goldsmith is put to shame by his idols, for his images are false, and there is no breath in them. They are worthless, a work of delusion; at the time of their punishment they shall perish. Not like these is he who is the portion of Jacob, for he is the one who formed all things, and Israel is the tribe of his inheritance; the LORD of hosts is his name. (Jer. 10:14-16)

 There is no one like the LORD. He is the great God over all the earth. No god compares to him in glory. Not the great religious gods that bind entire countries and cultures together (like Islam), nor the great gods we build for ourselves (like pornography or drugs) can compare with him in beauty, goodness, glory, and worth. To stumble across the LORD is to stumble across the inestimable treasure over all things. And we must sell all we have to have him. Nothing else compares. 

 The church must trumpet God as the greatest good. We should no longer corner him, cage him, or try to cover him over with paper-thin entertainments. I recently watched a video clip of a megachurch pastor riding into a service on a roller-coaster, with lights flashing and music banging. The world doesn’t need to have the gauze of flattering entertainments and weightless truisms wrapped around its eyes. We don’t need to spruce God up. We don’t need to make him more attractive. We don’t need to divert people’s eyes from the boring, problematic Bible. We don’t need to add anything to what God has said or who he is. 

 We need to let him shine. We need to be people of the truth who simply tell of his excellencies. He is the God whose glory would rip our faces off if he was not mercifully preserving us. His worth and beauty outshine the brightest sun. We don’t need to make God’s dry, dusty word become more exciting. We need to let it shine. We need to let it stand forth. We need to let him roar like the lion he is and put the din of the world’s raucous concert to infinitesimal shame.

 God was happy to put Christ forward as the definitive word on who he is. We should be content with that word. We should be happy with Christ and Christ alone. 

God’s word is clear. God is the God of glory (Ps. 29:3, Acts 7:2). He is worth more than everything else in all creation. In the next chapter, we will see that God is also the God of fathomless pleasure (Ps. 16:11). As the greatest good, he is the greatest heart-satisfier.