“LET ME ... SEE THY GLORY”
A. B. Parker
I have in mind also what has already been quoted that Moses asked Jehovah that he might see His glory (Exodus 33: 18). It was a very, very difficult time when Moses made that request.
He also said, “Make me now to know thy way”, Exodus 33: 13. God’s glory is expressed in His ways. It was still uncertain in one sense as to whether the people would be preserved; their very grievous sin was still very much in the mind of Moses, and in the mind of God too.
Moses evidently had some sense that there was going to be glory out of it but he did not know the way that that would be reached. He was concerned to know God’s way.
I was just thinking when our brother was speaking that there is so much in this subject in its practical bearing upon us that we do not have in our minds just an abstract thought of God’s glory; that He dwells in unapproachable light, for instance, that He is the God of glory, which means, I would think (and I think our brother had it in mind when he stressed that He is the God of glory) that He is the Originator of the glory which will abide eternally, but also He controls it and He can manifest it under conditions which in His ways are brought to pass so that there is .a receptiveness, a readiness to behold the glory and to see that we are in the shining of it and are reflecting it too.
When Moses saw the glory of God and came down from the mountain his face shone; he was affected by having been in the glory. And I believe we are to be affected too when the glory of God is manifested amongst us in relation to His ways. It was of great glory to God that a people who were saturated so to speak with idolatry should be adjusted, repentant. Some were incorrigible, which is often the case in issues; they were dealt with because God said that He was not sparing the guilty, but He emphasizes His loving kindness, and He was minded, it would seem from the way He spoke to Moses as He passed by and uttered His wonderful name, that He was minded to show mercy. It is a great matter when God is minded to show mercy.
That is this dispensation, the day of grace; God is minded to show mercy. That feature, that characteristic, that quality in God is free to come out because of the work of Christ and the fact that God is holding the world in reconciliation in view of as many as possible being reached through the glad tidings.
But anyway the great matter is that God is to get glory out of every situation. What was the glory really that was reached? The glory that was reached was that a people who had turned to idolatry, who were carried away by it momentarily, when thoroughly judged and repentant and humbled before God, their hearts burst forth in a heave-offering that was so abundant and so plentiful to provide for God’s dwelling amongst them that Moses had to issue a commandment to cease bringing materials for the tabernacle because he already had more than he could use. Dear brethren, we have been through a very trying time, an exceedingly trying time. If we go back a number of years, not too many at that, well within the memory of every one of us here, we know what we have been involved in and I believe as times goes on we are becoming more deeply affected by what we have been and what we were carried away by and how easily we were misled. The chaos that has been brought in, the untold suffering, the sorrows that are continuing in a vicious way in so many areas, all this is still a reminder to us of a terrible catastrophe and breakdown, which I would say in principle was equal to the breakdown that Moses had to face in relation to the golden calf. At any rate, the times that we have been through have been very difficult. What is the glory that God is going to get out of it? The shame that has been brought in on the testimony we shall never forget—when I say never I mean in time. But there is something else that is coming out of it and I believe that we want to see that.
And how are we going to see it? By seeing a people that are so affected inwardly that they enjoy the excess of Christianity.
The Lord could say. If you do as the tax-gatherers and others do what is there extraordinary about that? (Matthew 5: 47). Christianity is extraordinary; it is not just an ordinary congregation, some of whom come to the meetings occasionally, it is a case where there should be an overflowing abundance from every heart. We should not want a meeting to pass without being present. We should feel it very badly if we cannot be at a meeting. We should not allow trivial matters to keep us from being at the meeting; we should not become habitual home-stayers if we have gotten any touch of the glory that God brings in as a result of the breakdown of His people. Not that there is any virtue in breakdown, the virtue is that God in His disciplinary ways brings us through experiences which deepen our feelings and enlarge our capacity. For what? For better living at home? No! for living in the land, the land into which He brings us every time we come together. If we come in faith we cross the Jordan, we come into the area of divine blessing, we enjoy conditions of eternal life as together. Oh that we could be in it more enthusiastically, dear brethren, that the result of what we have been through should so affect us that we say, ‘I am not going to miss another meeting if it is possible for me to be there, and not only that but I am going to be at every meeting in faith, in dependence upon God and as a conscious contributor to the peace and blessing amongst the people of God’. If that were so think of what our meetings would be! I believe that is one of the glories of God that came in as a result of Moses asking God to show him His glory.
Now it is not any one asking to see the glory
in John 11, it is the Lord Himself saying that they would see it. “Did I not say to thee, that if thou shouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God?” You may say the glory of God was seen in the calling forth of Lazarus from the grave. Of course it was. But is that all? I believe that the glory of God is not only seen objectively but it is seen substantially. It is seen worked out amongst the saints, and I believe that John 12 is the expression of the glory of God amongst His people. When the dear brethren are together, not one missing, they are all there, Lazarus is there. He had been in the grave. Think of the experience he had gone through. Think of the experience those sisters had gone through; they had learned one of the most difficult lessons to learn negatively.
What was it they learned? They learned that the feelings that they had in relation to their brother, when they said, “he whom thou lovest is sick”, those feelings had to be adjusted. Not that there was any change in the love of Christ. He loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus.
We would have put it in a little different order, but I think the reason it is put that way is to show that it is not exactly there a love that is the result of the pleasantness or the lovability of the persons but a love which is generated, begun, in the heart of God, a love that flows out according to His purpose. We would have said He loved Mary, and Martha, and Lazarus, but it says of the Lord, “Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister”, Mary is not even mentioned by name, “and Lazarus”.
Well, what is going to happen? This is the area in which they had to learn that the very choicest thing in human relations must end in corruption. That is a terrible lesson to have to come to. It takes us a long, long time to come to it. There are many that carry forward the idea that they will see their loved ones in the glory and the relationship will in a sense be renewed—on different lines, yes, but nevertheless that the love that we had for one another naturally will in some way carry through. It will not carry through. What is natural will cease because nature must cease. Man according to flesh and blood has been finished in the unsparing judgment of God not only against sin but against the man and the order of man that sinned, and we have to come, dear brethren, to the end of the choicest natural thing. They said, “Behold how he loved him!”—Yes, but the Lord Jesus was feeling the awful power of death, which was God’s answer to sin having come into the world and spoiled what was of nature. But at the same time the glory of God was going to appear, and that would appear in a consciousness of a relationship which is eternal.
The conditions in Bethany in John 12 are the commencement, so to speak, of what is eternal, not now in the natural family but in the family of God which goes through, man after a new order. What we see in Bethany in John 12 is an area where, in spite of the fact that we are still in conditions here—and there was an element there that had no spiritual sensibilities whatsoever—there is power in having gone through experiences to override, so to speak, the element of the evil that may be in our hearts and amongst us in any sense and enter an area in which the Spirit of God is free, where each person is held in his own orbit in attraction to Christ and moves in relation to Him, so that the beauty of life and the activity of life and the odour of life all can flow in unhindered fashion. The glory of God was seen in that little household in Bethany in John 12 I truly believe.
Well, dear brethren, I have referred to these two results of the glory of God being seen in relation to ourselves in order that we may see that what we have been through, and the loss of loved ones and of those who were such pillars amongst us—we miss them and will continue.to miss them these are the conditions where death comes in, where pressure comes in, where trial comes in. But the glory of God is manifested in that, in those very conditions and surroundings, by our having come to know Jesus in some distinctive way as the Son of God who has undertaken everything for the pleasure of God, there is brought about the manifestation of His glory; “This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified”. Oh, dear brethren, I think the Lord wants to have us expressive of glory every time we come together, and even before we come together, and when we are waiting for the opportunity to come together. He wants us to be in this state of soul so that there is the expression of divine glory, glory secured through something being reached in persons while still in flesh and blood conditions. We do not have to wait for eternity to be ushered in before we can touch the feelings and the associations and the glory of the eternal day.
May we be energized, dear brethren; we need it; we need to be overcomers. Every church in Revelation that is written to is required to have overcomers, even Ephesus, even Philadelphia, “He that overcomes”. Let us all be overcomers, and let us overcome fleshly tendencies, natural tendencies, the tendency to take our ease, the tendency to put the things of God secondary instead of first, the tendency to give God the fag-end of our time. I speak to myself when I say this because I know how much my time is taken up with things which perish with the using. But, dear brethren, we want to be energized as a result of being here tonight. I was impressed at the beginning of the meeting with the way God speaks, ‘Thou spakest and creation rose’—what an expression! “He spoke, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast”, Psalm 33: 9. We may have heard the speaking; there may have been something wrought out in us; but the commandment follows, and if the commandment is heard and obeyed we shall continue in fidelity and energy and spiritual life. May the Lord help us in it.
Word in meeting for ministry, Brooklyn, N.Y.
11 September 1979