I want to introduce to you this sermon series that we're beginning today and in a moment Keith is going to come up and read the text. But we're starting in a series for the next seven weeks we're going to be looking at what's often called the attributes of God or the character traits of God. What is it that makes God who he is? So the questions that we want to answer in this series are who is God, number one. Some of you may not know God very well or at all. Because we have people visiting with us today who are looking at the Christian faith and so I want to try to answer those questions. And secondly why does that even matter? What God is and who he is. So I've called this series, behold his glory and over the next seven weeks we're going to look at these different character traits. Today is probably the most challenging one for me as a speaker and we're going to talk about his glory. What is the glory of God? And this passage that Keith is going to read is very mysterious, very strange, perhaps to your ears. It's Ezekiel chapter one. So he'll tell you what page number that's found on and give him your attention as we read Ezekiel one. Good morning. My name is Keith Johnson and I have the privilege of reading the scriptures for us this morning. You can find Ezekiel chapter one in page 820 of your Pew Bible and I'd encourage you to turn there because it's not an easy passage to follow. And I think if you're looking at it, it will help. In the 13th year, in the fourth month on the fifth day, while I was among the exile by the Kavar River, the heavens were open and I saw visions of God. On the fifth of the month, it was in the fifth year of the exile of King Jehoekin. The word of the Lord came to Ezekiel, the priest, son of Buzai, by the Kavar River in the land of the Babylonians. There, the hand of the Lord was upon him. I looked and I saw a windstorm coming out of the north and an immense cloud with flashing lightning and surrounded by brilliant light. At the center of the fire looked like glowing metal and then the fire was what looked like four living creatures. In appearance, their form was that of a man, but each of them had four faces and four wings. Their legs were straight, their feet were like those of a calf and gleam like burnish bronze. Under their wings, on their four sides, they had the hands of a man. All four of them had faces and wings and their wings touched one another. Each one went straight ahead. They did not turn as they moved. Their faces looked like this. Each of the four had the face of a man and on the right side, each had the face of a lion and on the left, the face of an ox. Each also had the face of an eagle such were their faces. Their wings were spread out upward, each had two wings, one touching the wing of another creature on either side in the two wings covering its body. Each one went straight ahead. Wherever the spirit would go, they would go without turning as they went. Their appearance of the living creatures was like burning coals of fire or like torches. Their move back and forth among the creatures it was bright and the lightning flashed out of it. The creature sped back and forth like flashes of lightning. As I looked at the living creatures, I saw a wheel on the ground beside each creature with its four faces. And this was the appearance and structure of the wheels. They sparkled like crystallite. All four looked alike. Each appeared to be made like a wheel intersecting a wheel. And as they moved, they would go in any one of four directions to creature's face. The wheels did not turn about as the creatures went. Their rims were high and awesome and all four rims were full of eyes all around. When the living creatures moved, the wheels beside them moved and when the living creatures rose from the ground, the wheels also rose. However the spirit would go, they would go and the wheels would rise along with them because the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels. When the creatures moved, they also moved. When the creatures stood still, they also stood still. When the creatures rose from the ground, the wheels rose along with them because the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels. Spread out about the head of the living creatures was what looked like an expanse. like ice and awesome. Under the expanse, their wings were stretched out toward one another, and each had two wings covering its body. When the creatures moved, I heard the sound of their wings like the roar of rushing waters, like the voice of the Almighty, like the turmoil of an army, and when they stood still, they lowered their wings. Then there came a voice from the expanse over their heads as they stood with wings lowered. Above the expanse, over their heads was what looked like a throne of sapphire, and high above the throne was a figure like that of a man. I saw that from what appeared to be his waist up, he looked like glowing metal as if full of fire, and that from down there he looked like fire and brilliant light surrounded him, like the appearance of a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day so was the radiance around him. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. When I saw it, I fell face down and I heard the voice of one speaking. This is the word of the Lord. A number of years ago, my wife and I were at a place in our lives, in my ministry that was a hard place, not a real happy place, things were not going great. I was kind of feeling burned out, I guess, would be the best term for it, and wasn't here, by the way, this was before I came to UPC. This has been a place of refreshment for me and for us, but before that time, my wife and I got to this place where we needed to get away from it all as it were, and go and get some refreshment, get some help, be in a place where we could recover. We went to a little town in Colorado called Marble. There's a place there called Marble retreat. It's on the western side of Colorado, south of Glenwood Springs, if you know that area, and we spent a couple of weeks there going through an intensive time of recovery and counseling, and it was really, really good. We got there, though, at night, so we really didn't see where we were. We just saw the house that we were going to be staying in. We knew we were in the Rocky Mountains, but we didn't really have a sense of its grandeur. So we went to bed that night, woke up the next morning, walked outside, and that's when we saw where we were. Surrounded on all four sides by snow-capped, beautiful, majestic, gorgeous Rocky Mountains. Nothing, nothing like it anywhere in the world. Rocky Mountains were exactly what I needed to go forward in spite of my pain. Now, it wasn't that those mountains had some magical effect upon us. It wasn't that suddenly the problems that we'd been experiencing disappeared. It wasn't like that at all, but what the Rocky Mountains did was give us perspective. They gave us perspective so that we could keep going, and indeed what happened was I left that place with fresh hope, with a renewed vision for our relationship, our present, in our future, and a new way to look at ministry. It was incredibly, incredibly refreshing. In Ezekiel chapter 1, I used that illustration to simply say that here you have a Colorado Rocky's experience, and then some. Who was Ezekiel? Ezekiel was an Old Testament prophet, as well as a priest. He lived in a time of incredible political chaos and spiritual turmoil. Ezekiel was one of the 10,000 or so Jews who were taken captive by the Babylonians back in the late 6th century BC and marched in chains to Babylon. It's an event that we call today the exile. Ezekiel was about 30 years old when he was taken to exile in Babylon and he possibly died there in his early 50s. Ezekiel he foretold the coming destruction of the city of Jerusalem, but the good news was he also foretold the coming restoration of the people of God. So when the book opens, Ezekiel is sitting by this Kabar river. Apparently it's a canal that branches off the Euphrates River located in what is today halfway between Baghdad and Basra. So very, very relevant to our times. And Ezekiel writes there in verse 1 that one day he says, the heavens were opened and he saw visions of God. And as I was telling the children just then what he saw is absolutely mind blowing. You might conclude that Ezekiel had something of a rocky mountain high, but it wasn't that. It wasn't he was hot, not high. It was a vision. A God given vision of the glory of God. He sees a cloud. Let me just kind of summarize it in case you've forgotten some of the details. He sees a cloud surrounded by blinding light, four living creatures with different faces and sets of wings and these creatures seem to be running all over the place. He sees blazing light. He sees bolts of lightning. He sees wheels. These wheels covered with eyes intersecting other wheels. He hears a loud roar like rushing waters in the tumult of an army as it says in verse 24. And notice that Ezekiel has to keep saying the word like. It looked like this. It looked like that. It was like a wheel, like an expanse, like a living creature, and so on like that. And what I mean is that the words that we're reading here are the closest things that human language can come to to describing what Ezekiel sees. Human language fell short of what was really there. So as you read a vision like this, you know that it was at least this much much more than the eye can take in and the mind understand. That's why it's really hard because of the limitations of language to get our minds around what Ezekiel is describing. But he goes on and he says he looks up and he sees an expanse and maybe the word is platform or something like that. And it seems to be sparkling like ice. And then he hears this voice from up above the expanse. And suddenly it appears that the living creatures get real quiet. Their wings come down by their side. And then he sees a throne, a throne made of what looks like sapphire to Ezekiel. And seated on that throne is a figure like that of a man. He looks like he's on fire. But he's not brilliant light and a rainbow surround the man on the throne. And Ezekiel knows what he is looking at. He says in verse 28 this was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of God. This vision changed Ezekiel's life. He was never the same again after this. It didn't end the exile mind you. It didn't take away Ezekiel's pain and the loss that the people felt. But like my Rocky Mountain experience it put it all into perspective. And I hope it will for you too. You know what I think? You and I need this kind of encounter with the glory of God. Now I doubt that we will ever see what Ezekiel saw. This is unique. This was given under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit as extraordinary. But it's possible. It's possible to have a fuller vision, a clearer glimpse, and a better grasp on God and his attributes than we've ever had before. That's at least what this chapter teaches us. That it's possible for you and me as individuals, families, and as a church body to know more of God than we ever have before, to increase in our experiential and emotional and intellectual understanding of who God is and of his glory. It's what you and I need more than we need another person in the White House. It's what you and I need more than physical healing or money or better job or different spouse or another weight loss plan. It's what we need more than we need Dwight Howard say in Orlando. We need an experience of the glory of God. I say this because I feel like a lot of us are spiritually just kind of drained. I can't say that about you. I can say it about me and I can tell you that that's my impression of where a lot of us are. I feel like we're tired. I feel like some of us are just going through the motions. Recently somebody told me that they were weary of the dayliness of life. Is that resonate with anybody? I think it does. I think it does with a lot of us. We've just come off of Christmas. My goodness, we're drained if for no other reason than that. But I think it goes deeper. You know, I'm not saying that we're falling off the cliff into heresy. I don't believe that we are. We're not turning our backs on the faith. We still have our devotions. We have our prayers. We put our offering in the basket. We're not cold. Maybe some of you are, but I think in general, we're not cold, but we're not particularly hot either.
Maybe it could be said that we're religious, but not zealous. There's a difference. We're beautiful, but are we passionate? Maybe we're like some of us like the church that is described in Revelation 4 as lukewarm. And not only that, not only are we dealing with that kind of spiritual dryness, many of us, but another whole category that many of us are experiencing now that we're dealing with now, that we weren't a couple of weeks ago, is grief. We're grieving the deaths of two men who died practically back to back. Men that we love, men that we called friends, men that we highly respected. They went home to be with the Lord this past week. Two funerals, Friday and Saturday here at UPC. That's another reason why we need God to show us His glory, to lift our spirits, to put our eyes upon Him and His awesome power and help us deal not just with the dailyness of life, but with the brokenness of life. So we're going to talk about the glory of God. And when we do that, we're dealing with something that's very fuzzy and very abstract. And I feel my own inadequacy to take 25, 30, 35 minutes and talk about the glory of God. It's like somebody I heard recently say it's like putting the Atlantic ocean into a thimble. It can't be done, but at least we can make a beginning. And that's the whole reason that I want to stretch this out over seven weeks. We're going to look at attributes of God, really add up to being His glory. So this is to wet your appetite. This is to get you thinking and earnestly praying that God would, indeed, show us His glory. So let's talk about that. The Hebrew word for glory means heaviness or weightiness. Now, you and I as Americans are not used to speaking of glory in that way, but to the Hebrew mind, a person's importance was considered in terms of weightiness. The Hebrew word cavaled, weightiness or heaviness. Some of you were alive in the 70s. Do you remember the 70s? Maybe you don't remember the 70s, but we used to say that's heavy. And maybe we were onto something. It's heavy. We said that about things that mattered, things that were important. They were heavy. The Bible is saying here that God is weighty. That is to say that God is of supreme importance. He matters more than anything and anybody else. He is the being than whom it's impossible to imagine a greater. He is infinite. He is eternal. He is unchangeable. One of my seminary professors defined his glory this way. He said the glory of God is simply the inescapable weight of the sheer intrinsic godness of God. Tim Keller talks about glory as his infinite beyondness. I mean, I'm asking you to open your mind up way bigger than we're normally used to it. His infinite beyondness. It's all of God's character traits added up together. And in this series, like I was telling you, we're going to talk about God's holiness, his power, his beauty, his grace, his justice, his goodness. Well, glory is the sum of all those attributes in many, many more. So to glorify God or to give glory to God, what's that mean? It doesn't mean that you're adding to God, something that he doesn't have already. Now, to glorify God means to see him and to acknowledge him as of supreme importance. It means to give God proper weight. The weight he deserves in your life. Preeminence, you might call it. First place, that's what it is to glorify God. Every human being, you know, attaches weight or value or glory to something or to somebody. Every human being sees something out there in the world as of primary value to him or to her. We all honor something as supremely important. You might know, I think Seth announced it last week that my wife and I went to the orange bowl this past Wednesday, biggest mistake of our lives. We're Clemson fans, you see. We're not like Chuck and Bethany Bergen who are pulling for West Virginia, but I see that hand. It was a disaster. It was the worst football game I've ever seen in my life. It was so terribly embarrassing to a Clemson fan like us. I was really sad about it, but somebody behind us in the stands was more than sad. A fight broke out in the section above us, and I can only imagine it was because a West Virginia fan was the subject of a Clemson fan's wrath. He hit him in the jaw. I saw the guy get up bleeding. It's apparent that to somebody in that game, that football game is more than just a game. It is something of supreme value because they were willing to get that upset about it. They weren't just sad. They were devastated. What is it that you glorify? What do you delight in? What devastates you when you lose it? For some, it's beauty, others' work, success, money, your family, your children, your reputation, your honor, your past. Everybody here today exalts something, and if it's not God, it's an idol. To glorify God means to give him proper weight. It is to treat him as the center of gravity in your life, as the one who calls the shots for you, who says what you do, who says where you go, who says how you obey him, the one you aim to please at all times, the one whom to displease is the worst thing you can imagine, the person who is more important to you than anything or anybody else, because you recognize his supreme worth. That is what it is to glorify God, and it's what you were created for, right? We Presbyterians, we love the Westminster Shorter Catechism question that says what's your chief purpose in life? Your chief purpose or your chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever, to see him as the most valuable person being thing in the world to you. So the question before us then this morning is what would it look like if you had an encounter with the glory of God? What would it be if you were to pray like Moses did in Exodus 33? Lord show me your glory. What would it look like if God were to do that? If he were to just open the window upon himself a little wider than ever before for you and show you more of his glory than he's ever shown you before? How would it change you? And I want to suggest this morning from Ezekiel 1 that it would radically affect at least three things. We don't really have time for these three, but let's talk about these three. It would radically affect your worship, your mission in life and your confidence, okay? So first of all it would radically affect your worship and encounter with the glory of God like we're talking about today will ignite your worship. Look at what happens when Ezekiel gets this vision of God. In verse 28 he says when I saw it I fell face down. When did you last fall face down? Either in private worship, home worship or church worship? Have you ever?
Maybe that's what God wants us to do more of. Fall face down. In chapter 3 verse 15 you go on to read that after this vision of God's glory ended Ezekiel sat there for seven days overwhelmed.
Can you imagine sitting in one place seven days doing nothing but feeling overwhelmed by a sense of the grandeur of God? See true worship is not something you watch. It's something you do with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. It's not something you critique. It's an activity that you give yourself because you're caught up with the beauty and glory and holiness and character of God. It worship affects the mind because you're thinking it affects your heart because you're feeling it affects your will because you're doing and it leaves you a bit unchanged. I'm sorry it leaves you a bit changed. You're not quite the same that you were before. Our trip to Miami wasn't a complete waste. We loved being there. We loved being with one another. Suzy and me and one of the things we like to do is we went to South Beach on the day after the fiasco and we toured South Beach and the art deco hotels and the buildings there. I'd never been there before. It was fascinating and the thing that made it fascinating was our tour guide. A woman was our tour guide. She led us around. We walked. It was walking to her. She showed us these different buildings and the the word that Suzy not observed that she said over and over and over again was lovely. She loved what she was doing and she loved what she saw. She saw she would show us a hotel and say you know what the rule of three is. There's something on this side, something on that side and something different in the middle. A, B, A. She said in that lovely. Look at that spire over there. That spire is so lovely. Look at the colors she said, isn't that a lovely color. In one spot I noticed we were inside a hotel. She was looking at all of the lovely things around us and there was a hotel worker sitting at a desk. This kind of, you know, board. She saw what he didn't see. She saw loveliness and worship is seeing the loveliness of God. You and I can do that, you know, when we come to church on Sunday morning, when you're in your home, during the week, you can see the loveliness of God. Jonathan Edwards did just as an example of what's possible. I read a biography of Jonathan Edwards one time and in that biography he quotes from Jonathan Edwards's diary and Edwards was a famous preacher in the American colonies back in the early 1700s and he wrote in his diary this particular entry. Let me read it for you. He says and I quote, once as I wrote out into the woods for my health in 1737, having alighted from my horse in a retired place as my man or commonly has been to walk for divine contemplation and prayer. I had a view that for me was extraordinary of the glory of the Son of God as mediator between God and man and his wonderful, great, full, pure and sweet grace and love. This grace that appeared so calm and sweet appeared also great above the heavens. The person of Christ appeared inevitably excellent with an excellency great enough to swallow up all thought and conception which continued as, near as I can judge about an hour, which kept me the greater part of the time in a flood of tears and weeping aloud. I felt an ardency of soul to be what I know not otherwise how to express emptied and annihilated, to lie in the dust and be full of Christ alone, to love him with a holy and pure love, to trust in him, to live upon him, to serve and follow him, and to be perfectly sanctified and made pure with a divine and heavenly purity. I have several other times had views very much of the same nature and which have had the same effects. Now I doubt you and I can ever reach the level of prose that that is but what I hear coming out of that little diary entry is the word lovely. Jesus is so lovely. Other people in the Bible had similar experiences when Abraham at the age of 99 saw the Lord in Genesis 17. It says that he fell face down. When God hid Moses, remember he hid Moses behind a rock in Exodus 33 and 34 because Moses had prayed, Lord show me your glory. Moses bowed to the ground as God passed by and worshipped. When Isaiah saw the Lord high and exalted we sang about that earlier. In Isaiah 6 he cried out because he saw his sin like never before. Woe is me? I am ruined. When Peter, James and John saw Jesus transfigured on the Mount of Transfiguration. Matthew tells us that they fell face down to the ground terrified. When John saw the glory of Christ in Revelation chapter 1 he writes that he fell at Jesus' feet as though dead. Now see there's a variety of responses emotionally to the presence of God, isn't there? For some it is standing up and being just enraptured. For others it is falling down in humiliation and confession and these are all extraordinary episodes. I know that but what they tell you and me at a minimum is that there's probably a lot more to God than you have ever experienced and it starts with you sitting at home kneeling at home wherever you do with your Bible open in your lap a prayer on your lips saying to the Lord God show me your glory, show me your glory, show me more reveal yourself more to me Lord. I want to as Paul says in Philippians 3 know you. I want to know you and the power of your resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in your sufferings. Lord I thirst to know you better. I'm so weak of faith. I'm so cold of heart, Lord, but show me your glory and I will know you better and when we come together on Sunday morning what is that but the overflow of worshipful hearts through the week, worship is not a spectator sport instead it's Lord show it us your glory here at UPC because you know it is one of our stated goals as a church family to have genuine corporate worship we are here to know God, grow together, serve others and knowing God a big part of that is what we do here at church on Sunday morning. So this year 2012 we've just begun a new year let's make it our prayer as a church family Lord show us your glory. Well and encounter with the glory of God well first of all focus I'm sorry it will ignite your worship but secondly it will focus your mission your mission in life and I'm going to be very brief with this one you can talk about it we'll talk about it more in the future but it will focus your mission in life to see the glory of Christ. Notice what it did for Ezekiel in chapter two the first few verses of Ezekiel two it says that God said to him son of man stand up on your feet and I'll speak to you as he spoke the spirit came into me and raised me to my feet and I heard him speaking to me he said son of man I am sending you to the Israelites notice that vision of the glory of Christ issued forth in mission you as a Christian are called to mission you as a family are called to mission we as a church are called to mission we exist not for ourselves but for the glory of God and for the good of other people our Lord our large corporate mission of course as a church with a capital C is the great commission to go and spread the gospel and to make disciples of every nation that's a large mission you have a place in it every individual believer in Christ has a part to play in that grander vision every one of us has money and gifts and time and jobs and resources and a brain that are meant to be engaged 110% and invested and used for the kingdom of God for Ezekiel it was being a prophet to an obstinate people what's your purpose can you articulate it why did God leave you here in this world what did he leave you with to accomplish why did he put your home on that street why did he give you that job and not another why did he bring you to UCF and not some other college in America is it just to make it through is it just to survive no it is to be obedient to his call and to serve God and to be a part of his grand work of making all things new that's our vision here at UPC what's your part that you're going to play the point is you exist not to be served but to serve make it your prayer in 2012 Lord show me your glory that I might know where I fit in the kingdom and do it with all my heart and third and finally and encounter with the glory of God will ignite your worship it will focus your mission and it will enlarge your confidence in the gospel it'll enlarge or it will grow your confidence in the gospel of grace I'll explain what I mean look at verses 27 and 28 of our text Ezekiel says about this man on the throne I saw that from what appeared to be his waist up he looked like glowing metal as if full of fire and that from there down he looked like fire and brilliant lights surrounded him now who is this but the second person of the Trinity the Son of God a pre incarnate appearance of the glory of Jesus Christ and he goes on to say notice this is really really important like the appearance of a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day so was the radiance around him it's no accident that Ezekiel sees a rainbow you know in Revelation 4 you might want to jot that down if you're looking at your Bible in the margin Revelation 4 contains a vision very similar to this one in that chapter the apostle John writes about his vision of God's glory that's very similar to Ezekiel 1 John sees a sea of glass clear as crystal he sees flashes of lightning he hears the rumble of thunder he sees oddly enough might surprise you he sees the same four living creatures that Ezekiel saw the the man the lion the ox and the eagle along with 24 elders and all of these beings are gathered around a throne on which sits one who had the appearance of Jasper and Cornelian and John says Revelation 4 that a rainbow resembling an emerald encircled the throne so Ezekiel 1 Revelation 4 but the first time you see a rainbow in the Bible is where you you know this right Genesis 9 after the flood after the big flood no one the ark and all of that God puts a rainbow in the clouds and in Genesis 9 13 the same phrase same Hebrew words are used there as are used in Ezekiel 1 a rainbow in the clouds God put it in the sky after the flood as a sign of the covenant and actually here's the interesting part the word the Hebrew word is not really rainbow now it's translated that way in our versions here but it's actually bow like a war bow a bow and arrows it's not really rainbow it's a bow he put a bow in the clouds and it's often been pointed out this is not original to me that if you look at a rainbow it's pointing up the bow is pointing at God the arrows are being shot upward as a sign that God's covenant of peace has been made with his people see if God didn't care about peace with his people he had aimed the bow at us because we deserve it as sinners but through Jesus Christ and the grace of the gospel he has put the bow shooting the arrows at himself and here's the secret here's the here's the gospel Jesus Christ took the arrows for you and me
Christ took the arrows on the cross when he was dying on the cross he was absorbing in himself the punishment you and I deserved so every time you see a rainbow think of the war bow the war is over because God has made peace with us through the cross so will you join me in this prayer this year Lord show us your glory show us your glory that our worship might be ignited with fire that our mission might be intentional and focused and that we might be enraptured with the good news that Jesus Christ has come and absorbed the blows of God on himself that we might be set free to know you and to have everlasting life this will give you perspective this will change your life it will make all things new for you as you see a bigger glimpse of the glory of God let's pray Lord Jesus thank you that you have come to take the arrows that we deserved thank you Lord Jesus that you came to show us the glory that you are and have had from time's eternity passed and so Lord we pray that you'll give us a vision of your weightiness your supreme importance forgive us Lord that we've attached value to many lesser things and we ask that you will help us to give proper weight to you God help us ascribe glory to you will you show us more of yourself your holiness your justice your goodness your grace your beauty that we might worship you are right that we might devote ourselves to mission and that we might bask in your amazing grace we pray this in Jesus' name amen