Knowing God and His Glory.

When I consider the wonder of Your creation how can I say, “There is no God”? Oh Lord how great thou art for sending Your Son to reach out to us – to me – who am I that you should bless me so?

”I have produced a created world with a multitude of creatures. Wonders wherever you look, yet the pinnacle of My creation is man. My real desire is to get to that point where all of mankind is one in its love and adoration of Me and My Son, Jesus.That is why I sent Him to die -to achieve that unity. My plan is working its way out to fulfilment when it will all come together and you will be there in the new heavens and the new earth with a multitude of others with one desire – to have a relationship with Me and worship Me”.

We proceed now in John’s gospel to Ch 17:1-8. This chapter deals with the High priestly prayer of Jesus. Called that because He prays as a high priest firstly for the disciples and then for all future believers.

As I read this section the emhasis is on God’s glory and the glory Jesus had from the beginning and was going to return to, struck me. Remembering the introduction to the gospel and the One who the gospel is about we read in 1:14 “The word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father full of grace and truth”. Could this indeed be the whole purpose of the creation and the new Kingdom which He developed out of that?

It seems that Jesus’s mission on earth was aimed at bringing God’s glory down among men and that the ultimate demonstration of that, when His glory was most revealed was when He went to the cross. His glory was not visible here on earth but His prayer states that He was going to return to the glory He once had when He was with the Father. Furthermore His obedience to death on the cross was the ultimate way that He would glorify God here on earth vs 4.

Ultimately the picture we have of the completion of time and a peek into the new heavens and new earth we see that central to the whole symbolic picture in Revelation ch 4 is God’s glory. “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory honour and power, for you created all things and by your will they were created and have their being”. So we can deduce from that that the whole excercise of creation and the interaction with mankind has added to God’s glory.

Standing out for me in vibrant colours in the center of this passage which focusses on God’s glory is the incedibly important statement in vs 3 “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You sent”. The ultimate manifestation then of God’s glory in us is that we may know Him. His aim in creation was not just to make humans but to make humans that would “know Him”. Of course that draws the discussion on relationship in the previos chapters together in a great purpose statement. God made us to have a relationship with Him which would go on into eternty and that would add to His glory.

The key sign that we know Him is demonstrated by our obedience to God’s word vss 6-8. That is the sign that we know God. That is not the means to knowing Him. We know Him by faith but we demnstrate that vibrant relationship by obeying His word. It is described at the end of vs 8 as believing that God sent Jesus – faith.

May God bless you all as you meditate on God’s glory. Till next week then bless you all.