I have titled this sermon, Beholding Glory… To behold something it to see it. Perhaps even to perceive it. To gaze intently at something. There is a great irony in this title. Because Glory… The GLORY OF GOD… is very difficult to describe. I confess, in my study I attempted to write out as many of the wondrous thoughts i could muster about the Glory of God. I tried to compose the highest and loftiest thoughts I could muster. I wrote about the beautiful complexity. But then at the end. I have come to realize that even my highest most philosophical and intelligent thoughts, just arent that helpful or clear… OR LOFTY. Ok, so then I need to find out how to define and understand the Glory of God… Where will I go? - Great theologians? - John Frame - Wrote THE DOCTRINE OF GOD (800 pages - Then wrote The Doctrine of the knowledge of God, another 400 pages - John Frame: “Glory, with the verb glorify is one of the most common terms in the Christian vocabulary, but one of the hardest to define precisely.” - The greatest preacher in the last few hundred years? - Charles Spurgeon - “ As for me, I cannot say that I will speak of the glory, but I will try to stammer about it; for the best language to which a man can reach concerning glory must be a mere stammering. Paul did but see a little of it for a short time, and he confessed that he heard things that it was not lawful for a man to utter; and I doubt not that he felt utterly unable to describe what he had seen. Though a great master of language, yet for once he was overpowered; the grandeur of his theme made him silent.” C. H. Spurgeon, “Glory!,” in The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons, vol. 29 (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1883), 277. What about those who have actually talked to God? - Job Tried: - The author speaks of the greatest wonders of God his mind can fathom, then throws in the towel. - Job 26:14 - 14 Behold, these are but the outskirts of his ways… the thunder of his power who can understand?” WHat about those who have perhaps seen the Glory of God, or at least a piece of it? - The greatest apostle? Paul - 2 Corinthians 12:3–4 (ESV) - 3 And I know that this man was caught up into paradise—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows— 4 and he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter. - The disciples? Luke 9 - the transfiguration - Peter James and John - praying on a mountain with Jesus - “They saw His Glory” - Surely they would have run home and described to everyone what they saw and heard… - Verse 36, “they kept silent and told no one in those days anything of what they had seen.”