What you believe about the necessity of preaching and the nature of preaching is governed by your sense of the greatness and the glory of God and how you believe people awaken to that glory and live for that glory. So this next section presents a portrayal of the glory of God, and the third will deal with how people awaken to that glory and are changed by it.
From beginning to end, nothing in the Bible is more ultimate in the mind and heart of God than the glory of God the beauty of God, the radiance of His manifold perfections. At every point in God’s revealed action, wherever He makes plain the ultimate goal of that action, the goal is always the same: to uphold and display His glory.
He predestined us for His glory. (Ephesians 1:6).
He created us for His glory. (Isaiah 43:7).
He elected Israel for His glory. (Jeremiah 13:11).
He saved His people from Egypt for His glory. (Psalm 106:8).
He rescued them from exile for His glory. (Isaiah 48:9-11).
He sent Christ into the world so that Gentiles would praise God for His glory. (Romans 15:9).
He commands His people, whether they eat or drink, to do all things for His glory. (1 Corinthians 10:31).
He will send Jesus a second time so that all the redeemed will marvel at His glory. (2 Thessalonians 1:9-10).
Therefore the mission of the church is: Declare His glory among the nations, His marvelous works among all peoples. (Psalm 96:3).
These and a hundred more places drive us back up into the ultimate allegiance of God. Nothing affects preaching more deeply than to be struck almost speechless almost by the passion of God for the glory of God. What is clear from the whole range of biblical revelation is that God’s ultimate allegiance is to know Himself perfectly, and to love Himself infinitely, and to share this experience, as much as it can be, with His people. Over every act of God flies the banner: For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it, for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another. (Isaiah 48:11; cf. 42:8).
From all eternity the ever-existing, never-becoming, always-perfect God has known Himself and loved what He knows. He has eternally seen His beauty and savored what He sees. His understanding of His own reality is flawless and His exuberance in enjoying it is infinite. He has no needs, for He has no imperfections. He has no inclinations to evil because He has no deficiencies that could tempt Him to do wrong. He is therefore the holiest and happiest being that is or that can be conceived. We cannot conceive of a happiness greater than the happiness of infinite power delighting infinitely in infinite beauty in the personal fellowship of the Trinity.
To share this experience the experience of knowing and enjoying His glory is the reason God created the world. He would bring us to know Him and to enjoy Him the way He knows Himself and the way He enjoys Himself. Indeed His purpose is that the very knowledge that He has of Himself and the very joy that He has in Himself will be our knowledge and our enjoyment, so that we know Him with His own knowledge and we enjoy Him with His own joy. This is the ultimate meaning of Jesus prayer in John 17:26 where He asks His Father that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them. The Father’s knowledge of and joy in the radiance of His glory whose name of Jesus Christ (Hebrews 1:3) will be in us because Jesus is in us.
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