Recently I spoke of the power of the truths we come across in the hymns we sing and I picked on one of my favourite hymns – To God Be The Glory.
At this juncture I need to make an apology.
I am sorry for giving you the impression that this was only one of my favourite hymns. That cheapens it. This is one of the greatest sung pieces of work ever to be inspired by God to man and duly expressed. In my humble opinion.
Simply outstanding.
In any case, in that piece, I touched on the line Oh come to the Father through Jesus the Son and I asked you not to get me started on the next five words. Oh but you didn’t listen did you? No you didn’t.
And give Him the glory
Right there, again, just stop. Stop right there. No don’t venture to finish the thing off. It’s not needed at this moment.
Those five words are a doorway themselves into some deep stuff. Real, deep stuff.
It occurred to me, that as worshipful beings, it is a natural complimentary thing to glorify the things we worship.
Oh about that word glory – and it’s linked word glorify. What a word. Can I be honest with you? Well I will anyway, and you can sue me when you see me. I think we should be challenged more often to define the words we use in a manner that your 6 year old can understand.
Most of my upbringing I heard the words bandied about as naturally as the regular vocabulary. So used to I of hearing it that, to my shame, it took me until my early 20’s to actually stop and ask – what on earth do I mean by that? Give God the glory – give Him what? Glorify His name – do what to His name?
This gives a good start of defining it. My own take on defining glory is the weighty presence of the brilliance of his essence. OF course that’s in reference to God I got to thinking that glory was not just splendour, but deep, rich, heavy splendour. So to glorify something or give something glory is to display in word and/or deed how excellent something is to the core of its essence. (I’m sure Alan Knox would come up with a more precise, concise and incisive definition, but I’m not Alan. Though by all means check him out.)
You might understand more of what I mean when I suggest that worship can come along with the sense of giving glory to the object of worship. That is most obvious when you see how some people treat their cars. No shine is good enough, no buffing is ever enough, the thing has to be just so because this is their pride and joy.
As you might know I’m not a big fan of pride. But if I am to be proud of anything, there is nothing greater to be proud of than God. There is no other being worth taking pride in than God. He indeed is worthy.
So when the hymn turns around and instructs us to give Him the glory – that is not a light affair. Indeed a verbal affirmation of that is only the start of that. It only begins to give an indication of what we mean by give Him the glory. Notice how this is glory that is definitive – it suggests that specific glory is due to God. It stirs the memory of what Jesus stated to the people trying to trip him up with the tax question. Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s – and give to God what is God’s. And the glory that belongs to God is nothing less than a life lived to the full in expressing joy, gratitude and trust in the brilliance of the Almighty God.
Nothing less.
When I sing that lyric, sometimes I repeat it in my version of the song. I repeat it and reinforce it. This is a big deal. This is the whole purpose of life. To give God THE glory – the unparalleled, incomparable dedication of the complete being in acknowledgement of Him.
Oh and don’t even get me to talk about those final five words … (you might know where this is going)
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
C. L. J. Dryden
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