Christ the Glory of His People

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Luke 2:32

A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel.

We shall now employ the natural Israel as a type of the Lord's elect ones, and surely there is no straining of the text, when we say that Jesus Christ is the glory of the spiritual seed, the redeemed people. And why, with evident propriety, may the saints of God be compared to Israel?

1. Surely because God has made a covenant with them as He did with Jacob.

2. We may be compared with Israel, again, because if we be the children of God we have learned to wrestle with the angel and prevail.

3. It may be that you have another likeness to Israel in the fact that you are much tried. Faith must be tried. God had one Son without sin, but He never had a Son without the rod.

4. The true Israel, which are spiritually the Church of Christ, are said, according to the text, to be the Lord's people.

(1)  By His eternal choice.

(2)  By redemption.

(3)  By voluntary dedication of yourselves to Him.

I. When we say that Christ is our glory, we mean that WE GET ALL THE GLORY WE HAVE THROUGH HIM. Some men go to the schools for glory, others to the camps of war. In all kinds of places men have sought after honour, but the believer saith that Christ is the mine in which he digs for this gold, Christ is the sea in which he fishes for this pearl; he gives up all other searchings and looks for glory in Jesus, and nowhere else.

1. The glory of election.

2. The glory of redemption.

3. The glory of adoption.

4. The glory of justification.

5. The glory of sanctification.Thus I might continue showing you that there is not a single treasure which a Christian possesses which does not come to him through Christ. He has nothing in which he can glory but what he is sweetly compelled to say of it, "I gained this in the market of Calvary; I found this in the mines of a Saviour's suffering; all this came to me through my bleeding, buried, risen, coming Lord, and He shall have the glory of it as long as I live."

II. WE SEE A GLORY IN CHRIST which swallows up all other glories, as the sun's light conceals the light of the stars.

1. In Christ's person.

2. In Christ's sufferings.

3. In Christ's resurrection.

4. In Christ's ascension.

5. In Christ's intercession.

6. In Christ's second advent.

III. The text is true in the sense that WE GIVE GLORY TO HIM. There is life in a look at the Crucified One. There is life in simple confidence in Him, but there is life nowhere else. God send to His Church an undying passion to promote the Saviour's glory, an invincible, unconquerable pang of desire, and longing that by any means King Jesus may have His own, and may reign throughout these realms! In this sense, then, Jesus is and must be the glory of His people.

IV. But there is another sense — namely, FROM JESUS IS REFLECTED ALL THE GLORY WHICH IS PUT UPON HIS PEOPLE. Whatever glory they have, and they have much in the eyes of angels, and much honour in the eyes of discerning men, it is always the reflection of the Saviour's glory. I know some holy men and women for whom I cannot but feel the deepest and intensest respect, but the reason is because they have so much of my Master about them. I think I would travel many miles to talk with some of them, because their speech is always so full of Him, and they live so near to Him.

V. The text may be read in this sense: Christ is the glory of His people, that is to say, THEY EXPECT GLORY WHEN HE COMES. Our glory is laid up. When you follow Jesus in resurrection, what glory! But we must not begin to speak of that, for we should never leave off at all if we began to talk about that glory — the glory of perfection, the glory of being delivered from sin, the glory of conquest, having trodden Satan under our feet; the glory of eternal rest, the glory of infinite security, the glory of being like Christ, the glory of being in the light and brightness of God, standing, like Milton's angel, in the very sun itself. If you want to know what heaven is, you can spell it in five letters, and when you put the five letters together they sound like this: Jesus. That is heaven. It is all the heaven the angels round the throne desire to know. They want nothing better than this, to see His face, to behold His glory, and to dwell in it world with. out end.

VI. THE PRACTICAL DRIFT OF THE SUBJECT.

1. We would give a word of warning to those of you who seek your glory anywhere else, because as surely aa you do so, even if you meet with honour for a time, you will have to lose it. It is always ill to put your treasure where it will be stolen from yon. Now, suppose you seek your glory in your learning. Well, well, well! Let the sexton take up your skull after you have been dead a little while, and what learning will there be in it, what show of wisdom will be found in it when it is resolved into a little impalpable brown powder? What will your science, and your mathematics, and your classics do for you in death and judgment? Suppose you seek your glory in fame, and become the favourite of the nation as a great soldier. When the grave-digger rattles your old bones about, what will that signify? You will have great fame, you say, and men will talk about you. But he who hath his glory in Christ, when he openeth his eyes in the next world will see Christ, and so behold his glory safe, and firmly entailed upon him.

2. Another word, and that is a word of rebuke. There are some preachers we know of, and I suppose there will always be some of the genus, who preach, preach, preach, but they never preach what is Israel's glory. They talk of anything but Christ.

3. There are some of you to whom I have a last word to say, and that is, some of you love Jesus Christ, but you are ashamed to say so. Now, since He is the glory of His people Israel, I shall be afraid of you and for you if you do not make Him your glory.

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