Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1178
“He that glories, let him glory in the Lord.” 1 Corinthians 1:31.
THERE is an irresistible tendency in us to glory in something or other. All classes of men glory—the highest and the lowest, the richest and the poorest, the best educated and the most illiterate. Solomon glories and so does the fool. Goliath glories and so does David. Pharaoh glories and so does his slave. Even in the most modest, the tendency to boast is present—only its nakedness is daintily concealed. Good men glory, yes, and in hours of weakness they have gloried in objects very unworthy of their boasts. You remember how, when the ambassadors came out of Babylon, Hezekiah showed them all his riches and his stores—and no doubt he gloried while he took them from treasure house to treasure house— and opened his caskets and showed all his precious things.
But it was an evil thing, and the Lord was angry with him for that glorying, and bade the Prophet foretell that all his choice vessels should be carried away as plunder by the very people whose ambassadors he had so delighted with the sight. The very first person who was born into this world was the subject of glorying and his mother, as she gazed upon him with rapture, said, “I have gotten a man from the Lord.” Perhaps she even said, as the original has been construed, “I have gotten a man—the Lord,” thinking that surely he might be the promised seed of the woman who would bruise the serpent’s head and would prove to be both a man and the Lord. Alas, it was Cain, who slew his brother, and was a child of the serpent rather than the bruiser of his head. The thing we glory in, though it is a dear child, may turn out to be a scourge for our backs—a Cain and not a consolation. Jacob glories in Joseph’s princely coat, but he wept, indeed, when he saw its many colors all turned to a blood-red hue.
I say good people have the tendency to glory and sometimes they glory in unworthy objects. Therefore it is that God has prepared a cure for it—not by repressing the instinct to glory—but by giving a worthy Subject for glorying—which finds in it a wider range and full liberty, but only in a licensed field. It may not wander there, nor there, nor there, for it is ill to glory in worldly things, but it may fly away up yonder to God Himself, and stretch its wings, and plume itself as much as it will in Heaven. The cure for vainglory is true glory! Somewhat upon the homeopathic principle, the cure for boasting is to boast in the Lord all the day long.
The prevention of glorying in men, glorying in riches and glorying in self, is glorying in the Lord. “He that glories, let him glory in the Lord.” On that text we shall now speak. And we shall have these four points. First, let us, dear Brothers and Sisters, as many of us as know the Lord, glory only in the Lord. Then, secondly, let us glory heartily in the Lord. Thirdly, let us glory growingly in the Lord. And, lastly, let us glory practically in the Lord.
I. First, then, LET US GLORY ONLY IN THE LORD. And we should do this because the theme of glorying is too great to admit of another. It was a good argument of a simple-minded man that there could not be two gods, because the first God filled Heaven and earth and all places, and therefore there was not room for another. If God is everywhere and fills all in all, there can be no other God. And if the glory of God is infinite, then there can be no second glory. And if the theme is boundless, then there is not room for a second. As all other gods but Jehovah must be idols, so all other glory except that which is in the Lord must be foolish and sinful.
Those men who really know the Lord feel that such is the greatness of His Glory, that it takes up all our faculties, absorbs all our powers, demands, indeed, our whole energy—and we cannot spare time, or love, or skill, or power, or thought for any other topic. Let the Lord be gloried in, and Him alone, because the Lord, alone, is worthy to be gloried in. He, only, is great! He is the blessed and only Potentate! From Him, only, comes our salvation! He is God alone! Therefore in one rolling flood let all our glorying cheerfully flow at His feet. All glory should be given unto God, because any other object of glory highly provokes the Most High. He has said, “My glory will I not give to another, nor My praise to graven images.”
It is written concerning Israel, “They moved Him to jealousy with their graven images. When God heard this, He was angry and greatly abhorred Israel” (Psa. 78:58, 59). The moment we begin trusting in a created arm, God is highly provoked with us. “Cursed is he that trusts in man, and makes flesh his arm.” And if we begin glorying in anything else, either the Lord will send the worm at the root to make the gourd wither, or He will stamp our idol into pieces and make us drink of the bitter water with which it is mixed—or else He will inflict upon us some other severe chastisement, for He cannot bear a rival. Where the ark of the Lord is, Dagon must come down. God will be all, or nothing. He cannot accept divided homage. Let us not provoke Him, then, especially when He tells us, “The Lord your God is a jealous God.”