The word glory is a beautiful word. Theologians have worked hard to explain what we mean by glory. So when we see things in Scripture that speak of ascribe glory to God. Or For example, when we're called to gaze upon the glory of God or think about the glory of God, what do we mean? Well, the word glory has to do with weightiness.
I remember when I was a child, my father took me to St. Louis. There was an exhibition that was going on at a huge art museum, and it was the Napoleon exhibition. And so the great military leader Napoleon, they had so many artifacts from the life of Napoleon. They had different suits that he had worn and paintings that were hanging on the wall of Napoleon, these famous paintings.
If you go online and you just search for Napoleon, you'll see some of these. You can gaze upon them. And there's one painting in particular of Napoleon that's always captured my attention. And it's the picture of Napoleon on this beautiful horse. And he's decked out in all of his military garb and it's the painting of him going over the Alps.
When you gaze upon that painting, and maybe there's other paintings for you that would maybe have the same effect, You gaze at this painting and it takes away your breath. You look at all of the detail of the painting. You look at all of the beauty of the painting. And you stand and you look at it, maybe for 10 minutes or 20 minutes or 30 minutes. What causes you to do that?
Why would any piece of art cause you to do that? Well, because that piece of art has a certain weight to it. It has a certain glory to it. It rests upon you. It takes your attention.
It secures time and contemplation upon you. So when we speak of the glory of God, that's what we mean. We're talking about the fact that when you take all of the attributes of God together, His holiness and everything else that the scripture reveals about Him. The effect, the effect that it has upon the one who gazes into it is one of weightiness. It's something that should take our breath away.
So when we study the scriptures, when we go to the Word of God, and we read those beautiful passages in the Psalter, for example, what we should be looking for is the weightiness of God. There's something about this being that's different than all other beings that should lead you