246 – THE KING OF GLORY – I

Who is the King of Glory? The psalmist asks, and he answers it himself, saying, “Jehovah strong and mighty, Jehovah mighty in battle” (Ps. 24:8-10). A theological current says that Jesus Christ is the Jehovah of the Armies, the lord of the armies (Ex. 15:3; 1 Sam. 18:17). But in the New Testament there is not a single verse affirming that. Christ did not preach glory during his time in this world. Jesus said, “He who speaks from himself seeks his own glory; but He who is seeking the glory of the one who sent Him, He is true, and there is no unrighteousness in Him” (John 7:18). Let us analyze the mentioned text.

Whoever speaks of himself seeks his own glory. Now, Jehovah was speaking of himself, therefore he was seeking his own glory. Let us look at some texts. “I am Jehovah, that is My name; I will not give My glory to another” (Is. 42:8). We will now see that Jehovah does everything in his own interest.“For My own sake, for My own sake, I will act; for how can My name be profaned? And My glory I will not give to another” (Is. 48:11). Jehovah was obsessed with fame and glory with men. “I will set a sign among them, and I will send such as escape of them to the nations, to Tarshish, Pul, and Lud, who draw the bow, to Tubal and Javan, to the islands afar off, who have not heard my fame, neither have seen my glory; and they shall declare my glory among the nation” (Is. 66:19).Ezekiel, who prophesied sixty or seventy years after Isaiah, said, “When they came to the nations, where they went, they profaned my holy name; in that men said of them, These are the people of Yahweh, and are gone forth out of his land. But I had respect for my holy name, which the house of Israel had profaned among the nations, where they went. Therefore tell the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord Yahweh: I don’t do [this] for your sake, house of Israel, but for my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations, where you went” (Ezek. 36:20-22). The impression we have from these texts is that Jehovah used the people of Israel to win fame and glory, but did not love them. In the New Testament John declares that God, the Father, loves the lost so much that he gave his only-begotten Son to rescue them from condemnation (John 3:16; Rom. 5:8-10; 1 John 4:10).

In the New Testament we do not read any passage that says that God loves himself. This is so true that all he does, he does for the love of his name. Back in the Old Testament god loved himself very much and did not love men. In the New Testament God loves men better than himself. This is why the psalmist said, “Lift up your heads, you gates; yes, lift them up, you everlasting doors, and the King of glory will come in. Who is this King of glory? Yahweh of Armies is the King of glory! Selah” (Ps. 24:9-10). Jehovah advanced himself there and compared men to animals (Eccl. 3:18-21). Men were compared to worms (Job 25:4-6). And Jehovah made sure that his glory was manifested in the midst of human beasts, and among the worms of decay! This is very strange!

After those 40 years wandering in the desert, the people of Israel camped, and Moses chose twelve men, one from each tribe, to spy the land of Canaan. Ten of them gave a bad report on the land, discouraging the people, who began to murmur once again. Jehovah, then, said, “Because all those men who have seen my glory, and my signs, which I worked in Egypt and in the wilderness, yet have tempted me these ten times, and have not listened to my voice; surely they shall not see the land which I swore to their fathers, neither shall any of those who despised me see it” (Num. 14:22-23).

What was the glory of Jehovah that was revealed in Egypt? Was it to change the rod into a venomous serpent? What was the glory? Was it to transform the waters of the Nile into blood, killing all the fish and bringing rottenness and stench? (Ex. 7:10; 10:2). To bring about rottenness and stench does bring glory? After the plague of the frogs came the plague of the flies: common flies, blue flies, green flies, the terrible blowflies. What great glory! “Lift up your heads, you gates! Be lifted up, you everlasting doors, and the King of glory will come in: Who is the King of glory?”  (Ps. 24:7).Jehovah is. What a fantastic school! This is the reason why the scientists of today are inventing poisonous gases of all kinds to destroy one another. The teacher is a good one, and the students are, too. The New Testament says that God is love, but the Egyptians received nothing but hatred from Jehovah. This god changed the hearts of the good Egyptians into bad hearts (Ps. 105:23-25), to hate Israel. Then, to top it all, he hardened their hearts to not believe in him, because he wanted to kill them. And he killed all the first-born of Egypt—of men and animals. This great king of glory has a great list of services done to humanity.

1. To Jehovah, his glory consisted in destroying humanity through the waters of the Flood. Killing to extinguish evil is a means used by men. But Jehovah has much more means. This is what Deut. 32:39, Is. 14:27 and 43:13. In Ezek. 11:19 and 36:25-27, Jehovah declares that he can change men from bad men to good men. If this is so, why does he kill? Why does he destroy? Why did he destroy the people of Sodom through fire? (Gen. 19:24-25). Jesus does not destroy them, but changes their hearts from bad to good, as we read in 1 Cor. 6:10-11.
2. Jehovah is glorified in the practice of evil. Jehovah repents from the good that he promises to do, and goes on to plan evils, that is, to create new forms of torment. We read this in Jer. 18:10-11.  These torments are pictured in the waters of gall that he gave to his people (Jer. 8:14; 9:15). He gave dregs in cups for men to drink (Ps. 75:8). He gave this cup to his people Israel (Is. 51:17).Jehovah used Nebuchadnezzar and Babylon to torture the captives of his people, comparing them to a golden cup (Jer. 51:7). Raise up your heads, o doors, and the king of glory will come in. A god using barbarous methods that men uses to this day is like going down from heaven to hell. For men, to use them is shameful; is it glory, for Jehovah?
3. Jehovah promised vengeance against the disobedience of his own children, serving them the flesh of their own children in a macabre banquet. We read about this in Deut. 28:53. We find this same threat in Lev. 26:28-29. The prophet Jeremiah makes reference to this dark project (Jer. 19:6-9).Finally, the prophet Ezekiel reminds the Jewish people of what had happened before in Israel (2 Kings. 6:24-31). The king of glory, Jehovah, was going to command the cannibalic banquet in the kingdom of Judah, also, and then to spread it to the four corners of the earth (Ezek. 5:8-10).
4. The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, unable to stand such atrocities, sent his only Son to this dark world to serve a new kind of banquet to all men—the banquet of mercy, in which the flesh of his Son is served in the meal. And Jesus says by the mouth of John, the apostle of love, “I am the living bread which came down out of heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. Yes, the bread which I will give for the life of the world is my flesh” (John 6:51).

by PASTOR OLAVO SILVEIRA PEREIRA