What a volume there is in that expression, "The glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ!" A man sitting at the right hand of God with God's glory in His face, and no covering over it. Ah! the fact of His being a man and such a man, up there, is the discovery of everything one's heart dreads to bring into the presence of God. I may have been carried away by my heart and so got out of communion, but when my soul comes in contact with that One seated there as the accepted sacrifice, I know that before God it is all right for me. If I ask, Who is that Lamb upon the throne? the answer comes, " It is the Nazarene," the One who came down to be my substitute, the One who washed me in His blood; and that One is the man in whose face God sees all His glory.
Have you living intercourse with that Christ? He who looks down and reads your heart, sees everything in you, any leaven not yet purged. He looks down as the. One who as Son of man bore all the curse for you; and you may look up and say, " Oh Lord, Thou didst take the lust of this world out of my heart, Thou didst find me a wandering sheep and didst bring me nigh by Thy blood; and is there not affection now and thought in Thy heart for the poor thing Thou didst pick up? Thou didst care enough for me to bear the curse due to me, and now shall I say I cannot be sure whether Thou lovest me?" What! shall this heart entertain such a thought of treason against Him? Shall I be calling out against Him because things do not go as I like, and things are not made smooth? Where is my soul if I do not know that the person who has spoken to me loves me? Oh if you knew how the watchers in heaven have seen thousands of the proofs of His love in His dealings with you! Do you think they could have had a doubt of His love to the poor woman at the well of Samaria? Can the watchers doubt His love to poor things down here now? You may, because of your evil heart of unbelief, but they do not.
If love and affection were not in the heart of the Lord, how could He come forth to gather His people up to be with Himself forever in glory? When He comes to call His people, He will not leave one behind. His faithfulness comes out there, as well as His love.
" The light of the glory of God" where? In the face of Jesus Christ. God, pointing to that face, says, “If you want to know all my glory, there it is." Unsearchable glory-glory past finding out-there it is in the person of my Son!
What a blessed thing it is to get the light so connected with our souls that nothing we find in ourselves can take us by surprise! No light can shine into my heart save what is in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ; if I do not know it there, I do not know God. Can you say not only that you know Christ is light, but that the light is shining into your heart? It is the probe by which God shows us what self is. There has been little but failure ever since the day of Pentecost, and the failure is greater now than it ever was before. Ah but when that light shines in, it shows out everything, and nips every budding of the flesh, everything that cannot stand in the presence of God.
When Christ began to attract you to Himself saying, "Now I want to draw you after a new Master," did you not know it? And do you not know it now, as Christians? Did He not know all your condition and all your circumstances when He picked you up as poor sheep, torn and weary? And, I ask, did He not act in a Lordly way when He picked you up?
When God calls a soul, the first feeling is, " I must be up and after the God who has called me." All who were called by the Lord when on earth followed the Lord, attracted and drawn by Him.
When Christ shined into my soul, did I look up into heaven first? or did Christ first look down upon me? Did I find Christ out by my own wisdom? I am sure that I did not. And if. God had not caused His glory in the face of Christ to shine into my soul (some forty years ago), I should never have known the God who revealed Himself to me and not to others of my kindred.. In the case of Saul, God revealed His Christ in glory to him, that He might lead him captive. God caused the light to shine round about him, to reveal Christ. He has shined into our hearts, and we are running after Christ because He drew us to Himself.
What is the stay of heart to an aged pilgrim? Can one find any comfort in thinking that for forty years one has tried to follow the Lord? Oh no but it is that the Lord-that my Master, in His perfect beauty, has been down here; and it is that He who let His beauty shine draws me after Him. It was like a hook put into my heart, it might have been in the form of terror or of grace, but it was something that like a hook drew me after Him. Ah! it was the call of that Lord which linked me. to Him, it was the effectual power of that Lord, used for drawing me after Him -; and He did not mean me to follow as a servant only, but as a fellow-worker with Him: it is the privilege, in one way or other, of every believer.