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Sunday, September 04, 2011

Glorifying God

The primary purpose of Creation in general and Man in particular is to glorify God. What does that mean? Does it mean to create glory for God? No, that makes no sense. Does it mean to increase glory for God? No, that's not right either. What, then?

David writes, "O magnify the LORD with me, And let us exalt His name together" (Psa 34:3). Now, "magnify" means basically "to make large". One version of "magnify" would be what we do with the very small. We make them appear bigger. We ... exaggerate. That is not possible when it comes to God. We cannot make Him appear bigger than He is. Another version, however, makes more sense. A telescope can be used to magnify stars. Now, stars, in fact, are huge. Compared to stars, we are less than a piece of dust. But they can appear so distant that we need a telescope to really get a good look at them. They appear very small, but when we magnify them we see them better for what they really are.

And that is the idea behind "glorify". We don't make God more glorious than He is. We don't invest Him with glory. The idea behind us glorifying God is that we realize that we've lost our attention and we take the time to call attention to His glory, to see Him for what He is, to bring His glory into focus with greater clarity and magnitude.

Glorifying God. Bringing attention to God, His beauty, His magnificence, His greatness, His attributes and character. There is no shortage of God to which to call attention. And it is our primary purpose, the reason for which we were made. Once a week isn't enough, but it's a start. It's a good start as the aim for an entire week.

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