2.6
Not even Solomon (Matthew 6:29)e
Solomon was the most honored king in Israel’s history and he received the greatest honors from this world. Not only was he the wisest and richest king who reigned over the most land Israel ever occupied, but God chose him to build His Temple. Solomon, whose name is from the Hebrew word for peace, shalom, was chosen as a man of peace over his father David to build God’s Temple (1 Chronicles 22:7-10) where God dwelt and His people worshiped Him. No place in Israel had more honor or glory than the Temple Solomon built. Today it is usually referred to as Solomon’s Temple, to distinguish it from the second and less glorious Temple of King Herod
The wisdom God gave Solomon set him against the general wisdom of this world. Even as the people in his time honored him, Solomon bewailed the vanity of his life and all that was in it. Few if any could understand the despair he had in this world and the futility that pursued his strivings. But a thousand years after his death, his memory still great in Israel, Jesus spoke to Solomon’s despair in the light of God’s hope. Jesus saw with the eyes of God who created time under the sun to be as He meant it to be. He saw and accepted God’s design in all things on earth. He knew the heart of Solomon and spoke the truth of this perishing world with naked simplicity. The glory of Solomon, Jesus said, dressed from head to foot in its most gorgeous robes, is no greater than that of the field’s grass that is burnt the next day. Jesus saw that the beauty of Solomon can’t compare to the wild lilies in the field that God so tenderly dresses in their delicately designed petals. Compared to them, the glory of Solomon’s riches reflect no light. Jesus saw that compared to God’s continual care attending the field’s lilies, Solomon’s greatest glory is nothing
At a profound spiritual level, the life of Solomon was much more difficult and challenging than any of us will have to endure. He knew the full power of this world’s allure at the same time he also saw its utter futility. At some point in his life, he chose the gods of his many wives over God (Solomon seems to have later turned back to God after recognizing his self deceptions [Ecclesiastes 7:26-9], though not without suffering their effects [1 Kings 11:1-8]). Solomon’s wisdom could not fully reconcile this world’s goods with God’s good. But Jesus kept His single focus on God who reveals His good on earth: God’s simple and ever present care, the constancy of His attention to the endless needs that cry out everywhere. It is the tangible and sufficient concern of God for us at this moment - whether or not we notice Him - that Jesus calls the true glory, incomparable to any earthly thing. God freely providing for us, showering His glory on us. We seek for the glory we can give one another (John 5:44), to be dressed in its beauty for others to admire. But Jesus exposed the poverty of such beauty and its shameful inadequacy that Solomon knew in his heart and despaired over
“Not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself. . .” (Matthew 6:29) like the oblivious lilies of the field, Jesus said. What hubris! How dare Jesus diminish the glory of so great a human life to a level below that of a common lily! How dare He presume to so devalue the achievements of a king Solomon! In this, as in so much of Jesus’ teachings and life, His great offense is the wound He inflicts on our self confidence. Jesus, unlike anyone else who lived on earth, knew the fulness of His Father’s glory because there was nothing in Him that denied God or vied with Him. There was no pride or self confidence in Jesus, no treasures He possessed in Himself or on earth to prove His worth, no success to validate His goodness. The only glory Jesus trusted was the one given to Him by His Father, the King of heaven who was always caring for Him. Jesus knew the full weight and beauty of His Father’s glory and so He knew that all other glory was nothing by comparison. No glory can compare with His Father’s gracious glory, not even the one radiating from king Solomon. Compared to God’s glory, Solomon’s is like the grass of a common field, destined for nothing but burning
Just how much greater is God’s glory than the one we reflect among ourselves? Can His be so very different from the one we give each other? The Hebrew word for glory is kavod, from kaved which means to be heavy, weighty, or burdensome. The glory that comes from God is heavy with substance that is reflected in all His creation. The glory we give one another does not originate from any one of us but is instead reflected from others’ reflections, like mirror images reflecting mirror images ad infinitum. Jesus teaches us the glory we give one another has no true substance. It is as insubstantial as vapor, like the vapor of Solomon’s vanity, and wholly different from God’s glory whose mere reflection fills His universe
Glory is often used synonymously with honor. Its meaning easily becomes more about reputation than substance. God’s glory is all about His substance, the great weight of His glorious presence that gives substance to all things in relation to Himself. The glory of God is always in relation to Himself and is never separated from Him. God never gives His creation the ability to derive substance from itself, to originate life and meaning from itself. He always wants to be connected to His creation. God always wants to share His glory in all He makes. He never wants to stop caring for us, attending to us and clothing us with His glory
The substance of God’s glory is all different from the one we manufacture. We find it in the beauty of His touch and the wonder of His kindness. Intimations of His glory surround and invade us. When we begin to know its true nature, we discover that it has always pervaded our life in things too familiar: in life’s small and simple details that are so easily assumed and dismissed; in the despised and abandoned. When our eyes are opened by His grace to His grace, we begin to see His glory shamelessly naked and exposed everywhere. We find it in a sparrow’s abandoned freedom in flight, seemingly oblivious to its own fragility; in the moon that hangs securely in the sky as it suffers dark clouds to cover it’s face; in the tiny bud of a flower whose beauty blooms for a brief moment, whether or not anyone is near to adore it; in a remote forest where an ant hill is intense with activity of great purpose, though no one is compelling its work; in a baby’s ecstatic laughter at her mother’s exaggerated expressions; in the unmerited forgiveness of a friend; in the mysterious rest of sleep, night after night. God’s glory sustains and overcomes both the smallest and greatest sufferings: in the heart so consumed by grief that it must turn inside out to be what it is, raw and empty; in the torture and murder of a war prisoner; in the anguished tears of an orphaned child. In all that is life and death, all that is good and evil, God is. The glory of God reaches beyond the farthest corners of the universes and is at the same time attending to the closest recesses of our heart
In all that is real and true, God’s glory speaks. Heaven and earth will one day become mute, but God’s glory will always endure. The goodness of God’s glory will always be. He will always be who He is, always establish the goodness of His grace, always provide and maintain the substance of His works. There is no need to recreate His works, no need to make His presence good. God’s glory is heavy with His grace that sustains and reflects on all life, His timeless care attending to each day’s smallest details. Only God’s glory can sustain us with the inestimable value of His good purposes that make all things beautiful in their time
Long ago there was a day under heaven when God showed Isaiah His timeless glory,
and Isaiah saw the King of kings filling His Temple, with angels gravitating around Him:
And one called out to another and said, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of hosts, the
whole earth is full of His glory’ (Isaiah 6:3)
God’s glory fills His earth. When we live our fleeting time under the sun as reflections of
God who creates and nurtures us, our time on earth changes. It is God’s grace that
frees us to despair of our insubstantial hopes apart from Him, so that our life’s journey is
not defined and concluded by dead ends. The true value of all things is from God who
creates unique beauty for all things in their unique times. Life’s transience under the
sun is as God made it to be. This world and its things have no substance in themselves
to wholly trust and securely rest in. But in God’s gracious time, we are continually
sustained because its measure is the substance of His works and the presence of His
rest. The Sabbath rest that God promises in Scripture is the subject of the next chapter