“Then he led me to the gate, the gate facing east and behold, the glory of the God of Israel was coming from the east. And the sound of His coming was like the sound of many waters and the earth shown with his glory.”
– Ezekiel 43:1–2
I love that imagery. Just picture it. Ezekiel sees the glory of God coming, and he says, “It’s like the sound of many waters.” Just hear the roar of waters and “the earth shown,” Ezekiel says, “with His glory.”
Just picture that. The earth shining with the glory of God. Now, even as I say that, I think Romans 1 makes clear that God’s glory is shining in creation right now. You and I can look out and just picture a sunset, a sunrise. Picture His beauty in creation in so many different ways. We can picture everything from the Grand Canyon to people around us that are a display of the glory of God, the way He creates and forms people in His image.
So God’s glory, yes, is shining all around us, but it’s marred in our lives and the world by sin in us and around us. Just picture the day when there won’t be any more sin to mar the beauty of God’s glory in the earth. His justice shining, no more injustice. His righteousness shining, no more wicked, no more evil. And his glory shining in full measure. That’s the kind of glimpse Ezekiel is getting here. And when I read it, I think I want to see that.
Don’t you want to see that? Don’t you want to see God in all of His glory, all of His beauty perfectly, with no more sin and no more evil and no more sorrow and no more injustice and no more suffering, just the goodness of the glory of God shining throughout the earth?
Jesus, we pray, come quickly. God, we pray, we want to see you in all your glory. We want to see you in all your glory. We want to know you in all your glory. God, we are not content in this sense here. We want to see your justice fully shining. We want to see your righteousness fully shining. And we want to see your love and your mercy and your goodness and your grace fully shining. Your majesty and beauty and your glory fully shining. We want to see you, God. We want to see you.
Help us to live today for this to know you more, to know you more. God, we pray that we would know and see more of your glory in our lives. So we pursue you, so we seek you today that we might know and see more of your glory at the end of today than we did yesterday and the next day and the next day as we long for the day when sin won’t be an encumbrance anymore. Even that we pray that you’d help us to throw aside sin today, temptation today, that we might live in, that we might behold your glory more and more and more as we long for the day when there won’t be any more sin, won’t be any more temptation, just you in all your glory.
And your glory is shining throughout the earth, God bringing about among all the peoples of the world, among all 7,000 unreached people groups right now, who have little to no access to the gospel, God, we pray for the day when your glory will shine among all of them. Help us to live for that. God, we pray for that right now. Oh, God, we pray, please use our lives to cause your glory to spread that it might shine among all the peoples of the earth. Help us to make disciples of all the nations.
God help us to live today, seeking you in all of your glory, longing for you in all of your glory, whatever that means for our lives. We pray you’d help us to live accordingly. Thank you for this vision in Ezekiel 43 and this hope that you’ve given all of us who are in Jesus that one day we will see His face, and we will behold you in all of your glory. Come Lord Jesus, come quickly. We pray in your name. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
