Where your glory comes from

Where does your glory come from?  From where do you get your praise?  What in your life do you take pride in?

For the people of Tyre, it came from their trading business. 

They were a port city, and had a thriving maritime business.  They were wealthy and successful.  They were also a very ungodly people, worshiping their own gods, including a god very common in our day, the god of money.

And here, in all their pride and glory, God brings judgment on them, warning them that the day would come when they would be overthrown. 

He warned that though they were famous and had great wealth, it would all be stripped from them.  Isaiah says of them,

Wail, you people of the island.  Is this your city of revelry, the old, old city, whose feet have taken her to settle in far-off lands? 

Who planned this against Tyre, the bestower of crowns, whose merchants are princes, whose traders are renowned in the earth? 

The LORD Almighty planned it, to bring low the pride of all glory and to humble all who are renowned on the earth.  (Isaiah 23:6-9)

And while God tells them they will once again be restored,

Yet her profit and her earnings will be set apart for the LORD; they will not be stored up or hoarded. 

Her profits will go to those who live before the LORD, for abundant food and fine clothes. (18)

In other words, all her pride and glory will be for the benefit of the Lord and his people, not their own.

What can we learn from this? 

Lasting glory can come from only one place.  It’s not from money, or fame, or anything else of this earth because all of these things are temporary. 

Lasting glory can only come from God.  And glory doesn’t come from molding ourselves into an image of our own devising.  Rather it comes from reflecting the Lord’s image as we draw near to him. 

As Paul wrote,

And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.  (2 Corinthians 3:18).

I like how the NASB puts it, that we are being transformed into Christ’s image “from glory to glory.”

And so what should we take pride in?  Jeremiah answers that, saying,

This is what the Lord says:  “Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this:  that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight,” declares the Lord.  (Jeremiah 9:23-24).

How about you?  Where is your glory?  Where is your pride?