Transformed

Introduction

Good Morning, One Church,

I realize that my voice sounds as if I was eating stones all week, so I apologize. Lauren and I have officially entered the season of life when your kids start getting annual winter-spring colds and inviting you to partake of the cold with them. Two weeks ago I caught something that was brought into work. But just as I got through that one, our kids gave me another one. All that to say that I can assure you that I am feeling much better, though my voice has not yet fully recovered. I don’t get sick often; I think this is the first time I’ve really been down for a couple days with a flu or something since I was in college, so although I am grateful that I don’t get sick often and was definitely not grateful for being sick these past two weeks, I couldn’t help but be reminded that sickness, whether it be a stuffy nose, a chronic illness, or something terminal, is part of a broken world but will not be part of the fully restored earth that God promises us. There is hope that whatever sicknesses we have today will one day once and for all be healed forever. And I was grateful to be reminded of that.

Anyway, we’re going to jump right in this morning and continue our Value series. This is the second of a two-part duo of sermons about Being With God. One of the things we like to say about being with God is, “when you’re with him, you become like him.” Last year, I also preached on Being With God and spent more time on the first half of that—how to be with God. If you go to our Youtube channel, you can try to find that sermon where I tried to give many practical examples of how to pray, meditate on Scripture, spend time in silence and solitude, and more. But today, almost a year later, I want to focus more on the latter half of that phrase, “Becoming like Jesus.” Being with God isn’t something we do to check off of a list or make ourselves feel good or give us a reason to believe that God is happier with us on days that we pray than on days we don’t. That’s how the Pharisees in Jesus’ day understood righteousness. And Jesus’ reponse is essentially “Thanks, but no thanks. I’m after something more.” To be with God, to be in his presence is to be transformed by him. We become more like him and in return receive the blessing of the fruit of the Holy Spirit.

We’ll be looking at a couple different verses today, the first of which is Exodus 34:29-35. It took me a while to pull this sermon together; this is actually the second version of it that I finished yesterday. So unfortunately some of these verses won’t be on the screen. To provide some context to this passage, God had just freed his people from slavery in Egypt and led them to the foot of Mount Sinai where he would enter into a covenant with them, that he would be their God and they would be his people. Their leader, Moses (played by Charleton Hesston) had just received the infamous tablets containing the Ten Commandments and was descending from the mountain, where we pick up:

29 As Moses descended from Mount Sinai—with the two tablets of the testimony in his hands as he descended the mountain—he did not realize that the skin of his face shone as a result of his speaking with the Lord., 30 When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, the skin of his face shone! They were afraid to come near him. 31 But Moses called out to them, so Aaron and all the leaders of the community returned to him, and Moses spoke to them. 32 Afterward all the Israelites came near, and he commanded them to do everything the Lord had told him on Mount Sinai. 33 When Moses had finished speaking with them, he put a veil over his face. 34 But whenever Moses went before the Lord to speak with him, he would remove the veil until he came out. After he came out, he would tell the Israelites what he had been commanded, 35 and the Israelites would see that Moses’s face was radiant. Then Moses would put the veil over his face again until he went to speak with the Lord.

Moses had just been up on Mount Sinai in the presence of God receiving the Ten Commandments. And because he was in the presence of God, his face shone radiantly. Just imagine for a second if you came into church one Sunday and Matt or Sheridan’s face was shining like one of these lights up on stage here. You’d probably feel pretty uneasy and scared, not only because that’s something supernatural that you never see but also because it would give you a visual reminder of just how holy and awesome God is. Just stop and think for a second about being in the presence of God. God is the ultimate being in our universe. There is none higher or more powerful than he is. The Psalms say that He created the world around us and he holds it together by the breath of his mouth, that if God were to stop breathing for a second that the quarks and leptons of the universe would separate and the matter in our universe would fall apart. And you are standing right in front of him, you’re looking at each other. What is your posture? What do you say or do? It’s so hard to grasp with our small minds because we have such limited knowledge and imaginations. My mind shorts out when I think about it and simply spits out random words like fear, regret, conviction, respect, submission, worship. Fear is preciesely what the people of Israel felt towards Moses because it was clear from his face that he had been in God’s presence. And to keep them from being afraid of him, Moses covered his face with a veil when he was among the people. But the text goes on to say that he would remove the veil when he went before God to speak with him, then put it on again when he came out.

This is a powerful visual reminder of what God’s presence is like, that we are changed in his presence, and that those around us should see God’s presence in us.

Paul picks this passage up in the New Testament in 2 Corinthians 3:12-18, so go ahead and flip there for a minute.

12 Since, then, we have such a hope, we act with great boldness. 13 We are not like Moses, who used to put a veil over his face to prevent the Israelites from gazing steadily until the end of the glory of what was being set aside, 14 but their minds were hardened.

Let’s pause right there because that’s confusing. We read in Exodus that Moses put the veil over his face because of Israel’s fear, but what Paul says here is that Moses put a veril over his face for another reason: To “prevent the Israelites from gazing steadily until the end of the glory of what was being set aside.” This is a confusing thought, so let’s break it down. Paul asserts that Moses also hid his face so that they didn't see his face gradually stop shining before he went back into the Lord’s presence. This is strange I know, but stick with me here. What’s greater than the glory radiating from Moses’ face is God’s glory in his presence. Moses didn’t want the people to dimish God’s glory by seeing Moses’ face gradually shine less and less after he left God’s presence. Similarly, what’s greather than the covenant with God that Israel was agreeing to is the new covenant that Jesus established with his body and blood, what we celebrated during Easter a few weeks ago. And symbolically, God didn’t want his people to diminish the greater thing that would come through Jesus if they knew that the current covenant would be set aside. The implication is that the Israelites would not be content with the convenenat God gave them at Mount Sinai if they knew that it would eventually be set aside for something greater in time. Their minds were hardened, that is, they wanted the law to remain and refused to face the fact that God had something further in mind. Let’s continue

For to this day, at the reading of the old covenant, the same veil remains; it is not lifted, because it is set aside only in Christ. 15 Yet still today, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their hearts, 16 but whenever a person turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. 17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 18 We all, with unveiled faces, are looking as in a mirror at, the glory of the Lord and are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory; this is from the Lord who is the Spirit.

What Paul says here is nuts. While he is writing this letter of 2 Corinthians, and still today, there areJewish people whose hearts are still hardened against Jesus as if covered by a veil hindering their belief. But that veil is removed when anyone turns to the Lord and commits to following Jesus. So then, we all who have chosen to commit to following Jesus, have unveiled faces like Moses, meaning that we belong in God’s presence and can go in boldness and confidence.

The glory of the Lord is evident to us through work of the Holy Spirit bringing righteousness into our lives, restoring communities, and captivating the hearts of outcasts. When we see God’s glory through the Holy Spirit, it’s as if we’re looking in a mirror at the glory of the Lord and seeing God’s glory in us in the reflection. When you look in the mirror, who’s reflection do you see? You see yourself in all your glory, especially if it’s before 6 in the morning. But Paul says here that when we the glory of the Lord through the Spirit’s work or in other people, we are able to see his glory in us because we’re made in the image of God. All humans are made in the image of God regardless if they believe it or not. Adolf Hitler was made in the image of God, your neighbor is made in the image of God, the unborn baby in your womb is made in the image of God, a disabled person in a persistent vegitative state is made in the image of God, the elderly person taking their final breath is made in the image of God. Every human being is made in the image of God with the capacity to represent something about the character and power of God, and we see that glory in oursevles or in each other. And yet, people who commit themselves to following Jesus are also being transformed so that the image of God in them becomes more visible over time.

I remember a coin my dad showed me when I was younger, a penny from 1851 that someone found in a field. And I can assure you that when that penny came out of the mint, hot off the press, it was not green. But I remember clear as day holding that penny in my hand, green from years of oxidation and corrosion. If someone were to clean it professionally, I’m sure the original brilliance of the precious metals would shine, and you could once again see the image and words on the coin.

We are like that coin, minted with God’s image all shiny and new. Yet sin corrodes the image. It doesn’t remove it from us but it obscures it and corrodes it. The transformation Paul is talking about here is restorative, that the Holy Spirit transforms us in his presence so that the image of God is restored and becomes visible again.

Hear this: You can change. Paul will go on to say a few chapters later in 2 Corinthians 5:21:

He made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

You can become righteous. I may or may not be one of the few here but hands down my biggest challenge emotionally, spiritually, mentally, and physically is knowing the me I want to be yet seeing the me I am. I can feel so defeated and discouraged and self-condemned straining to become the person I want to be and yet seeing the painfully slow progress drop like sand stuck in an hourglass. I want to be transformed so that the corrosion of sin is cleaned away and I carry the image of God well with myself and those around me so badly, and I want you to want that transformation too. Your marriage can be transformed in God’s presence. Your workplace can be transformed in God’s presence. You friendships can be transformed in God’s presence. Your grocery stores and coffee shops can be restored in God’s presence.

The Presence of God

But that leads us back to this question about being with God. If God’s presence is transformational, and we all want to grow and change and mature into better better Jesus followers, which we should desire,

then how do we access God’s presence?

For starters, where even is God’s presence?

If you read the Old Testament, God’s presence was also set apart from his people. It was sequestered, not because it was bad but because, as we’ve seen already in the story of Moses, it was so good. Not becuase God wanted to protect himself from people but because he needed to protect people from him. As Israel marched through desert after leaving Egypt, they constructed a tabernacle, which was essentially a temple in a tent. God’s presence resided in the middle of the Tabernacle separated from the rest of the community by priests and curtains. After Israel settled down in the land God promised them, they eventually built an actual temple where God’s presence, again, resided, protected by priests and curtains. Someone like you or I couldn’t just waltz into the room where God’s presence resided; only the priests could. Fast forward a few hundred years, the temple is destroyed and rebuilt, Jesus arrives, he ministers to God’s people, and dies. There’s an often-overlooked line in the Easter story that will clue us in to where God’s presence is in Matthew 27:50-51:

50 But Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and gave up his spirit. 51 Suddenly, the curtain of the sanctuary was torn in two from top to bottom, the earth quaked, and the rocks were split.”

In the death of Jesus, God’s presence left the temple where it had been residing for nearly a 1,000 years. A few chapters later in Acts 2, after Jesus resurrects, sees his disciples again, and ascends back into heaven, we read this:

When the day of Pentecost had arrived, they were all together in one place. 2 Suddenly a sound like that of a violent rushing wind came from heaven, and it filled the whole house where they were staying. 3 They saw tongues like flames of fire that separated and rested on each one of them. 4 Then they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled them.”

God’s presence left the temple and came to reside in the bodies of his people. God’s presence isn’t so much of a place we need to get to, although we will once again be in God’s presence when Jesus returns. God’s presence is a place we already are because his Spirit is alive inside of us transforming us from the inside out.

But that’s not all, turn quickly to Ephesians 1:15-23

15 For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, 16 I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, 17 that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, 18 having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, 19 and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might 20 that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, 21 far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. 22 And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, 23 which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all”

God’s presence is primarily alive inside of each of us, transforming us from the inside out. But God’s presence is also here among us collectively, for we, One Church, are the hands and feet of Jesus. We are the physical presence of Jesus on earth, the flesh that he’ll wear until the world ends. This means that just as we can change and be transformed and renewed individually in the presence of God, people coming into this space on a Sunday morning can experience that transformation too. Don’t for a second think that setting out coffee and donuts on a Sunday morning is trivial, or that giving a smile and greeting a curious passerby poking their head in is purposeless. Don’t think that houseless people here living in this alley here or people wandering in from the street for a cup of hot coffee can be ignored. They’re walking into this church, into this extension of Jesus’ body. Are we going to be the hand that receives them, bind up their wounds, and cultivates life in them, or are we going to turn Jesus’ body away from them as we turn away from them? Just as you can change, so can they.

The World, The Flesh, and the Devil

Why, then, can it feel like the process of transformation in a follower of Jesus is so slow? I know I’m saying a lot of nice things here, but the truth of the matter is that transformation doesn’t happen as quickly as we want it to. Here’s a perfect example from my life recently. I had a lot of anger in high school that I didn’t learn to manage and process well, and I would express a lot of it towards my parents. But then I moved out across the country, went through Bible college, got an adult job, got married, and never moved back. So I believed that I had gotten much better at managing my anger when in reality I just wasn’t in the same environments that used to provoke me…until I had kids. Recently I have noticed some of the same intense emotions that I felt back in high school resurfacing when I get frustrated with our kids—not listening when we tell them to stop doing something, not sleeping when we need them to, not wanting to eat their food, etc. But now the people that feel my anger are my kids or Lauren, such as me being short and rude towards them, disconnecting from them, or just demanding too much of them. It’s made me ask myself this same question: Why does transformation feel so slow? Anger is something I had in high school 20 years ago, am I really not past this? Myabe you too have similar things in your life that you feel similarly about, things that have been a part of you for as long as you can remember that make you question yourself: Have I really not gotten past this yet? Have I really not grown through this yet, or have I really not let this go after so long?

Ephesians 2 identifies three of the most common obstacles to our transformation:

And you were dead in your trespasses and sins 2 in which you previously walked according to the ways of this world, according to the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit now working in the disobedient. 3 We too all previously lived among them in our fleshly desires, carrying out the inclinations of our flesh and thoughts, and we were by nature children under wrath as the others were also.

If we distill this down, we get the world, the devil, and our flesh. These are the three most common obstacles to our transformation, but out of those three, there is one in particular that I propose poses the biggest obstacle to our spiritual transformation. The world and the desires in our world are powerful, sure, but only to the extent that we let ourselves be effected. The devil is powerful, sure--arguably even more powerful than the world--but Paul will say himself a few chapters later in Ephesians that we "put on the full armor of God" in order to stand against the schemes of the devil. This indicates that our choices effect how influenced we are by what is around us in the world and by Satan himself. The greatest obstacle to the Christian is ourselves, our flesh, because we have an inherent inclination to resist God's Spirit and choose our own way.

One author I read, Steven Porter, said it this way:

To put the point another way, what stands in the way of progress in holiness is not merely "flesh” understood as the Christian’s habituated desire to sin, but "Flesh" understood as the Christian’s habituated desire to be one’s own god. To make no provision for the flesh, then, is to put to death ingrained attempts to utilize one’s natural resources to live apart from God and instead to engage in practices of deepening dependence on the nourishment available by the Spirit, which brings forth the fruit of the Spirit. This means that the choice to “stop” rebelling and “start” depending is not ultimately a willpower issue. Rather, it is an interpersonal issue. In particular, it is an issue that involves coming to a greater trust/faith in the love and goodness of God as well as despairing of the attempt to find life apart from God."

The greatest obstacle to our ongoing transformation is ourselves, but the root of rebellion in our hearts, not the fruit of sin in our lives. Although sin is sin and needs to be addressed so that we can grow in holiness, that’s not where transformation starts. It doesn’t start by addressing patterns of sinful behavior—the lustful glances; the cheating in class or in a relationship; the dishonest things you tell people you love; the rampant greedy hunger that we need to have something more than what we already have. It starts instead with the root of those sins, which we find by asking ourselves this question:

“What is keeping me from trusting God?”

and then making small committments to intentionally choose to trust him.

Maybe that means choosing not to be controlled by worry or fear of your finances if you’re short on bills one month.

Or maybe that means choosing not to indulge in some area of your life—entertainment, extravagant experiences or trips, sex, certain foods—for a period of time and using that time and energy instead to spend time in prayer, meditating on Scripture, or listening to worship music.

That could mean choosing intentionally to pursue Christian friendships and community and allowing yourself to be vulnerable with them instead of continuing to hide and go unknown—that’s something that has been especially challenging for me.

It could also mean going out of your way to intentionally engage your neighbors or people in your local community—one thing I’m trying to practice right now is addressing people by their first name when they’re wearing a name tag.

It could also mean confessing sin, trusting that exposing sin and growing past sin is greater than acknowledgint any relational damage caused by sin.

Real Transformation

Lauren interrupted me briefly last night as I was feverishly finishing this up and suggested that these past three weeks of sickness compounding on themselves over and over and the exhaustion that has hindered me this week could simply be the result of a perfect storm of sickness. Even last night we had a toddler that wanted to dance and flail until 4AM instead of sleep. And yet it also could be indicative of something deeper, something spiritual. Satan would do anything to hinder people from believing that God is trustworthy, that change is possible because there’s nothing more dabilitating than the hopelessness that comes from habituated patterns of sin, from hopelessness itself, that change in our world or our close friends is impossible, from the apathy and indifference that comes from our overly busy lives that leave us with too little time to actually care or too little resources to give. Satan would love nothing more than to keep you enslaved this morning, whether that’s enslaved to your sin or esnlsaved to certain mindsets of defeat and despair. So I want to close by turning back to 2 Corinthians 3:17:

2 Corinthians 3:17 ESV

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

Please, please believe that there is freedom for you in the name of Jesus. I don’t know what it is that you’re carrying with you this morning, but I can assure you that Jesus already knows because he made you and he loves you. I can assure you that whatever it is that makes you feel “stuck” isn’t a surprise to him; he’s seen it all. We have our prayer team up front and they would love to pray this verse over you, that the Spriit of God brings freedom and transformation with him.