Glory to Glory Part 3
Glory to Glory • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Proposition or Proclamation
Proposition or Proclamation
And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.
What do you think the Apostle meant by the phrase “beholding the glory of the Lord” in 2 Corinthians 3:18? Have you ever heard the expressions regarding first impressions like, “First impressions matter” or “You cannot undo first impressions”. Often we finalize our first impressions of people in the first thirty seconds of our encounter with them. And even if we develop greater relationship and discover that our first impressions were inaccurate, we still tend to allow them to hinder us or we never forget those first impressions.
How many people have experienced a negative first impression of Christ Jesus through professing Christians? How many people perceive Christians as hate mongering religious nuts because of those professing Christians who use Scripture to condemn rather than lead people to the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Even still, other Christians give another impression of Christ. It is a completely culturally palatable Jesus that is tolerant of a willfully sinful lifestyle. Either way, Jesus has become a proposition rather than a pronouncement.
The other day I went to get my propane tanks filled. While the elderly gentleman filled my tanks I engaged in small talk. We talked about our service to the Army and he exclaimed of how he had served as a Nuclear Biological Chemical Warfare Non-Commissioned Officer in the 101st Airborne. As we continued to discuss our current employment, he mentioned how he and his husband ended up in Arkansas. Immediately, in my spirit I said, “Lord, how do I share truth of the Gospel with this deceived brother? Holy Spirit, give me the words and the delivery.” Once he had completed filling my propane tanks I reached out and took his hand. I looked him in the eyes and with all the sincerity I could muster, I called him by name and said, “Thank you so much for serving me today by filling my tanks in this bitter cold. Brother, I believe in a loving Creator who, according to the Prophet Jeremiah, formed and fashioned you with purpose in your mother’s womb. And that same loving God came in the flesh to shed His innocent blood that you would no longer have to live in the captivity of moral sin but could be redeemed to righteousness for intimate relationship, not religion, but right relationship with the Lord. Through the Prophet Ezekiel, God warns us that God has said to a man that he will surely die in his sin and if I do nothing to dissuade him, then he will surely die in his sin but his blood will be on my hands. Sir, I admonish you today to consider these words and turn to the Lord who loves you.” He looked at me with watery eyes and said thank you and we went our ways.
You see, the Holy Spirit knows how to touch a heart. But we must be obedient. I had to ask myself, if I truly loved that brother or was my flesh just pricked by his depravity. If we try and bring conviction apart from the Holy Spirit, it will come out as condemnation. And if we try to bring conversion through compromise of the integrity of God’s righteousness, it just leaves them condemned, not liberated.
According to Abraham Heschel, “The prophet was an individual who said No to his society, condemning its habits and assumptions, its complacency, waywardness, and syncretism (combinations of self-formulated beliefs). He was often compelled to proclaim the very opposite of what his heart expected. His fundamental objective was to reconcile man and God. Why? Perhaps due to man’s false sense of sovereignty, his abuse of freedom, his aggressive and sprawling pride and his spiritual bankruptcy. To us the moral state of society, for all its stains and spots, seems fair and trim; to the prophet it is dreadful. To us life is often serene, in the prophet’s eye the world reels in confusion” (Heschel, Abraham, The Prophets).
According to John Eckhardt, “Prophets are uncompromising, but have room for mercy and redemption. Prophets represent the heart of God, and God is merciful but uncompromising” We struggle to see how the two can be reconciled. For us to show mercy means we have to compromise integrity. Not so for God. He neither compromises nor contradicts His own nature. It is in His integrity that He is merciful.
In overflowing anger for a moment I hid my face from you, but with everlasting love I will have compassion on you,” says the Lord, your Redeemer.
“Cry aloud; do not hold back; lift up your voice like a trumpet; declare to my people their transgression, to the house of Jacob their sins.
Where the Glory of the Lord dwells, sin cannot. The Glory of the Lord illuminates righteousness and repels darkness. And where there is darkness, the Lord does not remain silent or neutral. The Glory of the Lord is revealed in the heart of the Father that calls us to return to Him and turn away from sin. Jesus said it this way:
When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.
If God is to move us from Glory to Glory in Christ, we must be the prophetic people of God that no longer behold the world and things around us as the culture does, nor even as the religious. We must behold all things and value all things from God’s perspective not our own or anyone else. We must hear different, think different, speak different, and see different. As such, there is no time for silence and no place for neutrality.
We live in a time as A.W. Tozer states, “The Christian message has ceased to be a pronouncement and has become instead a proposition. The invitational element of the Christian message has been pressed far out of proportion in the total scriptural sense. Christ with His lantern, His apologetic stance and His weak pleading face has taken the place of the true Son of Man whom John saw - His eyes as a flame of fire, His feet like burnished brass and His voice as the sound of many waters. Only the Holy Spirit can reveal our Lord as He really is, and He does not paint in oils. He manifests Christ to the human spirit, not to our physical eyes.”
Both God’s judgment and His mercy have been disproportionately reduced to humanistic self-justification or religious dogma in the doctrinal opinions of man. The Glory of the Lord, the Christ, can be seen in neither. Christ asked God to “glorify” Him that God may be “glorified”. And the Father granted that request through a public proclamation on a horrific cross and from an empty tomb.
The word used by Jesus in John 17 for “glorify” is the Hebrew word kavod כָּבוֹד meaning “to be heavy” or “to be honored”. Jesus was requesting both. In context, it refers to His majestic presence and the manifestation of His divine attributes.
Throughout Scripture, we see the Prophets and Disciples emphasize the majesty of the Christ. Too often, in modern Christianity the majesty of Christ been lost, His cause compromised and his name defiled by cultural alliance with depravity in the name of religious piety and human compassion.
There is no compassion greater than the heart of the Father. There is no glory to be shared with men who would seek their own. God desires more than anything else to reveal Himself to those who earnestly seek Him that they may behold Him face-to face.
For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.
Do you want to move to new depths of His glory? Do you want to behold Him with unveiled face? Will you seek Him with all your heart willing to forsake all carnality and humanistic reasoning? Will you truly seek Him with all of your heart as long as it takes? God does not make propositions, He makes proclamations. This desire of the Father to reveal Himself to you never was and is not a proposition. This call to redemption is not a proposition. This command to turn from living in darkness and come into the light of Christ is not a proposition but it is a proclamation. He awaits your response!
For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering.
God, in His infinite wisdom, for certain could have chose anaother way, but He saw it best to redeem through the suffering of His only Son. Why? Because this is the evidence of His great love. Great love always requires sacrifice. A love void of sacrifice is a self-serving love not true love for another. Truly, no greater love has any man than to lay down his life for another. And is this is seen the glory of the Lord and the maturing of the saints.
