Sermons
“WALKING BY FAITH"
TEXT: 2 CORINTHIANS 4: 16-5: 10 New Revised standard version
THE ETERNAL
What should Christians believe about the supernatural? When I hear the word, my mind jumps to the worst versions: TV shows like Ghost Hunters, Alien Encounters, The Twilight Zone, and all of the New Age Oprah claptrap. The word has been cheapened and dumbed down by our fascination with the unknown. And it is this fascination that has fed an endless market for trashy speculations and silly superstitions. Because we’re all just human, it seems the wildest speculations are still met with great success.
If I say, “I believe in an unseen world,” I could be subject to attacks of magical thinking or extreme gullibility. But just because I believe in an unseen world does not mean I believe in ghosts, goblins, fairies, ufos, and spirit guides.
But neither do I believe in materialism—that the entire world exists only of what can be seen, heard, tasted, touched, felt, smelled, or measured. Materialism is the old scientific view that still thrives as Humanism. Humanism, in its modern incarnation, fiercely rejects supernaturalism, even as it rejects God.
There have been Christian theologians who claimed to reject supernaturalism, but as they did so, they also came to reject the resurrection of Christ, which makes them about as Christian as Humanists—which is not Christian at all.
It is inescapable: to be a Christian is to accept some degree of supernaturalism. Paul, in today’s text, couldn’t be clearer about it. Consider such statements as:
v. 4:18 “…we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.”
Paul says that the real, permanent world is invisible. This does not indicate Plato’s world of perfect, unseen forms, but the kingdom of God.
5:4 For while we are still in this tent, we groan under our burden, because we wish not to be unclothed but to be further clothed so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.
The material world is the mortal world. People of faith hunger and thirst for the new life God is preparing for us, which is eternal, immortal. All unseen. And as if to crystallize the Christian mind and attitude, he says:
5.7 “…for we walk by faith, not by sight.”
We don’t count on our own senses to navigate reality, because our senses are as mortal as our bodies—as mortal as the cosmos itself. To walk by faith means we depend on something other than our sciences to apprehend the full meaning and purpose of life. Reality is essentially spiritual, which is a way of saying that we can’t trust our eyes.
The eternal cannot be seen, yet it looms central in our faith, and in the flesh alone we are all simply blind.
SERVING THE UNSEEN
What does it mean to walk by faith rather than by sight? I’ll suggest three ways: by trusting, serving, and sharing.
First, we trust in the revelation of God through Jesus Christ. Jesus in and of himself is the self-revelation of God. What can be known about God is not a matter of careful reasoning and argument, but only what we are shown through the life, words, and witness of Jesus.
Jesus reveals God, who is otherwise mostly unknowable.
Scripture’s chief value is its witness of Christ and to Christ. The Bible is not a magical book produced by magic; it is the authoritative witness to who Jesus is and what he says. In reading Scripture and hearing the gospel, we are healed of our innate blindness and empowered to see a light that the material world cannot see. That ability to see the unseen is the work of the Holy Spirit alone. We can neither reason nor investigate our way into seeing. Faith is a gift from God.
Second, it means that we serve the unseen rather than the seen.
This means we prioritize and value the spiritual realities that are not visible to our earthly eyes. The tenets of our faith, as worded in the Apostles Creed—and the other creeds and confessions—are the heaviest weights in the balance for our lives. What we say we believe, we must genuinely rely upon for our decisions and choices.
To say we serve the unseen means we place our bets—all of them—on the resurrection of Jesus and the promises we have through Him.
Now a disclaimer: Except for this year, Thanksgiving is the time families converge. It is only normal to expect to have at the table lots of strong convictions—many of them over all the wrong things. As we started out saying, not all service to the invisible is right—only service to God—but because we believe that there are things unseen that are nonetheless real, we are likely to have some sympathy towards Uncle Louie, who is convinced that all the world governments are secretly, invisibly conspiring to bring about Armageddon. Or your daughter’s boyfriend, who angrily insists he knows more about this world than anyone twice his age. Or your sister who has become a fruitarian because she swears she can hear the plants scream when they’re cut or pulled from the ground. And then there’s your cousin Amethyst (given name Amy), who gives involuntary readings of people’s auras and chakras.
To be fair, gathering Christians can be just as troublesome. Two brothers argue over the plenary inspiration of Scripture. Aunt Ellie announces that she has the spiritual gift of discernment, after which she advances her little evaluations of everyone else’s spirituality. We all know the drill—and I bring it up here to say that not all conviction is right conviction. We all know people who don’t know much more than we do who condemn all who don’t share their opinions. Politics? That’s it.
In my experience, the smartest people I know seem quick to acknowledge the real complexity of most issues and can acknowledge strengths and weaknesses on both sides of the fence.
To say we serve the unseen, in this case, means that we know that most of what is true is beyond our sight. We are humbled in knowing that the actual world is a heckuva lot bigger than we can talk about.
God sees all; we do not. We walk by faith, which means we leave some things—perhaps most things—under God’s care. We don’t always know what to trust, but we know Who to trust.
God knows all, and God will reveal what is needed when it is required. That’s enough for us—we don’t have to know everything or have all the answers. Better that we don’t. What we do have is faith in the one who knows all things better than we do or can.
Thirdly, we serve the unseen by sharing the good news.
Evangelism is not a matter of talking someone into following Christianity. It is more like introducing a friend to your parents. There is no proving Christianity. There is no evidence to prove our faith; there is only faith itself.
Yes, the gift of reason helps us sort out good ideas from bad, right implications from wrong ones, and healthy practices from weak ones—but at the center, our evangelism is telling people about Jesus.
And more than our words and stories, our hearts, attitudes, and character communicate our faith. Or it doesn’t. We can build an attractive, charming, and inviting church, but that only gets people into our pews; that may be Christianity, but that isn’t faith.
Faith depends upon an act of the Holy Spirit. We can tell the story, lay out the details, and proclaim the good news of Jesus and his love, but unless God throws the switch, that person, however compliant, will not see Jesus as Lord.
Our evangelism depends upon the work of God, and in every case of one coming to faith, a miracle of the Holy Spirit. This knowledge shapes our sharing. Otherwise, we would do something as disastrous as converting people only to Presbyterianism or to happy congregationalism—love of family, tribe, and community—rather than to Christ Himself.
So that’s how we serve the unseen as we seek to walk by faith. But what are the benefits of faith? Does walking by faith do something to us that makes us special? Yes.
UNSEEN BENEFITS
As we serve the unseen, we benefit from the unseen as well. As we live and walk by faith, we have a peace that the materialists can’t possibly have, for we know that death is no more. We have peace of mind—peace of soul—knowing that when this life ends, our real life in God’s eternal realm is only starting.
For the materialist—the scientist, the humanist—death is the ultimate and final reality. So they live without any real hope. They can say there’s hope for humankind to get better, but it hardly matters because you will be dead, cold, and forgotten by the time it happens. Enjoy!
Humanists can dream of going elsewhere and, in time, seeding the cosmos with life and intelligence such that the galaxies light up with life—but that is unscientific. Talk about believing in the unseen? That’s a wildly speculative superstition if there ever were one. And remember, the cosmos is mortal—dying, losing heat—so a physical eternity is beyond the question.
But we have hope. Because Jesus has risen, we know life continues in an unseen realm, and the promises of God assure us that we share in His eternal plan.
So we have peace, and we have hope when we walk by faith.
We may take them for granted—some of us have been following Christ for many years—but just how important are these?
To be frank, there is nothing more vital to one’s soul than to have hope and a sense of peace. People talk about happiness, but really—if you look at it closely—what they mean is peace.
We have been given, by Christ, that peace. It is peace that surpasses all human knowledge and understanding. That peace and hope will be in the fullest measure in our Christian hearts as we lay dying on our deathbeds. I’ve seen it—many, many times!
The materialist, the atheist, the humanist—can feel only terror, loss, and regret at death, for with their end comes the cessation of the universe, as far as they know. When they cease to exist, the universe ceases to exist, and everything is as though nothing ever was. And they’ll be too dead to feel sorry for themselves and the significant loss of the cosmos. It’s really quite pathetic.
The Christian stands at the eternity threshold with bright eyes and high hopes like a young graduate at graduation.
See here? Our best evangelism comes as we share the peace of Christ that He has given us and the hope He has put into our hearts—all of which make walking by faith a march of constant gratitude.
GRATITUDE
Final thought: our gratitude should run deep and wide. Among all the people in the world, we Christians should come off as the most thankful. Brothers and sisters, there is no aspect of our lives that should not be heavily flavored by gratitude.
One description of our worship could be gratitude training because not only do we give thanks to God for what we see, but we prepare for an eternity of thanks as we shall one day enter the unseen world we proclaim. Think how overwhelming our gratitude will feel then!
As we wait for America to change, we give thanks.
As we suffer the indignities of Covid lockdown, we give thanks.
As we struggle against medical afflictions or diseases, we give thanks to God.
As we gather with families—albeit in limited quantities—we give thanks.
As we may lay dying, we will give thanks.
When hardship, failure, and troubles beset us, we will give thanks.
Why? Because despite whatever this life dishes up, we know that our real life abides with Christ in the unseen kingdom which He prepares for us.
Everything is going to be okay.
Everything is going to turn out alright.
God is in His Heaven, working out His purposes for creation.
We can trust in Him, and as we do, we have peace, and hope—and these things, together with the mounting gratitude in our hearts—enables us to act in love, which is the most excellent outreach of all.
We are grateful that God loves us—so grateful that this small, temporary, visible world disappears by comparison.
So let us walk by faith, not by sight. Love by faith, not by sight, and the peace of God, which surpasses all human understanding, will preserve our hearts, bolster our hopes, and enable us to love others a little more as God loves us.
“CLAY JARS"
TEXT: 2 CORINTHIANS 4: 7-15 New Revised standard version
7 But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. 8 We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; 9 persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; 10 always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. 11 For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh. 12 So death is at work in us, but life in you. 13 But just as we have the same spirit of faith that is in accordance with scripture—“I believed, and so I spoke”—we also believe, and so we speak, 14 because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus, and will bring us with you into his presence. 15 Yes, everything is for your sake, so that grace, as it extends to more and more people, may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.†
CLAY JARS
I’ll remind you that in this letter to the Corinthians, Paul was put in the unhappy position of having to defend his own authority, which is always an unpleasant thing to have to do. But the arrogance of the new leaders who had wormed their way into power and influence within the Corinthian church made this a necessary corrective.
Paul needs to put them in their place, but he does not assert himself by flexing his muscles or touting his stellar record of successful church plants. Instead, he makes an appeal to mutual humility.
Remember, as we’ve said before, the Greeks believed that the body was something like bad—lowly and base. But the Jews believed that the body was good because it was created by God. Paul finds a winsome middle ground in the expression “Jars of Clay,” because it suits both cultures. To the Greeks, yes, the body is worth nothing more than clay. To speak of a treasure in clay jars fit in well with their views concerning the nobility of the soul contrasted with the earthiness of the body. For the Jews, to speak of the body as clay reaffirms that God made humanity from the clay of the ground. Master potter that He is, we—including our bodies—are made good and in His image. So Paul tactfully manages to speak to both cultures, despite their variances at once.
We are jars of clay, earthen vessels. Clay jars were inexpensive, fragile, and even dispensable. They were completely ordinary—you could find them anywhere—in every town, village, and home. The contemporary equivalent would be paper cups. Paper cups are ordinary, somewhat fragile, and completely dispensable. So Paul says our bodies are like paper cups, but they contain something most miraculous and extraordinary: the knowledge that the full glory of God is in Jesus Christ—found there, and knowable through Him. That secret is the very light God has given to transform the nations and the world. And getting that secret from within us out into the whole world is the whole point of the gospel.
PAPER CUPS
So we—you and I—are like paper cups containing the secret of the universe, and though we contain it, we don’t hold onto is as our own. We are neither possessive nor secretive of that knowledge. Rather, we are to give that secret away as freely as we can. We are to pour out that light, that glory—amid, within, and around—the darkness of a fallen world.
The secret of salvation is the thing we freely proclaim from the rooftops and and in the public square. The secret is not for an elite few, but for the whole world—for all with the ears to hear and the eyes to see.
We are paper cups, worth very little in and of ourselves, but our true value is established by the infinitely valuable thing we contain within us.
These paper cups which are our bodies, contain the purest gold. More than gold—something even costlier than gold. Consider the substance called Californium (perfect for our series). Californium is a rare element presently valued at something like $25 million per gram. Imagine a paper cupful of that! Even costlier is antimater—antimatter goes for 70 trillion dollars per gram. This is closer to the mark Paul would have us to understand.
We paper cups, we clay jars, contain something of inestimably great value. So how should that make us feel—proud? No, humbled. Unlike the arrogant leaders Paul opposed, he reminds us that we are nothing—totally ordinary, even disposable—but the glory of God in Christ, which we contain by His grace—is infinitely valuable.
So rather than pride, we are called to humility and service.
HUMILITY
I’ll remind you that humility is one of the eternal virtues. It is the positive power at the opposite pole of sinful pride. Pride is weakness; humility is strength. But we should understand exactly what humility is in order that we seek it, strive toward it, and recognize it as a spiritual necessity.
The word humility rings negative to many hearers because of its association with humiliation. The horror of being humiliated by another is a horror to us all, but to rightly understand humility is to recognize the eternal virtue that it is.
I’ll talk about three: humility as courage, humility as communal, and humility as eternal.
Humility as Courage
First, let’s acknowledge that humility is a matter of courage. Courage may be easier to associate with the mighty and powerful, but this isn't necessary. Courage is not about power, but goodness. Courage is the strength by which we serve conscience instead of impulse. Courage leads us to do what is right even when doing so puts us at a worldly disadvantage.
When a soldier in a foxhole throws himself on a grenade in order to spare the lives of others, that isn’t prideful, but courageous. It is humility, for in some way, that soldier has internalized the truth that his life is not better than those of the others—nor does he think his own life without value—but in doing what has to be done to save lives, we see that humility means doing what is courageous.
Courage is the necessary strength of humility, not because the soul rises up in great strength to perform mighty deeds (this is food for pride), but because it stands for the goodness of God in any situation. It takes courage to say no, to refuse worldly bribes, to reject peer pressure, to shun what is easy and embrace what is good. It takes enormous courage.
Humility as courage is seen in God's steadfast love for Israel–he continues loving beyond every insult to himself. We see humility as courage in Christ's confrontations with the Scribes and Pharisees. With his clearing the temple, with his refusal to sell out to Pilate, and most shiningly with his complete obedience to the Father as he agonizes in Gethsemane and on Golgotha.
Humility means a courageous faith that will not sell out to culture, to pleasure, or to self-gain of any kind. It takes tremendous courage to unlearn the little ego games that we grow up with—the masks we construct for our emotional self-defense, the self-delusions that have driven us, the little lies we tell ourselves to stave off fear, doubt, and insecurities—and it is part and parcel of our spirituality to grow beyond these masks and games. The virtue of humility lives beyond these things, and once these are stripped away—the masks, the games— we find that we are more truly ourselves than every before, and better for it.
Humility is Communal
Secondly, Humility is communal. Humility is appropriate not only for you and me as individuals, but for the whole body. We should be a humble congregation of humble followers of Christ. Among other things, this means our spiritual development demands that we be critical of all self-righteousness—especially our own.
Should we proud of ourselves—proud of First Pres? Be careful. Certainly part of our faith is an appreciative awareness, a constant gratitude, as well as a joy in our fellowship. We may say "I'm proud of my church" when we actually mean something like, “I am grateful and joyous about my congregation,” even if we don't talk that way.
The danger is that humble individuals can become prideful when grouped together. We are social creatures and even nice people can be swept up in mob behavior and mob-think. The humble man or woman can be guilty of family pride, team pride, party pride, or national pride to the point that truly ugly pride slips in to the heart almost unnoticed.
Charles Spurgeon, that famous, British, Reformed, Baptist preacher of the 19th century, puts it this way:
Do not desire to be the principal man in the church. Be lowly. Be humble. The best man in the church is the man who is willing to be a doormat for all to wipe their boots on, the brother who does not mind what happens to him at all, so long as God is glorified.
So we again need to remember that it is not who we are that gives us joy—we are clay jars, paper cups—but rather whose we are that makes us glad, gives us peace, and excites our joy.
Because we belong to Jesus, we gather and have courage in his name to stand before God in worship. As we know we are his children and that he has won all things for us, we take courage in his victory and strength. This humble courage enables us to stand together and take risks for God's glory and kingdom.
The true Church has always been a courageous-and-humble community making a difference in neighborhoods, cities, and the world following the calling of Christ and risking itself in mission, service, and outreach.
Mark Labberton, the extremely intelligent and articulate President of Fuller Theological Seminary, puts it this way:
Courage is the positive value that pride or arrogance are not. The point isn’t to cultivate an aggressive community of cocky disciples. It is to cultivate a loving and humble community of people who are prepared to stand up and stand in to those places where the love, justice, and joy of God are needed, despite the fears we have for doing so. And then we are prepared to do so again. And again.
So sharing humility as a congregation parallels individual humility.
Humility is Eternal
Thirdly, humility is eternal. When this life is over for you and me, humility continues on. When we walk in God's kingdom, we shall be humble, because we will finally have a relationship with God that is like the Son's to the Father.
Humility is eternal because we shall be eternally in God's presence, seeing God face-to-face, and there can be no other truth but humility when a creature faces its creator.
Now the idea of "eternal humility" may not appeal to all. Some think of eternity as their own ego becoming deified, which is dead wrong. Remember the story of Lucifer’s fall—he couldn’t bear play second fiddle, even to God, and rather preferred to rule in Hell rather than serve in Heaven.
Humility is part of our spiritual completion, and our ultimate destiny does not offer us the option to become God. There is only one of two destinies: either eternal humility or eternal humiliation. Eternal humility means that we will know God and worship Him in His presence to His eternal glory. Eternal humiliation means forever pretending that you yourself are God and suffering the spiritual torments that necessarily accompany all attempts to foster the preposterous delusion that we are, in and of ourselves, anything more than paper cups, lucky enough to be used to contain something so valuable as the glory of Christ.
THE HUMBLE GOSPEL
The Gospel is the story of how God Almighty poured his limitless worth into a paper cup. And the fullness of God was contained there, concealed there, and was subjected to this world’s forces of darkness, sin, and decay.
The cup was destroyed, but God raised it again, restored it, and transformed it into imperishability. That cup is alive with the Father in Heaven—in the body and beyond the body all at once.
We jars of clay, we paper cups, though nothing in and of ourselves, have been called to contain the most valuable knowledge in the universe—it is more valuable than gold, Californium, or antimatter—and we are called to give it away freely to all who will hear us.
May we all grow to share the glory of God that is in Jesus Christ with increasing courage, with increasing cooperation, and with an increasing awareness that this foreshadows our eternity with God.
QUESTIONS
1. What is it that Paul describes as “clay jars”?
2. Why is humility stronger than pride?
3. Why is it we consider pride a form of weakness and fallenness?
4. How is courage related to humility?
5. What is the difference between individual pride and collective pride?
6. What are the dangers of group pride and how can it override individual humility?
7. Humility is an eternal virtue. How can we imagine it playing out in eternity?
8. Why is humility a hard thing to build up in oneself?
9. What is the true source of humility?
10. How can we predispose ourselves to live into greater humility?
“UNVEILED GLORY”
TEXT: 2 CORINTHIANS 3: 7-18 New Revised standard version
7 Now if the ministry of death, chiseled in letters on stone tablets, came in glory so that the people of Israel could not gaze at Moses’ face because of the glory of his face, a glory now set aside, 8 how much more will the ministry of the Spirit come in glory? 9 For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, much more does the ministry of justification abound in glory! 10 Indeed, what once had glory has lost its glory because of the greater glory; 11 for if what was set aside came through glory, much more has the permanent come in glory!
12 Since, then, we have such a hope, we act with great boldness, 13 not like Moses, who put a veil over his face to keep the people of Israel from gazing at the end of the glory that was being set aside. 14 But their minds were hardened. Indeed, to this very day, when they hear the reading of the old covenant, that same veil is still there, since only in Christ is it set aside. 15 Indeed, to this very day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their minds; 16 but when one 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 And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.†
GRADUATES TO GLORY
Ruth Mitchell, Karena Owen, Rich Peterson, Jack Dotson, Ruth Fudge, Jean Otto, Roy Cabe, and Sydney Dooley—these eight—all graduated to glory amid the Covid pandemic, which means that we, the congregation of First Presbyterian Church of Upland, did not have the chance to grieve them or remember them as a gathered community. And this is not even to begin naming the people beyond First Pres related to our families. I especially lift up Lonettia and Dewayne Sparks at the loss of Dewayne’s mother,
Of all the things we’ve had to miss through this pandemic, I think these are the most serious and the most grievous losses.
Whenever a member of our community dies, we grieve, but there are good ways and ill ways to grieve. The right way is to grieve together—in the flesh--for the community to gather and offer face-to-face support to the family members. The family hurts the most, but the whole community is affected—we all feel it—and we were made to get over these losses as a community. That is how we heal. That is how we grow to become a deeper, more faithful community.
Ruth Mitchell, Karena Owen, Rich Peterson, Jack Dotson, Ruth Fudge, Jean Otto, Roy Cabe, and Sydney Dooley were among us and part of us for years and we acknowledge here and now that we miss them all.
Join me in a word of prayer:
[PRAY]
Yet as we grieve, we also celebrate their victory in Jesus Christ, for we know that they are not lost, but have been found, and gathered, and rescued from the decay and death of this world. Their souls are with The Lord, and they have been sanctified by the glory of God in measures you and I can’t possibly imagine.
Yes, they are in the glory of God—they see His face—which is the thing we long for every time we worship God in Spirit and Truth.
And today, in respect of these departed Veterans of First Pres, I would ask you to consider that when we worship, one thing that happens is that we develop and increasing hunger and thirst for that glory of God. We seek it in this life and get glimpses of it, but most of all, our hearts grow and open in longing for that glory, such that when our day comes to cross over, our joy—perhaps even our ability to receive and experience that glory—will be magnified.
Our worship is our training and preparation for that glory of God into which our graduated brothers and sisters now live and enjoy eternally.
SECOND LETTER
As we enter Paul’s second epistle to the church at Corinth, we need to do some updating. In First Corinthians, Paul addressed their aberrations, divisions, and messy worship. Some had come to doubt even the resurrection, and Paul gently sets them back into line and good order.
We know something about Paul’s work in Corinth from Acts 18 and other sources as well. It seems many of the Corinthians responded with Godly sorrow and repentance. Titus, who assisted Paul’s ministry in Corinth, was duly respected. But some holdouts went on the attack against Paul—intruders with no right to lead—so Paul has to defend his authority and do that awful chore of re-reading his resumé to the people.
In the 50s, trouble was brewing in Jerusalem. Not unlike some American cities under siege, people with wealth and savings to protect started leaving Jerusalem to avoid all the trouble. Today, the billionaires seem to go to Montana or Idaho. In Paul’s day, Corinth was a desirable destination for people with wealth to resettle.
As they did, the Jewish-Christians questioned Paul’s authority and apostleship.
“Well, he’s not really an apostle, is he? Not like Peter, James, and John back in Jerusalem!”
“Paul never actually met Jesus. In that sense, he’s no different than us, and couldn’t we all call ourselves apostles in the same sense?” You know how people can talk.
Paul defends not only his calling in Second Corinthians, but he defends the gospel from being turned back into a kind of reformed Judaism. In our text today, Paul talks about glory, and how the glory of Christ is superior to the glory of the Law. But before we talk about that distinction, we need to just talk about glory first.
GLORY: A HEAVY SHIELD
There are two Hebrew words for glory, and the first is KAVOD. Most literally, it is something like battle armaments—a shield or a bow—and KAVOD means “heavy” as well. We are less at home with military imagery than the ancients, but we can imagine the connection between God’s glory and His defense against the enemies of Israel.
An example is in Exodus 16, So Moses and Aaron said to all the Israelites, “In the evening you shall know that it was the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt, 7 and in the morning you shall see the glory of the Lord. Israel will "see" the "armament" of God, who is the one who has done battle for them with the Egyptians.
But we know that glory is more than just military might here; it is the power and presence of God advocating for and with Israel. Glory is the assurance that God is with them.
SHOCK & AWE
You’ve probably heard the second Hebrew word for glory voiced as “Shuh-KAI-nuh,” but the truer pronunciation is something more like Shock and Awe. This is a beautiful, translational pun. The glory of the Lord creates Shock and Awe indeed, and not merely in the military sense.
Remember the shepherd boys outside Bethlehem—they were seized with terror. They were terrified not because they were simple shepherd boys, but because the glory of the Lord is something completely out of this world—shock and awe describe quite well what they felt.
Today we might like to think of ourselves as more sophisticated than the ancients—and in many ways we are. If we saw a bright disk in the sky come hovering down, we might say, “Hey! It’s a UFO!” and immediately pull out our cell phones and calmly begin recording. But the experience of glory is not just a visual or technological event; it is “the Glory of the Lord.” It is not merely light and sound, but an invasion of the supernatural, infused with the power and presence of God. The most jaded and sophisticated modern urbanites would, I believe, be utterly terrified at what the shepherds saw. Shock and Awe.
GLORY IS HOLINESS
But what is glory? What is it precisely? I believe the glory of God is the going public of his infinite worth. God’s glory is the revelation of His holiness and infinite value. When God’s infinite value and holiness go public, we can’t help but see ourselves as infinitely inferior. Which is to say that the experience of glory gives us knowledge of our sinfulness. When holiness is revealed, we see ourselves in its light. Only in darkness, surrounded by absolute darkness, can we dare to think of ourselves as good. Only in comparison to meaner or more selfish people can we think ourselves better than average, but when the glory of God is revealed—even a smidgeon—our souls are held up in comparison to true holiness and we can only see ourselves as standing far below, like people looking up from the bottom of a dark well. God’s glory reveals our true state, our actual distance from God, and the effect of it can only be described as terrifying. Again, Shock and Awe.
GLORY CENTRAL
God’s glory is central. God’s glory is the absolute center of His Creation. Question number one from the Westminster Catechism is one we should all know and probably have memorized:
Q: What is the chief end of Man?
A: The chief end of Man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.
God’s glory is central and the central principle by which we order our lives and the agenda of the Church. Some churches have abandoned God’s glory in favor of what they call “human flourishing,” as if God’s greatest desire is that we all get along and take care of each other. Make no mistake, God wants us to get along and take care of each other, but only insofar as doing so brings glory to God. Human happiness is not the measure of God’s glory. God’s glory is its own standard. The danger is when the human side of obeying God becomes an end in itself. When that happens, Christians stop seeking God’s glory—they stop proclaiming His infinite value—and seek only the glories of humanity and the here and now. This is mere Humanism. Humanism seeks the glory of humankind—and I’m saying apart from God it is a heresy to be avoided.
Our worth depends upon God’s worth, not vice versa. God’s glory is the measure of every good deed, every pious act, and every prayer—otherwise, we’re just playing church for whatever personal benefits—individual or collectively—that we can take from it.
GLORY OF CHRIST
So now we can turn to today’s text in which Paul tells us that the glory of Christ surpasses the glory of the Law. He reminds us that Moses beheld the glory of God and it changed his face. He wore a veil except when he read the Law to the people. Glory was too intense for the people to endure for long. When Moses finished reading the Law, he veiled himself again.
But Paul says that the glory of Christ surpasses the glory of the Law. His main audience here is the Jewish Christians who continued to demand Jewish observances of themselves and the converts from the Gentile world. He says their minds are still veiled, for they haven’t yet comprehended the freedom from the Law offered in Christ.
This is Paul’s chief theme in Romans, as we studied earlier this year. It’s his point in Galatians 3, where he tells us that the Law was our babysitter until Christ came to make us adults. The law is like those training wheels we no long need once we know how to ride.
Now even after nearly 2000 years, Christians get anxious when they hear anyone talking down the Old Testament Law, and this comes from a good place. It’s not that the Law is not good, not holy, and not of God; but rather that the light of Christ is so far superior that we should live by that light rather than the light of the Law.
Think of it this way—this should illustrate it well. Glory is like light. To glorify something is to shine light onto it. Now imagine you are in a strange house and you have to go down to the basement, but it is pitch dark. You take a few steps and hear the treads creak, but you can’t see a thing—not even your hand in front of your face. You peer around but find you are in total darkness. That is the human condition of sin: being in the dark.
Then you discover that in your back pocket you have a tiny, penlight flashlight. You take it out and turn it on. Glory! It’s small, but now you can see a small circle of things at a time. You don’t fall down the steps because you can spot them below, one at a time. In that darkness, you are grateful for that little light and you might call it your salvation. This little light is good! And it is, no doubt.
But then, by using the penlight, you find a light switch. You flick the switch and find the basement filled with light—bright light—from end to end, every shadow chased away and every corner revealed. You move about freely and are no longer taking cautious, small steps. The lights are on; this is the fuller glory of Christ.
And now, with all the lights on, do you keep using the little penlight? No, for now, it looks dim by comparison and it is pointless to use. The glory of the penlight leads to the greater glory of the fully lit room. In the same way, the Law is good—it has a glory that gives light in the darkness—but once the lights are turned on, its value and function change. The greater glory eclipses the lesser glory, and so the greater glory of Christ eclipses the glory of the Law.
REFLECTING GLORY
Finally, I’ll say that it is our role and purpose to reflect that glory as best as we can. Verses 17 and 18:
[READ]
17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 18 And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.
This is our life: being transformed from one degree of glory to another. Our mission statement at First Pres is Growing in Christ and Making Him Known, which happens not by our good intentions, but by the Spirit’s work in us.
It’s not that we are all little flashlights, producing small amounts of the same kind of light that is God’s glory, but rather that we are little mirrors, usually slightly dirty mirrors or slightly distorted mirrors—and, we’re all working on it—but we are made to reflect God’s glory, not manufacture it. We can’t.
God's glory is the radiance of his holiness, the radiance of his manifold, infinitely worthy, and valuable perfections. We are small, imperfect mirrors, but if we are oriented in the right way, we can and will shine.
“Let your light so shine before others,” says Jesus, without telling us the obvious, which is that He Himself is the light. He provides all true light, and our role is to participate in sharing His glory by becoming decent reflectors.
Q: What is the chief end of Man?
A: The chief end of Man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.
QUESTIONS
1. Paul’s authority in the Corinthian church was certainly legitimate. Given that people don’t change much from era to era, what motives may have led Paul’s detractors in their defiance of his leadership?
2. Paul says his fellow Jews have “veiled minds” when they read the Law. What was Paul getting at in referring to their “hardened minds”?
3. Discuss the difference between living by the Law versus living by the Spirit.
4. Why is it meaningful to say that as Christians, we are less like penlights than mirrors? What is the source of light in each case?
5. We all may desire to be transformed into the image of Christ “from one degree of glory to another,” but how does that transformation occur?
6. Given that we, as mirrors, are all somewhat dirty or slightly distorted, how much effort should we put into cleaning ourselves up and fixing our distortions?
7. How much more important is our orientation as a mirror, given that even a somewhat dirty or slightly distorted mirror can reflect the bright light of the sun very well?
8. What does it mean for a person, like a mirror, to be oriented toward the light?
“OUR RESURRECTION"
“OUR RESURRECTION"
A SERMON BY NOEL ANDERSON PREACHED AT FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH OF UPLAND ON NOV. 1 2020
TEXT: 1 corinthians 15: 35-57
GNOSTIC CORINTH
“How are the dead raised?” asked someone in Corinth, “With what kind of body to they come?” For the Corinthians, the idea of bringing a body back from death was unthinkable, like digging food out of the garbage disposal and putting it back on your plate. The Greeks had a tough time with the whole idea of resurrection. They held a low view of the body. For them, the spiritual was far more real than the physical. The Corinthians were very spiritual people. So spiritual, that the bodies were almost an embarrassment—they were certainly an indignity—and they sought to transcend mere matter in order to become pure spirit.
They would have said “We are essentially spirits presently trapped in bodies of flesh.”
Their idea of the afterlife was one of blissful disembodiment, where they could live free in the ether of Heaven, like happy ghosts or otherwise being dissolved into the divine realms.
The idea of a resurrected body was hard for them to understand.
MATERIALIST JUDEA
Contrast Corinth with Judea. For the Jews, bodies were essential. God made Adam from the dust with God’s own hands. God made the Earth and all of creation, so the material world was good and central. The Jews affirmed the world as good because it was created by God who is good.
Because creation is a good gift, we are responsible for what we do with our bodies and our land. Justice is required in the here and now, because the here and now is all we know about. Yes, they believed in Heaven as the realm of God, but they also believed that God made Earth to be the realm of Man, so our responsibilities begin here and end here.
As the Greeks said “We are souls but have bodies,” the Jews would have said, “We are bodies with soul and they are unified.” It was close to materialism. Materialism today is what we call the scientific worldview (though many scientists are not so limited!). Materialism expects to see, touch, taste, feel, or smell something in order for it to be real or true. They wanted spirituality they could see; they demanded signs from God and the prophets of God. Signs they could see.
Even so, many of them—especially the Pharisees—believed in a general resurrection, even prior to Christ and Easter.
Follow me on this thinking: they expected justice in the here and now. God would vindicate the righteous and punish the wicked. However, sometimes the wicked prospered and the righteous died unjust deaths. How then can God be called righteous? Well God has to be righteous, so His righteousness must work in spite of death.
General resurrection said that on Judgment Day, all bodies would be raised back to life by God and then God would judge the nations—judge everyone—and do perfect justice. Judgment Day meant Justice Day. God would reward the righteous—especially them who suffered unjustly in life—and punish the wicked who prospered at others’ expense.
ANABIOSIS
So both Jews and Greeks had a hereafter. For the Greeks, it was just a continuation of the soul, but now an existence unhindered by flesh. For the Jews, death was real death, but new life could be given by God after death.
The Greeks had a hard time with resurrection because they already believed that souls were immortal. Mortality was part of having a body—once the body is gone, so is death and mortality.
The Jews—such as the Sadducees, Jerusalem’s aristocratic class—believed neither in the soul nor a hereafter of any kind. But they wouldn’t put it past God to be able to do anything.
Still, we need to make clear that there is a difference between resurrection and resuscitation. Jesus’ friend Lazarus was dead for three days, and Jesus raised him from the dead. Was this resurrection? No, it was resuscitation. Lazarus came back to life, but lived a normal, mortal life, dying a normal death later on, as far as we know.
In the Jewish idea of resurrection, once all the dead are raised for judgment, how long were they supposed to live? The short answer is: “long enough for justice to be completed.” Was it eternal life? We don’t know, and the Jewish literature never says “forever.”
With Christ, Jesus body is raised, but not resuscitated—it is transformed. Not like the ghostly immortality of souls of the Greeks. But with a real, physical body in addition to immortality:
Luke 24:39—“See, a ghost doesn’t have flesh and bones as you see I have.” They knew what ghosts were, but Jesus makes clear that a “ghostly immortality” was not the plan.
Here we hear Paul in our text, v. 44: “It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body.”
CHRISTIAN VIEWS
This difference between resurrection and a “ghostly immortality” has played itself out in Christianity to the present day.
The Greek view, I would say, is the dominant one—the one most people hold. I think of it as the basic, Sylvester the Cat model. I’ve read that Sylvester dies more than any other cartoon character. What happens? Well, he hits the pavement after trying to eat Tweety Bird, and out come the cat ghosts with white robes and angel wings. The immortal soul floats up to the clouds of Heaven and he’s given a harp to play. This picture is not the biblical picture of resurrection, but the Greek worldview of the immortality of souls.
Strictly speaking, the bulk of Christian orthodoxy holds to something like the Jewish idea—complete death until resurrection. This seems to respect the integrity of body/soul unity. The idea is that death is really death—just dead—until the final trumpet sounds and the dead are raised. Paul even uses this same language. It is in the wording of our Presbyterian funeral services.
But there are texts which work against this body/soul union as well:
In Luke 23, as Jesus speaks from the cross to one of the thieves he says: “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.” How does that happen without bodies?
Elsewhere Jesus indicates a body/soul division. In Matthew 10, He says, 28” Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” So it seems we do have souls beyond and separate from our bodies.
When we die, our souls, without bodies, go to be with God, awaiting bodily resurrection.
You might wonder, “Why not go full Greek? Why a resurrection at all? Can’t God just make whatever kind of new bodies we would need?” The answer to that is yes, but we can’t discount the fact that Jesus’ body was not left in the grave. His body was resurrected and this is our pattern of expectation as well. We are not expecting a Sylvester the Cat kind of Heaven.
What I think: I believe we have a spirit or soul that can live apart from the body. I believe that when we die, our souls leaves our bodies and go to be with Christ.
Those of us who have Christ in us cannot fully die, though the body may die.
As it says in Acts 2:24 “But God raised him up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power.”
United with Christ, we are also united to eternal life that death cannot touch.
I believe that people see departed relatives and angels to guide them—most often very near to death—and I believe that although others in the room can’t see them, they are not visions or illusions, but really and truly there.
When our time comes, we will be met by angels to escort us where we belong.
Paul isn’t far off from this as he talks about two bodies: one of dust and the other of Heaven.
OUR RESURRECTION
We too, after whatever time God sees fit, shall have our bodies reunited with our souls.
If you ask “Why? Why bother? Why not just live in the eternal spiritual realm?” you understand the Corinthians very well.
Our bodies are good creations. God will not allow decay and death to have the good thing he created forever. Our bodies will be resurrected in their transformed nature, just as Christ’s body was raised but not resuscitated.
It’s a wild, strange thought to consider that these hands you and I look at will one day be the hands of a corpse, and then one day again raised and transformed to the imperishable nature of Heaven. Look at your hand. You will again look at that hand in the year 61 trillion. Yes, the hand will look better then than now.
Our personal-ness is preserved. It’s not like the God of classical, pagan philosophers—a great, undefinable source like the Force in Star Wars—nor like the Buddhist/Hindu idea of all things being one and only one, into which all other things are dissolved and undifferentiated—a kind of great God Soup—but God is revealed as a lover of persons—of personhood and personalities.
It’s not that God is like us but that we have been created like God’s image. God has a heart as we have (figurative heart, of course), He feels, He suffers pain, He rejoices. God means to preserve that part of us as well.
PAROUSIA
Paul’s teaching of a coming transformation of the world by God is the good news of Jesus’ return, and with it, the transformation of all flesh and the whole comos. The dead are resurrected and those who are walking the Earth when it happens will suddenly experience the total transformation in the twinkling of an eye.
BANG! Just like that, we could be transformed and this world of decay, entropy, and death will be transformed beyond our dimensions—the mortal literally putting on immortality.
This is what Paul calls “the Blessed Hope” and it is central to the Christian Faith. God has a plan unfolding for all reality, and we are part of it. In every day, we make choices—very real choices—that participate in how God will complete the world.
God can see all the possible options of all human actions, and he wants us to do what is right and good with our choices in order that we also share in the final victory.
We must love God with our whole heart, soul, mind, and strength.
We must love others as ourselves.
We must love ourselves.
As we come to the table, we are fed in body AND soul for the eternal journey we already walk.