BEHOLD! Week 2: Exodus 3:20 How BEHOLDing leads to transformation?

We are going to talk about the holiness of God.

Now, there are a few uh universal truths in life.

Uh, truths that you and I we cannot argue with.

And one of those truths is this a pretty lady can convince a man to do almost anything.

Uh, she can convince a man to change how he combs his hair, uh, to change how he likes to dress.

A pretty lady, she has the power uh to change the food that a man wants to order at a restaurant, uh, to change the music he likes to listen to, or the movies he wants to watch.

And it's often uh true that it requires a pretty lady to be brought into the life of a man for him to become convinced that it's time to grow up and no longer be a boy.

It's certainly true.

A pretty lady can convince a man to do, well, almost anything.

The Greek writer Homer, he knew that to be 100% true.

In his epic The Iliad, Homer tells the story of a pretty lady, and her name is Helen.

Helen, she is the daughter of Zeus and the wife of King Menelaus.

She is known around the world for her incomparable beauty, her long golden hair, and her porcelain skin.

According to Homer, it was the beauty of Helen that caused the Trojan War.

Hers was the face that launched a thousand ships.

Both life and literature, what they do is they remind us of beauty's immense power in the life of an individual.

Because true beauty can grab our attention and it can then hold our attention.

True beauty, it has the power to change a person's fate and to transform their life.

But the reach of beauty, the reach of the power of beauty, must not be limited to a guy or a gal.

You see, beauty's a true power is only on full display when we behold the beauty of the Lord.

Those words of King David in Psalm 27, verse 4, they are so true.

Psalms 27:4

One thing I have desired of the Lord, that will I seek, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple.

Today we are continuing the series that we began two weeks ago, a series that revolves around a single word.

That word, behold.

You see, this word is critical for the church in 2021 because behold is the word that addresses the spiritual consequences of our cultural attention deficit disorder.

Amidst all of the distractions of our life, uh, behold summons us to pay attention to the one thing that truly matters: the one who is truly beautiful, the Lord.

But when it comes to beholding, attention is only a half of the equation.

There's also transformation.

Remember those words written by the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians chapter 3, verse 18.

2 Corinthians 3:18

Paul says this: he says, We, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory.

Working together the words of King David and the words of the Apostle Paul, they led us to define behold with this statement.

Behold, it's a total attention that yields total transformation.

It's a total attention that yields total transformation.

Now, here's the critical point of application that exists that just beneath the surface of Psalm twenty-seven of Second Corinthians three and that working definition of behold.

You become what or who you behold.

You become what or who you behold.

If you are a parent or a teacher, you can verify the truth of that statement.

Your child or a student in your class has a new best friend, and uh after spending many weeks and months, a whole semester with that child, that new best friend, you think to yourself, you spend so much time with so-and-so, you're starting to sound like them.

Or it could be that your child's mannerisms, uh, their attitude, uh, their vocabulary have become uh like that of the lead character on their favorite show on Netflix or Disney Plus.

You become what or who you behold.

Now, modern science just further confirms what we see with our eyes.

You see, each time we think a thought, it travels a very specific path within our brain.

And as we think that thought over and over and over, it literally will wear a path in the wiring of our brain.

And so over the course of months and weeks and years we become different people.

We are transformed because of what we have paid attention to.

That's why at the conclusion of week one in our series, I laid out the behold challenge.

I challenge you to take five minutes each day to behold God, to behold the beauty of the Lord.

Spend the first couple minutes slowing your breathing down.

That's the calm yourself phase.

And then three minutes just sitting in silence, praying to God to show me your beauty.

And maybe the last week, as our lives kind of came to a uh sliding, screeching halt with all the snow 14 plus inches, I think, in parts of our county.

It gave us a unique opportunity to what?

Behold the beauty of the Lord.

I commented to Lauren uh during the week when I let the dog out at the end of the day, right before we all went to bed, I noticed that when the moon would be out, it was like our backyard uh was alive.

Our backyard wasn't dark because all the snow and the ice that was covering the ground and the moon was reflecting off that ground.

And as I was thinking about this, beholding the beauty of the Lord, I was reminded that when you're in God's presence, there is always light reflecting.

There is never darkness when you are in the presence of God.

So imagine when we are in the presence of God, his beauty reflects off of everything that is around, and we are transformed.

Hope you've accepted that behold challenge.

Because over the last couple weeks, if you accepted it, maybe the first thing you noticed about God, the first facet of his character that caught your attention was his holiness.

Holiness is one of the central themes of the Bible, and it is the central characteristic of God.

Every other characteristic of God, God's love, his mercy, his forgiveness, his justice, his wrath, is an expression of God's holiness.

It's why those seraphim, those angels in the heavenly throne room, if you're familiar with this story in Isaiah 6, when Isaiah is transported to the heavenly throne room, he sees those seraphim, and what do they cry out?

They cry out holy, holy, holy.

But holiness is not only the central characteristic of God.

God desires for holiness to be the central characteristic of his people.

God is not just content to be holy, he wants a people for his glory in the world who themselves are holy.

And listen, my friends, there is only one way you and I will become holy.

We must behold our holy God.

Remember what we said?

You become who you behold.

Or you could say it this way: you become holy when you behold the holy.

You become holy when you behold the holy.

Today, as we open God's word together, we will behold the beauty of the Lord as we reflect on the holiness of God.

We're gonna try to understand what it means to say that we know and worship a holy God who now calls us to be his holy people in the world.

Hear it again.

You become holy when you behold the holy.

If you have your Bibles with you in your home, would you join me in Exodus chapter 3?

Exodus 3 · chapter mention

I'm gonna read for us verses one through five.

Exodus chapter 3, beginning in verse 1, says this.

Exodus 3 · chapter mention

It says, Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Hereb, the mountain of God.

And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush.

He looked and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed.

And Moses said, I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.

When the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, Moses Moses, and he said, Here I am.

Then he said, Do not come near.

Take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.

It's been forty years since Moses was driven from the land of Egypt.

Forty years since Moses arrived in the wilderness of Midian to begin a new life with the family of Jethro.

Moses is the son that Jethro always wanted.

Jethro had a group of daughters who he loved, but he needed a son.

A son would help Jethro with managing all the assets of the family, and one of those important assets for their family would have been the flocks.

So on this particular day, what Moses is doing is he is doing some asset management for his father-in-law, and he has led these flocks into the wilderness.

They have journeyed to a pasture that they don't often visit.

Maybe their familiar pastures are dry.

Maybe their familiar pastures they have already been eaten.

The flocks have already visited them, and they have stripped every last blade of grass from the ground.

Now, whatever the reason for Moses and these flocks traveling deep into the wilderness, what we should imagine is that Moses on this day, all he is doing is he is uh watching this flock eat and drink and repeat.

He is watching them eat and drink and repeat, and the minutes of the day quickly turn to hours on the day.

And I have to imagine that maybe at some point Moses becomes a little bored.

I mean, how many times can a person watch Sheldon the sheep or Shelley the sheep walk between the grass and the watering hole, and the grass and the watering hole, and the grass and the watering hole.

Or maybe Moses has a spell of ADD.

He's struggling to focus on the task at hand.

But then something demands Moses' attention.

It grabs his focus.

Behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed.

There's that word again.

Behold.

It's a word that awakens us from our boredom and forces you and I to pay attention.

Moses in our text, he is bored maybe because of the task.

And I but I wonder if you and I, we are bored uh because of the text.

We are bored because we have read this story, heard this story preached or taught dozens, hundreds, if not thousands of times.

We are bored because we think we know this text and what it means and how it applies.

To people who have become bored with the Bible, who become bored with the stories that it tells.

Maybe Exodus 3, first, is just this subtle reminder that there is nothing boring about the stories in this book.

That when we open this book, when we read its pages and its stories, it is a window for us to behold the holy.

And Moses, while he is working in the wilderness, what he does is he accepts the invitation to behold the holy.

He approaches the bush, and when he's instructed, he takes off his sandals.

By taking off his sandals, what is Moses doing?

He is acting with reverence.

He is acting with humility.

And maybe one of the reasons that you and I get bored with the text, we get bored with the Bible, is we don't approach God's word to behold the Lord, to behold the holy, with the same reverence and humility that Moses displayed in the wilderness.

It's just a dusty old outdated book.

It's just a book of Proverbs and principles.

And it's not the story of the holy God working in the world and continuing to work in the lives of people.

Our hearts lack the reverence and humility to behold the holy.

Only the barefoot can behold the holy.

Why are reverence and humility absolutely necessary?

It's because holy is the word in the Bible, the names, all of the ways that God is different from us.

To say that God is holy means that God is in a class, all of his own.

He is distinct from anyone or anything else.

Anything that has ever existed or will ever exist.

God is all powerful.

He is morally and always pure.

And it's God's holiness that later on in the book of Exodus, it leads the nation of Israel to sing this lyric.

They sing, Who is like you, O Lord?

Among the gods, who is like you?

Majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders.

Have you ever beheld the holy?

Here's how you know.

Have you ever beheld the holy, you are overwhelmed by the holy.

When you behold the holy, you realize that there is nothing that compares to God.

And it's only when we behold the holy.

This is why it is absolutely important that we behold the holy.

Only when we behold the holy do we truly understand the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Without an absolutely holy God, there would be no moral law to which every human is responsible.

Without the holiness of God, there would be no divine wrath directed towards sin.

Without the holiness of God, there would be no perfect Son, Jesus Christ, who is the acceptable sacrifice for our sin.

Without the holiness of God, there would be no vindication of Jesus through his glorious resurrection.

Without the holiness of God, there would be no final defeat of Satan.

And without the holiness of God, there would be no hope of a new heaven and a new earth where holiness will reign, where God and his holiness and God's people who are his holy people will reign forever and ever.

And it's in light of that holiness that we will confess our sins, we will give our lives to Jesus.

And then we will begin to walk the road, to travel the road that leads towards personal holiness.

You become holy when you behold the holy.

Listen to these words in Leviticus 19.

More words that the Lord speaks to Moses.

Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them, You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy.

In the book of Leviticus, the people of Israel they beheld God on a daily basis.

Within the walls of the tabernacle, the presence of a holy God dwelt with his people.

But God was not content to simply dwell with.

God desired the people to become.

God desired the people to become like him, to be holy as he is holy.

In the context of a nation like Israel or a church, like First Baptist, or in the context of your individual life, holiness describes a people or a person who is devoted to God and distinct from the world.

In the context of Israel, this meant that Israel would be different from all the other nations that surrounded them.

They would think differently, they would act differently, they would treat one another differently.

That's why God gives to Israel the laws of the Old Testament.

The people of Israel never envisioned that the law saved them, but they did believe that the law distinguished them.

That the law distinguished them from all of the other nations that surrounded them.

And that law that was first given to Israel, listen, it was fulfilled by Jesus Christ, and now the Holy Spirit writes that law on our hearts when we follow Jesus.

Jesus, when we place our faith in him.

And the law that is written on human hearts by the Holy Spirit, it calls the church and it calls people, disciples of Jesus, to act and to think and to treat one another differently.

Differently than the politicians in Washington, differently than actresses and influencers in Hollywood or Nashville.

Differently, even than some of our neighbors here in El Dorado.

You see, to be God's holy people in the world, we demonstrate our devotion to God by living according to the words of the Sermon on the Mount.

We become people who are never overcome by anger.

We are people who pray for our friends and our enemies, and we love them too.

We are people who also are filled with forgiveness.

We are people who are not consumed by worry.

To be God's holy people in El Dorado means that individuals in our church corporately, the fruit of our life is love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Now, growing up in Benton, we had this roller skating rink called Buds.

And at Buds, there was this old jukebox.

And kids would bring uh quarters with them so that they could pick the song to play on the jukebox that would then be broadcast over the entire uh skating rink.

So it was the late 80s, so there was a lot of Bon Jovi and Phil Collins and Def Leopard and MC Hammer and uh Vanilla Ice.

That was what was on the jukebox at Buds.

Nowadays you don't see too many uh jukeboxes at restaurants or in public places.

But in reality, each of us has a jukebox.

We have a jukebox in our heart and our soul.

And the the lyrics of the songs that are played, that's what tells us how to act and to think and to treat other people.

Now, some days it's the influences of the world that are jamming quarter after quarter after quarter into that jukebox.

And those are the days when it's just easier to hold a grudge, to let bitterness grip our hearts.

But for us to become holy, we have to let the Holy Spirit be the one who puts the quarters in the jukebox.

So that the words of Scripture are the lyrics that play in our heart.

You see, personal holiness is not the result of earning the blue ribbon, of working hard, of achieving something.

Personal holiness only occurs when we open up our life to the grace of God, to his Holy Spirit being unleashed in our innermost being by surrendering our lives to the Spirit's work in our heart.

Listen, God created and calls you to be holy as He is holy.

But you will never become holy until you behold the one who is and always will be holy.

The one who in his very person is morally pure and awesome in power and distinct and different from anything that ever has been created or will ever be created.

Hear it again.

You become holy when you behold the holy.