Be Beholding

As you turn to First Corinthians, chapter three, verse eighteen.

Second Corinthians three, verse eighteen. I'm gonna want to introduce

to you someone that many of you already know. Mister

Matt Warren has been a part of this church. Give

me a second, yuys. Mister Matt Warren has been a

part of this church since Corgroup days. So that's ten

years now that Matt has been a part of this church.

He's preached for us once before, that was five years ago.

And yet this summer Matt was doing a wedding. He

gets more people asking him to do weddings than I do.

And I see why. This summer I was attending a

wedding that Matt was officiating, and just the passion with

which he shared God's word and the investment that he

clearly makes in the people of this church. It's so

life giving and heartwarming. And while I was sitting there,

I thought, Matt's got to preach for us again. So

I've asked him to do that. Would you welcome him again?

All right, thank you, Josh.

I've preached once.

It's been a while, only five years that is, but

it's been a pretty good while. But anyway, I'm excited

to be here and get to get to preach at

the Crossway, this church that I love, and it feels

like a like a pinch hit at bat. So, who's

an Astros fan in here? Astros? Okay, all right, there's

a few of y'all.

All right?

Does he even know who Great Kessinger is? I don't see,

like one hand. There we go, all right, So this

won't land with anyone else, But the analogy is Great

Kessinger is the last guy off the bench for the Astros.

He's like a minor leaguer, like a one forty hitter.

But every now and then Joey Spotta calls his name,

he gets into bat. So that's that's what I'm doing today.

I'm getting to take some rips. I'm excited. I'm a

swinghart all right.

So but really it's not about me at all.

It's not about Josh, it's not about who stands up

here at this podium.

It is about the glory of God.

That is what we are here in this spot to

do is point to the glory of God. And that's

actually exactly what we're talking about this morning. So I'm

thankful to get this opportunity, and I love Crossway. Like

Josh said, had been a member of this church for

ten years. When I showed up ten years ago, my

life was on a different course. But by the grace

of God, through the leaders that are still the leaders

of this church, I was encouraged, I was discipled, and

God changed my course. So I love Crossway. I love

this church. But on the other hand, like we're not special,

We're just a church. We are God's church. We are

sinners gathered together to worship and glorify Him. And so,

like Josh mentioned, I'm gonna preach Second Corinthians verses three eighteen.

Actually verse three eighteen, just one verse, I asked Josh.

When he asked me what I wanted to preach, I said,

I want to preach Send Corinthians three eighteen. I'll take

twenty verses on the front end. I'll take twenty verses

on the back end, maybe just all of three, all

of four, and I'll cover all that.

It'll be good thirty minutes.

I got it, and Josh goes, WHOA, Greg Kessinger, tap

the brakes, how about just preach that one verse? And

so I was like, all right, but man, I'm thankful

for that. I think that was some some some good wisdom.

And yes, yes, and amen, it's hard to put a

sermon together. So we're gonna talk about a verse that

I love this morning. And so why do I want

to preach this verse? That's simple. I love it. This

verse has meant so much to me in my life

in recent days. It encourages me, it convicts me, It

motivates me, It stirs my heart for the Lord. And

so when I came across this verse maybe three or

four years ago, it has kind of become the center

of this mini sermon that I preach to myself, and

I also preach to the guys in my small group

really whoever will listen.

And so to those of you who are here, it's

going to be some.

Redundant info, no new content necessarily for you this morning,

but it remains true. And as I've as I studied

this text, as I tried to really understand what is

Paul saying, a question just came to my mind, just like.

Why does this hit me so hard? Why do I

love this.

Verse so much? And so here's where we're going this morning.

Something I just know to be true about my soul

is that I want to behold glorious things. I want

to be captivated by glorious, majestic things. I want to

be moved. I just know that to be true. I

feel it.

But also God's word testifies.

To that truth that we are all created in the

image of God to be worshipers of God. So this

is a truth about me from God's Word that I feel.

And one of the ways I feel it is in

the fact that I love to hunt elk. Elk hunting

it takes you to the most glorious places in creation,

like deep, rugged canyons, high mountains, dark, timber like majestic places.

In an elk.

If you don't know what an elk is, it's an

eight hundred pound deer that has horns that are this

big and it like it could kill you.

It doesn't.

I don't know why that could. But they're just these

majestic creatures. And what they like to do for this

one period of the year is they scream at each

other from across the canyons. It's wild, it's so weird,

and when they do that right next to you, it's terrifying,

like you'll turn inside out. And so it's a it's

a really glorious thing all put together, El Khunting. I

love it, but it's a reflection of something so much

more glorious. And so another truth that I know about myself.

This is very clear to me. I want to change.

I am not okay with where I am. There is

sin in my life that I know the Lord would

have me kill. So I know that about myself. I

also know that I am loved and saved and covered

by the blood of Jesus, that I am in Christ,

I am His.

Yet I need to change. I feel that.

And so why I love this verse so much and

where we're going this morning, is that this is where

those two things are tied together. That's what Paul's aim

is in this text is to point us to the

source of all glory. So the greater context here is

this is Paul's second trip to Corinth and the Corinthians

are they're stuck in sin. They're also being swayed by

false teachers. There's this prevailing cultural story of the day

that's about external qualifications, fancy rhetoric, status seeking. Paul wants

them not to be swayed by these false teachers. So

he's trying to get the eyes of their hearts on

the glory of God. And so in chapter three we

see that Paul begins a series of comparisons.

The glory of God.

Has seen in the Old Covenant versus the glory of

God in the New Covenant. Like if the old was good,

how much better is the new? He keeps going back

to it. If the old was good, how much better

is the new? Like do you see it? Do you

see it? And so the Old Covenant was God's promise

to his people, the nation of Israel. He gives them

the Law, He gives them the sacrificial system to atone

for sin. He gives them a mediator between himself and

the people. But the Nation of Israel was not faithful.

They never were. But God promised the New Covenant. He

promised that he would send a messiah into the world

to fulfill the Law, to be the perfect final sacrifice

for sin. He said that his law would no longer

be on tablets of stone, but he would write it

on our hearts. And so in chapter three, leading up

to verse eighteen, Paul is contrasting this old way versus

this New way, and all of the comparisons he makes

are about the Corinthians seeing and understanding and beholding the

glory of God.

So in a sentence, our souls need.

To behold the glory of God. Our souls need to

behold the glory of God. So I want you to

write this down. I want you to write down unveiled beholding,

unveiled beholding.

With the eyes of our hearts. We need to see God's.

Glory clearly with an unveiled face. And so you see

in chapter three, in verse seven and verse thirteen, Paul

keeps going back to this reference of a veil. He's

talking about Moses's veil, which is actually a reference to

Exodus thirty four. See, Moses was the mediator between God

and his people, and Moses would go up to Mount Sinai,

he would meet with God, be in the presence of God.

He would receive God's commandments, his laws, his statutes. He

would come back down to the people and he would

communicate with the people what God had said. But when

he'd come back down from being in the presence of God,

there was a physical manifestation of the glory of God

on Moses's face, like his face lit up, got into

wild probably freaked him out. Did freak him out, and

so when he come back down his face.

Would be illuminated. He'd put a veil over his face.

So the second hand glory of God, even the second

hand glory of God, was too much for the people

couldn't handle it. So the principle here is that sinful

people can't stand in the presence of a holy God.

But in verse fourteen, in chapter three, it says, through

Christ is it taken away? Through Christ is the veil

taken away? How Christ was the Messiah, He was the

perfect holy son of God, who God sent into the

earth to put on flesh, to live the perfect life

that we could not live, to live up to God's

righteous requirements his law, and then to die as the

only perfect sacrifice for our sins.

So Jesus, through him is the veil removed.

But now that the veil has been removed, now we

actually can behold glory. Now we can look at the

face of Jesus, look at his person, his work, who

he is, and we can see the glory of God.

Hebrews one, verse three says this about Jesus. He is

the radiance of the glory of God and the exact

imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by

the word of his power. So the glory of God

is right there in the person and work of Jesus.

It's there for all of us to see.

And it's not to say that we can't see and

behold the glory of God in other ways. I mean,

God gives us his church, his people, gives us his word, he.

Gives us the elk woods.

God's glories everywhere, but it's most perfectly reflected in his son.

And so his glory's right there for you to see.

But the thing is, we just don't see it until

we see the bad news about ourselves first. To see,

the Gospel of Jesus is good news. That's what the

word means, the very word itself, gospel means good news.

It's just not that good of news if we don't

know the bad news. That's true of me and of

all of us. And the bad news is that we're sinners.

The Bible says that we are desperately wicked, that we

all of us turn away from the Lord, that no

one is good, not one. The Bible says that we're

actually deserving of spiritual death and eternal separation from the Lord.

The wages of sin is death. It's bad news.

But until we get that, we don't see the Lord

as glorious. We don't see Jesus on the cross for

our sin as we should, as we need to. And

so for me, how this worked was by the grace

of God. I had parents that were Christians that instilled

the seeds of gospel truth.

Into me at a young age.

But as I grew up and was out on my own,

I wasn't much impacted by those things. Like my life

wasn't that changed slash, it wasn't really changed at all.

Like I wanted to be a good guy, I wanted

to be a Christian, said that I was. But the

truth is like I was in control of my life

at the end of the day.

I was king and he was not.

And so what the Lord did, in his grace and

in his goodness was he leveled me.

He leveled me.

I was in a relationship that was just not good

and I shouldn't have been in it.

And I was awful in it.

And when it all came apart, came crashing down in

the broken mess of that, the Lord showed me again,

in his grace, you did that.

That's because of you.

And so that's when it landed for me what it

means when the Bible says that I'm a sinner, because

before it had just kind of been like words, Jesus

died for my sins. I believe that in my head,

Jesus died for my sins. Well, that's when it landed

in my heart and I saw the reality of my

sin and it was horrible.

And yet in the.

Sadness and brokenness of that, Praise God, that's when his

glory for me, Jesus on the cross paying for that.

That's when it clicked.

That's when my soul first felt the weight of God's glory.

And guess what, That's when I started to change. That's

when everything started to change. So Christians, by the grace

of God, you've seen his glory too.

Like if in a.

Moment in time you have hit your knees and repented

and said, Lord, I need you.

I don't want to be in control anymore. I need you.

Guess what you've felt that you've experienced His glory and

you've felt the weight of His glory.

But is that feeling fade does for me?

And yeah, I'm talking about a feeling because I think

that's what Paul is getting at.

He wants us to feel.

You can't behold glory and not feel anything. I can't

go experience those mountains and feel no stirrings in my heart.

And I especially cannot sit under the grace and glory

of God and feel like the waterfall of His love

and grace and not feel anything.

None of us should be able to not feel anything.

And I'm not talking about just chasing down a feeling,

like let's get after finding that feeling. No, the feeling

is a result of beholding what's true about God and

seeing that in relation to how we are. So, like

I said, I behold God's glory most when I've really

screwed up. It's just how it is, like when I've

blown it with Whitney or with my boys, and the

Lord in his grace will chase me down because I

don't want to repent.

I don't want to deal with that.

But he chases me down and he brings me to

my knees. And when I'm on my knees in repentance,

broken over my sin, that's when he's glorious. That's when

he's most glorious. But again, it's fleeting. So how how

do I get this more? Because I need it more

so Paul's saying, He's saying, our souls need to behold

the glory of God. How do I get it more?

Like on a Tuesday morning. Well, I'm doing all right.

I'm just going through life and been doing pretty good.

I guess, because what I find is that there's a

backfill in my soul. I go from experiencing the glory

of God, seeing him as he is, being moved to

walk in repentance, and then what backfills is just a

general apathy towards the Lord. Just to my heart just

naturally gravitates towards other things. I would just rather be

distracted phone TV, fun things to do. My heart starts

looking inward. And so the principle here is that it's

just not natural for me and for us to incline

our hearts to the Lord and to behold his glory.

This is not a natural move that my heart makes.

And so why why do we need to behold God's glory?

We need to behold God's glory to be transformed into

his image. So write this down for me, increasing transformation,

increasing transformation, So earlier in chapter three and verse seven,

verse eleven, Paul keeps talking about what was being brought

to an end, how the Old Covenant is being brought

to an end. It's being brought to an end, he says,

So you see, this picture of the glory of the

Old Covenant is diminishing. But the contrast here in verse

eighteen is that as we behold the glory of the Lord,

we're being transformed into the same image, from one degree

of glory to another. So diminishing glory of the Old Testament,

the Old Covenant against the increasing glory of the Lord

in us. So Christian God's glory is permanent. But one

day he will glorify us. He will complete the work

that he started in us. The question is, how is

that transformation going? How is that transformation going? And for me,

sometimes it's going okay, and then sometimes it's not going

well at all. But like I said at the beginning,

I know I want it to be going well. I

know that I need to change, and I know that

I need to grow. But the reality of my life

is like there's just rarely a day where I'm not

guilty of sin, even sin against like my prized possessions,

the people I love the most, my wife, my boys,

Like there's just rarely maybe some days, but there's certainly

not a week where I don't have a harsh word

for my son's or I'm not just blatantly selfish and

unloving with my wife. Like you could look at that

and be like, well, no one's perfect.

Man.

I hung on to no one's per it for a while,

got me nowhere, nowhere. And so the principle is this,

because it's not natural for our hearts to incline to

God's glory, to behold his glory.

It's not natural.

We have got to work on beholding his glory every day.

And here's what Paul doesn't say. He doesn't say that

time when you beheld God's glory and it was awesome,

and then and then you were transformed.

It's not what he says.

He says, beholding the glory of the Lord, we are

being transformed into the same image, the image of God.

So this is an ongoing thing. We got to work

at it. That that didn't connect for me until this

till this text. And so here's what I'm doing about it.

By his grace, here's what I'm trying to do about it.

I know that every day I've got to read God's

word and I've got to pray, and I got to

do it earnestly.

So that's what I'm trying to do every day.

Like there's been years of my life as a follower

of Jesus, I've known I need to read the Bible

and pray, But now I just I know that.

My soul needs that rather than like it's.

Just the things that you do, like I just He's

convinced me that I need to approach him that way

every day. But here's the thing, I'm not that good

at it. Okay, I don't bat a thousand. I'm the

goal is every day and I'm trying to do that.

But guess what, I'm not good at it. So what

I've done, by the grace of God. There's other guys

in my small group that struggle in the same way

that have confessed to Yeah, what kind of is the

normal for my heart?

Is apathy towards the Lord.

And feeling like I'm stuck and like I'm not growing

and I'm not beholding God's glory. And so we've got

a group text, just a simple text with a few

guys where we When we get done with our time

with the Lord of the morning, we send a text, hey,

it was good, good twenty four hours read prayed for

you guys, committing to another by his grace. Amen. But

here's the thing. Didn't account for this. It's making me

deal with my sin all the time, all the time.

Like the way I used to operate. It was like

when I really screw up. Man, I know I gotta

deal with that, but there's so much that like, all right,

let me just breathe and go go, you know, through

a few days, small groups coming. Okay, I know I'll

need to confess this, but you know, then maybe we

don't get all the way around because the moderator of

our group, this guy, he is so bad about getting

through everybody.

So maybe I won't have to go.

But what I can't do when I earnestly just doing

the best I can get into God's word and then

hit my knees in prayer, I just I can't get

away from it. If there's sin that needs to confess

that I need to confess, and.

Then I certainly can't do that.

And then also text the guys it's the night before

I was a total jerk to my wife, and so

I'm dealing with it a lot more now. Yeah, praise

the Lord is right, because it's actually exactly what my

soul needs.

My soul doesn't need to just be a little more comfortable.

It's taking a long time for the Lord to impress

that upon me.

So there's a.

Guy named George Mueller, Mueller that is like Ferris Bueller,

don't get that wrong.

George Mueller lived in the eighteen hundreds. He was.

So first, he's just living at home with his wife

and started an orphanage in his house. And he had

thirty kids, thirty living at his home, and sure that

was loud. Can't imagine I have three. And so it

was just I'm sure wheels off. There was city ordinances

and things. I read all this, you can read it too.

But he realized, I gotta find another place. So this

huge part of his life's work is building orphanages, and

he builds I don't know five of them or so

ten thousand plus kids come through these orphanages and they

were loved and they were cared for, and they were

shown the Gospel of Jesus. And he did all that

without ever asking for a donation.

That was his thing. He's going to pray for it

and see what the guy, what the Lord would do.

And then he had a second act and when he's

like seventy, he just goes and travels the world until

he's about ninety, and he speaks four languages and he

just spreads the gospel.

He's an evangelist, the amazing guy, George Mueller.

But at the end of his life, he was interviewed

and the person interviewing him just has this amazing life

in view and is just asking him about his secrets

and what did you do and how did you accomplish

all this for the kingdom? And here's what he said.

He said, the point is this, I saw more clearly

than ever that the first great and primary business to

which I auto attend every day was to have my

soul happy in the Lord. So that's what he was about.

And I just think that's a different way of saying

it's just saying the same thing. As he's inclining his

heart to the Lord, he's beholding the glory of the Lord.

And so, like I said, by the grace of God

for me right now, tears are a lot more common

in my morning time with the Lord. But I promise

you my heart is so much happier in the Lord.

And let me pause right here to make sure that

I don't mess this up totally, just ruin it by convincing,

making y'all think that this is a sermon about doing

the things. But we are a church that loves to

do the things, and we should like we love our Bibles,

were intentional about reading them. We love to pray. We

pray corporately, we pray together in our small groups. We

pray right now like you'll see it. You'll see praying

happening out there. We don't say pray for you, I'll

be praying. We pray now. We serve one another, We

serve the body like it's it's or to who we are.

And these things are good. But look, these things they

don't change us. These things don't change us. They point

us towards the end of beholding the glory of God.

When we behold the glory of God, that's when we're changed.

That's what Paul's getting at. So you can do a

lot of things, and I have you can do a

lot of things for a lot of time and be

real unchanged. If you're not getting out of those things.

That God is glorious, and that Jesus on the cross

for you is worthy of everything that you have. So

what the Lord has shown me through this simple verse

is that repentance is the key to worshipful beholding. Repentance

is the key to worshipful beholding. If I will be repenting,

I will be beholding.

And that's what my soul needs.

So less like you're like me, and you might be

inclined towards pride, and I hope that you're not like me.

It ain't easy being me, says Chris ninth.

But if you are, then Paul ends with this, this

comes from the Lord, who is the spirit. This comes

from the Lord, who is the spirit. The Lord is

the prime mover in this equation. If we believe Jesus

is our savior and our king is because God opened

the eyes of.

Our hearts, He gave us sight. So it goes on

in chapter four.

The very next chapter, Second Corinthians four to six, Paul

finishes three with saying, hey, behold God's glory.

That's what changes you.

And then the first word of chapter four is therefore,

and he just spends a whole chapter saying, therefore, go

and live this way. Go and live this way. In

verse six of four reminds us again that God is

the one that opens the eyes of the heart. Says

this in verse six, for God who said let light

shine out of darkness, has shown in our hearts to

give the light of the knowledge of the glory of

God and the face of Jesus Christ. So God gives

us sight, and then he gives us the ministry of

the spirit. He gives us the ministry of the spirit,

says in Ezekiel thirty six, verse twenty six. And I

will give you a new heart and a new spirit.

I will put within you. I will remove the heart

of stone from your flesh, and I'll give you a

heart of flesh. And then an Acts chapter two, verse

thirty eight says, and Peter said to them, repent and

be baptized, every one of you in the name of

Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of your sins, and you

will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Holy

Spirit who does the work in us. The Holy Spirit

does the transformative work in our hearts while we work

on beholding God's glory. The Spirit does the transforming. And

so if you're here this morning and you've yet to

behold the glory of the Lord, I just encourage you

to consider the bad news that the scriptures say is

true about all of us.

Like it's bad.

News, it's depressing, it's also true. But if you can

see that that's true about yourself, that you want to

be your own king. Like me, you want to run

your own show, and you don't want to submit your

life to the deserving, rightful King who has loved you

and died on a cross for you. If you can

just see that and then turn to the Lord, the

veil will be removed. You will see his glory and

you will watch as he transforms you. And then if

by his grace he's done that in you, But like me,

you're just not sure how that transformation part is really going.

Paul doesn't say do better, try harder. He says something

just totally unexpected. It's totally unexpected from me, he says,

be beholding the glory of the Lord. And where his

glory is most clearly seen is Jesus on the cross

for my sin, for your sin. So, Church, let's be

a lowly group, like Josh preached, last week, not running

from our sins, but walking in regular confession and repentance,

so that we might behold His glory and be transformed.

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