2nd Corinthians: Glory and the Veil | Guest Speaker: Josh Teague

Good morning, friends, family.

Nice to see so many of you this morning.

Russ, our pastor, who's typically up here on Sunday mornings, he is away with Christy and the girls, and they're enjoying a little bit of an extended holiday break.

So they'll return next week and we'll pick up the season of Advent and potentially some more in Acts as well.

So if you don't know me, uh my name is Josh Teague.

I'm just a member here at the church.

Um to give you a little background of where I'm coming from, I'm married to my wife Lauren.

We live here in Marietta, and we've got four girls, ages eight and under.

And people will often ask, you know, what is it like to have a family full of girls?

Give me a little glimpse of that.

I've got two boys or a boy and a girl.

What's it like to have four of a kind?

Is the question.

And there's a few ways we can answer it.

Typically, I'll say, like you know, like any house of a family at our stage in life, you know, there's dancing, there's laughter.

Uh I get compliments, which is quite nice.

You look so handsome, Daddy.

That's that's a very good thing to say.

I'm gonna repeat that for them here today.

Um, so that's great.

We also have a bit of crying.

We deal with crying.

Poor girls, there's a lot of tears, buckets of tears.

Um but Lauren pointed out to me that there's a bit of a dynamic where where we have one of our daughters crying in the house, there will inevitably be another one crying elsewhere.

They have a bit of a mysterious connection between them.

You know, one can be upstairs in a room crying because of an issue.

There'll be another one even outside having an issue.

They have this thing going on.

So we work out our feelings in our households.

It's just a thing.

Um, makes us unique, I think.

So anyway, happy Thanksgiving.

Uh I'll be honest that this Thanksgiving, I am grateful that this is not my normal day job.

I'll be honest to say that.

I I am very grateful to be an elder here and serve and get to know so many of you in various ways.

Um, but then I step back and consider that this is actually just one of the roles that Russ takes on week in and week out.

Preaching is just one thing he does.

He does it every single week.

So um, you know, he's doing counseling with couples, individuals, working through family issues, relational things.

He's shepherding our student ministry as well, so he's working with people of all ages, all stages of life.

Um he's shepherding us as a church.

You know, where is God stretching us?

Where do we need to be stretched?

Where do we need to be resting in Christ?

Those kinds of things.

He's fundraising.

All that kind of stuff is going on in a week, and I just have to do this.

And this was a lot.

Um but anyway, I am very grateful to explore uh the gospel with everybody this morning.

Um, so we've got a lot to get into.

Uh, in your bulletin, you'll see the main text that we'll be pivoting around this morning.

We're gonna be centered in on 2 Corinthians 3, but we're gonna flip around, and so you'll your nose will be probably a little bit deeper in your Bibles as we kind of pivot around it.

Um see if your phone's with you, that'll be helpful as well.

Because we'll look at some other passages.

Let me start with 2 Corinthians 3, uh, verses 4 through 6, and then we'll pray, and then we'll go in through the sermon.

The word of the Lord.

Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God.

We have confidence in Christ.

Because of the work he did here on earth, living the perfect life for us, dying the death that we don't have to.

We now, because of him, we have confidence.

And where do we get to direct that confidence?

To God.

Without him, we don't have confidence in facing God.

We don't have that.

So that's something that we, in our unique period in time, we have that benefit to us, that grace to us.

He goes on.

Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us.

We have nothing.

We bring nothing to the table.

But our sufficiency is from God, who has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant.

We're gonna talk about what that means to be.

What in the world does that mean, ministers of the new covenant?

We're gonna look at that this morning.

Not of the letter, this is the law, but of the spirit.

For the letter kills, but the spirit gives life.

Let me pray for us.

God, thank you for this morning.

I thank you for this church you've given to us.

I thank you, Lord, that your word reveals to us that it is in you, in your son, Lord, that we have our confidence.

It's in you, Lord, where we have our sufficiency, not in ourselves.

Thank you for that grace.

Thank you for this new covenant, Lord.

I pray that you reveal what that means to us, Lord, corporately as a church and as individuals, Lord, this morning.

Thank you that we have the Spirit, Lord, is writing directly to our hearts.

And no longer, Lord, are you writing to stone tablets, Lord?

Thank you for that grace.

Thank you, Lord, that you've gone further and you've made us ministers of a new covenant.

Thank you for that, Lord.

And lastly, we'll thank you that your spirit is with us and that you are alive.

And that, Lord, you're ministering to us.

Thank you for that.

Jesus' name.

Amen.

Okay, so what is the big picture here in 2 Corinthians 3?

What is Paul?

Paul's writing this letter to his church.

What is he trying to express with this text?

At a high level, Paul is contrasting the glory of the Old Testament, and there was glory there.

We're going to look, what in the world, like there was glory there?

We know that.

We look at Moses' the stories, there's lots of glory there.

And he's saying there was glory there, and yet it pales in comparison to the glory that we live in today.

We look back as those as kind of like the glory days, right?

All the stories of Moses and the people leaving Egypt out of captivity.

You know, the Red Sea was parting.

We look at those as kind of the glory days.

But Paul is saying that we have something so much greater.

And this passage for me just tends to be one of my personal all-time favorites.

I love how it tells the story of the relationship between God and Moses.

The relationship between Moses and the people that he was bringing out of captivity.

And then the relationship between the people and God.

It was a very, very rich relationship they had there.

And yet Paul says, we have so much more.

Because what we have today is eternal.

We'll look at that a bit.

And I just love kind of mentally just swimming back and coming back in every scripture and just kind of bringing it back to this.

It just tends to be helpful for me personally.

The core of Paul's message here is summarized in verses 9 through 11.

I'll read it.

This is really the crux of everything, is what Lauren read.

For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, the ministry of righteousness must far exceed it in glory.

Indeed, in this case, what once had glory has come to have no glory at all, because of the glory that surpasses it.

For what if was being brought to an end came with glory, much more will what is permanent have glory.

So he's saying the new covenant, what we have today, completely eclipses the old.

Completely.

Let me read the verses that follow.

We'll stop at verse 13.

It's in your bulletin.

Since we have such a hope, we are very bold.

Not like Moses.

And I love how he just kind of drags Moses right under the bus.

I mean, I never read or read it that way until I was doing it for studying this.

He just totally is like, you know, we have hope and we have boldness.

Not like Moses.

Like that.

Like we look at Moses like Moses, like the prophet.

Oh my goodness, I want to meet Moses.

And he's saying we have hope and a boldness that he didn't have.

So that's something I think.

Not like Moses.

And you don't you just know Moses is like in heaven?

Like, why did you write that?

Like, what in the world?

Thanks.

So, not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face so that the Israelites might not gaze at the outcome of what was being brought to an end.

So, the glory of the new covenant, it gives us hope and it gives us boldness.

These are new things that we can, we can, that God that God has given us.

So, what is Paul talking about here with this veil, though?

Can we go back?

He's hearkening back to a story that he knew and the Jewish people knew very well.

Let's pop back in our Bibles to Exodus 34, and we'll start in verse 29.

And as you go in there, I'll give you the brief backstory here.

Is that Moses had, again, a special position among the people of Israel, where he would meet with God in person, he would meet with God and bring back messages and prophetic words to the people.

Among the most significant things that Moses brought back were, of course, the Ten Commandments, the first inkling of the law, Capital L law.

And this law, at a high level, it says, you know, by your performance you will be found righteous.

And of course, we know that the real meaning of the law is we'll talk about, Paul points out, the real meaning of the law is that we cannot uphold that.

We are crushed by the law.

And so we need, not ourselves, we know we can't do it.

The law is too high of a thing, so we need a savior.

That's the meaning of the law.

And we'll read on in verses 29.

When Moses came down from the Mount Sinai, now he was coming back with the Ten Commandments, with the two tablets of the testimony in his hand.

As he came down to the mountain, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God.

His face is shining.

Aaron was Moses' brother.

Aaron and all the people of Israel saw Moses, and behold, the skin of his face shone, and they were afraid to come near him.

They were thinking, oh my goodness, Moses, I know you've got something in your hand there, but you don't realize your face is a shining woe.

Something's going on here.

This is a miraculous thing that's happening.

You don't even know it.

What I understand that to me is that when we spend our time, when we spend our time gazing at God, being with him, looking at him, being in his presence, just being in his presence.

His glory reflects off of us.

He's so glorious that it just reflects off of us.

In the case of Moses here, the glory of God literally reflected off of his body, off of his face.

And this, I think, is what Paul is saying.

This is what it means to be ministers of the new covenant.

It just simply means to rest and go to God, spend your time gazing at God, understanding him, finding the glory, sitting under his majesty.

That is what it means.

Because then the result is people see that.

It's inevitable.

People will see that.

They'll see, and your spirit is changing, your heart is changing.

There's change happening just by being in his presence.

Our bodies and our spirit are changing.

We're transformed into God's image by looking and gazing into his glory.

This is what it means.

The whole New Testament because about, you know, being like Christ.

What does it mean to be like Christ?

It means to be with Him.

And He reflects off of us.

That's it.

This is why we talk about Jesus at this church every single week, because we just want to know Him.

And we know that by looking in Him, our hearts are transformed as God's name is made great, which is the whole goal of this whole thing.

Paul repeats this many times in all of his letters, and he says in 2 Corinthians 4 that the life of Jesus, no way puts it, the life of Jesus will be manifested in our bodies.

As an outward expression of Jesus living, and he is living, as an outward expression of that in our bodies by being with him.

Now, maybe you look at this story of Moses and Aaron and you say, you know, it's not always great to put yourself in the middle of the scripture.

Like, well, how do I relate to this?

But in this case, you know, maybe you're remembering, maybe, maybe you relate to Aaron.

Maybe there's somebody in your life you look towards and you think, my goodness, this is a person that that that there's something special about this person.

Or maybe you're like uh Moses, uh, you know, has has your face ever shined?

Has your face ever shined?

Can you relate to Moses?

Uh mine has.

And I'll I'll tell you how uh my face has shined.

Uh it was the day of my wedding.

Uh Lauren walked down the aisle uh veiled, as tradition would have it.

And my face is not shining in the beaming sense.

Like this is a different kind of shining.

Uh she removed her veil, and she saw the upper part of my face was a bit shinier than usual.

And uh her pupils dilated as we're up there.

That's the that's the that's the end of the story.

Back up about six hours.

So, six hours earlier, I made a horrible error, a horrible personal error.

I awoke that morning and suddenly decided to take notice of my own personal appearance, because this is your wedding day.

You know, I never cared for this, I never cared for my appearance, but of all days, to look good, your wedding day is probably the right day to start trying.

Uh so uh I looked in the mirror as I was getting ready, combing my hair, and I noticed my eyebrows.

I'm looking at my eyebrows.

Okay, never noticed those before.

I could probably make that look a little better.

Um so I took some tweezers, which I happened to have.

I don't know where they came from.

I had some tweezers and I started tweezing my eyebrows.

Uh and then I proceeded to shave around them.

And then cut with scissors the spots that needed help.

By the time I was done, I looked like a monster.

I mean, sh just chunks of eyebrow gone.

It's like, no hope.

Uh we lived over here off uh in the in the Brumby lost at the time.

So in in a panic, I lived there, I ran up to Hair by the Square.

I think it's still there.

Uh I'd never known what was other, I'd never noticed it, but I went I in a panic, I called Hare by the Square.

I was like, I'm coming to see you.

I walked in and they immediately saw, like, what in the world has this man done?

Um and they went into emergency repair mode, uh, waxing, sculpting, and the ch putting in makeup, literal makeup, were the spots I had totally blown in.

Uh so by the end of it, my forehead was like a shining city on a hill, just red, it looked awful.

But it looked better than you know the monster I was a moment ago.

Uh it just reflected everything, though.

Just like, oh my god, this is just so bad.

So uh in a perfect alignment with scripture, when Lauren removed her veil, she saw my bright shining face.

She saw it.

And I in that moment wanted to then take her veil and put it over my head as a bit of a, you know.

So I'm like, I understand Moses' motivation here.

I get it.

I get what he's going through.

Who wants to see that?

Uh so I had to, you know, I wanted her veil then to cover my shame and just complete uh overworking of trying to correct myself.

Um anyway, I can relate to Moses.

Let me uh let's just keep going in scripture, though.

Let's jump down to Exodus 30 uh verses 33 here.

And when Moses had finished speaking with them, he put a veil over his face.

It's after he's speaking with God.

He put a veil over his face.

Whenever Moses went in before the Lord to speak with him, he would remove the veil until he came out.

So he goes to see the Lord, the veil comes off, it's God and Moses, he leaves the Lord's presence, the veil comes back on.

And when he came out and told the people of Israel what he was commanded, the people of Israel would see the face of Moses, and that the skin of his face was shining, and Moses would put the veil over his face again until he went to speak with him.

And I want to point out this happens repeatedly.

This is not like a one-time thing.

This didn't happen just the first time he went to the moat to the mountain to get the to get the Ten Commandments.

This happened every time he went with the Lord.

That's what Exodus is saying.

There was a pattern here.

It's not just a one-time miraculous thing.

So look, we have this as well.

Um, how can we interpret the meaning and the purpose of this veil?

According to this passage and what Paul is saying, I think there's probably a few ways that we can understand what that means.

Uh, one, I think the veil, according to Paul at least, the veil in Moses' case represents fear and hopelessness.

He said, we have a fear, we don't have fear, and we had he has a hopelessness as well.

He was hiding the outcome of the glory fading off of his face.

And Moses, according to Paul, didn't want that to be shown to the people.

He wanted them to think the glory was ever present.

But he knew that the glory was fading as he would leave God's presence.

Uh the veil, of course, literally represents a separation.

It's something between us and our people, us and God.

It represents a hidden truth.

The idea that we have something that we're hiding and we want to cover it.

And perhaps as a result of all these, uh, the veil represents even shame.

So, where else in Scripture do we find these themes?

Well, they're actually all through scripture.

If you read any of the Bible, you'll find these themes all through it, because this is what the gospel saves us from.

Um let's read one example in Genesis 3, 7 through 8.

Of course, this is Adam and Eve, they're in the garden, and uh they had had perfect relationship with God, but they had sinned.

This is what we'll pick up in verse 7.

Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew they were naked.

And they sowed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths, they're covering themselves.

And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

So where there was once no shame, no covering, nakedness between us and God, he knew us, we knew him.

We ourselves build a separation.

Um, we build a barrier to our true selves.

And we find out later, this is a whole other, I think Russ pointed this out this out to me back in September, out to all of us, that God, God Himself then fashioned a covering for them.

A grace, he showed them grace by fashioning a better covering for them.

And that took a sacrifice.

Of course, we know that there's a sacrifice coming down the road in the work of Jesus.

But these themes of fear, hiding, uh, separation, and shame, again, these are what the gospel saves us from.

This is why we're here.

That's why we celebrate the gospel.

Back in 2 Corinthians, we'll pick up there.

Paul goes on.

But their minds were hardened.

For to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted.

Because only through Christ is it taken away.

Yes, to this day, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their hearts.

This is Paul's repeating what I said earlier, which is he's saying here that the true meaning of the law is veiled to the minds of unbelievers, Jewish, Gentile people alike.

It's veiled to us until Jesus, until we see Jesus.

He removes the veil.

The imagery here is just so stark.

But when one turns to the Lord, verse 16, the veil is removed.

So just as when Moses removed the veil when he met with the Lord, he took the veil off, the veil is removed when we meet with Jesus.

And friends, as followers of Jesus, uh, the veil is gone.

The veil is gone.

And we can celebrate that.

Uh let's finish reading 2 Corinthians 3.

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

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.

In closing, I want us to look at the cross.

The New Testament books of Matthew, Mark, and Luke each document a series of miraculous things happening right at the moment that Christ died on the cross.

Matthew 27, it says, And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit.

And then behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom, the earthquaked, and rocks were split.

So as we review here, we have a veil in the garden covering our shame, covering our fear.

We have the veil of Moses hiding our fear and our hopelessness.

The temple veil, which is again a literal separation between us and the throne of God, only the special, you know, the holiest of holies, a special place you don't have access to.

That's a physical veil.

And Paul's saying we have a veil over our hearts and minds in today's age unless until we turn to Jesus, until Jesus saves us.

So, as believers, though, all these veils, the literal ones, the metaphorical ones over our hearts and minds, they have been removed.

So we can boldly approach the throne.

Jesus loves you.

He loves us so, so much.

Like Moses, let us spend our time with him so that we may reflect God's infinite glory.

But unlike Moses, let us do it boldly.

Because of the everlasting spirit that is indwelling us, indwelling our very bodies through the person and the work of Jesus.

And pray for us.

God, thank you for this morning.

Thank you, Lord, that you are alive.

I thank you that your spirit is indwelling our bodies, Lord.

You are only you're not only covering us, Lord, with your blood, you are inside of us, Lord, and you are working on our hearts, transforming us, Lord.

God, I thank you for your word that it's true.

For the words of Paul here.

And God, I ask that your word continue to transform us individually and corporately as a church here in Marietta.

Lord, let us seek your will first in all things.

In Jesus' name, amen.