Not Your Ordinary Church Service: Afterglow | Part 2

Welcome to the Awakening Church Podcast.

We pray this message encourages you and provides the hope and light of Jesus Christ.

Thanks for tuning in.

Last week we kicked off a new series called Not Your Ordinary Um Church Service.

If you missed it, I encourage you to go back.

You can podcast it, you can YouTube it and listen to it as it sets up the context for our entire series.

We asked this question what are we doing here?

Like in our gatherings.

Why do we gather?

What if God has more for us than we're currently experiencing in our gatherings?

And we're actually spending the next several weeks talking about this, what we're actually do when we gather together as a church and what God has for us.

And I left you with a few application points last week, and I just want to encourage you not only to continue on if you want to experience a not ordinary church service, but I just think I want to applaud many of you who actually did these this week.

One was we said for the series, hey, would you commit to attend every week?

Just like get into the rhythm, get in the habit of like we're gonna journey together as a community.

The second was before you come, would you prepare your heart?

It changes the way you uh interact and encounter and what God has for you in this moment when you like go, okay, uh, you know what?

I'm gonna listen to some worship music on the way.

We have a Spotify channel for you to do that.

I'm gonna read the teaching scripture ahead of time.

We have post that on Instagram and email, or you know, where you'd pray this prayer, but maybe as you drive up, God, would you speak to me?

And then would you speak through me?

Like you have a purpose and a plan for me today.

Uh the third thing was that you would arrive early, 10 minutes early, and stay 10 minutes later.

And I was where this tent was today, and people in the tent, way to go, church.

You're there, you're growing, we're getting there.

That's the culture, like we're uh long to be in the presence of God together.

And finally, Christina mentioned it, ask who can I encourage today?

Who can I encourage today?

Not an ordinary church service.

That's what we long for.

Because I really believe this.

As we step into this season of returning, God has something new for us that He wants us to actually get more out of what we're experiencing in our church gatherings.

He has more for us than we're currently getting, and and I believe He He longs and has uh wants more from us than we're currently giving so that we can encounter Him afresh.

You know, when I was in college, I uh led worship.

That's what I mainly did.

I'm a musician, I told you last week as a drummer, but uh I started leading worship and um you know, from late high school to college and on.

And so I led worship at my school, Moody Bible Institute, and I led for a college ministry at the church I attended outside of downtown Chicago there.

And in the like late 90s, early 2000s, there was a few bands that uh deeply formed me as a as a young, you know, late teens, early 20s believer, like when it came to worship and encountering Jesus.

One of them was this band called Delirious.

Anybody know Delirious?

Okay, a few of you.

I was afraid like I was gonna say this name and everybody's like, yeah, you're old.

Um there.

They just changed my like world when it came to worship and introduced new sounds and songs and and connected to the father's heart.

And another is a person, a guy named Matt Redman.

Uh, and outside of my brother who writes worship songs for a living, uh, Matt Redman is my favorite um worship song writer.

Jason, I love you.

Your songs are amazing, and I love those songs more.

Uh, but I do love Matt Redman, and for the last two decades, he's written these incredible songs that have shaped how we worship.

Now, both of those uh are from the UK, both of them are from the you know uh Britain, and so they had this British accent, and you'd listen to these CDs and be like, Thank you, Lord God, today.

Um I yeah, I have a terrible, terrible British accent, and and doesn't it just like if you have a British accent, or maybe Australian or South African or something, don't they not only does everything that they say sounds nice, even they can offend you, you know, but that sounds nice, but but doesn't it sound like they're closer to God?

You know, like when they pray, it's like Lord God today.

I'm like, oh my gosh, that's cool.

So I was leading worship um at this college ministry, it was a couple hundred college students, and it was a great night, and we're packing up, and I'm putting my guitar away, rapping chords, and this guy comes up to me and he says, Hey, hey, Ryan, man, thank you so much for worship tonight.

I'm new.

Um, where are you from?

And you know, we're in Chicago, so I said, Well, I'm from Santa Cruz, it's in California, and he looks at me, kind of, oh, I thought you were like from Australia or something.

See, I had so admired that I began to mimic Matt Redman and Delirious.

So I'm up there leading worship, and I unconsciously am going, Lord God, thank you today.

And unfortunately, my British accent sounds Australian.

And so I gotta apologize to both the Brits and the Aussies because I can't do an accent.

I'm sorry, it's awful.

But today we're talking about worship, specifically musical worship.

Like, why do we gather together and sing together?

Why do we have a band that plays them?

Weren't they great today?

Man, they are just awesome, love our team.

Why do we do this?

That was so half-hearted.

Let's do that again.

Yeah, let's let's let's let's bless them.

And I want to wrestle with this question.

Would you do this with me?

Because I think this is the question for us if we're gonna be a not ordinary church.

How do we move from a church with worship music to a church filled with passionate worshipers?

Like we have worship music and it's awesome, and I love our team, but how do we then move and have a culture where together we go, no, no, no.

We're a church and it's filled with passionate worshipers.

Like people show up and they're ready to encounter the presence of God.

Like it's not just the worship team running to God.

We're we're all running together.

Like when people show up, they go, like, I don't know much about that church, but whoa, they worship and it's a big, big deal.

It's filled with passionate worshipers.

I believe that's what God has for us in this next season of not ordinary.

And why would we settle for ordinary anyway?

Let's move to what God has for us.

Uh, to do this, I want to give you three marks of a passionate worshiper.

Three marks for us if we're gonna become that kind of church, those kind of people that move from just having worship music to passionate worshipers, three marks that will cultivate and develop this in our lives.

I want to take you to the book of Exodus.

If you have your Bible, flip over, Exodus chapter 33.

Exodus 33 · chapter mention

And in Exodus, it is the story of God's people who were in bondage for 400 years as slaves in Egypt.

400 years of being a slave, 400 years of knowing nothing else.

Your identity is in your work and what other someone else tells you to do.

And Moses, God calls to be the great redeemer and liberator of the people of Israel, leads them out.

You can read it all at the beginning of Exodus.

The parts of the Red Sea.

Now they're in the wilderness, they're at Mount Sinai, and this is actually intended a particular amount of time where God is actually establishing a new people, a new nation, a new tribe, where he's wanting to strip away the identity of slave and now bring upon the identity of a new people of God that you have uh and you are now worshiping the one true God together.

And this is where we pick up and learn how do we uh move from a passionate uh worship music to a passionate worshiper.

The first mark of passionate worshipers is we're gonna become that church.

We have to shift our perspective of what is taking place in our gathering.

We have to shift and change our perspective of what's happening right now when we're gathering.

And the perspective is simply this: this tent, and here's what's really cool, we're under a tent right now, and then we're gonna talk about a tent, and the very first worship gathering happened in a tent.

This tent is the tent of meeting, not simply the tent of learning.

There's an encountering.

In Exodus 25, God tells Moses, he says, Let them make a sanctuary or a holy place that I may dwell in their midst.

Notice this that God's desire has always been to be in the midst of his people.

His desire has always been in the middle.

In fact, the tabernacle or the tent was to be in the center of camp, and a cloud by day would reside on it.

They called it the Shekinah glory, the visible manifestation of God's glory, and and by night a pillar of fire.

And he wanted to be in the center of camp, always to remind his people that they're with them.

You're out here, and I'm with you, and I'm at the center of it.

Now, from Exodus 25 to Exodus 33, where we're headed today, a lot happens, and it's worth your reading and taking time.

We we uh uh a lot happened with the Israelites.

They made some bad choices, some golden gaff, uh calf choices, that is, that uh meant that then Moses then set up a meeting place that was outside of the um of the camp as a result of that encounter with uh response of the Israelites.

And listen to what happens next.

Exodus 33.

Now Moses used to take a tent and pitch it outside the camp, some distance away, calling it the help me out, tent of tent of meeting.

Anyone inquiring of the Lord would go to the tent of meeting outside the camp.

This word meeting is meeting is a very um uh specific word.

It means a deliberate, pre-arranged rendezvous rather than a casual accidental meeting.

And that this place was a place that was prearranged, it was deliberate, it that was intentional, took thought.

And see, if we are going to shift our perspective, uh we have to shift that the gathering place is the tent of meeting where you meet with God.

Now, let me ask you this.

Think about somebody that you really would love to meet.

I mean, who is somebody that you just go like, oh man, I would love to meet them?

And don't get all spiritual.

I know you're in church and you're like, okay, like Jesus or the Pope or whatever.

Like, you know, maybe it's a a designer, maybe it's a social, you know, influencer, maybe it's uh a famous person, um, maybe someone who's doing incredible work with their life.

I don't know.

Who is it who came to mind?

I the first person that came to mind, and you can see where my mind was at, was um Steph Curry.

I would love to meet.

And um, hello, Steph.

I'm available anytime you want to be.

If you happen to be watching, I don't think you are, but if you are, uh man, I would love to meet you.

Clearly, this isn't my Jersey.

This is um um, this is one of my kids' jersey.

Steph Curry, uh, the greatest shooter in NBA history.

I mean, he just plays the game with such joy.

Isn't it great to have a Bay Area team?

Like, growing up, we we gotta watch Jordan and go, like, man, one day I was like, I would love to go to Chicago and watch Jordan, and by the time I got to Chicago, Jordan was done.

I'm like, thank you very much.

But Curry's here and get to watch him.

You know, just imagine if somebody came up and said, Hey, Ryan, after church, you're gonna get to go meet Steph Curry.

Well, one, I'd be super giddy.

Uh yeah, giddy.

Uh, and and I would be like, okay, hang on, let me run back.

I'll get a real jersey that fits me because I want to wear jersey maybe for him to sign, and I'm gonna be living with such an anticipation, excitement on the way there.

By the way, that's an incredible thought because I'm going to meet Steph Curry.

There's an excitement anticipation, and I can't wait to get there, huh?

That might just shape the way we go about church.

Hold that thought.

And then I get there and we're like, oh my gosh, Mr.

Curry, I was I'm not, I can't call you Steph, uh uh uh great basketballer, you.

I don't know how to address you, but I want to address you properly because I want a second invite back here.

See, there isn't there a big difference between meeting Steph Curry and learning about Steph Curry.

You know, if somebody said, hey Ryan, after church, there's a seminar about Steph Curry.

And and somebody's got a killer slideshow, bro.

It's gonna knock you your socks off.

It's awesome.

I already learned about Steph Curry on his master class that he did.

I've watched it, I've tried it, I can't do it, but I've watched it.

In fact, when I wake up and I'm really tired early in the morning, I you're some of you are wondering, how long is this Steph Curry bit gonna go?

Give me a little bit longer.

Friday morning, I woke up at 4 a.m., not because I had anything, I just woke up and I was like tired, so I was, you know, I when by the time Jenny finally wakes up, I was like, I was bored.

You know what I do when I'm bored?

I watch Steph Curry videos online.

That's what I do.

Now there's a radical difference, friends, if I'm gonna learn about Steph Curry or if I'm gonna go meet him.

Now, listen, listen, listen.

What we've done in our gatherings today, we've turned the tent of meeting into the tent of learning.

We come to learn about God, we come to learn new facts, we wanna be have our you know minds tend that we've never heard before, and it's this tent of learning.

I've come to learn about God, and he says, No, I want to meet with you.

I want to show up in your presence, and we have to shift our perspective of how we're showing up, of like, I'm not just coming to learn about God, I'm coming to meet with him.

We're in the tent of meeting, not the tent of learning.

We're not in the tent of entertain me, we're in the tent of encounter him.

So let's talk about worship a little bit.

When we worship, what does that even mean?

Encountering and meeting him.

Well, worship, worship fundamentally is what we do as humans, it is the natural activity of the soul.

It's fundamentally a response.

Worship is always a response to what we value or adore most.

We were created to worship, and so we adore, we give praise, we idolize that which captures our heart, and whatever captures your heart is that which you are worshiping.

It means to ascribe worth, value, ah, praise.

And so biblically, worship is recognizing and responding to the greatness of God.

That's what it means to worship.

It is recognizing and realizing you are God and I am not, you are holy and I am not, you are immense and mighty and all-powerful and all good and all-righteous and all loving, and I'm recognizing who you are, and I'm in your presence, and so I'm responding to who you are, to your greatness.

And so worship is far more than a genre of music or a song, it is a life response.

This is why the Apostle Paul in Romans 12:1 would say, Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, in view of what you have done for us to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God.

Romans 12:1

This is your true and proper worship.

That worship is not something you watch, it's a full body sport.

I love how Pastor Louis Giglio, an author, said it.

He said that worship is a whole life response to the greatness and glory of God.

This is what worship is recognizing and responding to the greatness of God.

So then, why do we come and sing, Ryan?

What is that about?

How does that lead me there?

First, music is the language of the soul, and you know this.

Isn't it amazing how a song can evoke emotion?

Can take you to a moment?

That moment when she broke up with you or he broke up with you, or that moment when you first said, I love you.

You see, music can move you in ways that words alone cannot.

When my wife and I were dating, we have a had a song and we still have a song.

We dance to that song, Edda James at last.

And it doesn't matter where I'm at.

I can be in a grocery store, I can be, you know, driving my car, I can be anywhere, and the minute I hear that song, it takes me back to those early days of dating, takes me back to the moment when I said I do to my beautiful bride, and we dance together, and it just brings back all of that emotion in that moment.

See, music is the language of the soul, and so we worship musically because it connects our hearts in ways that mere words fall short.

And then, secondly, music changes the atmosphere, doesn't it?

I mean, that's why movies have soundtracks, right?

And TV shows have because when you take that soundtrack, uh, Gladiators isn't as epic, by the way, without the music behind it.

It changes the atmosphere, whether it's a party or whether it's just, you know, uh at a restaurant.

This is important, by the way, because worship music sets the atmosphere.

This is why when we come in, it says, enter his gates with thanksgiving, enter his gates with praise.

That that first song is so important because it's setting the atmosphere for what we're doing, that we're just coming into his gates with praise and we're lifting our eyes up on him.

We're lifting our eyes off of all the things that we walked in with, and we're just going, God, we've come to meet with you.

I'd encourage you, friends.

Man, maybe you're having a rough day.

Would you throw on some worship music?

It sets the atmosphere.

Maybe you're feeling anxious, overwhelmed, depressed.

Would you throw on some worship music?

Maybe your kids are really crazy right now.

Throw on some worship music.

You know, for us, many mornings we start the day in the house just with worship music because it sets the atmosphere.

In the morning, I just drive with worship music.

Then I put on laid-back beach vibes after that because that's what I drive home to.

It sets the atmosphere for laid-back beach vibes.

That's the reason I go home to them.

And so we gather.

We when we gather, we're coming to meet with God and in doing so respond to who he is through musical worship.

This is what we're doing.

This is the tent of meaning.

In fact, I just want to help kind of you understand the structure of our gathering a little bit.

Because we have a worship service, not just worship music.

This entire thing is we set aside to create a moment where we encounter the presence of Jesus.

And so the musical worship on the front end, this is the way I've always thought about it.

Uh, the musical worship on the front end is where uh I believe it's just preparing the heart, the soil of his soul, to begin to hear from God.

It's that spot where, man, you may not have been ready today to hear from God or meet with him, but it's just starting to prepare your soul, it's just getting you ready.

And then the word of God is the seed of life.

And it says it's planting, then when I'm preaching the word of God, it's the planting of the seed of the word of God.

And then the second set of word worship is often the watering of the soil to germinate that seed so that you respond.

That's like what we're we're doing a worship service.

This is part of the worship service.

We have to shift our perspective of what's taking place in our gathering.

This is the tent of meeting.

We're meeting with God.

And he wants to meet with us, he wants to be in our mints.

But this begs the question then who are we meeting with?

Who is God?

And so we must adjust our pursuit.

Our perspective, then our pursuit.

We must adjust our pursuit from personal, personal fulfillment to God in his glory.

Adjust your pursuit and your aim, what you're running after, from personal fulfillment to hello, God, it's all about you and it's all because of you, and it's all for your glory.

In fact, the pursuit that Moses' cry on his heart was show me your glory.

Moses is having a conversation with God in the tents of meetings.

And in it, he says something that is at the heart of every single one of us, our longing, the ache of our soul.

He says, God, would you show me your glory?

And we don't use glory a lot, so it kind of misses us a little bit.

But glory, God's glory is his visible manifestation of the excellence of God's character.

The Hebrew word kavod, it literally means a heaviness, a majesticness, a splendor displayed in brilliant light and beauty.

See, this is the ache of your soul, is the desire for God's glory.

You're searching for your heart's longing for.

It's longing for God.

And this is why some of you wandered in today.

Because the gods that you have been worshiping, the gods that you've been adoring, the gods that have captivated your heart have fallen short, haven't they?

The gods of your career or success, of a carefully crafted image, the gods, you know, of a relationship that is perfect and will finally fulfill you, the gods of pleasure and getting to do whatever you want whenever you want, uh, the gods of power and all that in you, they've come up wanting, and you're going, they've left me empty, and you've walked into this place because you were created for one true God, his glory, and it's a hunger that you're desiring and longing for.

It's interesting.

In uh the Septuagint, that's the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible.

Uh, I can't remember exactly, I think it was about 140 years pre-Christ, uh, before Jesus walked on the earth, uh, a group of scholars translated the um Hebrew text into Greek.

Uh it was the common language of the day.

And as they're doing this, as they came to this text, show me your glory, when they when they translated glory from the Hebrew into the uh Greek, you know how they translated it?

It was this way.

God, would you show me the real you?

Show me your glory, show me the real you.

Like, like not the person in my mind, not the person I've made up.

God, would you show me you?

I want to know you.

I want to know who you are.

A.W.

Tozer in his book, Knowledge of the Holy, says, left to ourselves, we tend to immediately reduce God to manageable terms.

We want to get him where we can use him, or at least know where he is when we need him.

We want a God we can in some measure control.

And that is not the God of the Bible.

We have to get to the place where our pursuit is not after a God that we can somehow manipulate or control, but a God where we say, Show me you.

I want to know you.

And I love how God responds.

Notice this.

And the Lord said, I will cause all of my goodness to pass in front of you.

You want to know me?

It's goodness.

I will cause all of my goodness.

In fact, uh, New Testament scholar D.A.

Carson says, God's glory then is supremely his goodness.

And I will proclaim my name, the Lord in your presence.

I will have mercy on whom I'll have mercy, and I'll have compassion on whom I'll have compassion.

But he said, You cannot see my face, for no one can see me and live.

Show me your glory, it's your goodness.

And he says, Uh, I'll show you all of my goodness.

In fact, what he tells Moses later is, I'm gonna hide you in the cleft of the crock, uh cleft of uh the rock of the mountainside, because if you see me, you uh I you can't handle all of me in this moment.

In fact, I'm I I'm gonna pass by and you'll see my backside or the afterglow, the residue of glory left over.

That's what you can handle.

And the goodness is just gonna be so overwhelming to you in that moment, but you're gonna get to see the real me.

And I just want to take you somewhere.

This will uh connect some dots for you.

Flip over real quick to John chapter one, because for some of us you're thinking, like, that's awesome, but I'm not Moses.

This may be a tent of meeting, but there's no pillar of cloud and there's no fire, Ryan.

Show me your glory.

Hello.

Uh, what does that mean for us today?

John chapter one.

This is how the apostle John opens up his gospel as he's explaining who Jesus is.

The word became flesh, incarnate, and made his dwelling, literally pitched his tent, the God who wants to be in our midst among us.

Immediately the readers would be thinking back to Exodus 33.

We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Like if you want to see the glory of God, if you want to see the goodness of God, if we want to know who God is really, uh, what he is really like, you look to Jesus.

He is the exact uh representation and image of God.

It's his glory revealed.

And we begin to set our eyes and fix our eyes on Jesus.

I think when we worship and we come, okay, our perspective shifting our focus.

God, I want to I want to see you, I want to know you, okay.

So, Jesus, you are the revelation of God and his glory.

So I'm gonna fix my eyes, show me more of Jesus in this meeting, show me more of Jesus.

But I think if I'm honest, and this has been my posture at time, this is the way I've come into church at times.

And it's kind of the way I experienced the Grand Canyon as a kid.

And I've never been back since, which is a bummer.

But when I was nine years old, we moved from Texas to California, and on the way, my dad, you know, he had three kids that were really mad at him for ripping us from the home with our friends and all this.

We're driving across to California.

We didn't, I mean, we we didn't even know what California was like.

And so he's driving this, you know, converter van with three kids, you know, that boys, and then my sister was too young, so she's not culpable.

She's actually innocent in this story.

Um, and then we had two animals that were drugged up for the drive.

It just was a miserable, miserable drive.

And he said, Well, you know what?

I'm gonna try to make this a little better.

Let's go to the Grand Canyon, which I think was like two or three hour detour from the way.

I don't really know, but it was a long way.

All we knew is just longer in the car.

Both my brothers and I, we get out of the car, we look at this big hole in the ground, ten minutes later, get back in the car and say, Let's go.

What's going on?

Yeah, this was literally our response.

Big hole in the ground.

Keep it a moving.

I think sometimes, friends, we're confronted with majesty, we're confronted with the Grand Canyon, and and and by the way, beauty is not hard to find, it's just easy to overlook and we can miss it.

And we're confronted with Jesus, and he's trying to meet us, but we're just like, I'm not gonna go there.

I'm gonna get back in the car, and would you just lean in?

And would you go there?

We just go, no, no, no.

I'm gonna stop and I'm actually gonna take it in.

I'm gonna stop and really be present.

I'm gonna pray.

As I'm sitting here in this place, God, would you show me your glory?

Would you get my eyes more on you, Jesus?

So I want to get my attention and my eyes fixed more on you.

I'm not getting back into the car, I'm gonna actually go down into the canyon and I'm gonna be in awe of you.

That's what passionate worshipers do.

So Moses goes up onto the mountain, Mount Sinai.

He needed to get a second edition of the Ten Commandments.

You can read about that and why he needed to replace the ones that he broke.

And he's encountering the glory of God, and God is passing by him.

And see, when you encounter the glory of God, your posture changes.

Like the way you hold yourself changes.

Notice what it said.

And Moses bowed to the ground at once and worshiped.

Do you know the most common posture in Scripture when one encounters the presence of God is to bow.

We don't do it much in our culture today.

To get low, to get prostrate, to get on your face before the high and exalted one, because you bow in reverence, you bow in honor, you get on your knees because you recognize that you are God and I am not, that I am in the tent of meetings and I'm seeing the glory of God, and I'm overwhelmed by your goodness, I'm overwhelmed by your greatness, I'm overwhelmed by your love, I'm overwhelmed that you are high and exalted and immense and yet intimate at the same time, that you're completely holy and yet at wholly drawn to me, and I don't get that.

And so I get low in reverence and honor.

And friends, our posture, our posture is so important.

Our posture often aligns and directs our internal world.

And there's some times where you're going, I'm not really feeling it, and you just need to get on your knees before the Lord.

As you get on your knees, then it will begin to align your heart and soul with what he's doing in your life.

But what are some other postures of worship?

Well, you bow and kneel in reverence.

We stand in honor.

Stand in awe.

There used to be a song, I stand, I stand in all of you.

Nobody knows that song was in the 90s.

You knew it?

Okay.

In fact, next week we're going to talk about the preaching of God's word, and people would stand in the in honor and awe of God's word as it was read out loud.

And we're going to stand next week in the reading of God's word.

You can dance in joy and delight, and some people, man, the joy of the Lord filled your heart.

David danced before the Lord, uh, undignified, it says, and and you can dance.

And my wife said, I can't, but you can dance.

So I sway.

She told me to just like uh hitch, keep the arms down between 10 and 2.

I get them up high, get them going.

She says, Please stop.

You may be worshiping, but everyone else is distracted.

But dance before the Lord, and some of you just dance, and it's wonderful.

And you dance here, and we raise our hands, and I love this picture, and it's always been the picture of a child reaching out for their parent, for their mom or their dad.

And we reach out for our parents in different ways and for different reasons, right?

There's times when we're scared in the middle of the night, and we just reach out and we call mom, dad, generally mom in the middle of the night.

I don't know why.

And then we reach out just in excitement or just want to be.

You know, my kids, I mean, I've got two teenagers and one middle schooler.

When I get home, they're still excited to see me.

I hope that never changes.

And they actually run to the door.

I hope they don't mind me saying I should have asked them ahead of time.

And they just give me a big hug and say, Dad, welcome home.

We missed you.

And it's amazing that, like, when we're worshiping, that we're just so in awe of who God is that we just raise our hands and go, Whoa, Deavenly Father, I'm just in awe.

I love being in your presence.

I love being with you.

You're incredible.

In postures of worship, we bow, we stand, we dance, we raise our hands.

To move from just worship music to a passionate worshipers, a perspective, the tent of meetings, pursuit, show you me your glory.

And then we have to ask, what difference does this make?

What happens as a result?

When we spend time in the presence of God, we end up reflecting the glory of God.

When we spend time in the presence of God, you end up reflecting the glory of God.

The presence.

Instead of Moses' face, it was radiance.

He comes down the mountain after being with God.

It says, when Moses came down with two tablets of the covenant of the law in his hands, he was not aware that his face was radiance because he had spoken with the Lord.

He's glowing, he's like a glow worm.

You know, I mean, he I mean, that had to free, I did, it freaked him out.

It said they were afraid, or you go on uh the next verse, it says they're afraid.

They're like, what's going on?

And so to not freak people out, he started wearing this veil.

And then you know what he did because he wouldn't always spend time in the presence of God and the glow would fade.

He wore the veil to cover up that he hadn't spent time with God, and the glow had faded.

And the apostle Paul picks up this theme for you and I and what this means in 2 Corinthians chapter 3.

2 Corinthians 3 · chapter mention

He says, Now the Lord is spirit, and where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

And we all who with unveiled faces, we don't put a veil up like Moses did, contemplate or literally reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord who is spirit.

We are to be the people of the afterglow.

We are to be the people that when they get after there's this afterglow of his presence and of his glory in our life that people, when they come and they encounter you, when they come and see you, when you walk away from church, there's just to be you should there should be some sort of glowing going on.

And you may not even know it and you may not even recognize it, but somebody who's like, you see, hey, there's something.

Like you spent time in the presence of God and at work, there's just something, there's a peace, there's a there, there, there's a glow about you, there's a radiance about you.

Because when you spend time in the presence of God, when we sit in the presence of God, when we're together in the presence of God, we begin to reflect his glory, begin to become more like his son, Jesus.

And people just begin to see the afterglow of his glory in our lives.

One scholar wrote this Moses only reflected God's glory and had to wear a veil, so people could not see the glory disappear.

But today, God's people radiate God's glory from within as they see Jesus.

And so, as we close, why do we do this corporately?

The tent of meetings together.

You know, a couple years ago, um, I didn't get a meat curry, but I did have a chance with a number of people at our church.

We see to go to a game and get to get in early.

See, the Warriors organization invited um churches and other uh you know, Christians up and said they sent an email to us and said, Hey, we'd love to have you up.

You can buy some special tickets that are discounted, and um, then you get to get in early, and you're gonna get to see them warm up on the floor, like you're all the way down there.

I mean, your seats are way up there, but you get to be all the way on the floor.

And this was awesome.

So a bunch of us went, Steve Papuyas and his boys, and me and Miles uh went up there and a number of others, and I gotta tell you, this was amazing.

For obviously, you know, I'm a kind of a curry freak at this point, and you're deeply concerned for other reasons for your pastor.

But I'm sitting there on the floor with Miles, and you see this picture, like I'm that close to curry warming up, watching him.

I'm going, this is amazing.

But you know what was more amazing was not just me getting to be there.

That would have been great.

It's getting to share it with my son.

Isn't it true that these moments when you get to share them with one another, they're powerful.

They're bonding, they're connecting, they begin to form a way, even as Miles and I, two years and two and a half years later, still talk about, oh, wasn't that so great?

And we don't have to go, you well, you had to be there.

No, we were there.

And the thing that God did in our midst, we were there.

And we get to gather together and be there as he meets us.

You know, we're gonna close with a song from Matt Redman called The Heart of Worship.

It's an old song, and probably for some it's a brand new song.

And you know, uh, I like how my brother says it.

He says, Worship music is just um prayers in song form.

These are just my prayers I'm writing.

And so if you don't know the song, would you just allow this to be your prayer?

And if you do know the song, would you allow this to be your heart's cry?

Where it says, I'm coming back to the heart of worship, where it's all about you, not about me, it's all about you, Jesus.

This is the tent of meeting.

Show me you, Jesus.

I'm running after you.

God, would you make that true of us?

Would you make us passionate worshipers?

Where we would gather in your name for your glory and renown.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

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