Our Beliefs : Sermons : Sermon Archive - 2007 : February 18, 2007

Theme: Seeing the Face of God

Church year occasion: Transfiguration

God wants us to do what's right. That's obvious. But just as important to God is not only what we do, but also how we do it and why we do it. All of those things must line up if we can say we are truly following God's will.

Let me illustrate. I recently heard a story about some 12-year-old girls who were learning how to put on lipstick in the bathroom at school. That was fine, but then they would press their lips on the mirrors, leaving behind all kinds of lip prints for the custodian to clean up every night. Needless to say, the custodian didn't appreciate it, and one day after school he showed the principal. She helped him clean them off that night. The next day, she called the girls into the bathroom along with the custodian. There again were the lip prints they had put on that morning. Then she smiled and told them it was going to stop. "And this is why," she said. "I thought you'd be interested in how I cleaned off the mirrors last night." She then took the custodian's squeegee, dipped it into the toilet, and then used that to clean the mirrors. Strangely enough, they didn't have any lip prints on the mirrors after that.

I think you'd agree with me in saying that was a pretty effective way to change those girls' behavior -- with a threat of the consequences if their behavior didn't change. But this morning the Apostle Paul tells us that there is a much better way to change what we do, how we do it and why we do it -- oh, and it also changes where we'll spend eternity -- by seeing the face of God.

Moses was as close as anyone ever got to see the face of God in its glory. We read it from Exodus 34 (verses 29-35) earlier in the service how he came down from Mt. Sinai with the Ten Commandments and how his face would shine brightly afterward for a while as a result because he had spoken with God. But then something strange happened. When he finished speaking with them, he covered his face with a veil. But whenever Moses spoke with God, his face would again light up. Then he would talk to the people about God's law, but immediately cover his face with the veil to hide the disappearing glow.

What in the world does that mean? Well, St. Paul actually gives us a commentary on that rather strange passage from the Old Testament -- a passage that some of us might not have ever heard before. He says the reason is that now there is a better ministry and message that comes from it than Moses was given. Moses was given the ministry of the Law. It said, "You shall not!" and "Do! And "Don't do!" It showed Old Testament Israel how they should worship and govern themselves and act toward God and each other. It promised blessing if it could be kept, but it promised curses and death for those who couldn't keep it. And, of course, no one could. Paul says, "The wages of sin is death," and that's exactly what happened to all who couldn't keep God's law perfectly -- it brought death. And that's what it was meant to show us, that we're sinners who deserve death, as Paul also says, "Through the law we become conscious of sin." (Romans 3:20)

However, the Jewish people didn't understand. Moses wanted them to see the Law in all its glory -- that God would damn anyone who didn't do it all perfectly. When Moses spoke to them the Law as God had spoken it to him, they would look on his radiant face and know God meant business and demanded obedience in every action, but also every word and thought. But even as Moses was speaking, the radiant light of his face would start to fade. That's where the veil comes in. Why did Moses put the veil over his face? Paul tells us in verse 13: "Moses would put a veil over his face to keep the Israelites from gazing at it while the radiance was fading away." Just as the light from Moses' face faded away with time, the Israelites soon became complacent with their sins, thinking that they weren't so bad or that God was talking to others about death through sin, but not them, not the Israelites. They were his chosen nation, after all. And so the Israelites twisted the law. They softened it. They became mesmerized with the laws, rituals, feasts, festivals, holy days, Sabbaths and the sacrifices. That became their religion. As long as they were doing what God ordered, they figured everything between them and God was fine. In essence, they had twisted around what God wanted the ministry of the Law to do -- instead of showing them that they were sinners who deserved nothing but eternal death, they thought that they were pretty good and deserved eternal life because they were pretty good.

And so they became blind to God's holy glory and deaf to God's calling them to repentance. Paul sums it up: "Their minds were made dull, for to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read." The main teaching of Judaism is still to keep the laws of the Ten commandments and other laws added by their leaders and everything will be fine between them and God. They're still blind -- and going to hell if the veil of self-righteousness isn't removed.

What do you see when you look at the commandments of God? Do you review your life, or at least the last few weeks or days, and conclude that if you've been fairly good, you're OK with God; but if you have been rotten or excessively sinned, you've blown your chances of getting to heaven? If so, then you are also blind to the purpose of God's law. Then you are just like any Muslim or Mormon or Jew or Hindu -- any non-Christian. Their man-made religion says that if I'm good, I'm OK with God. If I do wrong, I need to make up for it by living better. That makes sense to us. The Bible says, "There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death."

So God himself had to show us a different way -- the only way -- to be right with God. Paul speaks of God's way in verse 16: "But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away." The Lord is the Lord Jesus Christ. As we know, Wednesday begins another Lenten season. There's no law that says we have to hold these Lenten services, but we will anyway. Because in Lent we concentrate on the sufferings and death of Jesus and what was accomplished through them. The book of Hebrews says, "Christ has appeared once for all…to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself." The price Jesus paid to save me was not cheap…the life and blood of the most unique person who ever lived. Jesus was both God and man in one person. There never was or will be another person like him. That's why his blood shed for us was enough to save us from punishment that all our sins have brought on us -- God's punishment and eternal death in hell.

We dare never put a veil over our faces when we look into God's holy Law. Its glory tells us that God is holy and demands we be holy and when we're not he demands an accounting. But we also dare never to think that is the last word. The ministry of the Law, although it is vitally important, was never meant to be the last word. God showed that by the glory fading from Moses' face. But God showed his true glory when he sent his own Son to take our sins on himself. Peter, James and John saw a brief glimpse of that greater glory of God in the gospel when they looked into the face of Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration. Then they knew this was God himself, and they were terrified. But they didn't need to be. Jesus came to bring peace to our troubled hearts that accuse us of never being good enough, of constantly failing him and others. He would bring peace when he was weighed down with our sins and paid their punishment. He looked like anything but the glorious God when he hung on the cross. But that is how Jesus purchased our freedom. Our reading says, "Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom." There is freedom from sin's punishment, from death in hell and freedom to serve God on this earth. All of this is due to Jesus' sufferings and death for us. Peter, James and John didn't see the face of God on the Mount of Transfiguration; they saw the face of God on Mount Calvary when he shed his lifeblood to save them. And that is when we see the face of our loving and glorious God as well.

Jesus said, "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." Right before that he said, "My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you....If you love me, keep my commandments." There are those commandments again, urging us to honesty, goodness, godliness, selflessness. All of these virtues and characteristics were displayed in Jesus' life. Loving him who first loved us, we desire to serve him and display those same characteristics in our lives. So our text says, "We, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit." The more we see the face of God in our Savior's suffering and death, the more our lives will reflect that glory. We will be more and more willing to serve others, help others, live for others, perhaps even give up our lives for others as Jesus did for us.

In Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel, The Great Stone Face, a boy named Ernest lived in a valley where he could view a rock formation that looked like an old man peering intently into the valley. His mother tells him that someday a venerable man who bears a likeness to that face will visit the valley. So Ernest waits and watches for years. Great men from all walks of life come and go, but none resembles the man on the mountain. Ernest reaches old age, disappointed that his mother's prediction has never come true. Then a famous poet visits the area and watches and listens as Ernest delivers a speech to his neighbors. The poet notices in Ernest's face a resemblance to that great stone face on the mountain. Having gazed on the figure daily for many years, Ernest had gradually come to resemble that great stone face.

That's what happens when we gaze regularly, daily at our Lord's glory in the Scriptures. As we see more and more of God's face, we are changed into his likeness, slowly but surely, over an entire lifetime. Then others, looking at us, will see the marvelous transformation of Christ in us.

In the meantime, we are comforted with God's promise of forgiveness for all sin. Why is it that we have the gall to go to God again and again, for the same sins, and say, Lord, forgive me? We know that he won't because he promised he wouldn't. Paul says, "Since we have such a hope, we are very bold." Be bold this week as you show people the face of God now that you have seen that face yourself in the gospel of Jesus. Amen.