Finding Your Why: Living the Resurrected Life & Reflecting God’s Glory

Discover how a clear purpose unlocks true joy, direction, and the power to display God’s glory. We explore Genesis 1, Psalm 8, Romans 6‑8, and 2 Corinthians 3 to reveal why we were created to reflect the Father’s image. Learn how sin veils our purpose and how the resurrection removes that veil. Walk out of the “what” into the “why” and become a living mirror of divine glory.

Transcript

Michael: 0:00

We're gonna go right into the word, and so I want you to open to Romans chapter 8 and worship team as you guys come back up. I want you to go back into that song, Evan, if you guys would. Okay. Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Lord. Once again, if you're visiting, we welcome you and we we thank the Lord for having you join us today. And um our sole purpose, if you go into foyer, you see our our core values up there, and and one of them it says is his presence is our pursuit. And this is the purpose for why we're here. If you're a member here, this is a reminder of what our purpose is. And so during after that first song, when I got up to talk, I told you guys that that we're going back to our why. And so Simon Sinek has a book called Start with Why. And um, if you are interested in in leadership at all, and you're you're whether you're in the marketplace, whether you're in vocational ministry, this is a book I would recommend to everybody. And sometimes I think as believers living in this world, knowing that our citizenship is not this world, I think sometimes we lose our why. So I want you to process with me a little bit. You guys know I'm interactive, you guys know I don't want to just sit here and lecture you. But what is at stake if a person loses their purpose and their why? In your perspective, what's at stake? All right, somebody said everything. Let's be a little bit more specific. Okay, their joy, direction, focus, their family, peace. Okay, somebody on this side of the room. What's at stake if we lose our why? Your destiny is at stake if we lose our why. Please hear that. In our striving against sin, in the battles that we face in this world, in trusting God for payroll, in trusting God for our future, and trying not to get caught up in all these things and all the battles that we face. Sometimes we're so drowned out by all those things that we've forgotten our God-given purpose of why we're on this earth and what our destiny is. And in that book that I mentioned by Simon Sinek, he teaches that lasting success and people who actually accomplish their destiny are marked by a clear sense of purpose. A clear sense of purpose. They know their cause, they know their why, and they live from the why. They don't live from the what. As Americans, a lot of us are like, what? What's the first question we ask a dude? Hey man, what do you do when we meet a new guy? Why don't we ask him, why are you here? What's your purpose? No, we just we're just content to know what. And a lot of us live out of that what. And I think God's drawing us deeper into our why. And if we are around people who live by their why, we find them inspirational. They motivate us, they inspire us to action. And we we're attracted to their tenacity and to the movements that they create in their actions. And it should be this way with the church. We should have this effect in culture, we should have this effect wherever we go. So I want everybody to go back to Genesis chapter one, and we're gonna remember our why. Because if we don't live out of the why, then whatever our what is, it will drown out our why. Genesis chapter one is a very famous passage, but sometimes I think we lose the magnificence of this passage in its familiarity. So Genesis 1, 26. Then the Lord, sorry, then God said, Let us make man in our image. There's some really important pronouns here, not as our society calls them, but as the Bible calls them. And those pronouns are us and our. And it's the representation of the concept that we call in Christianity the Trinity, is the three persons of the Godhead, God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, working in perfect unity, saying to one another, let us create man in our image, according to our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and the sky, over the cattle, and over all the weeping, sorry, not weeping, creeping. Pretty close, okay? Over all the creeping things that creep on the earth. And God created man in his own image. In his image, God created them. Male and female, he created them. And then he said, he blessed them and said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, and rule over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth. So God created man in his own image. If you got a phone, which I'm sure 95% of the people in this room do, have take your phone out and open the camera. Hit that little reverse button to where it looks back at you. Most people are already prepared to take selfies anyway, so get your camera out. I shouldn't have opened my phone. I know better than that on a Sunday morning. But I just got a random text. Are you the new yoga instructor? You can tell that's a fish. Jesus help me. Yeah, send him a selfie. That's it. Oh, God help us. Let's delete and report junk. Okay. Squirrel. All right, here we go. Get your cameras out. Flip that thing and look in it. It is displaying an image that God created. Now there's not a likeness in this room perfectly. Every single one of us are different. You might have a child that might look a lot like you, but they're still different. But what the camera beholds is what it shows. And church, who we behold is who we show. We are meant to display the image of our Creator. And I want to leave you with a question. Today, I want I want you to consider this. Have you ever thought that creation was never intended to see us? Creation was never intended to see self. Creation was created to see who we're beholding. You're like, where are you going with this? Stay with me. In Psalm chapter eight, verse four, I'm going to read this to you. You don't have to turn there. In four through six, he says this. And you crown him with glory and majesty. Church, I need you to hear this. You crown man with glory and majesty, and you make him to rule over the works of your hands. If you overlay Genesis 1 in Psalm 8, it is the same thing. So what did God do? God said, Adam, I'm going to crown you with my glory. Eve, I'm going to crown you, I'm going to bestow my glory on you so that when creation looks at you, they see me. And Adam and Eve from that moment partnered with God. They beheld his glory with no hindrances. They walked in intimacy with him, reflecting him in every way that he was. And creation was taking in the full splendor of God with every interaction with Adam and Eve. Their creativity, their inspiration, their wisdom all functioned. And creation submitted to it because they beheld the glory of God. And then came the serpent. And Eve believed a lie with Adam right next to her. Not covering her, not doing his job as a husband. And they both sinned. And in Romans chapter three, it says, There is no one righteous, no, not one. And the saddest verse to me in Scripture says, All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Now I need you to see this. God bestowed his glory on mankind. And we were placed in creation to display that glory. And when they chose to believe the lie and try to do things in their independence apart from God trying to be like God, that glory was taken from them. And there was a separation. They could no longer reflect the glory that they were created to reflect. And that's why it says, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Because we were created to display the glory of God. And sin, it's like putting a towel over your phone and then trying to take a selfie with it. It's blocked. It can't behold you. And that's what sin did to us. It took what we were created to be and to do. And it made it impossible. There's a veil that keeps us from beholding his glory. And so I want you to look at Romans 6. This has been, for those of you who are visiting, we've been in a series on the crucified life and the resurrected life. And what is this life God has intended us to live? And for the last few weeks we've been going through this. And I'm going to quickly go through this, so, and we're going to end with another time of worship here. Romans chapter 6, we're going to read verses 1 through 4. What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be. How shall we who died to sin live in it still? Or do you not know that all of us who've been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death? Verse 4. So that as Christ was raised, listen, as Christ was raised from the dead through what? Say it with a little bit of conviction. Through what? Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You mean the glory of the Father, which is evidenced by the Spirit of God, is what raised Christ. So if we're in Him, what raised us? The very thing that was stolen from us by sin. We were created to live in it and to display it. We were created to see the glory of God and to walk in intimacy with Him, displaying Him, and sin put a veil over it. But when Christ died, the veil was torn. And the glory of the Father raised him up through Christ's resurrection by the glory of the Father is what has brought us back to life. So now go to Romans chapter 8. These are all continual thoughts. Basically, Romans chapter 3 through 8. Every believer should bury themselves quite literally in these scriptures until they become life to us. Romans chapter 8. He goes through and talks about living according to the spirit of Christ that is in us. In verse 11, if the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, then he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies through his spirit that dwells in you. This is the resurrected life. Well, what's the point of the resurrected life? Keep reading. For all who are being led by the Spirit of God are the sons of God, and he gave us not a spirit of fear, but of adoption. And the Spirit testifies that we're co-heirs with Christ and God's children. Now pick up in verse 18 with me. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with what? All right. Come on, church, say it with me. The sufferings of this world are not worthy to be compared with that is going to be revealed. In who God is getting us back to our why. Because He wants to reveal His glory, but like a mirror, we can only show what we behold. And if we're so stuck in the meaningless battles of this life that they're important, but they're not eternal. If we're so weighed down with the cares and the deceitfulnesses, deceitfulness of riches and the worries of this life, and it's choking the God-given call for us to display his glory. For the ancient blah blah blah, not anxious, for the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. Now let's put these two verses together. Paul says that the sufferings of this world won't compare to the glory revealed in us, and then he immediately brings creation back into it. Why is creation waiting for the sons and the daughters to be revealed? Is because it is sick of looking at self. It is crying out. Creation is groaning to see God's glory again. And that is contingent upon us. Look at the next verse. For creation, verse twenty, was subjected to futility. Not willingly, which means it was the action of someone else that caused this. Not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope. Verse 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its slavery to corruption in freedom of what? Of the children of God. Is because creation is say, I am dying, I'm under corruption unless I see the glory of God revealed through his children again. So what is our role? To display the glory of God. The resurrection ensured victory over sin, over that veil, enabling mankind to display the glory of God again. In church, this is what we're called to. This is our purpose. I want you to go to Second Corinthians chapter three, verse eighteen. I want all of you to read this. Second Corinthians chapter three. And the people couldn't handle it. So they said, Moses, no, no, you got to block us from this. Put a veil over it because we can't handle it. And in Exodus 33, it says the chapter before that, it says that Moses spoke to God face to face as a man speaks to another man. And then he said, God, show me your glory. Lord, nothing else matters if your presence doesn't go with us. Show us your glory. Moses knew his why. And church, we got to remember our why. So he goes on in verse 7, he says, if the ministry of the Lord of death in letters engraved on stones came with glory, so much that the sons of Israel could not look at the face of Moses because of the glory, fading as it was, verse 8, how much more will the spirit fail to be even more with glory? And if the Spirit of God dwells in us, it should be more glorious than Moses' face shining and reflecting the glory of God. Verse 9, for if the ministry of condemnation has glory, how much more does the ministry of righteousness abound in glory? Church, glory is not a place, it's a person. His glory is the only word we can use to describe his presence. It's the only word that we could think of in some way to describe when people see God. Now, look at what this says. But their minds were hardened, for until this very day, at the reading of the old covenant, the same veil remains unlifted, because it is only removed in Christ. But to this day, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their heart. But whenever a person turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. What's he saying? When we come to Christ, he restores our capacity to display the glory of God. Now where the Spirit, where the Lord is spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. Now look at verse 18. But we all with an unveiled face, beholding as in the mirror the glory of the Lord. What does it say? Beholding what? Are being transformed into the same image. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on a sec. Y'all stay with me. But we who are now saved by the Spirit, who no longer have a veil of sin blinding us, no longer have a veil of sin blocking us, like a mirror, like your phones, are beholding the glory of the Lord. It has been restored. We can see this, we can live in it every day. And what does it do? We are being transformed into that same image from glory to glory. What does that mean? That means every day we can look at God and He'll show us something new that we've never seen, and His glory will be revealed in us and something new we've never seen, and we'll display it like never before. Because this is what we're going to be doing in eternity. This is what they are doing right now in heaven. So what is the purpose? How does this apply to everyday life? Living the resurrected life enables us to fully display the glory of God on earth. Because earth was never meant to see us. It was never meant to see sin. It is crying out for God's glory to be revealed. And every day we have the choice: am I going to reveal him or am I going to reveal me? And guys, all the weight that we carry and all the issues of life are strangling our heart. It's hardening us. Elijah gave the word about the calluses. It's calloused us. That we've grown comfortable living with a veil. And God's saying, I've removed it. I want you to display my glory. I want to ask the worship team to come back up. Why do we need this? Because it's what you were created for. It's what your purpose is on this earth. You say, you mean I can I can really look at God? When Stephen was being stoned in Acts chapter six and seven, and they were throwing rocks at him, and they were, his life was literally leaving his body. They looked at him and Said, his face began to shine like the Son of Man. And Stephen looked up into heaven and said, I see the Son of Man. What Stephen was beholding, he displayed. Even in the midst of the most excruciating death by stoning. Church, we are called to display the glory of God. And we've got to get uncomfortable with the veil of sin. You can't say no to sin until you have something bigger to say yes to. Now we got to do business in this world. We got to be able to show creation. This is how the kingdom works. You are called to do this, but you're not called to do it by yourself. You're called to do it as you display the glory of God by how you treat your employees. You display the glory of God by how you pay your bills on time. You display the glory of God by how you treat a vendor. Y'all are really enjoying this, I can tell this. Church, we're resurrected for one purpose. And that's to be in his presence and reflect him. We are not resurrected for us. We're resurrected for his glory. I want you to stand.