SPEAKER_00: If you have a Bible, you can turn in your Bibles to Second Corinthians chapter three.
SPEAKER_00: 2nd Corinthians chapter 3.
SPEAKER_00: This is part two.
SPEAKER_00: If you missed part one, let me give it to you in a nutshell.
SPEAKER_00: Paul had been showing the difference between two ways of living.
SPEAKER_00: One was built on adequacy that is from God.
SPEAKER_00: And the other was a life based off of or a ministry based on the old covenant.
SPEAKER_00: One is built on this, I've got this sense of I've got to prove myself to the world.
SPEAKER_00: The other is this dependency on God's at work.
SPEAKER_00: God's already at work, trusting in the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: You'll recall that last week we saw that Paul was contrasting the old covenant letter of the law against the new covenant of grace and the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: You remember that Paul calls the ministry, there's a way to do and claim that you're a follower of Jesus, but to do ministry in a way that is just causing death in people's lives.
SPEAKER_00: That's ministry according to the old covenant.
SPEAKER_00: And then Paul had talked about how he's doing ministry according to the new covenant, the Spirit of God bringing life into people.
SPEAKER_00: And so we asked the question: in our relationships with the people around us, are we engaging those relationships according to the old covenant and bringing death into the people, into other people's lives?
SPEAKER_00: Or are we operating according to the new covenant, bringing life into the people around us?
SPEAKER_00: That's what we looked at last week.
SPEAKER_00: We ended at verse 11.
SPEAKER_00: So in order in order to um catch y'all up, I'm going to start from verse 2 and read up through verse 18.
SPEAKER_00: You yourselves are our letter written on our hearts, known and read by everyone.
SPEAKER_00: You show that you are Christ's letter delivered by us, not written with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God.
SPEAKER_00: Not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of human hearts, such as the confidence we have through Christ before God.
SPEAKER_00: It is not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God.
SPEAKER_00: He has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the spirit.
SPEAKER_00: For the letter kills, but the spirit gives life.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if the ministry that brought death, chiseled on letters, in letters on stones, came with glory, so that the Israelites were not able to gaze steadily at Moses' face because of its glory, which was set aside, how will the ministry of the Spirit not be more glorious?
SPEAKER_00: For if the ministry that brought condemnation had glory, the ministry that brings righteousness overflows with even more glory.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, what had been glorious is not glorious now by comparison, because the glory that surpasses it.
SPEAKER_00: For if what was set aside was glorious, what endures will be even more glorious.
SPEAKER_00: Since then we have such a hope, we act with great boldness.
SPEAKER_00: We are not like Moses who used to put a veil over his face to prevent the Israelites from gazing steadfastly until the end of the glory of what was being set aside.
SPEAKER_00: But their minds were hardened, for to this day, at the reading of the old covenant, the same veil remains.
SPEAKER_00: It's not lifted, because it is set aside only in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Yet still today, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their hearts.
SPEAKER_00: But whenever a person turns to the Lord, the veil is removed.
SPEAKER_00: Now the Lord is that Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: And where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
SPEAKER_00: We all with unveiled faces are looking as in a mirror at the glory of the Lord, and we're being transformed into the same image from glory to glory.
SPEAKER_00: This is from the Lord who is the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray together.
SPEAKER_00: Father, as we look at these verses this morning, we ask that your Spirit would teach us that what Paul's talking about, the ministry of the Spirit, would happen in our lives, and that you'd write on the tablets of our hearts, and that you do that inward work in us as we come before your word.
SPEAKER_00: And I pray for each person here that your spirit, that you would just highlight one thing, maybe two, that Lord, you're wanting to show us this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Teach us, Lord, as we sit and engage your word, as we study your word, please teach us, we pray.
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: What I want you to keep in mind as we go through this text is that the Spirit of God is at work not just to bear witness to your heart of the forgiveness brought to you by Jesus, but the Spirit of God is setting you free.
SPEAKER_00: The Spirit of God is bearing witness to this incredible, just unveiled, no longer needing to have a veil in your life, which we're gonna unpack a bit more as we go through this.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel doesn't, it doesn't just forgive you, it removes the veil, it frees you, and then you're being remade, you're being transformed.
SPEAKER_00: And you're in that process right now.
SPEAKER_00: If you have accepted Jesus' invitation to new life, if you've responded to the message about being saved and rescued, then you're in a relationship with God.
SPEAKER_00: What's happening?
SPEAKER_00: Paul's describing what's happening in your life.
SPEAKER_00: But here's the reality: you may be forgiven by the work that Jesus did on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: You may have responded to that invitation, but you may be engaging God in the same way that the Jews who were not following Jesus, how they were responding to God.
SPEAKER_00: And so Paul's teaching, he's discipling, he's training the Corinthian church to be able to discern and recognize that there are people who say they are Christians, they say they're followers of Jesus, but their modus operandi, the way that they operate, is more like an unsaved, Jesus-rejecting Jew than it is like an actual disciple of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And so, with open hearts, we ask the Spirit of God this morning, discern my life.
SPEAKER_00: Where in my life am I following the old covenant in order to relate to God rather than following the new covenant grace of God?
SPEAKER_00: And we want to be listening this morning for the Spirit to just point out, hey, when you had that conversation, when you were frustrated in your heart towards that person this week, when you were looking at that person that's very different from you and their lifestyle is different, and they're not yet a follower of Jesus, they're far from God, when you looked at that person, were you looking at them through the new covenant lens or the old covenant lens?
SPEAKER_00: When you were scrolling through your social media this week, are you engaging it from a perspective of old covenant or new covenant?
SPEAKER_00: Are you a legalist according to the letter of the law, or are you just this person overflowing with the grace of God?
SPEAKER_00: And so Paul calls the Corinthian church to take some things from verse 11, basically nine.
SPEAKER_00: You could go back to eight.
SPEAKER_00: You can go back all the way to eight, and he and that brings us up to verse 12.
SPEAKER_00: So let's look at that.
SPEAKER_00: You see that those of you that have gone through my teaching on inductive Bible study, you recognize this word here.
SPEAKER_00: What's that word?
SPEAKER_00: Since.
SPEAKER_00: Since is an indication that there's logic that Paul is using to make his case.
SPEAKER_00: And he says, since then we have such a hope.
SPEAKER_00: So he's pointing backwards to this material we covered last week.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying, since we have this hope.
SPEAKER_00: Well, the question then is, well, what's the hope he's talking about?
SPEAKER_00: And it's this hope that we have been entrusted with the ministry of the new covenant that is more glorious than what ministry Moses had.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, the law, he says, is the ministry of condemnation and death.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, when Moses came off the Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments, his face was radiating.
SPEAKER_00: It's glowing because there's a glory that comes from this encounter with God.
SPEAKER_00: And yet the old covenant that Moses brought, the letter of the law, was limited in its capacity.
SPEAKER_00: It was external, not internal.
SPEAKER_00: It judged and condemned rather than giving and authoring life.
SPEAKER_00: And it was performance-based.
SPEAKER_00: You do this and you'll receive this blessing.
SPEAKER_00: You do this and you'll be cursed.
SPEAKER_00: That was the ministry.
SPEAKER_00: Now it's from God, and God's establishing the nation of Israel, and it the law served a purpose, so it had glory.
SPEAKER_00: But what Paul is telling the Corinthian church is you have something so much better than the new covenant that Jesus brought in.
SPEAKER_00: At the end of our service, we're going to take the bread and the cup.
SPEAKER_00: And that cup, Jesus inaugurated the night before he died, he said, This cup is the cup of the new covenant, in my blood, which is shed for you.
SPEAKER_00: The new covenant, which is, it took blood, the shedding of blood to make this covenant between heaven and earth, between you and God.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus' blood was shed so that you could be under the new covenant, not under Moses' covenant, the old covenant.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul's last week he said, This is a glorious thing.
SPEAKER_00: It has so much more glory than that of the old covenant.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul talked about this veil that Moses would wear.
SPEAKER_00: Moses came down off the mountain.
SPEAKER_00: The Israelites see his face glowing and shining like a sun.
SPEAKER_00: And they're like, put a veil over it.
SPEAKER_00: We're freaked out by it.
SPEAKER_00: But then what happened was that the glory would fade.
SPEAKER_00: The glory would fade, but the veil would stay on Moses' face.
SPEAKER_00: Why did he keep the veil on his face?
SPEAKER_00: He didn't want Israel to see that the glory was fading away.
SPEAKER_00: It was being done.
SPEAKER_00: So that's important for you to understand as we come into the text this morning.
SPEAKER_00: So Paul says, this is our hope in our relationships, in our marriages, as we're leading our kids and our grandkids.
SPEAKER_00: As we're doing all of our relationships, we're living in the Jesus New Covenant and have this incredible hope in relationships.
SPEAKER_00: What hope comes from the letter of the law when you're in relationships?
SPEAKER_00: If you step into a relationship and you just have your list, your checklist.
SPEAKER_00: This is what it means to be a good person.
SPEAKER_00: You don't check all the boxes, then you're cursed.
SPEAKER_00: What kind of friendship is that?
SPEAKER_00: What kind of parenting is that?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe some of you had that kind of parent.
SPEAKER_00: Where you're always working off a checklist.
SPEAKER_00: And if you don't do it, man, you don't get approval.
SPEAKER_00: And you're always facing just this fear of judgment.
SPEAKER_00: But what Paul says is, no, no, no, no, no.
SPEAKER_00: We're a people in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: We've accepted this invitation to live in Jesus' kingdom under the new covenant, and we have this incredible hope.
SPEAKER_00: And so, what do we do?
SPEAKER_00: What action comes from this great hope?
SPEAKER_00: We act with great boldness.
SPEAKER_00: Act with great boldness.
SPEAKER_00: So in your relationships, there can be this foundational hope that leads to just a boldness.
SPEAKER_00: Now, what causes people to not be bold in relationships?
SPEAKER_00: Fear.
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
SPEAKER_00: Fear of disappointment, fear that you're not going to be approved of, fear that something's going to go wrong.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul says, hey, saints, you're under the new covenant.
SPEAKER_00: And so the way that I've worked with you, Corinthian church, is this just great boldness in my communication because God is at work.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you in work, like you're at work and you've got difficult people that you work with.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're not on the same page with them.
SPEAKER_00: You've got people that are just a pain, right?
SPEAKER_00: Just to kind of put it how it is.
SPEAKER_00: As a follower of Jesus, you're stepping into that relationship, knowing that the God of the Bible, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, is in your presence and is at work in your world.
SPEAKER_00: That you're bringing with you the values of the kingdom of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: When you choose to turn the other cheek, God is honoring that.
SPEAKER_00: When you just decide to return good when you're treated evil, God's there in your presence.
SPEAKER_00: When wrong is done to you, you're holding back from judgment, knowing that God repays and takes vengeance.
SPEAKER_00: Can I tell you just a real quick story about this?
SPEAKER_00: We have a brother who's in our church named Jude.
SPEAKER_00: Right back there.
SPEAKER_00: I had the privilege, I had the privilege of watching Jude two, probably about a month and a half ago.
SPEAKER_00: He came, he was over at the compassion center, he put his bag down next to this guy, and this guy blew up on Jude.
SPEAKER_00: So mad at him.
SPEAKER_00: How could you put your bag down here next to mine?
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you're dirty.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you got anything on your bag.
SPEAKER_00: Just cussing out Jude to his face.
SPEAKER_00: And Jude's like making trying to make peace, staying calm.
SPEAKER_00: He's not responding.
SPEAKER_00: The guy actually hit Jude.
SPEAKER_00: And Jude's like not responding, just making peace with the guy.
SPEAKER_00: And Hudson was there, worked with him, responded to him, de-escalated the situation.
SPEAKER_00: But Jude was wronged.
SPEAKER_00: And I got to talk to Jude after the fact.
SPEAKER_00: And Jude, I don't remember exactly every word you said to me, Jude, but it was this you processed it through this Christian paradigm of like, that's not right.
SPEAKER_00: The man's not treating me right, it's injustice.
SPEAKER_00: But you responded without instead of fighting him, which this guy desperately wanted, was a fight, he responded with peace.
SPEAKER_00: And I watched that and I was so upset that this had happened to Jude.
SPEAKER_00: And I had no power to like execute justice against the guy.
SPEAKER_00: I had no ability to like right the wrong, but what had happened to him was just, it was so wrong, not just to Jude, but to everybody around, had to put up with this garbage behavior.
SPEAKER_00: Yesterday um Friday, the guy who caused the conflict came to the compassion center and gave us a paper.
SPEAKER_00: We opened it up, and it was a memorial invitation to that guy's death.
SPEAKER_00: The guy died.
SPEAKER_00: A month and a half later.
SPEAKER_00: That guy died.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he died about uh less than a week ago, I think.
SPEAKER_00: And I looked at that and I was sad because I knew this guy's story.
SPEAKER_00: He he had um he had anger problems, he told me he had anger problems, he regretted what he did, but he was still defensive.
SPEAKER_00: He's a Muslim, yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I I looked at that and I just appreciated the fact that Judeo engaged in that situation in a way that was honoring to Jesus, and look, you know, how God deals with another person, that's up to God.
SPEAKER_00: I think the guy got hit, it was a hit and run, and he was on a scooter and he died.
SPEAKER_00: And so that's the idea, right?
SPEAKER_00: You all are in different settings, you're in different relationships, you've got stuff going on around you.
SPEAKER_00: We have this choice.
SPEAKER_00: Are we gonna take matters into our own hand?
SPEAKER_00: Are we gonna be like a Moses, bring in the ministry of death, or are we gonna trust Jesus in the way that we live, the way that we do things, right?
SPEAKER_00: Paul is saying, when I do life, when I work with other people, I'm acting with a great boldness, not anger, not eye for an eye, but a great boldness in my communication because of this hope I have in the fact that Jesus is at work.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, sir.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00: It is true, it is true, and we all make our own decisions, right, on how we're going to engage.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul's trying to encourage this church as you have these super apostles that are there that are trying to like trash Paul.
SPEAKER_00: Well, Paul's not there.
SPEAKER_00: It's just a messy situation, and Paul's just trying to say, hey, I want you to understand that there is, as a Jesus follower, we're doing life according to the new covenant, not according to the old covenant.
SPEAKER_00: Are you tracking?
SPEAKER_00: We got to keep moving here because we're gonna run out of time.
SPEAKER_00: Um in verse 9, if we go, if we were to go back to verse 9, it says that the ministry of the new covenant has more glory than that of the old covenant.
SPEAKER_00: There are a few things that you need to know as you look at this passage.
SPEAKER_00: The first is that Paul is contrasting a ministry that is rooted in the old covenant against a ministry based in the new covenant, which I've said.
SPEAKER_00: You just need to know that that contrast is in play.
SPEAKER_00: In Paul's setting, he was writing a letter to a church he had helped establish, but in his absence, it was being stolen away by a group that sarcastically he called super apostles.
SPEAKER_00: In that setting, Paul was not territorial or envious.
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't like, oh, you belong to me.
SPEAKER_00: That's not Paul's issue.
SPEAKER_00: Paul's not contending with this unnamed group of superapostles because he's a caddy.
SPEAKER_00: He's concerned for the spiritual health of the church.
SPEAKER_00: And he's hoping to help the Corinthian church see the issues with the superapostles' ministry.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: So Paul has to figure out how to be a pastor when his very authority is being challenged.
SPEAKER_00: That's really hard.
SPEAKER_00: If you're in a relationship that's like triangulated, it's not just you and a friend, but there's a third party there, and the relationship is being undercut by a bad influence.
SPEAKER_00: How you go about winning the argument in your friend's life without operating according to the Mosaic Old Covenant, it is challenging.
SPEAKER_00: It's challenging because it takes a lot of self-discipline.
SPEAKER_00: Naturally, we want to call down lightning from heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Remember the disciples who are like, just call down lightning from heaven, Jesus, and strike him dead, just like Elijah did with the bears that came out of the wilderness and mauled all the kids that were mocking Elijah.
SPEAKER_00: No, Jesus came as a minister of peace, turning the other cheek, right?
SPEAKER_00: He came to bring life.
SPEAKER_00: And our calling as followers of Jesus is to bring life to the people around us.
SPEAKER_00: The guy that died had the opportunity.
SPEAKER_00: Jude gave him the opportunity to have life.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't take it, he didn't take it and run with it.
SPEAKER_00: But Jude did his job in provisioning a space for peace, for the kingdom of heaven, for God to be at work in his life.
SPEAKER_00: Let's look at verses 13 and 14.
SPEAKER_00: Paul says, We are not like Moses, who used to put a veil over his face to prevent the Israelites from gazing steadily until the end of the glory of what was being set aside.
SPEAKER_00: Super simple, right?
SPEAKER_00: Paul's like, that's not how we do ministry.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, when I show up, I'm not playing games with you.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not rolling like I rolled into the parking lot this morning in the Whole Foods truck.
SPEAKER_00: But I don't have like a Rolls-Royce, right?
SPEAKER_00: I'm not like trying to have authority or influence in your life as a pastor by being something awesome that I'm not.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just normal.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just Josh, right?
SPEAKER_00: No, thank you.
SPEAKER_00: If there's anything awesome, it's like the work that God has done in me is continuing to work in me.
SPEAKER_00: That's what makes you awesome, right?
SPEAKER_00: Is that God's at work in us, and it's this, it's we're gonna see it in chapter four.
SPEAKER_00: It is a glory to behold.
SPEAKER_00: You guys are wonderful.
SPEAKER_00: I was watching you guys in your classes this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Scripture memorization and the feedback, going through the homework and wrestling with salvation and what does it mean?
SPEAKER_00: All of it.
SPEAKER_00: It's just like it's a beautiful thing to watch.
SPEAKER_00: But there's a way to be like Paul says, I'm not like Moses, but you and I have to ask the question: am I like Moses?
SPEAKER_00: Am I like Moses?
SPEAKER_00: Am I putting a veil over my face when I come to church or when I'm in my marriage or I'm with my kids?
SPEAKER_00: Am I playing games?
SPEAKER_00: Am I pretending that there's a glory behind the veil that's actually faded away a long time ago?
SPEAKER_00: But the people around me think because of my veil, they think that glory's still there.
SPEAKER_00: That's ministry according to the old covenant.
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to play those games.
SPEAKER_00: You've been liberated from playing games.
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to play, you don't have to pretend, like the glory that you have in your life, it's from Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: It's not because of something spectacular that you've ginned up.
SPEAKER_00: So he says in verse 14, but their minds, again, still speaking of the Israelites, the Israelites' minds, they were hardened.
SPEAKER_00: So Moses has a veil, and the Israelites' hearts got hard.
SPEAKER_00: Or their minds got hard.
SPEAKER_00: What's going on inside of them?
SPEAKER_00: What does it mean to have to have a hardened mind or heart?
SPEAKER_00: Nothing gets through.
SPEAKER_00: You know people like that.
SPEAKER_00: We call them hard-headed.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we call them hard-headed.
SPEAKER_00: And these Israelites were hard-headed.
SPEAKER_00: They were impenetrable.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, God, save us from being impenetrable, blind, operating off of a glory long past has faded away.
SPEAKER_00: And just playing games with people.
SPEAKER_00: That's not how we want to do friendships, relationships.
SPEAKER_00: Do you know how much energy it takes to keep that veil up in relationships?
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Some of you are exhausted because you just got the veil up, trying to pretend, oh, there's a glory.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, yeah, there's a glory in there.
SPEAKER_00: But it's actually faded away, and you you're just doing relationships and ministry according to the old covenant.
SPEAKER_00: But their minds were hardened, for to this day.
SPEAKER_00: So when you have this word here, right?
SPEAKER_00: For, that is a flag word for his substantiation.
SPEAKER_00: He's going to explain to us what does it mean for them to have their hearts hardened?
SPEAKER_00: For to this day, at the reading of the old covenant, the same veil remains.
SPEAKER_00: It's not lifted because it is not, it is set aside only in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: So the Israelites in Paul's day, they're engaged every Sabbath, even to this very day, yesterday, Jewish people gathered together and looked at the Hebrew Scriptures and said, This is the glory of God, this is the full glory of God.
SPEAKER_00: And they have a veil over their hearts and minds.
SPEAKER_00: They don't understand that the glory of the old covenant has faded away.
SPEAKER_00: And it's only set aside in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: The veil gets taken away, your heart is unveiled as you accept the invitation to receive Jesus as your Savior.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the veil remover.
SPEAKER_00: Remember when Jesus died on the cross, what happened?
SPEAKER_00: The veil, the curtain in the temple was ripped.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the one who takes away the veil.
SPEAKER_00: Let's go to verse 15.
SPEAKER_00: Yet still today, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies on their hearts.
SPEAKER_00: Listen, this theme comes up all throughout the script.
SPEAKER_00: Here Paul is repeating the word veil.
SPEAKER_00: You can think of like a bride on her wedding day, she wears a veil.
SPEAKER_00: You may think of like a Muslim woman who's, according to her religion, has to veil her face and cover her face.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever image you need to make sense of this, Paul keeps using this word.
SPEAKER_00: But go back to Genesis chapter 2.
SPEAKER_00: In Genesis chapter 2, the very last verse, verse 24, it says that the man and woman were naked and unashamed.
SPEAKER_00: Remember that verse?
SPEAKER_00: They run around Eden without any clothes on, and they felt like nothing was wrong.
SPEAKER_00: When did they feel like something was wrong?
SPEAKER_00: When?
SPEAKER_00: They ate the fruit, and what does it say?
SPEAKER_00: They were ashamed.
SPEAKER_00: They saw their nakedness, they were ashamed, and they sought to cover themselves.
SPEAKER_00: So this sense of veiling and covering up goes back to the very beginning of the sin story.
SPEAKER_00: And what Jesus does, and all the ark, the redemptive ark of Scripture, talks about that Jesus takes away our filthy clothes and clothes us with robes of righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: That's what you get in the book of Revelation.
SPEAKER_00: We're heading to a place where the clothing is this, these beautiful garments that are appropriate to the setting.
SPEAKER_00: But in Hebrews it says that we now stand naked and unashamed in his presence.
SPEAKER_00: There are people around you that respond and use Christianity either as an instrument of revealing or as an instrument of disclosing, of covering up.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you play church to cover your nakedness.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you are doing what Paul has done, which is like Jesus has set me free from this veil.
SPEAKER_00: The covering up of nakedness.
SPEAKER_00: Now I don't have to worry about my shame.
SPEAKER_00: Now in Jesus I'm a liberated person.
SPEAKER_00: Let's go to verse.
SPEAKER_00: Well, here's Genesis 2, 24 and 3, 6, and 7.
SPEAKER_00: They're ashamed.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: They're ashamed.
SPEAKER_00: They're trying to cover it up because of their rebellion.
SPEAKER_00: Sowing fig leaves together.
SPEAKER_00: They made coverings for themselves.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel doesn't, again, it just doesn't, it doesn't just forgive you.
SPEAKER_00: Like when we talk about coming to Jesus, some of you have not yet stepped in, you haven't received Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You haven't received that invitation.
SPEAKER_00: And that's your next spiritual step that you need to take.
SPEAKER_00: And the door's wide open.
SPEAKER_00: We don't know.
SPEAKER_00: Are you going to die next month, like the guy we were talking about with Jude?
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: But I'm always surprised at how many people we do know that have come here have passed away sooner than I realized they would.
SPEAKER_00: But you have that open door in front of you.
SPEAKER_00: You have to make your own personal decision on receiving Christ.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus is not just about your forgiveness of sins, it's that removing of the veil, it's this freedom, and it's the remaking of you.
SPEAKER_00: Let's keep going so we can see these two more pieces.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 16.
SPEAKER_00: Whenever a person turns to the Lord, the veil is removed.
SPEAKER_00: Can I ask, think about this for a second?
SPEAKER_00: What does he mean when he says, turns to the Lord?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
unknown: Become born again.
SPEAKER_00: Become born again.
SPEAKER_00: Right.
SPEAKER_00: And you guys in your class this morning, you were talking about this process of salvation.
SPEAKER_00: What does salvation mean?
SPEAKER_00: What are some of the words, what are some of the actions that we do to respond?
SPEAKER_00: Here the word is turn to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: What other words do we use?
SPEAKER_00: What?
SPEAKER_00: Repent, right?
SPEAKER_00: Repent is I'm going in this direction, and now I'm going to go back, I'm going to change the orientation that I'm going, and I'm going to head towards Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: That's repentance, right?
SPEAKER_00: I'm turning from living for myself, turning toward Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: What's another word that we use?
unknown: Surrender.
SPEAKER_00: Surrender.
SPEAKER_00: That's a great word.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to surrender, living my life my way.
SPEAKER_00: I'm willing to let Jesus win in my life.
SPEAKER_00: What's another one?
SPEAKER_00: Okay, he's going to take over my life.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's another one.
SPEAKER_00: Trust.
SPEAKER_00: That's the one I was looking for.
SPEAKER_00: Trust, believe.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to believe in Jesus that he is able to save me, and the work that he did on the cross is sufficient for me.
SPEAKER_00: All of those words are the same activity moving you from death to life.
SPEAKER_00: Have you, listen, think about this deeply for a second.
SPEAKER_00: If you don't hear anything else, have you turned to the Lord?
SPEAKER_00: Because if you have not yet turned to the Lord, you are not yet saved from your sins.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible says you're living in the kingdom of darkness.
SPEAKER_00: You're separated from God.
SPEAKER_00: You're going to be eternally separated from him when you die.
SPEAKER_00: You're not in a good place, but that's the bad news.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus came so that you could be rescued from that.
SPEAKER_00: And when you turn to your life to him, you turn towards him, you will be forgiven, saved, set free.
SPEAKER_00: He's going to keep going on what happens when you turn to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: The first thing is that the veil is removed.
SPEAKER_00: You're no longer like the Israelites, where you're blinded, the veil is up in front of your eyes.
SPEAKER_00: The veil is taken away from your heart.
SPEAKER_00: When you and I turn to Jesus, you were given a new capacity to see spiritual things.
SPEAKER_00: Did you know that?
SPEAKER_00: That's huge.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you went through school and learned that maybe you have a low IQ.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe your life reflects that maybe you're not the sharpest pencil in the box.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: That's like me.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not the sharpest pencil in the box.
SPEAKER_00: I'm kind of making my way along.
SPEAKER_00: But here's the thing: spiritually, when you turn to the Lord, the veil is taken away.
SPEAKER_00: You have a capacity to see spiritual things that you could not see previous to turning to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: That's a dynamic, it's a reality.
SPEAKER_00: It's not that you didn't go to a class to get that.
SPEAKER_00: It's God does this in you because Christ has paid for this on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 17, now the Lord, the Lord that takes away the veil, that Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
SPEAKER_00: So we went from being unveiled.
SPEAKER_00: Now Paul's talking about freedom.
SPEAKER_00: We've gone from Paul saying that I have this great hope, and so I'm operating, I'm acting with great boldness.
SPEAKER_00: So there's a number of what we call downstream effects, symptoms of coming to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And this is another one.
SPEAKER_00: You engage, you turn to the Lord, and you are free.
SPEAKER_00: What's the freedom that he's talking about?
SPEAKER_00: Free of stress?
SPEAKER_00: Is that do you think Paul in this chapter is talking about freedom from stress?
SPEAKER_00: You're free from condemnation, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Free from the old covenant.
SPEAKER_00: That's very good.
SPEAKER_00: Free to walk in newness of life.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Paul is like, listen, all this stuff that entangled you under the old covenant, you're free from that.
SPEAKER_00: You're free from the games.
SPEAKER_00: You've been set free from having to wear the veil in these relationships.
SPEAKER_00: You are free.
SPEAKER_00: And now you get to do new covenant, new covenant life.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 17.
SPEAKER_00: Well, we'll do this slide.
SPEAKER_00: Remember what Paul has said about the Spirit in this section, and this is important.
SPEAKER_00: He keeps going back to the work of the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: You are Christ's letter written by the Spirit on human heart, your heart, right?
SPEAKER_00: Your human heart.
SPEAKER_00: We've been made competent ministers of the Spirit, and the Spirit gives life.
SPEAKER_00: And then in verse 80 says, the ministry of the Spirit is more glorious in comparison to the ministry of death.
SPEAKER_00: So Paul, you know, with verse 16 comes back to the Spirit of God.
SPEAKER_00: That where the Spirit is, there's freedom, there's liberty.
SPEAKER_00: We sang about that this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the Lord is that spirit, and where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
SPEAKER_00: We all with unveiled faces.
SPEAKER_00: Are you ready?
SPEAKER_00: This is the capstone.
SPEAKER_00: We talked about the veil.
SPEAKER_00: We all, everybody in this room that follows Jesus with unveiled faces are looking as in a mirror at the glory of the Lord and are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory.
SPEAKER_00: So imagine you're looking in the mirror this morning, right?
SPEAKER_00: Hopefully you looked in the mirror.
SPEAKER_00: That's good.
SPEAKER_00: It's a good discipline in your life.
SPEAKER_00: You look in the mirror.
SPEAKER_00: But in this spiritual mirror, you're seeing the glory of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: So you're seeing yourself, but you're also seeing the glory of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: This is a cool mirror we're talking about here.
SPEAKER_00: Because when I look in a mirror, I just see my body.
SPEAKER_00: But Paul's like, no, when you're looking into this mirror, your face is unfair.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, you have this new spiritual capacity to see things you couldn't see before, and you're looking into this mirror, and you're seeing the glory of the Lord, and you are being transformed into the same image of glory.
SPEAKER_00: And so all of a sudden, what you're seeing in this spiritual mirror is the glory of the Lord upon your life.
SPEAKER_00: James talks, uses a similar metaphor and talks about when we read scripture, it's like looking into a mirror.
SPEAKER_00: And how dumb would it be to look into a mirror, have something on your face, and not take care of it, right?
SPEAKER_00: Paul says, you have an unveiled face.
SPEAKER_00: You have this spiritual capacity.
SPEAKER_00: You and I are engaged with the Spirit of God, setting us free, giving us life, teaching us about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: We see the glory of God.
SPEAKER_00: And you and I are being transformed into that same image.
SPEAKER_00: From glory to glory.
SPEAKER_00: This is from the Lord who is the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever talked with a like a computer repair guy?
SPEAKER_00: Your computer breaks.
SPEAKER_00: And you take it in, it gets fixed.
SPEAKER_00: You come back to pick it up, and he starts explaining to you the flops and the hard drive and this port and this RAM over here and the CPU and it's all this stuff.
SPEAKER_00: And you're just like, what in the world are you?
SPEAKER_00: I just need it to work when I hit the start button, right?
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Because it's technical.
SPEAKER_00: What Paul has done here is he has spent a few minutes helping you and I understand some technical stuff about the new covenant and the old covenant.
SPEAKER_00: He isn't taken and thrown under the bus, the old covenant.
SPEAKER_00: He said it had glory, but it's faded away.
SPEAKER_00: You now live under the new covenant.
SPEAKER_00: And that's different.
SPEAKER_00: And you still have the option to wake up tomorrow morning and to do your relationships and do your relationship with God according to Moses' law, or you can do your day and your week and your relationships according to the new covenant grace of God.
SPEAKER_00: What do you want to do?
SPEAKER_00: You want to do it by grace, or do you want to do it by law?
SPEAKER_00: It's your choice.
SPEAKER_00: But Paul is helping you and I.
SPEAKER_00: You gotta understand, these are the options.
SPEAKER_00: One brings death.
SPEAKER_00: If you look back over your week and it's just like, man, that felt like death.
SPEAKER_00: Good question to ask.
SPEAKER_00: A good question to ask is was I doing life according to the old covenant, or was I doing it according to the new covenant, grace of God?
SPEAKER_00: That's a great place to start.
SPEAKER_00: And so we're gonna leave it there.
SPEAKER_00: When we come back next week, we'll look at chapter four.
SPEAKER_00: In chapter four, Paul's gonna jump right in and say, because this is the case, therefore, since we have this ministry, because we were shown mercy, we do not give up.
SPEAKER_00: That's verse one.
SPEAKER_00: Because of this, we're not quitters.
SPEAKER_00: We don't quit, we keep going.
SPEAKER_00: Man, that's gonna be a fun sermon.
SPEAKER_00: I can't wait till next week.
SPEAKER_00: But we get to practice all week.
SPEAKER_00: We get to practice all this week.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray together.
SPEAKER_00: Father, thank you for sending your son Jesus to inaugurate the new covenant on our behalf, to be just giving us life rather than death and entrusting us with this covenant so that we could be ministers of life with your spirit.
SPEAKER_00: As we celebrate communion and remember the death of Jesus on our behalf, Lord, would you afresh just remind us of your forgiveness as we repent of our sins?
SPEAKER_00: Remind us of your washing, your cleansing in our life.
SPEAKER_00: Sow into our hearts just the reality of the cross and the great hope that we have moving forward.
SPEAKER_00: We pray this in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.