HSC: How The Glory Gets Out | Pastor Jake Sweetman

Welcome to the Cathedral Podcast, where we delve deep into the heart of spiritual transformation and community vision. In today's episode, "How the Glory Gets Out," Pastor Jake invites us on a transformative journey through the book of 2 Corinthians. He reflects on a pivotal moment of divine revelation at a summer conference, challenging us to envision and pursue our God-given dreams courageously. As we celebrate the one-year anniversary of embracing the vision of Cathedral, Pastor Jake warns against the temptation to internalize God's blessings meant to uplift others. Drawing from the Apostle Paul's teachings, he emphasizes the importance of self-emptying and weakness as pathways to experiencing and sharing God's abundant grace. Through powerful storytelling and theological insight, this message urges us to shift from self-focused experiences to kingdom expansion, encouraging a life marked by sacrifice and service. Tune in to discover how the glorious presence of the Holy Spirit can inspire us to impact the world around us and bring God's glory into places that need it most.

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Transcript

 Did you bring a Bible to church?

Wonderful.

Why don't you go ahead and turn to the book of 2 Corinthians.

2 Corinthians.

I'm going to have us be all over that book, beginning, middle, end, end, quite literally.

We'll be in chapter 1, chapter 6, and chapter 12 as we make our way throughout the message.

We'll get there in just a moment.

Just over a year ago, I stood before many of you on a Sunday morning and I shared an

 Back in 2023 at a summer conference that was put on by a friend of mine at his church.

It was opening night of the conference and as the band began to play, I felt myself creeping towards criticism.

 And I wasn't all that surprised by that feeling rising in me because although I love this church that my friend of mine leads, their stylistic preferences have never quite been to my taste, never been quite my own.

And so I felt the criticism creeping in and I tried to shut the criticism down.

But then unexpectedly, I heard a voice in my mind and the voice was not my own.

And the voice invited me to look around the room.

And I knew instantly that it was the voice of the Holy Spirit.

 And so I did.

I took him up on his invitation.

I looked around the room.

I took in the lights.

I took in the production.

I took in the music, the whole experience.

And as I looked around, there came another phrase.

And the phrase was odd, but it was instantly recognizable to me in its meaning.

This was the phrase that the Holy Spirit said to me.

He said, you are standing in your friend's head.

You are standing in his head.

 And the interpretation came immediately with that statement.

The phrase meant, you are standing in a vision fulfilled.

And I knew what the Holy Spirit was saying.

He was saying, hey, you can critique the style if you want, but at least your friend had the courage to pursue what he sees.

At least he has the courage to pursue what he envisioned.

And then came the question that I will never forget.

And the question the Holy Spirit asked me in that moment is, Jake, what does it look like to stand in your head?

 What do you see, Jake?

And will you have the courage to go after it?

That moment marked me because nine months earlier we had decided that we were going to change the name of our church to Cathedral.

Cathedral is what it showed me.

He said, Jake, Cathedral is not just a name.

Cathedral is a vision.

Cathedral is what it looks like to stand in your head.

 It's a church for the glory of Christ, the beauty of the bride, and the good of the city.

It's a church built upon the foundations of presence, discipleship, and mission.

It's charismatic worship and prayer and spiritual gifts and the Eucharist and expository Bible teaching, a culture of sacrifice, servanthood, leadership, and growth.

Above all, it's a dwelling place for the glory of the Lord in our lives.

 That's the church that I see in my head.

And one year in, as it turns out, what's in my head is in many other people's heads as well.

Pastors and leaders and members of this church who see what I see.

And to borrow some words from Paul, who are willing to spend and be spent for the sake of seeing the vision come to life.

 The church that I see in my head is coming to life right before my eyes through the power of the Holy Spirit working through the hands and the hearts of many, many people.

And so tonight, on this final night of conference, I first want to say, Cathedral, look how far we've come.

 Look at what we've seen in just a year's time since bringing this vision into the world.

In just one year, look at what the Lord is bringing to life right in front of our eyes.

Look at this beautiful church that we're building together.

Look at a church who gets excited and claps over a 12-hour prayer meeting.

Look at a church who's three days into a conference like this where you've probably sweat more than you ever have in your life, but it doesn't hold you back from still pouring out your best praise even on night three.

Look at where we are.

Just one night in.

 Sorry, one year in to what God has called us to build.

And with that celebration also an exhortation to go further up and further in.

Because as we bear fruit, we will face a familiar temptation.

 It's the same temptation that Adam and Eve faced in the garden.

It's the same temptation that Noah faced in his vineyard.

It's the same temptation that the nation of Israel faced in the promised land.

It's the tension, it's the temptation to take the blessing of God's fruit and to turn it in on ourselves.

 So that we hold in what was always meant to go out.

To make about ourselves what is meant to be about Jesus and about others.

Can I tell you, God has put his glory within us.

But if we are not careful, we will become more concerned with the container than we are the contents.

And what was meant to flow out will be held in and held back.

And a spirit-built church will become a man-made monument.

 And so tonight I want to talk to you from this simple idea of how the glory gets out.

In 2 Corinthians we learn that as a result of the death.

 The resurrection, the ascension of Jesus because of what Christ has accomplished through his passion and through his triumph.

You and I, as a result of that, we have received the gift of the Spirit of God.

God's glorious Spirit has come into the hearts of those who believe.

And this gift, this arrival is the very climax of Old Testament promise and prophecy.

God's Spirit, not merely in a tent, not merely in a temple, but all the way into the human heart.

 And the arrival of that gift has always been the point.

The Exodus story, the second book of the Old Testament, points the way to this reality that God's plan has never merely been about liberty.

Otherwise, the story of Israel would have ended after they escaped from Egypt.

God's story has never ultimately been about law.

Otherwise, Israel's story would have ended at Mount Sinai.

Not just liberty, not just law.

The story is about the light of God's presence coming down into the midst of His people.

God coming down the mountain to be Emmanuel.

 And that's why the Exodus story concludes with the building of the tabernacle and the cloud of glory filling the holy of holies because God's glory dwelling with his people has always been the point.

That is the promise.

 And as the Old Testament unfolds, that promise becomes even more intimate, even as God's people become more and more lost.

Eventually, in the darkness of Babylonian exile, God speaks through a prophet named Jeremiah, promising a new covenant that includes the forgiveness of sins.

 And then through a prophet named Ezekiel.

Through whom he promises new hearts.

Hearts that are cleansed by that forgiveness of sins.

So that they can become holy habitations for the glory of God.

For the very spirit of the almighty God.

The glory is coming all the way in because of the Messiah.

That's the promise of the Old Testament.

 And so it's no wonder that Paul begins in 2 Corinthians chapter 1 in verse 20.

No matter how many promises God has made, they are yes in Christ.

And so through Him, the amen is spoken by us to the glory of God.

Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ.

He anointed us, set His seal of ownership on us.

And through Christ, the Spirit, the glory of the Lord has been placed in our hearts.

And that is the point.

 At least it's the point if you have the proper perspective on it.

Because if you don't have the proper perspective, you'll make the mistake of thinking that the story ends here.

That it's just about you and the glory.

A personal romance lived out within the confines of your own heart and your own expectations and your own plans.

 Which, of course, is not the full story.

It never has been.

Even back in Exodus, as the typological story of Israel begins to take shape, and they prepare to welcome the presence of God into their midst, God speaks these words to them to rightly contextualize the gift of His glory that they are about to receive.

He says in Exodus 19 and verse 6, Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples.

Why?

For all the earth is mine.

 Israel, it's not just about you.

All the earth is mine, and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.

You are a priestly people in the midst of every nation that belongs to me.

Therefore, your role is to mediate my presence to them, to shine my light before them by remaining faithful to me.

In other words, yes, the glory coming to dwell within God's people is the point.

 proper perspective on that glory is this that we are a holy nation of royal priests and so we must live in such a way that the glory which has come in has a way to get out and this is the major concern for Paul as he writes the Corinthians because many of them were missing the point of having received the glory of God they had taken the gift of the spirit the filling of the spirit and managed to make it all about themselves

 Which honestly wasn't all that surprising given the culture of Corinth, the culture they had come out of and the culture that they very much still in many ways lived within.

If there's one way to sum up the core issue in the Corinthian church, it's this.

They were letting the culture of Corinth shape their Christianity rather than letting their Christianity transform the culture of Corinth.

Corinth was a city of excess.

 The word that scholars use, which is really just another word to say that it was a city plagued by self-obsession.

The scholars break that excess down into five major categories.

Power, money, impressive rhetoric, athletics, hello youth sports, sensuality, aka sexual immorality.

Sounds a lot like modern day America to me.

 And all of their excess revolved around one thing, the service and the promotion of the self.

And that's the difference, by the way, between excess and abundance.

Excess is self-serving.

Abundance is others-oriented.

That's why Jesus told the parable of the man who had such a large harvest one year that he decided he would tear down his barns and build bigger ones to contain that large harvest, therefore kick back, orient the blessing around himself

 Only to find out that he would die that night.

The problem with the farmer wasn't that he planted a lot of seed.

That's what farmers are supposed to do.

The problem with the farmer wasn't that the earth returned to him a massive harvest.

That's what farmers hope for.

His problem was that he settled into a life of eating the seed that he was meant to continue planting.

He took the blessing of God.

He took the blessing of God and turned it into a self-centered experience instead of a gift around himself.

 And this was the problem with the Corinthian church.

They were filled with just as much self-importance as the city that surrounded them.

So the abundant gift of God's spirit and power became an occasion for personal excess.

Their pride had become the seedbed of all kinds of issues.

Self-indulgence, self-promotion, self-gratification, self-reliance.

Therefore, God's grace became an excuse for immorality.

God's gifts became a contest of ability.

God's ministers became a divisive game of follow the leader you like most.

 God's gathering became a performance rather than an expression of love.

And boasting in self replaced boasting in the cross.

And Paul wants the Corinthians to understand that as long as your perspective on the gift of God's glory centers on the self, what has come in will never be allowed to flow out.

 How can the contents of God's glory pour out of us when we're more focused on polishing the container of self rather than giving away the gift of God?

You see, that was part of the problem in Corinth, is that their self-interest had blinded them to the true value of what had been placed within them.

If they'd understood it, they would have in a heartbeat followed Paul and his example, seeing themselves as nothing more than ordinary jars of clay, humbly entrusted to behold and contain the inexpressible worth of God's glory.

 Had they seen that, they wouldn't have hesitated to empty themselves so that true glory could be witnessed.

The whole thing can be summarized like this, that the Corinthians mistook the gift of God's glory as being about their personal experience instead of being about kingdom expansion.

The Corinthians mistook the gift of God's glory as being about personal experience instead of being about kingdom expansion.

 And we face the same temptation today when the church, when the community of the Spirit becomes a field that feeds us, our promotion, our recognition, our friendship circles, our ideal church services, our comfort.

But can I tell you that the church was never meant to be merely a field that feeds.

The church is meant to be a fire that fuels and a mission that moves you to honor the Lord and bless His bride and push the borders of the kingdom into new spaces and new places.

 And so I love how Paul addresses this problem in Corinth.

He takes them on a theological journey.

Truthfully, to really deal with the Corinthian problem, 2 Corinthians probably only needed to be like two chapters.

That would be fine.

But Paul's a good preacher, and he's like, I'll take 12.

Thank you very much.

 He takes them on a journey showing them how God's glory is going to get out.

And he shows them by grounding the gift of glory, the gift of the Spirit, in an unexpected way, in a theology of power, not in self-importance, but power in weakness.

 Over and over again in 2 Corinthians, Paul draws the same contrast.

He says to them, hey, you want to see excess?

Let me show you my excess.

I got excessive hardship, but in that hardship I have excessive comfort.

I got excessive despair, but in that despair I got excessive confidence.

I got excessive insufficiency, but in that insufficiency I got excessive sufficiency.

I got death, but I got life.

 I got affliction, but I got joy.

I got suffering, but I got blessing.

I got hardship, I got confidence.

I got weakness, I got strength.

And Paul's message is clear that God's power is not revealed through human strength, not through perfect containers, but through surrendered weakness, not through self-preservation, but through self-emptying.

And to miss that

 is to misunderstand the gift of glory almost entirely.

And so Paul begins his description of the Spirit in 1 with a very powerful intention, I find.

He says that the Holy Spirit is a deposit.

Everyone say deposit.

Deposit.

 The Spirit of God is a deposit placed within us, guaranteeing the glory that is to come.

This is what Paul is teaching them in chapter 1.

Anyone who is in Christ has received the Spirit of glory into the innermost recesses of their being.

 As a result of that, they've been ushered into an entirely new realm.

A new creation reality that has more in common with what's coming than it does with what's present and what's past.

And this gift of the Spirit, as wonderful as He is, is a deposit of glory, of even more glory that is to come.

That term deposit is an economic term.

It means literally down payment.

 The Spirit, Paul says, is like money now, which signifies to you that more money is coming later when the owner returns to collect what belongs to him.

The Spirit is God's, hear me, God's glory now, signaling that more of God's glory is coming later when the one who bought us with his blood returns to redeem, restore, and renew all of creation and dwell with us in his unbridled fullness.

 This image, this economic image carries an important point because Paul is helping us to see that the Holy Spirit is not a placeholder for some other gift.

The deposit of the Spirit is not substantively, if I could use this word, not materially different from the full payment.

The Holy Spirit is the same stuff.

The Holy Spirit is God.

God is the gift now and God is the gift later.

 The only difference is the degree to which we experience Him.

We have received a measure of His presence and power now through the Spirit, and that measure is a down payment declaring that God has infinitely more of Himself to give to us in the age to come.

 Therefore, to orient the gift of glory around a life of pursuing a personally tailored Christian experience is actually to have a poverty mentality around the Spirit.

It means that your excess is actually grounded in a belief that the Spirit is in short supply and that there's only enough of Him for your comfort, your security, and your status.

You see, the person who orients their Christianity around themselves and their own experiences is often plagued by fear.

 Fear of lack.

Fear of inadequacy.

Fear of how they'll measure up and compare to other people.

Fear of an uncertain future.

And so what they do is they hold on to what they should give.

They hide behind.

 What they should use to serve.

And Paul is saying to the Corinthians to take the gift of God's glory and turn it inward and make it all about yourself.

Makes no sense.

Don't you see that the Spirit is the down payment on an infinite decree of glory?

A glory that all believers will bask in and behold for all of eternity without limit.

 So the only logical thing to do with a gift that never runs out is not to promote yourself, not to indulge yourself, not to preserve yourself.

No, the only logical thing to do with the gift that never runs out is to do the same thing that the one who gave you the gift in the first place did, which was to empty himself and spend himself by going to the cross so that he could minister the Spirit to the world.

In fact, as long as you are primarily concerned with yourself,

 You will always be hamstrung in your ability to minister the Spirit to others and to expand the kingdom.

In fact, you'll be stunted even in your desire to minister because others won't ultimately be the point in your mind.

You will.

Glory within, but no desire for glory to get out.

 which of course is to miss the point entirely.

It's to go through the whole process of the liberty of Christ and the law of Christ and welcoming the light of Christ without realizing that the whole reason for having the light is to let it shine to the world through your God-focused, others-centered existence.

That's why Paul said to them back in his first letter in 1 Corinthians chapter 14 and 1, yes, but friends, don't forget this truth.

Follow the way of love.

Love is just another word.

 of self-emptying, giving of yourself.

And that is what is required for the glory to get out.

So Paul wants the Corinthians to understand you have received a gift that has no end.

It makes no sense to hoard what God has promised to give without limit.

And if you truly grasp the fullness of the glory God has placed within you by His Spirit, you won't waste one more day preserving or promoting the container.

You will desire the container to be broken open.

 So the contents of glory can pour out to others.

Paul holds up his own life as an example.

He offers his experience to the Corinthians, no doubt with a desperate prayer that they would finally grasp what he's trying to teach them because the Corinthians were struggling.

They were struggling to break free from the deception, the prison of self-orientation.

 So much so that many of them had begun to disparage Paul's way of life.

Recently, the Corinthians have been taken captive by the impressiveness of some self-proclaimed super-apostles.

If you call yourself a super-apostle, I'm doubly suspect of you.

It's not that I don't believe in the apostolic gift.

It's just, I don't know, when you put it on your Instagram bio, it gets a little weird for me.

I'm just saying.

I'm just saying.

 But they've been taken captive by the impressiveness of these self-proclaimed super apostles who had arrived in Corinth preaching a gospel of works.

A gospel that was antithetical to the gospel that Paul had preached.

But the Corinthians were buying it because these guys had credibility.

 They came with letters of recommendation.

They had rhetorical skill.

They had style.

They had presence.

They had everything except the Spirit.

They had tricks.

They did not have transformation.

But they were puffed up with the kind of excess that the Corinthians admired.

So Paul has to remind them that's not how the Spirit came to you.

 And if you take up that mode of being in the world, that's not how you're going to be able to minister the Spirit to others as well.

But the message was falling on deaf ears because the Corinthians had begun to dismiss Paul entirely simply because he lacked the usual things that impress an audience.

And Paul is begging them to see.

Please hear me.

Paul is begging the Corinthians to see.

My failure to impress is not a bug.

It's a feature.

 It's what happens when you rightly recognize reality in light of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Which brings us to the heart of the letter, 2 Corinthians chapter 6.

It's the literary center of the letter, but it's also the theological center of the letter.

And Paul says to them in 2 Corinthians chapter 6 and verses 1 and 2, "...as God's co-workers, we urge you not to receive God's grace in vain."

 Please don't receive the grace of God in vain.

For God says, in the time of my favor, I heard you.

In the day of salvation, I helped you.

I tell you, now is the time of God's favor.

Now is the day of salvation.

Paul's saying, do not waste the gift of God's glory in the vanity of getting tangled up in self.

Recognize that the glory you've received is actually a sign pointing you to an entirely new way of being in the world.

A way that breaks you free from the prison of self.

 You might say, well, this is just how I am.

I'm just somebody who keeps to myself.

Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 15 and verse 10 that by the grace of God, I am what I am.

But His grace to me was not in vain.

No, no, no.

I worked harder than all the rest.

Yet not I, but the grace of God was with me.

Why?

To preach.

To empty myself for the sake of others.

Notice here in 2 Corinthians 6 how Paul pulls them out of their self-oriented stupor.

He quotes a verse from Isaiah 49.

 Now is the time of God's favor.

Now is the day of God's salvation.

It's a verse about the promised day of God's redemption.

About the arrival of new covenant.

About the dawn of new creation.

I love this.

Paul isn't just correcting their behavior.

He gives them a theology in which to ground their lives.

 We do something really similar all the time.

When someone's caught up in sin, or they're walking down a path that is not a good path for them, we don't just correct the behavior.

We try to give them a theology, and we'll ask them certain questions.

Say, hey, don't you know who you are?

You're a son of God.

You're a daughter of God.

Or don't you know what you are?

You're a priest.

You're a king.

Or don't you know where you are?

You're in Christ.

You're in the kingdom of heaven.

Paul is doing something like that here, but he frames it with a different question.

Paul's question is this.

Don't you know where

 When you are.

Don't you know that the age of the Spirit has come crashing upon your shores and the topography of your life has changed permanently as a result.

Paul says now is the time of God's favor.

Now is the day of salvation.

We're living in a kairos moment.

An appointed time that you've been brought into.

Don't you know when you are?

In the prior age we were all blinded by self.

 Self-important, self-reliant.

All who turn to Christ and when the veil is removed, all who look finally see, and what they see is life is not about me.

Life is about the Lord Jesus Christ.

We're no longer living in the age of self and sin.

We're living in the age of the Spirit.

And the Spirit doesn't point us to self.

The Spirit points us to the Son and empowers us to point others to the Son as well.

He is the one who is exalted and glorified.

 And he has placed his glory within us, not for our applause, but to be poured out for the sake of others.

Which of course we cannot do if we are more focused on personal experience than we are on kingdom expansion.

The gift of God's glory within you, hear me, is the ultimate permission to stop being concerned with the glory of self.

 Because you have received an infinitely greater glory.

You have received the deposit of the most glorious glory there is.

And that deposit guarantees the overwhelming fullness of God's glory that is coming to you at the end of history.

And so shouldn't the presence and the promise of that kind of glory set you free from self-concern?

 Shouldn't it move you from self-importance and self-preservation and self-indulgence into a life of self-emptying?

Shouldn't it lead you to give and not to keep, to serve and not to self-promote, to sow and not to store?

Some of you didn't give in the offering last night because your mentality is that you don't have enough to give.

Friends, that's not true.

The biblical truth is that there is too much not to give.

 Too much glory not to be generous.

An infinite degree of glory that you've received the down payment of.

Too much for you not to be a giver.

Too much for you not to be a servant.

My Bible says that my God shall supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

God has given you too much of his glory for you to hold back what was meant to get out.

And if the gift of the glory of God within you is not a strong enough reason for you to get over your fears of dying to self, then, friends, there is not a better reason coming.

 After all, the Spirit guarantees the glory ahead, which means that by giving, by serving, by sacrificing, by self-emptying, you quite literally, this is what the deposit tells you, you quite literally have nothing to lose.

Here's what I hear the Apostle Paul saying to the Corinthians.

I think this is a word for our day.

Here's the message of 2 Corinthians.

When glory is our guarantee...

 Sacrifice should be our standard.

If the deposit of the Spirit is the glory of God within me that says, Jake, you just can't even fathom how much of my glory you're going to experience.

If that's my promise, then friends, let me follow the Lamb wherever He goes.

Let me take up my cross and embrace a life of sacrificial self-emptying because I have nothing to lose.

 And that sacrifice becomes the doorway so that the glory within me becomes a power that flows out of me.

Paul does something incredible right here in the heart of the letter.

He meets the Corinthians where they are, but then he subverts their game to open their eyes.

He basically says to them, hey, if it's a resume you want, let me give you a resume.

 If it's letters of recommendation that you want, then let me, Silas and Timothy, let us give you our letters of recommendation.

Here, chapter 6, verses 3 to 10.

We put no stumbling block in anyone's path so that our ministry will not be discredited.

You guys have misunderstood us.

We want to tell you how qualified we are.

Let me tell you how qualified we are.

As servants of God, we commend ourselves in every way.

The Corinthians are probably thinking,

 Finally, Paul is going to say something that validates his apostolic authority to us.

So Paul begins, here's our list.

We're commended in great endurance.

Here's what that looks like.

Trouble, hardship, distress, beatings, imprisonments, riots, hard work, sleepless nights, and hunger.

Friends, these are exactly the things that the Corinthians considered as points against Paul.

He's like, I know, isn't that great?

That's my resume.

 But then he goes on in verse 6, but also in purity, understanding, patience, kindness, in the Holy Spirit and in sincere love, in truthful speech, the power of God with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and the left.

These are the things that the Corinthians admired, that they would have celebrated and

 And if they were honest, they would have admitted that Paul, Timothy, and Silas came with all those things, most especially the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Notice that he is central to the entire list.

And Paul's structure of this whole list is very intentional.

He begins with weakness.

He moves on to power.

To make this point clear, you cannot have power without also having weakness.

And then he does the unthinkable.

 Then he takes both categories in verse 8, through glory and dishonor.

Bad report, good reports do.

Genuine, but a lot of the time we're regarded as imposters.

Known, yet not really many people follow us on Instagram.

Dying, yet we live on.

Beaten, yet not killed.

Sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.

Poor, yet making many rich.

The whole thing is a paradox of power that Paul sums up with the last line, having nothing and yet possessing everything.

 He wants you to know, the only way you can minister the Spirit, the only way the glory gets out, is if you're willing to share in the suffering of Christ.

The very weakness that the Corinthians despise, Paul says, is the very reason that the glory can flow out of me to minister to you and to many others.

And the tragedy is this, that by resisting Paul's weakness, they were resisting the Spirit's work.

Not just in Paul.

 but also in themselves.

They want resurrection without crucifixion.

They want power without pain.

They want glory without sacrifice.

They wanted experiences for themselves, great church services, really well-run small groups, personal development that's meeting all of my needs, that I am flourishing and growing.

But they want it all without the cost required to grow the fruit of the kingdom within and to expand the reach of the kingdom.

 But friends, in God's kingdom, the way up is always down.

The spirit rests where the flesh breaks, and that's how the glory gets out.

None of this is theory to Paul.

This is not abstract to him.

This is not theological ivory tower.

This is deeply personal for him.

 I don't just mean in the sense that it's his life that's characterized by this.

I mean that the first time Paul encountered the glory of Christ, the first time Paul encountered the glory of Christ wasn't in a miracle.

It wasn't in a message.

It wasn't in a heavenly vision.

The first time Paul encountered the glory of Christ was through the death of a man named Stephen.

Stephen.

 a follower of Jesus, who as he was being stoned to death because of his proclamation of Christ, cried out, Father, do not hold this sin against them.

And Paul stood there.

He carried the coats.

He approved the execution.

But even in his hardened state, he was watching a man die with mercy on his lips and glory.

Acts 6.15 says that Stephen's face shone like an angel as the Sanhedrin questioned him, glory shining from his face as Paul stood there.

 Which means that as Stephen emptied himself to the fullest extent, Paul was among those who saw the glory of Christ on display.

And I believe that a seed was planted in Paul that day, not through human power, not through persuasion, but through the sacrifice of a life laid down so that glory could get out.

 It's no wonder that Paul goes on in 2 Corinthians 4.

He says, For God who said, Let light shine out of darkness, made His light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God's glory displayed in the face of Christ.

And the first place that Paul saw the face of Christ was not on the road to Damascus.

The first place that Paul saw the face of Christ was at the edge of

 of the city as the dust kicked up and the stones flew through the air and Stephen's flesh broke open and the glory of God got out and it's no coincidence that from that moment in Acts the gospel goes out of Jerusalem to Samaria to the Gentiles to the ends of the earth because through the breaking of Stephen's flesh the glory of God that had filled that temple began to flow out to the rest of the world.

 And friends, if we do not spur one another on to lives of sacrifice, we will very quickly devolve into fun church services and nice community.

We will get rowdy when certain songs come on.

The mirage will be that we think we're worshiping the Lord, but we won't be worshiping the Lord.

I don't want to worship the song.

I want to worship the one that the song is about.

His name is Jesus Christ.

I don't need the right combination.

 of pad.

I don't need the right mix of guitar pedals.

I don't need Pastor Dylan to do the cymbal thing where we all go crazy.

It's not about the song to me.

It's about the Son of God for whom all worship songs are to be written.

Not the container.

Not the container.

The contents of glory that have filled the heart of humanity.

 And that's exactly why Paul says what he says at the very end of the letter.

Because real power doesn't come from polish or comfort.

It comes from a life poured out.

You guys know this next passage, I'm sure, like the back of your hand, 2 Corinthians chapter 12.

We're getting to the end of our tour of 2 Corinthians.

Paul says this in verse 8.

Three times I pleaded with the Lord, please take this thorn away from me.

This thorn of my flesh, remove it from me.

But God said to me, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in...

 Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses so that Christ's power may rest on me.

That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weakness, insult, hardship, persecution, difficulty.

For when I am weak, then I am...

 Something significant is happening in this text, friends and family.

Paul is talking here about the same power, the same glory, the same Holy Spirit, but now the imagery has changed.

In chapter 1, we had an economic image of the Spirit.

The Spirit as a deposit.

Here in chapter 12, we've moved on from the economic image, and now we're looking at a temple image.

The Spirit tabernacling, dwelling, resting upon Paul.

That word rest, the power of Christ may rest upon me.

That word is literally tabernacle.

 To host the holy.

To carry the weight of God's glory, not just within, but upon.

So we've gone from the picture of the Spirit within, guaranteeing salvation, to the picture of the Spirit resting upon, empowering for mission.

We've come to the picture of God's priestly mission for His people, to host His glory and carry it into the world.

Paul says, yeah, I carry the glory of God like that, and here's how the glory gets out.

 Here's the X factor.

It's not eloquence.

It's not charisma.

It's not strength.

It's weakness.

It's hardship.

It's suffering.

It's self-emptying.

Weakness is what Paul brings.

Strength is what God supplies because God delights to work through weakness.

And without embracing weakness, without embracing Christ crucified, without embracing a life of self-emptying, friends, all you ever have to give to the world is a show of strength.

 but you won't be giving the power of God.

You might give yourself, and you can be really impressive.

You can give tricks, but you'll never give transformation.

Just look at what the so-called super apostles have given you.

They've given you persuasion, not power.

Friends, you can spend your life preserving the container to show that you are something, or you can allow the container to be broken open through a life of surrender to show that God is everything.

 The best thing about you is not the container.

The best thing about you is the contents, the spirit of glory within.

Church, if the spirit is like oil, then weakness is the match.

You're not only meant to be indwelt by the spirit, you're meant to be empowered by the spirit.

And the bridge between indwelling and outpouring is a life of self-emptying.

 That's the bridge from chapter 1 to chapter 12.

Chapter 1, he's within.

Chapter 12, he's flowing out.

The connecting bridge is a life of self-emptying.

The only waking the jar.

Keep letting the glory out.

What God has placed within us will continue to flow out of us.

The temple of his glory will expand throughout the earth.

 And we will move from a life centered around personal experience to a life centered around kingdom expansion.

And that's how Paul concludes with this picture.

I love this picture in 2 Corinthians 10.

Ben, you guys can come.

This is the place that Paul is trying to get the Corinthians to.

They're caught up in self-experience.

He wants to move them to kingdom expansion.

He says this in 2 Corinthians 10, beginning in verse 12.

He says, we, speaking for Paul,

 Timothy and Silas, we do not dare to classify or compare ourselves with some who commend themselves.

When they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they're not wise.

Paul says we're not getting caught up in the game of comparing containers.

 We've moved on from a life that's oriented around the self and how we measure up to other people.

This is what Paul says.

Look at verse 15.

Neither do we go beyond our limits by boasting of work done by others.

Our hope is that.

Our hope is that.

Our hope is that you, Corinth, you, Cathedral.

Our hope is that you, C3.

Our hope is that as your faith continues to grow, our sphere of activity among you will greatly expand.

 so that we can preach the gospel in regions beyond you.

Paul's point to the Corinthians here is piercing.

If they mature, if they let go of self-importance, if they let go of self-preservation, if they get over the container and start focusing on the contents, then they can become a launch pad for gospel mission.

They can become a base for the glory of God to move into new regions, even into regions beyond.

 And so I just wonder here tonight, as a people who have been so filled this week, so filled with glory, so overflowing, will we orient the gift of glory around ourselves?

Will we turn abundance into excess?

No.

Let us ask in faith, as we receive this word in our hearts tonight, this question.

God, what people

 What cities, what regions beyond God will you entrust to us?

You see, I just wonder where the glory might go next if we embrace a life of self-emptying, a life of following the Lamb.

Friends, the Spirit wasn't given to make us comfortable.

The Spirit was given to make us courageous.

He was given to send us empowered in weakness, emboldened by love, carrying the glory of Christ into the broken places of this world.

 Some of us, regions beyond, today looks like stepping into a consistent lifestyle of servanthood.

 For some of us, Regions Beyond looks like taking on greater leadership responsibility within the church.

For some of us, Regions Beyond looks like carrying the mantle of those prayers that Father David has put before us tonight.

For some of us, Regions Beyond looks like being a part of a launch team that will launch out and plant cathedral campuses in cities that God calls us to.

Friends, I'm not just here to enjoy the glory.

I'm not just here for the conference.

I'm here to extend the glory into the places in the world that God calls us.

 Let's not just build a place where God dwells.

Let's be a people through whom God flows.

Because the glory got in, but now the glory's gotta get out.

And so what does it look like one year in to stand in our head at the unfolding of this cathedral vision?

 I see you living out the identity of royal priesthood.

That is yours in Christ.

I see you running your race to the very end.

The power of God moving through a life of surrender.

That's for you, David Ladding.

You don't have to worry about whether or not you're going to make it.

You're going to finish the race.

He who began a good work in you will bring it unto completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

 I see you leading your office to faith in Christ.

I see you preaching the gospel.

I see you healing the sick.

I see you driving out demons.

I see you cleansing lepers.

I see you raising the dead.

These things are not just for the Far East.

They're for here.

They're for now.

I see teams of people launching out to plant cathedrals in regions beyond.

Right now, I'll tell you, I can see as far as Santa Barbara.

 As of about 45 minutes ago, I can see about as far as Bangkok, friends and family.

I don't know the timing.

I don't know exactly where.

But I know that there's a glory that's gotten in.

And it's got to get out.

A life of sacrifice.

A life of self-empty.

Pastor Jeff, I see South Bay multiplying.

 God gave me this praise today for you.

Bishop of the Bay.

Bishop of the Bay.

 You are like one with the spirit of Timothy, my beloved Timothy, who oversaw churches at Ephesus.

You are a man made to multiply and you will multiply.

I don't see you just leading one church in the South Bay.

I see you leading several churches in the South Bay.

I see God multiplying a work of his spirit through the faithfulness of your heart and your hands.

Pastor Steve Stewart,

 I believe God has given you a spirit like that of Jeremiah.

Jeremiah chapter 1 and verse 10.

See, I have appointed you over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to overthrow and destroy, to build and to plant.

I see one like the spirit of Jeremiah coming upon you to uproot comfortable Christianity.

To uproot religious profession without witness to Christ crucified.

 I see you doing a work in Nashville.

See, I placed you in Nashville.

It's not an accident.

It wasn't just through a string of events, one thing leading to the other.

God says, no, I placed you in Nashville to uproot certain mentalities that have plagued that city for too long and to plant gospel witness.

I have made you a prophet, says the Lord, to prophesy to those people about the truth that really leads to life.

 through loving ferocity, you will reveal to the people of Nashville the life they said yes to, but have yet to apprehend.

But they will apprehend it as you help them take hold of that which is truly life, as they follow the Lamb alongside of you.

I see the dream of this church extending further.

 I see the presence of God dwelling in city after city, neighborhood after neighborhood.

I see Malibu.

I see Santa Barbara.

I see Bangkok in Jesus' name.

I see churches marked by sacrifice, servanthood, and spirit-filled power because God has called us to give what we have received.

All we need to be willing to do is break the jars open and let the glory out so the gospel can go forth.

 forward.

Lift your hands all across this room.

Father, in the name of Jesus, we stand before you tonight and we're so grateful that the gift of your glory has been shed abroad into the hearts of humanity.

Thank you for your generosity.

Thank you for your faithfulness, your kindness, your mercy.

Thank you, Lord, that when we were still far off

 when we were still dead in our transgressions, you have made us alive in Christ Jesus.