So we are, if you've got a Bible, it'd be really useful to
find it, whether it's a physical one or digital one.
Really used to find it because we're going to be in the whole
of Two Corinthians chapter 3 and all the way chapter 4, verse 6.
Now I'm not going to read all that right now because I haven't
got time, but it'd be really helpful if you hand that have
that to hand because I'm going to be going through it and
pretty much. So if you've got it, I'm going
to be going for a I'm going to be starting at the end.
And then what you'll know that I've finished because I've just
read chapter 3, verse one. OK, That's when you'll know that
I'm pretty much I'm done. So here we go.
What I've got today. I believe that out of this
passage, God's got 4 questions that he wants to ask us all.
And the first one is what is the ultimate end of the gospel?
What's the ultimate end of the gospel?
What's the highest? What's the best?
What's the sweetest? What's the final end to the
gospel #2 what obstacles stand in our way?
What, what stands in our way from receiving that highest,
most wonderful, most sweetest end of the gospel #3 what has to
change? What has, what has to change?
Because actually, whether you have received the gospel or not,
at one point we were all in darkness.
And So what has to change or what changed so that you could
receive, so you could experience the gospel and #4 what does God
call us to do now? Now that we've received the
gospel, what does he call us to do now?
So #1 what is the final end to the gospel?
Gospel meaning good news. What's the final end to the
gospel of good news? What is the, as I said, what is
the, the, what is what if you took it away?
I'm going to put up on the screen a second a load of good
things that the gospel gives us. And what what one thing, if you
were to take it away from the gospel, the gospel wouldn't be
good news. What is the final end of the
gospel? You see, here are some things
that the gospel does for us. I mean, these are awesome.
The gospel justifies us. In the gospel, we are forgiven.
The gospel removes God's wrath from us.
The gospel redeems us from guilt.
The gospel liberates us from slavery.
We looked at last week that once we were slaves to sin, but now,
thanks to Jesus Christ, we are now free.
The gospel means that we are free, that we will not, that we
don't go to hell. The gospel means that we will
enter into heaven. The gospel means that we have
eternal life. The gospel means that we can be
delivered from all sickness, pain, suffering.
And the gospel tells us that one day God will make everything
new. Now all these things are
amazing. All these things are what Jesus
has bought for us in the gospel, But they are not the final end,
ultimate purpose of the good news.
Let's read chapter 4, verses 4 to 6.
It says this, the God of this age has blinded the minds of
believers so they cannot see the light of the gospel that
displays the glory of Christ who is the image of God.
For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as
Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus sake.
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 Jesus.
So he says here. What Paul says is that that the
light of the gospel is the knowledge of God.
The glory of Christ is the same as the glory of God.
Then the image of God, the glory of God is found in the face of
Christ Jesus. So what Paul is saying is that
the ultimate end of the gospel, what it's all about the reason
ultimately why Jesus died. Yes, he died to, to to forgive
you. He died for your justification.
He died so you could go to heaven.
He died to so that he could create a new heavens and earth
with you in it. But the ultimate goal of the
gospel is the glory of God. It is the glory of our Father.
It's the glory of Yahweh that is displayed in the face of Christ
Jesus. See, God is beautiful, He is
glorious, He is wonderful, He is magnificent, and the gospel is
all about being able to be with him in His presence, to dwell
with him in His glory, to dwell with him in His beauty, in His
magnificence. You see the life, the death, the
burial of the ascension of Jesus Christ, it displays the glory of
gods. And as Christ was there upon the
cross, obediently hung to that tree, as the wrath of God was
pouring out upon him, the glory of God was emanating from him,
was emanating from Christ to the Father.
See, that is the end of the gospel.
The end of the gospel is for us to see, for us to savour, for us
to enjoy, to treasure, to be wrapped up and experienced and
be in the presence of our gods. That's what the gospel is all
about. You see, we don't behold His
glory. We don't get to be in His
presence to have a stepping stool to something else.
We don't get to be with our God to have something better.
There is nothing better than being in the presence of our
gods. There is nothing.
It is the end. It is the point of the gospel.
You see all those things that I put up there, all of them, they
point to the greater good. They point to the greater being
in the presence, being in the glory, being able to behold the
beauty and majesty of Jesus Christ.
See, we are justified in the gospel.
Why are we justified? We are justified so that we can
stand accepted in the presence of our Lord and Saviour, the one
who satisfies our soul. I mean, why are we forgiven?
Miss is really important. Why do we need forgiveness?
Why do you need forgiveness? To not go to hell.
I, I don't want to go to hell. But let me say, if that's your
answer, it's a really bad answer.
It's a really bad answer. And it, it, let me put it, give
you an illustration. OK, Why that's a bad answer
because, because I imagine, OK, this is completely fabricated.
OK. I come downstairs one morning,
OK, And as I'm going into our kitchen, I trip over a pile that
my lovely wife has left on the floor.
And as I trip over completely fabricated.
As I trip over this pile I I snap and I shout at her and I
say, what on earth are you doing?
What's wrong with you? Why did you leave your stuff all
over the place? As soon as I've said it, I
realise I probably shouldn't have done that.
OK, Several minutes go by and my wife is is is in the kitchen.
She's at the stove with her back to me, literally and
metaphorically. The room is icy.
Anyone ever been there? Yeah.
The room is icy. I know.
I need to be forgiven. Why do I need to be forgiven?
Let me give you a bad answer.
Because I don't want to feel guilty anymore.
Maybe another. Another bad answer, because I
don't want her to throw that dinner she's making at me.
She'd never do that. She'd just slam it down the
table in front of me. That's another bad answer.
Actually, the reason why I need forgiveness is because I want
the ice to melt between us. I want her.
I want her to turn to me. I want to see her.
I want to feel her. I want to know her embrace.
I want to be with her in her presence again.
That's why I need forgiveness. And it's the same with Jesus.
We don't need forgiveness so we don't go to hell.
I don't want to go to hell, but we need forgiveness so we can
see His face, so the ice between us can be dissolved, so that we
can know His warm embrace, so we can know His pleasure, so we can
know life with Him alongside Him.
See all of these things that I said?
Justification, forgiveness, freedom from sin.
They're all great, but they all point to and get us to the
greater good, which is a life with Christ, to be in His
presence, to be in his glory, that we may see, we may savour,
we may reflect, we may behold and be transformed by his very
presence. So that's the end of the gospel.
That's the point of the gospel that we get Christ #2 what
obstacle stood in our way, what stands in our way for must be
able to be in God's glory, to be in His presence, to gaze upon
his beauty and His wonder. In chapter 3 and chapter 4, Paul
is going to draw from to explain this problem from the book of
Exodus. He's going to draw from Exodus
34. And in Exodus 34, we've got
Moses and he is up the mountain of God and he is spending time
with Yahweh. He's spending days, he's
spending weeks in the presence of Yahweh.
And it says that he comes down the mountain with the tablets of
gods. And as he comes down the
mountain, the people are it freaked out as they gaze upon
Moses. They're freaked out because his
skin literally starts to glow. It not, not like a oh, you're
glowing today, Moses, you have a, a wonderful complexion about
you. No, no, no.
He's literally lighting up. You know, it's like that.
The people would be standing there at dawn and be like, oh,
the sun's coming up early. No, no, it's just Moses coming
down the mountain. He is shining.
And so because the people have freaked out, he puts a veil over
his face so the people can no longer see the glory that is on
him. See, God has been spending time
with him. He's been spending time with
God, and therefore the glory of God has been shining into Moses,
and he is then radiating that glory from himself.
But the people can't stand it, so he puts a veil over his face
so they are unable to see the glory of Gods.
And it says that he would only take it off as he came into the
presence of God. As he came into the presence of
God, he'd removed the veil and he'd speak to Yahweh face to
face. And he says here in 2
Corinthians 3 verse 13 to 15, he says we are not like Moses
who put a veil over his face to prevent the Israelites from
seeing the end of what was passing away, but their minds
were made dull. For to this day, the same veil
remains when the old covenant is red, it is not.
It is not being removed because only Christ is it it in Christ
it is taken away. Even to this day when Moses read
a veil covers their hearts, It's it once, once, once each one of
us, our eyes were veiled. We were unable to see the glory
of God. We were supernaturally poor,
would say blind. He says in verse chapter 4,
verse four, he says the gods of this age has blinded the minds
of unbelievers so they cannot see the light of the gospel that
is displayed in the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
See, we've looked at this, we've looked at this.
There are physical, there's a physical reality and there is a
spiritual reality and there is a spiritual reality that it is at
war with God and at war with us, who, as Paul says, the gods of
this world are preventing us from seeing the glory of gods.
So when you tell someone about Jesus, when you're ridiculed,
when someone opposes Jesus, when people just don't seem to
understand, it's not that they're an idiot.
It's not that they're stupid. It's because a veil has been
placed over their eyes. They've been blinded by the gods
of this world. See, we are surrounded, church
by blind people, by people who are blinded to the glory of God.
They can see reflections, images, echoes of glory When
they watch something amazing happen in a sports game.
They can see echoes, amazing sense of glory in in at the
birth of a child or in a relationship or an amazing job
done in work. But when it comes to the
ultimate highest, greatest glory as a veil as a haze over their
eyes that they are unable to see past.
So what is the end of the gospel?
What's the point in the gospel? It's to be in the glorious
presence of Christ Jesus. What prevents us, what stops us?
What obstacle is there is there? I said we were blind.
We were literally blind. The gods of this world have
blinded our eyes and there's a veil over our face.
So what has to change? What needs to happen for us and
what still needs to happen for some people so that we may gaze
upon the glorious face of Christ Jesus.
He says in verse in chapter 4 verse six, he says for God who
said let light shine after darkness has 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.
Why he's talking about this. He's he's, he's echoing, he's
drawing imagery from creation. He says God has shone his light
into our hearts. It's the same as the first page
of the Bible. There was darkness, there was
chaos, there was disorder. But God spoke, let there be
light. And there it was no battle, no
struggle. It just lit up.
And he says that's what God needs to do for each one of us.
He must share. He must, he must, he must, He
must call his light to shine into the darkness of our lives.
See, we were once going around stumbling.
We weren't once blind. We were once unable to see
because we were just in darkness.
We were just doing the best of what we could had.
But then God shone his light into our eyes.
He shone light into our hearts and we were able to see.
Is that the end? No, Paul gives the illustration.
He says. He says there was a veil over
our face. Not only did we need light, but
we needed this veil removing. And so to be saved we need God
to speak life. But to see His glory.
Church, you need to look. You need to look at him.
You need to gaze upon him. He's never going to force you to
look upon him. He's never going to force you to
change your direction of how where you're going.
But to receive Christ, you see his glory.
You have to look upon him and his promises.
He says every time, every time we turn to look at Him, the veil
is lifted from our face and we get to spend time, we get to be
with him in his glory. He never ever says as we turn to
him, Oh, I didn't mean for you to look at me.
I didn't want you. No, no, no, no, he every single
time, Paul says. He promises that when we look
towards Him, He takes the veil off our eyes so that we are able
to see Him in His glory. You see the Israelites, the
ancient Israelites, they were God's chosen people.
God chose to let His light shine onto them.
He chose them. They were His chosen people.
He shone his light, He shone His presence, He shone His glory
onto them, not so that they would keep it, but so the
nations. Would see so the nations you're
right in so the nations don't die so the nations would see so
the nations would come see the purpose we see in in the in
Genesis Chapter 11, the tower of Babel God disowns the nations,
but then he chooses Abraham. He chooses Abraham and from
Abraham he produces a supernatural people, a people
born from a supernatural birth. And he says I'm going to let my
light shine in you through you not so that you can have God all
to yourself so that the nations may see as the book of Hosea
would say so that those who are not my people.
That's us here. If you weren't born Jewish, who
those who are not my people would be called my people so
that we'd see the light and the glory of of God through his
people. As we know they failed, they
failed, they needed a Saviour, but Jesus came who was the
perfect Israelite. And it is through his glory that
we can come, that light has shone into our lives and we can
come and we can turn and and have our veil lifted so that we
can gaze upon the glory of Christ Jesus.
Paul says in verse 15 of chapter 3, he says even to this day, and
I'd say even to this day, not just when he was writing it,
even to this day, when Moses read a veil covers their hearts.
Now he's talking about the Jewish people in his land.
I just want to encourage you. We want to pray for all people
and we're going to pray for all people for their eyes to be
opened, for blindness to go, for the veil to be lifted.
But this just reminded me this week, let's pray for our Jewish
brothers and sisters. As you know, just hit me with
one of the the interview with one of the people from the from
the the synagogue tragedy last week is you know, they said that
every week, every week we go to synagogue, every week we read
Torah. Every week we pray for our
nation. You just think they've got the
life, they've got it, but they've, as Paul says, their
eyes are veiled to it. Pray, pray that their eyes would
be open to the Gospel, that their eyes would be open to the
glory of Jesus Christ, he says. But whoever turns to the Lord,
the veil will be taken away. Now the Spirit is the Lords, and
where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
And we all with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord's glory,
are being transformed into His image with ever increasing glory
which comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.
So what changed? God spoke light into your life,
and then we turned in grace and He opened the veil so that we
could see the glory. We could see in faith the
wondrous, glorious majesty of His presence, that you are
accepted, that He loves you, that He wants to spend all
eternity with you. So number one, that's the point
of the gospel, that we may see His glory #2 we were blind, the
veil was over our eyes, that we could not see the glory of God.
What changed? Jesus shone light into our
lives, we turned to Him, and the veil was removed.
And so finally, what does God call us to do now?
Well, if you're not a Christian, God calls you to turn to Him.
God calls you to turn to him and he will not reject you to turn
to him. And he will remove the veil so
that you will be able to see the glory of Jesus Christ.
I mean, isn't it amazing? I'm I've never seen anyone glow
up like a light bulb. But when you see someone go from
life, from death to life, when you see someone one week and
they're not following Jesus and the next week they've
surrendered their life and they call him King, there's something
different about them. Their face looks different.
They may not be glowing like a light bulb, but they look
different. The that's the glory of God has
been revealed to them and it is emanating from them.
That is what to church. If you don't believe, if you
haven't put your faith in Jesus, if you haven't said, Jesus, you
are my Lord and King, I want to live for you.
That's what he wants you to do right now.
It's as easy as this. You say, Jesus, I am sorry for
the way that I have lived. God, I ask you to forgive me.
And God, I thank you that you do forgive me.
And I want from this day forward to live, not for myself, but I
want to live for you, King Jesus, Amen.
That's it, That's it. And then you do it, and then you
fail and you come back to him and repent and you say, Jesus,
I'm sorry, I love you. You're still my king.
That's as simple as that. And for the rest of us, for
everyone else who knows Jesus Christ, who says Jesus, you are
my king. Jesus calls us now to help
remove the obstacle of blindness from those around us.
God has called you to be an obstacle to to remove obstacles.
He's called you to remove obstacles from those around.
He's called you to remove the veil of blindness.
We are surrounded by a town, by towns, by a county, by a nation
that is blind to the glory of gods.
And Jesus answer to that is to send you and I into the world to
help remove veils from blind people, to remove those veils
from blind people. And he Paul says, how do you
keep doing that? How do we do that?
Well, First off, we have to keep looking at Jesus church.
The Israelites became dull and useless to the surrounding
nations because they didn't look at their gods.
They didn't look at their king church.
We are only able to see the lost saved if we are focusing on the
king. If we're giving them something,
the lost something to look at, we're not giving them life
skills, we're not giving them better life management.
We're giving them Christ. That's who we're giving them.
See how we're the the hundreds of years ago when most people
couldn't read the church, they came up with things called
catechisms and the Westminster Catechism.
And 1st question and basically how the catechisms worked is you
would learn a question and you'd learn the answer to it.
Do you need to read or you just learnt by rote question and
answers and the Westminster Catechism first question is what
is the end of man? What's the point of living?
What's the point of life? It says to know God and to enjoy
him forever. That is what you and I are
called to do. How do we know him?
We look at him. How do we enjoy him?
We look at him. You are cool to look at him and
as you look at him you will become like him, he says.
And we who with unveiled faces, who now can see the glory as we
contemplate, as we, as we think about, as we study the Lord's
glory, are being transformed into his image with ever
increasing glory, which comes from the Lord who is the Spirit,
See a life, life to the full life that Jesus promises you is
not found in life without conflict, life without fights,
life when everything goes exactly how you wanted to know.
Life's, the full life that Jesus promised you, the best life
possible, is found in gazing at the face of Christ Jesus.
That's who. That is how it is found by
gazing at him, by treasuring him, by being wrapped up in Him.
And as we do, we are transformed more into His presence.
See, as we look we are changed. As we look we become kinder, we
become more gentle, we become more joyful.
As we look we become generous. As we look we become servant
hearted. It's just a side note.
If we spent more time looking at Jesus and less time looking at
our problems, the vast majority of past dinner or pastoral
issues would disappear. They would did just go away.
Our problem most of the time is we're not looking at Jesus.
As we look at Jesus, depression goes, joy increases.
If you look at Jesus, your friendships will get better,
your marriages will improve. See life change.
It's it's what happens when we gaze at Jesus.
But you may be saying, well, yeah, life change is great, but
that wasn't the question. The question wasn't how are we
changed? The question was what does Jesus
ask us to do? And how you seem to answer that
was that Jesus asks us to go into the world and display his
glory. So what is looking at Jesus got
to do with that? I mean, surely our answer should
be we should be praying for blind eyes to be opened.
We should be going to the world and talking to people.
And you'd be absolutely right. That is good.
That is great. But here's the thing, If I was
to set everyone a target this week, then I want you to pray
every single day for blind eyes to be opened.
If you were to pray every single day for, for opportunities for
God to use you. If you, if I was to say right, I
want you every single day to talk to someone who doesn't know
Jesus, that would be a great goal.
But the reality is, come Tuesday, you'd have forgotten,
let's be honest. And then come next Sunday, I'd
go, how'd you go? And you'd be, you'd be having a
great time until I said that because you'd be, you'd be like,
my, my week's been great. I've enjoyed praising Jesus.
And then all of a sudden, how did you do?
Who have you shared the Gospel with?
Oh, oh, oh, well, I did pray What?
Every day? No, no, I'm so useless.
I'm a failure. That's how it goes.
But here's the thing. As we gaze upon Jesus, we become
more like Him. And Jesus prayed for us.
Jesus, the Scripture tells us, is praying for us right now.
He is interceding for us. So as we become more like Jesus,
we gaze upon Him. Guess what, we want to pray for
people. It's not something, oh, I need
to fit in my prayer time to pray for blind eyes to be opened and
for obstacles. No, no, no, no.
It's I'm gazing at Jesus. I'm becoming more like him.
And as I become more like him, I'm becoming more like the one
who intercedes for me. Therefore, I just naturally want
to intercede for others. Jesus, who is the greatest
scent? One, He's the ultimate apostle.
He is the one who left heaven and came to earth.
And so where if we go around thinking, I have to tell someone
about Jesus today, I have to tell I'm failing because I
didn't do it tomorrow, I didn't do it yesterday and I haven't
done it today. That's not what it's about.
As we become more like Jesus, we gaze upon him.
As we become like Him, we become like the great scent. 1 And what
you just find, you meet people and you just start talking about
Jesus because it's natural, because it's who you are now.
It's not a tick list of things to do.
It's something that you want to do.
It's not a a target that I have to reach.
I have to do this or else God's not going to be pleased with me.
It's that Jesus is like this. I'm more like Jesus.
I just do it now. I do it now as I speak to
people. I just find I'm just naturally
starting to speak about Jesus, to speak about him.
You see, and I'll end with this 3 verse one and two, it says we
are we beginning to commend ourselves again or do we need
like some people letters of recommendation to you from to
you or from you, you yourselves are our letter written on our
hearts, known and ready read by everyone.
What he's saying here is just just kind of just step back and
just give you some context. In the 1st century, it was
really dangerous to be a Christian, really dangerous.
You'd be killed. You could you could be, you
could be crucified. You could be awful things would
happen to you. So when travelling Christians,
some of you know, you might go to another town, you might visit
another church. When that happened, they would
take letters from their elders to say, so when they arrived at
that new church, the elders would go, oh, OK, here's your
letter recommendation. Oh, you really do follow Jesus.
You do love him. You're not a spy sent by the
Romans to to come in and slaughter us.
No, no, you love Jesus. Come on in, come and worship
with us. Come and take communion with us.
And Paul's saying we don't need that.
Me and Timothy, we don't need that.
He's not saying that because we're super famous Christians.
He's saying that because the letter of recommendation isn't
something written by human hands.
And she says, you, Corinth, are our letter of recommendation.
As we have gazed upon Christ, as we have drunk him in, as we have
looked upon him, he has then through the Spirit started
writing letters of salvation on your hearts.
He has started writing letters of healing, of glorification on
your hearts. It's a church.
Who are you? Who is the Holy Spirit writing
letters of salvation on through you?
Who as you gaze upon Jesus, are you spending time with?
Who are you mixing with? Because the Spirit writes
letters of recommendation on those who we spend time with.
He is sanctifying those. He is saving those who you spend
time with. It is the glory that is shown on
you that is then reflecting. That is reflecting.
Think of the guys as they shared their testimonies 2 weeks ago,
Brian. He is a letter of salvation
written from the glory of God coming to Mikey's life.
That's what it is. Think of Karina, she is a letter
of salvation written by people like Olympia, Kika, others in
this church spending time sowing seeds of the gospel, letting the
light shine that is in them onto her.
Who are you spending time with? The answer should be Jesus and
then people. As you spend time with people
and God, his light will radiate from you and write letters of
salvation upon them. Let's pray.
Lord Jesus, God, your gospel is so amazing.
God, I want to thank you that I am justified, that I am
forgiven, Lord Jesus, that I have eternal life, that I am
going to heaven, not hell. Lord Jesus, that one day you're
going to make all things new and I'm going to rule and reign with
you on the new heavens and new earth, Lord Jesus, but all that
is nothing, all that is rubbish without you, God.
God, we thank you that you've done all of that so that we
could know you, so that we could see the glory, the beauty, the
majesty, the wonder that we could be wrapped up and
experience life with you, the King of glory, Lord Jesus.
And I pray that we'll be a people that longs to, that
spends time gazing at your face, Lord God.
And I ask you that if there's anyone here right now or who
listens or watches this who does not know you, Jesus, I pray that
they would turn to you now, and as they do, you would keep your
promise and you would lift the veil of blindness from their
eyes so that they may see you for themselves, Lord Jesus.
And I pray for us here. I pray that we, like Moses, will
be shining your glory to the people around us, Lord God.
And I pray for more letters written on hearts of salvation,
Lord, letters that have been written because we loved you,
because we dared to become more like you.
And we shared about you. We worshipped you.
And as we did, those around us saw that light of glory.
And you opened their eyes and you saved them.
You changed them. You were made.
You began to make them more like you.
Lord Jesus, do it. Grow us Lords.
Sluse, us Lords, by your holy precious name.
Amen.