Painting God’s Masterpiece Part 8
Scriptures: 1 Timothy 1:1; 2 Corinthians 3:17-18; Numbers 6:24-26
Introduction:
This message will conclude this series. This morning we will examine how Christ represents our hope, our vision and our image. As I have gone through this series, I have been working on this drawing of Christ being the image we should be focusing on. I have previously shared with you that Christ is the head and we are the body and therefore whatever Christ does and wherever He goes, His body does and goes with Him. This is the image that we should be focusing on versus one of being alone and without any hope.
I. Jesus Christ: Our Hope; Our Vision; Our Image
When First Timothy opens, the following is stated in verse one: “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus according to the commandment of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus, who is our hope.” (1 Timothy 1:1) Paul immediately identified that our hope lies with Jesus Christ. What this means is that He is our source for victory; our source for comfort; our source for healing; and our source for eternal life. He is our head and we are His body. All that we are rests within Him as He is the one who gives us the victory. Let me use this example. All of us at some point in our lives have been exposed to some type of competitive sport. If you are familiar with any sports team, most team have a star player, the one who makes it happen and can be counted on in most cases to help the team win. When this player is on the field or the court, the team plays different because they have what? They have hope based on the skills that this one individual has displayed in previous games. They have hope for a victory and they have hope in this one player. The coaches place their hope in the person and therefore the other players do the same. This person often carries the weight of the team, the fans and the sponsors on their shoulders. In Christianity and for me in all things spiritual, Christ is our hope. He is the one that will lead us to victory. When He is on the field or the courts of our lives, we play in this world a lot differently than when He is absent. When He is present, regardless of the outcome it is going to be all right. We must begin to see His image within us. Look at 2 Corinthians 3:17-18.
“Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.” (2 Corinthians 3:17-18) In these verses Paul makes a couple of points that I want you to get a visual of. The first point I want you to see is what he said about where the Lord is. He says where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty. We actually sing this verse in a song sometimes during our praise service. Where Jesus’ Spirit is, there is liberty. Have you ever wondered why this is? Liberty is defined as the “freedom from slavery or captivity; a particular right.” Many read this verse and think about having the liberty to do whatever they want to do. However, I want you visualizing your freedom from the slavery of sin; the slavery of sickness; the slavery of despair; the slavery of hopelessness; the slavery of past weaknesses and failures. All of these things we have been freed from when Christ entered our midst. The second part of the definition talks about having a right to something. Do you see yourself having the right to expect forgiveness for all sins? Do you see yourself having the right to feel hope; happiness and security? Do you see yourself having the right to be totally free from the things of your past that was unlike God? This is what this verse is talking about. Paul is letting us know that when Jesus is in the house (the house of our hearts) we are freed from all those things that hold us down and we are given the right to expect more. We do not have to be worried about “what if” because we have the right to focus on what shall be.
In verse eighteen Paul makes this dramatic statement: “But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.” Before we go into this verse, I want to remind you of Paul’s background. Remember, he was the one who was out killing Christians. When He came face to face with Christ, he was a changed man and became instrumental in documenting what is available to us through Christ. So what he is sharing is coming from a man who made a dramatic turnaround in his life. He was really coming from left field because he had not trained under Christ directly as the other disciples had so he had a lot of catching up to do. He spent a lot of time with Christ in prayer and meditation receiving revelations from Him. So when you consider his background, he speaks of our transformation which is similar to what he himself went through so he was speaking from first hand experience.
The first thing he says is that we are looking with an unveiled face. When you read the rest of this chapter, you find that he was comparing what happens with us versus what happened with Moses and the Israelites. Whenever Moses entered into God’s presence he glowed afterwards from his direct contact with God. Once he left God’s presence, the glory that shone upon him would eventually fade away. It appears that as the glory faded from Moses face, the people would get discouraged so Moses placed a veil on his face so that the people could not see the glory fading. But Paul tells us that we are looking at the glory of God within us without our faces being covered. Not only that but he says it as if we are looking in a mirror. What do you see when you look in a mirror? You see your face looking right back at you. So here we find that not only do we see our face, we see God’s glory on it – surrounding us – and it never fades. A veil is not required as the glory of God will never fade from us. It will never fade from us because through Jesus Christ we can always be in His presence. As a matter of fact, we are actually being transformed into that glorious image that we see – that image where God’s glory is being reflected around us covering the image of a stained life of sin. Moses had to go into the mountains to get into God’s presence and while he was there, God’s presence engulfed him and shone all around him. Well we can enter into God’s presence at anytime so His glory should always be reflected within and around us.
So we find in these two verses that we have been given our liberty in Christ and thus have been freed from those things that have held us bound. Not only that, but we are also being transformed by the glory of God through Christ Jesus. The image I see in the mirror may be my face, but it also contains the glory of God which surrounds me. You might not be able to see it with your naked eyes, but I know the change that has taken place within me. When we accept this change, we can accept the image. We are more than we seem – we just need to stand up and take our rightful place.
Our faith is tied to Christ as He is our only hope. All things rest with Him and if we are to be we will be through Him. If you believe that Christ is your hope, then you can rephrase Hebrews 11:1 to say this (I am not being blasphemous, just trying to paint this vivid image for you): “Now faith is the substance of Christ in me, the evidence of things not seen.” Can you see this point? Our faith is linked to Christ being within us, our hope. Christ, as my hope, brings before my vision those things that I cannot see but what will be. If we are walking with Christ, we blindly follow where He leads knowing that where He leads is the best place to be. Christ is our hope; He is our vision; and He is our image. Everything is placed before us, we just need to reach out and take it.
Conclusion
I started this message eight weeks ago with the story of Adam and Eve and how God made us in His image. I have shared with you that when this took place, we became according to Ephesians 2:10 His workmanship – God’s work of art. God took the time to get intimately involved in our creation versus just speaking us into being. During this series I shared with you that Leonardo da Vinci took sixteen years to paint the Mona Lisa because it took him that long to get the image from his head to the canvas. We also have an image that has been implanted within us and that image is Christ. We are working to get His image from within us to be painted on the canvas of our hearts. When His image is firmly planted on the insides of our hearts, we will begin to reflect that image on the outside. We live by images and if we are to come into what God has for us, we must begin to operate by the image that He has. This series has been about getting us to make a decision to change what we see and become what God has placed within us.
When God created the world, He spoke a lot of things into being, but He did not do that with man. With man He took the time to form us with His hands and then He breathed into us part of Himself, part of His Spirit, and man became a living soul. Not only did God form us, but once that were done, He breathed into us Himself. This is the image that we must see – we are not an accident, nor are we a mistake. We are what God made us and we are becoming what Christ is within us. There is nothing lacking in our formation and all things through Christ is available for us. When we accept this, we begin to understand that our past failures do not become our future failures. We also begin to understand that what God delivered us from in the past does not compare to what He will perform in our future – if we remember and expect it. We must remember what God has already done for us so that we will have faith to move into what He is planning for us. Remember the part of the message on living in the land of WERE? When we live in WERE we forget what God has done and because we cannot remember His deliverance we operate in fear and distress about what shall be. Living in WERE hinders our ability to see what God is doing because we are so focused on the problems around us. Our problems are so big that they overshadow the memory of what God has already done in our lives. When we leave WERE, we begin to walk in “what shall be.” When we begin to walk in what shall be, we understand that “what was” is not “what shall be.” We stop walking in and repeating the failures of our past. We stop seeing ourselves as continual sinners who are continually saved by grace. We were saved once and our sins were wiped away, now it is time to walk in the deliverance and benefits of what God has already done for us.
Do you understand deliverance and benefits? If you commit a crime and you are locked up in jail, you lose a lot of benefits. You lose the benefit of coming and going as you please. You lose the benefit of sleeping in and waking up whenever you want. If you are in prison, you lose the benefit of eating what you want to eat. These are benefits that those of us who have never been in prison take for granted – because they have never been taken away from us. Well when this person who was in prison finally gets out, what happens? They begin to enjoy the “benefits” of being out of prison. They do not live outside of prison as if they were still in it. When God delivered us from sin through Christ Jesus, he restored to us those benefits that He had originally given us when man was created. Even though our benefits have been restored, many times we operate as if they do not exist. This is the image that we must walk away from. The land of WERE is not where God wants us. Every day that are able to wake up we should see it as another opportunity to serve God and another day to see what God will fulfill in our lives. This is why so many people who are struggling can maintain their faith – because they know what we face here today is temporal and will past away.
I have told you that there is a spiritual battle going on and it is for our hearts. When we believe something in our hearts, we act on it. God knows this and that is why He has implanted Christ there when we accepted Him. However, as I shared with you last week, Satan cannot change the image of God has placed before us, but he does attempt to change how we process the image. When we understand that we have already been seated with Christ and we have already been given authority in which to be victorious in this life, we will stop walking with a defeated mindset. We will stop giving in to every sin that tempts us and bind it in the name of Jesus. We will stop justifying why we fail and begin to acknowledge that we have the strength to carry on. We will stop laying blame on someone else for what they have not done and begin to pick up the pieces so that God will ultimately get the glory. We have to be able to see this image. We have to see victory. We have to see healing. We have to see peace. We have to see love. We have to see financial security. We have to see spiritual strength and power. When we begin to visually see these things in our spirits, we will begin to accept and operate in them. This is why the image that we see and focus on is so very important.
We are standing in faith. Our faith is fueled by our hope and our hope is Christ. I told you two weeks ago that there is a difference between wishing and hoping. When you hope for something there is an expectation that you will receive it. Remember, hope is a desire accompanied by expectation. Faith latches on to our hope as our hope allows us to see clearly what shall be. When we begin to see what shall be our expectation increases. When our expectation increases, we begin to make plans for what shall be. If you are praying to God and are making no plans for when He answers your prayer, then you are not praying with hope of receiving. Remember, hope is a desire accompanied by an expectation. When there is an expectation there is also a plan for when it happens. Let me explain it this way. If you are hoping for a bonus, you begin to see the bonus in your mind. You begin to calculate what it will be and then, and only then, do you begin to visualize what you will do with it. If you are just “wishing” for it and you do not see yourself getting it, you make no plans for it as it is just wishful thinking. The truest way to know if you really expect something to happen is when you make plans for it to happen. When there is a real expectation, there is also a plan for it. You do not expect to buy a home without talking to a bank and understanding what you can afford. It is only when you are seriously looking and expect to make the purchase do you go out and start the process of finding out what you can afford. When you truly expect something to happen, you make plans for it to happen. When two parents decide to have children, they expect it to happen and they make plans for it accordingly. They begin to choose names, consider if it will be a girl or a boy, establish college funds, etc. All of these things are done after there is a real expectation. When you expect God to do something for you, you plan for it. If you are praying for something and are not making plans for it happening, in my humble opinion you do not expect God to answer your prayer.
It has taken me eight weeks to get this across to you; eight weeks to try and get you to see what God sees. God sees you as victorious in Jesus Christ. He does not see you as a sinner; as a loser; as someone who will never get it right. He sees you according to His purpose for you and yes He has high hopes that through His Son, Jesus Christ, you will fulfill what He has placed within you. So if you ask me what you should take away from this series, I would sum it up with these bullet points:
• God made you in His image. You are not a mistake, nor an accident. You are and forever will be His work of art.
• You must see yourself as God sees you and reject the image that Satan has so carefully placed before you for most of your life. You’re not a failure, but victorious.
• When God made you and formed you, He gave you part of Himself – His Spirit.
• When you remember what God has done for you in the past, you’ll have faith for what He is going to do in your future. Leave the land of WERE and never go back. Forever march towards “what shall be” which is not what was.
• Remember your assigned seat – right with Christ at the head table. You do not have to sit in the back – you are God’s honored guest and He expects you to sit at the table with His Son.
• Stop wishing for God to do something for you and give your faith something to latch on to – HOPE. Where there is hope, there is a desire with an expectation. Expect God to act on your behalf.
• Satan will attempt to change how you process what God has placed before you, do not let him. Guard your heart through understanding God’s word.
• Let this image remain in your hearts and before you face continually: You are not a sinner saved by grace. You are a child of God who has been delivered from sin through grace. Start acting like a child of God and you will find the strength you need to deal with everything that you will face in this life.
“May the Lord bless and keep you; the Lord make His face shine on you, and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up His countenance on you and give you peace….Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.” (Numbers 6:24-26; Jude 24-25)
