Paul presents to the Corinthian church two options for our lives. We can choose a path leading to death and condemnation or the path leading to the Spirit and righteousness.
Do you want a relationship with God based upon your performance or upon Christ’s?
Do you want to want to stand in your own unrighteousness or in Christ’s righteousness?
7 But if the ministry of death, in letters engraved on stones, came with glory, so that the sons of Israel could not look intently at the face of Moses because of the glory of his face, fading as it was, 8 how will the ministry of the Spirit fail to be even more with glory? 9 For if the ministry of condemnation has glory, much more does the ministry of righteousness abound in glory. 10 For indeed what had glory, in this case has no glory because of the glory that surpasses it. 11 For if that which fades away was with glory, much more that which remains is in glory.
Paul begins by making specific comparisons between the New and Old Covenants.
One was a covenant of failure due to man’s falling short while the other was a covenant of victory based upon Christ’s work on our behalf.
The pathway of the Old Covenant: LIMITED GLORY
a) Engraved on stones: in letters engraved on stones
Ten Commandments: Exciting scene where God is giving Charlton Heston the Commandments. It is done in a way that God is actually flinging them at the Tablets.
Thunder and Lightning! Booming voice! Moses flinching at every fling of God’s hand.
• Some people will use the Bible as a club to beat others over the head with. However we might do it today we are nothing in comparison to how the OT Jews behaved with Scripture. Adding and adding and adding to every part their own interpretations.
A lady said to preacher George Stuart one Sunday morning, "Pastor, you said britches instead of trousers in your sermon. That is such a coarse word, and I was embarrassed by it."
"Well, let’s see. What did I say before I said britches?" "I don’t know."
"And what did I say after I said britches?" "I don’t know."
"Well, if I hadn’t said britches in my sermon, you wouldn’t have remembered anything I said."
• The mistake the Jews made with the Old Covenant was to only have a LIMITED understanding of the Word of God in it.
b) Face of Moses shined: the sons of Israel could not look intently at the face of Moses because of the glory of his face
Moses’ faces shined so much that he had to wear a veil over it.
This was before the days of sunglasses. They might have called them Moses glasses. ‘I got a Moses burn’ Moses only reflected the glory of God coming from His backside and not even His front.
• God allowed Moses’ face to be an indicator that this Law would also fade.
c) A glory that fades away: fading as it was(a glory that was only short lived)
The Super Bowl is the most watched television event there is. The year that the New Orleans Saints came from behind to defeat the Indianapolis Colts there was a big parade afterwards in New Orleans but the plane bringing the Colt home to Indianapolis was only greeted by 11 fans. The glory fades Did you ever wonder how the winning team always seems to have championship caps and t-shirts immediately after the game? The NFL orders two sets of caps and two sets of t-shirts, in this case one for the Saints and one for the Colts. So what happened to the caps and t-shirts made up in case the Colts won? The NFL donated them to World Vision who will distribute them in Haiti. THE COLTS WERE WORLD CHAMPS IN HAITI!! As far as they knew.
Manley Beasley preached not for motivation but for transformation….for change. Most preachers preach to motivate. Motivation lasts from three to seven days. Change lasts for a lifetime.
Camp or revival experience: Most will return to their former behaviors or mindset.
Lynne’s grandmother: Interesting woman of barely 5ft stature. Very devout Catholic. Came to hear me preach but it had to be on a Wednesday because to come into a Baptist church on a Sunday would be a sin. Sometimes she would attend her church for weekday mass and come home while we were there visiting. She would walk in and have this glowing looking on her face saying, ‘I have been to church, I have been to church’. Then after awhile she would sit down to play a game with you and if you weren’t careful she would begin to cheat so she could win. The glory faded pretty quickly.
• The Old Covenant never offered anything permanent. There was the constant awareness that this would have to be done again. There would be another sacrifice, another Passover, another Day of Atonement.
• What kind of PERMANENCE do you experience in your walk with God?
Are you always trying to live up to His expectation?
Trying to keep up with the codes of conduct you have made for yourself?
Does your glory fade with each new circumstance life brings?
The OT law is a mirror and not a bar of soap. We look in the mirror to see the condition of our countenance. I need a make over – I need a shower I am dirty!
The law is not a surgeon, who can remove a cancer but it simply gives us the diagnosis
“The law shows us the disease in such a way that it gives us no hope of a cure!
How would you like to go to a doctor who only saw his job as telling you what was wrong with you? He never prescribed medications or did any surgery.
People just walked out of his office with nothing but the bad news of their conditions.
Some of us need a SECOND OPINION:
To find a doctor who not only has the diagnosis but knows the cure.
• What kind of difference do we find with the New Covenant?
LIFECHANGING GLORY: The Pathway of the New Covenant
The New Covenant is a covenant of the Spirit and Righteousness.
It fills us with the life of the Spirit and allows to stand before God with no condemnation.
12Therefore having such a hope, we use great boldness in our speech, 13 and are not like Moses, who used to put a veil over his face so that the sons of Israel would not look intently at the end of what was fading away.
The New Covenant gives us hope and a reason to speak boldly.
Paul says that Moses did not put the veil over his face primarily to protect the people from the glare but from the fading of the glare. That they would not see how it soon became nothing.
How many believers do not maintain their hope and boldness for Christ but in an embarrassing way fade before a lost world?
They praise the Lord at church and then go to work or school and fade away?
They love to talk about the Lord in Sunday School and then go home and grab the remote and fade away.
Are you less now than you have been for the Lord in the past?
Have you allowed yourself to fade in your faith?
How can we get back to the glory? What is the pathway to doing just that?
How can I discover this LIFECHANGING direction?
14 But their minds were hardened; for until this very day at the reading of the old covenant the same veil remains unlifted, because it is removed in Christ.
We need to realize that we are living behind a veil that needs to be lifted.
The Jews knew the OT backwards and forwards and the veil remained.
The veil would only be removed thru an encounter with Jesus Christ.
You can learn and work and do and serve and be constantly active in your life as a Christian and still your faith will fade but when you have a fresh encounter with Christ you will discover the veil is removed.
The veil Paul spoke of what not over the face like what Moses had but Paul spoke of a veil that covered a different part of us.
15 But to this day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their heart; 16 but whenever a person turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.
Paul spoke of a veil that covers our hearts. The problem Jews had then and today is not a veil over their eyes but over their hearts. What they saw with their eyes they rejected in their hearts. ‘Fool has said in his heart there is no God’
• This veil keeps us from seeing and understanding and experiencing God in His fullness.
This veil keeps us from understanding all that is ours in Christ.
What the full extent of the Christian life is meant to be.
• We can continue to live in the spirit of the Old Covenant.
An attitude of condemnation and death instead of knowing our position in Christ and living in the fullness of His Spirit.
The final truth of this difference between the Old and New Covenants;
LIBERATING GLORY:
Paul says there is a great liberty to be experienced in knowing Christ.
17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
The New Covenant does not enslave us to a legal code but sets us free to experience the presence and power of God in our lives.
Some think license and liberty are the same thing:
License is the freedom to do what one please while liberty is to live like God pleases. License will never lead to true liberty.
Some worry that if we don’t put a lot of rules on believers they will do anything and everything. If they seek license to do worldly things and still call themselves believers instead of seeking the liberty to do more and more for Christ then they are most likely not truly born again.
The true use of freedom will help us to know which is true of them.
If we are not experiencing that kind of freeness then we are still caught up in the ways of the Old Covenant regardless of what we are calling it.
The stars and moon may be helped to guide and comfort us through the night hours when the day comes and the Son rises then we don’t need to look for the moon or stars to follow. There is something better to see by now. We are free to live by that light.
18 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.
Instead of a dying experience with the Law we see something greater than Moses’ fading face when we see the reflected glory of Christ.
It no longer about the MIRROR of the Old Covenant reflecting Him but we are to be His Mirrors that reflect His glory to the world.
His Spirit in us reflects His presence through us which is far beyond what comes through the Old Covenant.
This glory is also not a stagnant glory but His reflection through us is constantly getting more and more intense.
are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.
A person can stand back from a mirror and their reflection will fill less of the mirror but as that mirror moves closer and closer the more their image will fill the total space of that mirror.
We are set free by the New Covenant through our being set free in Christ but then we begin a process of bringing Him closer and closer and filling us more and more as we are transformed going from glory to glory.
Rom.8:29 “For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son,”
The IMAGE OF CHRIST is the ultimate destination of Glory for the life of a Christian.
The Old Covenant could never take you there.
In the early 1970s the Dallas Cowboys had a star running back named Duane Thomas who was kind of a head case. One year the Cowboys made it to the Super Bowl and someone asked Duane Thomas what he thought about playing in the “ultimate game.”
He replied “If this is the Ultimate Game, why do they play it again next year?”
Jesus is the ultimate answer because IT IS FINISHED. That is the message of the New Covenant and not of the Old that constantly has to do and redo. It was all done for us through Christ and now we are to reflect Him to those around us and to do it with great and greater glory as His Spirit continues to transform us more and more with each passing day.
