Afraid of the Glory of the Lord

Transcription

1 GLORIA DEI LUTHERAN CHURCH, February 11, 2018; Transfiguration of the Lord Lectionary / Selected: Psalm 48; II Kings 2; II Corinthians 3:12-4:6; Mark 9:1-13 (NLT) Sermon Hymn: Oh, Wondrous Type! Oh, Vision Fair (LBW 80) Anthem: Afraid of the Glory of the Lord On the outskirts of a small town, there was a big old pecan tree by the cemetery fence. One day two boys filled up a bucketful of nuts and sat down by the tree, out of sight, and began dividing the nuts. One for you, one for me. One for you, one for me, said one boy. Several were dropped and rolled down toward the fence. Another boy came riding along the road on his bicycle. As he passed, he thought he heard voices from inside the cemetery. He slowed down to investigate. Sure enough, he heard, One for you, one for me. One for you, one for me. He just knew what it was. Oh my, he shuddered, it s satan and St. Peter dividing the souls at the cemetery. He jumped back on his bike and rode off. Just around the bend he met an old man with a cane, hobbling along. Come here quick, said the boy, you won t believe what I heard. St. Peter and satan are down at the cemetery dividing up the souls. The man said, Beat it, kid, can t you see it s hard for me to walk. When the boy insisted, though, the man hobbled to the cemetery. Standing by the fence they heard, One for you, one for me. One for you, one for me The old man whispered, Boy, you ve been telling the truth. Let s see if we can see the devil himself. Shaking with fear, they peered through the fence, yet were still unable to see anything. The old man and the boy

2 gripped the wrought iron bars of the fence tighter and tighter as they tried to get a glimpse of satan. At last they heard, One for you, one for me. And one last one for you. That s all. Now let s go get those nuts by the fence, and we ll be done. Now I imagine that put the fear of God into those eavesdroppers! It s also notable that they were more interested in glimpsing the devil than they were of seeing St. Peter. But in an odd sort of way, they are illustrative of normal people in general and both apostate Jews and immature or backslidden Christians in particular. In other words, when people are not right with God, consciously and purposefully living in sin, rebelling against Him, they truly don t want God. They d prefer He simply didn t exist. They will go to extreme lengths to hide from Him, and create all manner of deceitful fantasies, philosophies and faux-scientific theories that confidently assert that there is indeed no such thing as God. When shown evidence that God actually is real, they will deny, disregard, and turn away from it in fear. They are ultimately afraid of the truth, because they do not want to have to deal with it and face the music of ultimate judgement. One of God s immutable characteristics, which is part of the definition of what it means to be God, is that He is glorious. He has glory. In the same way that God is love and truth and life itself, so God is glory. Glory has no existence apart from God. All glory belongs to God and comes from God. There is no glory apart from the presence of God s Spirit. Thus all glory belongs to!2

3 Him. Attempting to steal or glorify one s self is tantamount to stealing from God Himself. It s impossible and necessarily does not end well for the would-be thief. One of the characteristics of the Son of Man, the Savior and Lord Jesus the Christ, is His complete and total identification with mankind, or peoplekind as Canadian prime minister Trudeau insists is inoffensive and more properly inclusive. In His emptying of Himself (Philippians 2:7), He put aside His innate gloriousness, His glory, and took on human flesh whose only glory is the reflected glory of our Creator and Father God. Much like the moon has no and produces no light of its own, yet it shines gloriously in the night sky solely reflecting back the light, glory of the sun. Yet, Father God would glorify His Son in certain spectacular ways that left no doubt that Lord Jesus possessed glory in and of Himself. At his baptism by John in the Jordan River, Holy Spirit appeared in the form of a dove and descended on Him, and Father God spoke from the sky specifically identifying Lord Jesus as His beloved Son. This time, Lord Jesus knew what was coming. There was to be an executive committee meeting to hammer out the details of the once-for-all-time death to end all deaths that was soon to come in the holy city of Jerusalem. He took along three witnesses, His inner circle of disciples, Peter, James and John. Leading them up a high mountain, probably Mt. Tabor in southern Galilee, at the summit, He was transfigured. He began to glow, and His clothing became whiter and whiter until its unearthly whiteness!3

4 actually radiated light, rather glory. Within this near blinding radiance, Moses and Elijah suddenly appear, and the committee meeting gets under way. Perhaps Moses and Elijah are relaying to the Son of Man certain instructions regarding His upcoming crucifixion and resurrection. Whatever it was exactly, the details were lost upon the witnesses as Peter, James and John were scared spitless and only Peter who always had such trouble keeping his mouth from moving inappropriately blurted out how good it was they were there so they could build three booths to shelter the three heavenly personages. To their credit, they didn t flee! Recall another appearance of the glory of God that occurred about a thousand years earlier, and again with Elijah. At Holy Spirit s direction, Elijah had gone looking for a young man named Elisha. Upon finding him, and throwing his cloak upon him, Elisha left his farming behind and became Elijah s disciple and designated successor. Fast forward about ten years and Elijah s time on earth is coming to an end, though not in the usual way. He doesn t die. He s taken directly to Heaven by a VIP limousine service, a glowing chariot pulled by a team of fiery flaming horses. Though Elisha tried to stay beside Elijah, the horses came between them and Elijah was scooped up. As he was rising in a whirlwind, his cloak fell from his hand and landed on the ground near Elisha. After Heaven s taxi had disappeared in the sky, he picked it up, walked back over to the Jordan River, struck the water with the cloak, and asked God where He was. God answered,!4

5 again in glory, parting the waters again, and proving for all to see that the divine, holy glory that had rested on Elijah was now doubled, resting on Elisha. The relatively short fifteen years of Elijah s ministry now continued on in Elisha s next fifty to sixty years. But as his ministry was just getting started, Elisha returned from the Jordan first to Jericho where God used him to purify their water, and then on to Bethel where the two of them had just been a few days earlier. By this time, the news that Elisha had now taken the place of the famous Elijah had spread far and wide. But a gang of boys from the area of Bethel saw him and started pestering him, calling him insulting names. In those days, premature baldness was practically unheard of, so the mid-twenties Elisha was probably not in the least bit bald. But the term itself had an intentional vulgar meaning. These teenaged hoodlums had no real idea that who really they were cursing out. Elisha, full of Holy Spirit, cursed them with the name of the Lord God, and God caused two bears (how unusual and rare for any to be in those parts!) to come out of the woods and maul them, killing 42 of the unbelievers who so despised God and His glory resting on God s chosen servant Elisha. Don t mess with the Lord s anointed if you want to live see another day. God is not mocked. Kevin Miller wrote, A few summers ago we took a family vacation to Toronto. We d never been there, but all the guidebooks said, You have to go up the CN Tower, [then] the world s tallest building and freestanding structure. Just the thought of being!5

6 1,815 feet above the ground made me queasy. But the kids said, Aw, Dad, we gotta go, so against my better judgment, we went. I was the last one into the elevator. We started up, which was when I realized that the door of this elevator was actually made of glass, and that this elevator was affixed to the outside of the tower. As we rushed up the side of the CN Tower, I could see the city of Toronto falling away at my feet. My palms started sweating, my throat got tight, and I started breathing really fast. I told myself, Just hang on. Soon you ll be on the observation floor. I stumbled out of the elevator onto the observation floor, where I thought it would be safe. But I found that some sadist had installed a glass floor there so that people could walk on it and look straight down to the ground. The kids were laughing as they walked onto the glass floor, jumped up and down, and even laid down. C - mon, Dad! they yelled. That same year, we went to the Grand Canyon, where you can stand at the South Rim and peer 6,000 feet straight down. At the Grand Canyon, you are not separated from your doom by blocks of glass 2.5 inches thick. So every year, an average of four or five people die while visiting because of (in one website s words) overly zealous photographic endeavors. Still, the Grand Canyon is so beautiful that I was drawn to it. I had to see it, to get near it. I wouldn t do anything too foolish near the edge, but the same awesome beauty that caused me fear also drew me toward it. When the Bible talks about fearing God, what is it talking about? Is it talking about the kind of fear I!6

7 felt at the CN Tower? Or is it more like the fear I felt at the Grand Canyon? For years, preachers and writers have told me that it s like the fear I felt at the CN Tower. When the Bible says to fear God, they explained, it doesn t really mean fear. It means awe or reverence. You should respect God, of course, but you don t need to actually fear Him. It s like you re standing on the glass floor 1,100 feet up in the CN Tower. Being there may give you a thrill or a quick feeling of awe, but you re completely safe. So if you do feel any terror with God, that s unnecessary or even irrational. But the Bible disagrees. Isaiah prophesies, The Lord Almighty is the One you are to fear, He is the one you are to dread (Isaiah 8:13). And Jesus says, Fear God, Who has the power to kill you and then throw you into hell (Luke 12:5 NLT). So when the Bible talks about fearing God, it means not just awe and not just reverence. It also means fear. It s the kind of fear I felt at the Grand Canyon, where I was drawn to amazing beauty, but I also felt a realistic fear at the danger, because people who acted foolishly near it have died. There are so many people today who are acting so very foolishly. Too many of them are on TV, the internet, or walking the halls of Washington, D.C. and other centers of power. We may not be able to warn them of the grave danger they re in, but we can pray for them. Our prayers can enable the powers of Heaven to show them the folly of their ways so that some of them will repent and turn to the truth, and behold the saving glory of God.!!7