The Glory Descends

All right. Well, again, welcome to Hope Lowertown. And those of you who don't know me, my name is Brian. And excited to open the Word of God with you this morning. One announcement. I forgot I had a slide for it, and I just forgot to put it in there. And that is next Sunday. So we'll look at the building on Saturday, and then on Sunday, we're just gonna have a family meeting after the service. So if you can just stick around for a little bit longer, we'll just do it in the fireside room, like where we normally are at after the service, and just go over a little bit more of the numbers, finances, and just any questions, just let you process a little bit of what you saw on Saturday, and we can kind of go through that and hopefully answer any questions that you might have then on Sunday. So just want to let you be aware of that. It's in the email, but I just wanted to make sure that you were aware of that. All right. We are in the Gospel of Mark, and I'm going to start off the same way I have been the last 30 weeks. And that is in the beginning of the good news about Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God, that this is the good news. This is the gospel. There's lots of gospels, right? Caesar Augustus had a gospel. There's lots of gospels, but this is the gospel about Jesus. This is the good news of Jesus, the Messiah, the anointed one, the promised deliverer of Israel, and of all people, the Son of God. And Mark is getting at this question of who is he? And his power is on display, that he's seen God in the flesh, that he is Emmanuel, he is God with us. He's physically here, and yet he's God. And he has immense authority in his teaching over demons, as we're again going to see today. Authority to forgive sins and authority over nature. So this week I've titled the sermon the Glory Descends. And again, we'll be at Mark, chapter 914 through 29. If you're just checking on Hope, this is your first time in here. It's hard to recap 29 weeks, which I understand. But what's really important about this week was last week. And last week was interesting because it was Easter and we didn't do a normal Easter sermon. At least I didn't. I kept with Mark and where we were at, and it just worked out beautifully. It's actually one of the passages that maybe in, I don't know, five, six years, I might revisit on an Easter Sunday it just fits so well with the Resurrection. And specifically the topic at hand is the transfiguration. Transfiguration of Jesus. If you've grown up the church or you haven't, maybe you're just like, what? I don't even know what that means. What does it mean to be transfigured? It's one of these passages that you read and just go, I don't get it. What is the point of all this? And really what happens is that Mark is setting the stage. And he says, I want you to see, he's gonna use this language after six days. Which Mark doesn't do. Mark loves using the word immediately, immediately, immediately. And yet last week he says, after six days, which is exactly the same language that we read about Moses, this prophet of Israel, that he goes up to the mountain for six days. It's the same language. And the glory of God descends on Moses like a cloud. Same language that we see last week. And then Jesus is transfigured. And it doesn't mean. It's hard to think. Cause we don't have a visual. We don't know exactly what it looked like. But in essence, Jesus became, or he revealed who he always was. He didn't become something new. He didn't become something he wasn't. He said, this is who I am. And someday when we get to glory, we will look out and somehow recognize each other just by saying, yes, I know you. I knew you, and this is who I always knew you would be. This is it. This is you. Completely unabated by sin in our worldly flesh, that this is us transfigured. And he gives his disciples, specifically Peter and James and John, that they go up the mountain with Jesus and they see him. And then Peter says, jesus, let's build a tabernacle. Let's build this altar for you and for Moses and for Elijah. And he says, no, that's not what we're gonna do it. And Peter, very human, just like a lot of us when we have some transcendent experience or we experience God in some way, and we just feel really close to God, that we wanna take that thing, we wanna bottle it up, and we wanna domesticate the glory of God. And we wanna bring it back into our daily lives. And anytime we're feeling distant from God, we want to go. I just wish I could experience that again, rather than descending into the valley, which is exactly what's going to happen this morning. And then what happens in that passage that we looked at last week, that Moses and Elijah they vanish. And it says jesus is left alone. Moses and Elijah are often referred to as the law and the prophets. And they vanish. And now it's just Jesus. Something new is about to happen. There is a new covenant about to be established in Jesus. And then the voice from heaven says, this is my beloved son. Listen to him. What a good word. That when I'm struggling, when I'm doubting my own faith, that when I'm listening to my culture around me, whether it's from politics or how I should behave or act, or how I should love my neighbor or who my neighbor is, you listen to him. That was where we looked at last week. And then he says to them, I'm going to die and I'm going to rise again. And then it says that he descends the mountain. And the point is that the mountain is not the destination. It's not the stopping point. We don't stay there. We don't try to live on the mountain like Peter, but the valley, maybe even the valley of the shadow of death, that is where Jesus does his work. When we realize that we can't handle it on our own every other day of the week. So let's look at this again. The glory descends. I have three points to this outline. I've never done three points. I've always done five. We're mixing it up this morning, and it's alliterated. That's what they teach in preacher school. So I thought, you know What? It's been 20 years. How about I listen? Listen to the experts. So we've got three points. Chaos, competence, and candid. So we're gonna look at those this morning again last week, looking at the on the mountain, in the glory. And this week we're gonna see Jesus go back and enter into reality. And Mark is doing this on purpose. The fancy word is pericope. Just the story, Mark, just goes from one to the next to the next to the next. But these two are very linked. If you look in your English translation of your Bible, there's probably a big paragraph break and maybe even a new heading or title of that paragraph. But Mark here is wanting. He's putting these right next together on purpose. Jesus on the mountain in glory. Peter says, let's stay. And God says, no, we're gonna descend back down the mountain, into the valley, into daily life. So let's look at this. And when they came to the disciples, that is Jesus. And then Peter, James and John, they saw a great crowd around him, the scribes arguing with them. And immediately all the Crowd when they saw him, were greatly amazed and ran to him and greeted him. So again, just like last week of looking at of Mark comparing Jesus with Moses on the mountain, he's doing the same thing here. Moses comes down the mountain. Moses just receives the Ten Commandments. It's this huge moment for the nation of Israel, receives the ten commandments, and he comes back down the mountain. The same exact language that's used in Exodus, and it says, after six days, again it says the same thing. And we see Moses coming down the mountain with the ten Commandments. He just had this incredible experience with God. And it says that his face was. Was glowing. His face literally shone because he saw the afterburners of where God once was. God hides him in the cleft of the rock and says, I'm gonna pass by, and then you can see where I once was. And that was enough to make his face shine. Jesus has the same experience, but he is God. And he comes to the mountain and he's shining, which is most likely why the people see him. And they're amazed, because there's something visually different about Jesus in this moment. But as Moses descends back down the mountain, it is chaos. It is pandemonium here at the bottom of the mountain. And we see that Aaron, which is Moses, brother, who is the priest, he says, let's fashion a God. Let's fashion something that is Yahweh, that resembles Yahweh. And one of the big ten, that Moses is coming down and says, do not make any graven images. And he doesn't even get down to the bottom of the mountain. And one of the commandments is already completely shattered, enters into the chaos, and now Jesus is doing the same exact thing. The crowd again, greatly amazed. Jesus is most likely still radiant. And the glory now is literally walking into the mess. And he asked them, what are you arguing about with them? And someone from the crowd answered him, teacher, this is a father, I brought my son to you, for he has a spirit that makes him mute. So a question maybe I have for us this morning. What we looked at a little bit last week is where are we trying to stay? Where are we trying to stay up on that mountain? Where do we try to domesticate the glory of God and keep it for ourselves? Or maybe another way to think about that, just a different vantage point maybe, is what chaos of everyday life are we trying to avoid when we descend back into it? What are we not wanting to acknowledge? What is the golden calf that we are just trying to skirt past? Oop, oop. Just let me sneak past you there, good old Minnesota. I'm just not gonna acknowledge this thing. And let's just see if we can continue on in our daily life. And yes, God is here. He's present. I love God. I'm a follower of Jesus, but I don't want to acknowledge this thing. I don't want to acknowledge the chaos, this hardship that I'm walking back into. It's avoidance. And it's an avoidance. It's a sin that we all, every single one of us, struggle with. And we might not. We might know that we're not on the mountain anymore. We might know that right now, wherever you're at in your daily life, you might go, yeah, I am not on the mountaintop. I do not. I don't feel close to God. He seems very distant to me. I know that I'm not on the mountain, but I just don't want to address the problem, though. I want to avoid it. Maybe it's a relationship that's gone sideways, a family member, a parent. Maybe it's a problem at work or just work in general. Could be our community or our city or our nation. Could be politically or just something in our lives that I just don't want to address. I just want to sweep it under the rug and act like it's not there anymore. We just avoid it like this golden calf. Which moves me into the second point here of competence. We read this in Mark. Whenever it. That is this spirit, whenever the father hears talking, whenever it seizes him, it throws him down and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid. So I asked your disciples to cast it out, and they were not able. Why? Why were the disciples not able to cast this demon out? We're going to come back to that. And he answered them, this is Jesus. O faithless generation. How long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him to me. Jesus isn't scolding them here. Oh, you faithless generation. He again is performing something prophetic. He's reenacting numbers 14, the same exact language that Yahweh God uses about Israel. Jesus is now using about his disciples. You are a faithless generation. You have witnessed miracle after miracle after miracle with your own, and yet you still don't have faith. It's the same thing. It's exactly what Moses and God said to the Israelites in the wilderness. You just saw me split the Red Sea. You saw me destroy and defeat your oppressors and the Egyptians. I sent you to the promised land. I sent you to this land that I promised Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. You're here and you got there and you said, wow, there's a really big army here. I don't think we can do it. You start to rely on yourself. You start to rely on your own competency rather than depend on God. Faithless generation, you have witnessed this over and over. And even the disciples were part of those miracles. We already read this just three chapters ago, in chapter six, Mark, chapter six, starting in verse seven. And he called the 12 and began to send them out two by two and gave them authority over unclean spirits. He charged them not to take anything on their journey except a staff, no bread, no bag, no money in their belts, but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics. There's a lot. And you can go back and listen to that sermon there. And he said to them, whenever you enter a house, stay there until you depart from there. And if any place will not receive you and you do not listen to you when you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them. And so they went out and proclaimed that people should repent. And they cast out many demons and, and anointed with oil, many who were sick and they were healed. The disciples have already been doing these things. And yet now here they come and a situation arises where someone is demon possessed and they can't cast them out. Why is that? The disciples have the authority here. They had complete authority. God gave it to them. Jesus said, you have the authority to do these things. So what changed? They had already cast out demons and now they can't, not again, because their authority had been revoked. But because their authority or their faith exercised in competency, they thought they had figured it out. They thought they could do it on their own. Oh yeah, I did that before and now let me do it again. It became about them and what they they had begun to operate under self sufficiency, not utter dependence on God. So going back to our passage, Jesus asked us, father, how long has this been happening? He said to them, from childhood. And it has often cast him into the fire and the water, destroy him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help him. Did you catch that? Jesus obviously does. He says, but if there's something about it is the same word, that little two letter word, if that has plagued humanity in their relationship with God for all time, going all the way back to Genesis in the garden, excuse me, of Adam and Eve being tempted, right? Did God really say. And then Jesus, as he is being tempted in the wilderness, God just says, this is my son. This is my beloved son. And then he goes into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And what does the devil say? If you're the son of God. Now, same thing again. Jesus up on the mountaintop, this is my son whom I love. Listen to him. And moments later, as he goes back down into the chaos, someone says, if you can. It's the same thing I struggle with. Well, if you can. I mean, I know you can, but I don't. You probably won't. You don't do that. If you can. And Jesus answers, if you can, then listen to what he says. All things are possible for the one who believes. Jesus says, I've already done this before. You've already witnessed me cast out demons. You've already witnessed me cast out demons from afar. I haven't even been next to people, and I've cast out demons. Their sons and daughters had a demon, and I said, okay, when you go home, the demon's gone. I have the power. I have the authority. You've seen me do it over and over again, and yet you still come to me and say, if we don't fail in the valley because we lack the right tools or that God can't. We fail because we forget who the tools belong to. And our past victories deceptively and quietly become the enemy of current dependence. It's a phrase I used, I don't know, several weeks ago. I have all the faith in the world when it comes, that when I die, I'm gonna be in the presence of God. I have all the faith when it comes to my eternal soul. But I really struggle to have faith on a Tuesday. A struggle, A struggle. If you can handle my finances, if you can handle this building purchase, if you can handle this situation of someone in my life, this relationship's going sideways. It's always, if I know you got that, I know you got the mountaintop. I'm struggling in the valley here. So when do you tend to depend on yourself? When do you tend to look at your past experiences and say, I've learned a thing or two? I kind of know what I'm doing now. With your job, with co workers, family, kids, spouse, maybe even your relationship with God. This is what I've always done. I get up, I read this, I pray this, I go through this book. I do these things, and it becomes old and stale because you're depending on yourself to do something. You can't do it all becomes second nature. And we fail to depend on God. And we start to think, based on our past experience, that we're competent rather than a true mark of a disciple of being fully reliant. And if there's ever a time to depend on God, it's when we're in the valley, which is most of the time, which is just called life. It's called Tuesday. We could maybe just sum it up by spiritual dependence versus competency. Do I think, based on past experience or things that I've learned, that I can do this on my own, or is there always a posture of spiritual dependence? I mean, I'm preaching to myself right now. I hope you know that this is me in the building. God has shown up again and again and again and again. And I find myself still saying, all right, I can take it from here. I need to repent of this. I think I can do it. I think I can figure it out. I was smacked in the face, those of you who were there, not quite literally, metaphorically speaking, by Ben, one of our elders, at the family meeting. And we were talking about doing janitorial work in the new space. Hey, we don't have necessarily money to hire a janitor, so a lot of that's gonna fall on my shoulders. And Ben said, you mean on our shoulders? Yeah, yeah. We're in this together because God has put us together. We are partners in this. And I fail to recognize that. I fail to think that I'm. I overthink. I'm a somebody and I can do this on my own. I can't. The last point is this idea of being candid or honest. The father immediately, in Mark's favorite word, immediately the father of the child cried out and said, I love this. I believe. Help my unbelief. It's got to be the most honest prayer in the scriptures. I think the Psalms are full of them, but this sums it up. I believe, but God help my unbelief. The Father recognizes that he doesn't have it all together. He's holding on by a thread. As a father of a son, I can't even begin to imagine what this Father is going through. And broken, he says, I believe he had helped my unbelief. The Father here doesn't try to pretend or to perform. He comes to Jesus with broken and weak faith and says, this is all I've got. And Jesus says, it's all I'm asking for. Not the posture of someone who's self reliant, rather total dependence on him. This is something I've shared in the past and I wanna reference this briefly. This is from the Gospel Centered Life, a little kinda small group study by Bob Thune, pastor in Omaha, Nebraska. And he has this image of the cross. You're kinda going on with life. And then there's this moment of conversion, this moment where you say, yes, I wanna bow the knee to King Jesus, I wanna be a follower of Jesus. And when that happens, you start to see the cross. And the cross grows and it grows in its freedom and its power that sin gets exposed. And rather than hide from it or downplay it, or blame other people for my sin, I say, yes, that is me. And I wanna be more like Jesus because I know that he's paid for that, he's covered that on the cross. And the cross becomes bigger and bigger as we grow in our awareness of God's holiness. And as we grow, then at that bottom line of the awareness of my flesh and my sinfulness, I should be becoming less sinful, but I become more aware of how sinful I am. And the cross just continues to grow. But we shrink it. And we shrink the cross, particularly through, as Bob says. Bob, I've only met him once, I don't call him Bob, As Bob, as Dr. Thune says, we shrink it through pretending and performing, which is not the posture of this. Dad, how do you pretend? We might say things like, I'm not that bad, I'm not as bad as those people. I'm not really that way. I just made a mistake. Here are all the good things that I've done. We don't like to admit how sinful and self reliant we are. So we pretend that we have it all together most of the time when we can. And we try to earn God's approval by thinking that we measure up to what he wants us to be. Or we actually believe that we can do it on our own. We actually think I am actually a somebody, I am actually a holy person. I'm for sure more holy than them. And we shrink the cross. Thinking of this, I'm not really that way. Back in the spring of 2004, my senior trip, we went out to where is this? California. And we kind of went all over the place in California. And I didn't have a picture of this man. I wish I could. I was digging through some old photos and I found this. One of some of my class that were able to make it to the trip. But one of the stops that we made was at the San Diego, not the San, obviously at the San Diego Zoo. We went to SeaWorld, right? Which. Is that still a thing? But they closed that down. Oh, it's still a thing. Okay, cool, cool. I don't know. Anyways, so we went to SeaWorld, though. And I know no one's gonna believe this. Cause I don't have photo evidence of this. But Yao Ming. If, you know, Yao Ming was there. Yao Ming is a basketball player. Was a basketball player. He's Chinese. He's seven foot six. He's huge, right? He's, like, almost a foot and a half taller than me. It's so hard to comprehend how large of a human being this guy is. And we went to a little. What are the animals? Seals. Thank you. We went to a little seal show. And Yao Ming was sitting right behind me, right? So his knees were just engulfing me, right? He's huge, and he's sitting right behind me. And they needed some volunteers, right? They were asking for some people. And for whatever reason, my whole class. And then. I don't know why. Yao Ming decided to join in the fun. And start pointing to me, okay? And he didn't know me. I never met him. We took a picture afterwards, which I don't know where it was. I don't know where it went. Anyways, I get selected to go up front. And I get up front, and we're supposed to do this dumb thing. I'm supposed to play a plunger, like a trumpet, whatever. And the seals can do it better than me is the whole idea, right? Well, they start playing, like, the YMCA or some music or something like that. Now, you have to understand. If I can go back to this picture. You'll notice girls were not allowed to wear pants. So that's the. That's culture I'm coming from. And now a rock song is playing, all right? And the guy that's in charge. He leans over to me. And he just says, dude, just go nuts. As a very conservative fundamentalist. Who had never shaken his hips before. I didn't know what that meant. But I jived and gyrated in a way that I didn't know I could do. And what I didn't know was that my principal was in the back. And he was observing the whole thing. And so I got in a lot of trouble. And I remember. I remember being on the. There's a point to this whole story, I promise. We got on the bus, and he said. And I remember he was asking everyone. Hey, did anyone do anything that they maybe shouldn't have done? Anyone get, like, called up Front. And my whole class covered for me. No, I don't know what you're talking about. Everyone covered for me. But he was there. He knew. And so then he calls me up, he's like, brian, you knew of anything? I was like, clearly. You know what I mean? Can we stop playing this game? And I was like, I've just. I've never done anything like that before. And I just remember he looked at me and he goes, yeah, but you did. You know what I mean? That was his point. I know it might be a little facetious. You probably don't struggle with doing the boogie in front of your classmates. That might not be your sin struggle. But the thing is, I've counseled people that have used that same language. I've said, yeah, I did that thing, but it's not really who I am. Your best thinking got you here. This is who you are. You are a sinner. You are broken. And you keep using these phrases, pretending that you're a good person when you're not, you're broken. Another aspect. And time has run short here. And so I don't want to just fly through this, but how do we perform? Family, our job, Theologically, I think that I'm better theologically than somebody else. I'm self righteous in my theology. My intellectual, I'm well read. I fell asleep last night reading Civil Religion and the Renewal of the American Politics. What'd you fall asleep reading, huh? I think I'm better. Schedule. I don't struggle with that. You weirdos do. Flexibility. Hey, hey. Now we're talking mercy, legalism, finances, politics, tolerance, et cetera. We perform and we think that we're righteous. We think that God might love me more because of the things that I do. And these things that when we depend on them or think, we shrink the cross and it just leads us into more sin rather than freedom from it. We become blind to it. We become blind to our self reliance. Now, some of you in this moment might be feeling really beat up. Yeah, I do that. I pretend I perform all the time. I want you to think of this. I really want you to think of this as God thinks of you right now. What is the look on his face? Man, this last week, man, I messed up. I did this thing, I yelled at this person. I behaved inappropriately, all the things. And as God is viewing me thinking of you right now, what is the look on his face? This is where the cross is so beautiful. Because if you imagined God as anything but completely overjoyed with you, you've fallen into a performance mindset. Because according to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, that in him I am now robed and clothed with his righteousness, not my own. I can't depend on myself. And when he clothes us with his righteousness, he looks at you and he says, you are my daughter, you are my son, according to Galatians 4, 7. And that is why we can cry out, I believe, help my unbelief. And when Jesus saw the crowd running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, you mute and deaf spirit, I command you to come out. And after crying out and convulsing him terribly, it came out of the boy and it was like a corpse. Most of them said he was dead. And Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up and he arose. This is what happens when glory descends into chaos. It's not always a neat solution, it's not always what I wanted, but it's death to life. Even on a Tuesday, even when I just am really struggling. He shows up and he makes all things new again. Maybe not the way that I want. And then what does he say here? Why? The disciples say, why couldn't we cast this demon out? And he says, this kind can only be driven out by prayer. There's no technique, there's no past experience you can depend on. It is a complete posture of dependence. When you're in the valley on a Tuesday, don't think you can handle it. How do I know if I'm depending on myself? A very easy litmus test that Jesus gives us here is, have you prayed about it? And is your prayer filled with the word if or is it dependence on God? And again, the answer might not be what you want, but it is knowing that God is going to make things right in his time. So what or where is your, I believe, help my unbelief moment? Jesus is in the mess with you. He knows what it's like to be in a mess and he's right there with you. And again, God is going to make it right. Briefly, as before, we move into communion I down at Wheaton College I we took a little bit of a break in between dinner before we went back for lecture. And there's a museum. I didn't even know this was there. There's a CS Lewis and a Tolkien museum. It was really cool. This is Lewis's desk. The wardrobe was there that little Clive used to play in as a five year old. And that's what inspired the lion in Witch and the Wardrobe. It was really cool. We were Allowed to touch it, and it was beautiful. It was a really cool wardrobe. I took pictures of it, but it's not here. Anyways, this is his desk. And then we went from this museum, from C.S. lewis, which was really cool. I'm there with a bunch of other nerds. So it was just kind of fun to look at the coffee stains, you know, this is stupid. And we went around the corner, and the woman that was giving the tour, she pointed out this painting. The name of this painting is the lion is the Lamb. And it's this painting of Aslan. And underneath it is this. And I've used this before. You know, I love CS Lewis in the Chronicles of Narnia. But the kids, Peter and Lucy and Susan Edmund, they're learning about Aslan for the first time. This king. And Lucy says, is he human? And Beaver says, no, he's not a human. He's a lion. And Lucy says, whoa, is he safe? And Mr. Beaver says, He's a lion. Of course he isn't safe, but he's good. I think that when we're in the valley, we want safety. We want it to be fixed the way we want it to be fixed, when we want it to be fixed the way we want it. But God is good. He's not safe. He's good, and he's gonna make all things right. Let him lift you from the dead, even on a Tuesday. That doesn't mean again that your problems, that they're all gonna be fixed in this life. It means you have faith that someday God will have the last say. We're gonna enter into a time of communion, something we do every week here at Lowertown. This is something that can become mundane when you do it every week. This is something that can just become ritual, can just become habit. Pray, depend on God. This, the whole point of this is an image, something that we can physically taste and see that I cannot do this on my own. I am completely, utterly dependent on the finished work of Christ. Because every time I try to put my own righteousness on or I try to fix it on my own, I fail miserably. And it hurts. And I hurt others around me. I can't save myself. I can't fix myself on a Tuesday. Utter reliance on him. I'm gonna pray, and the worship team's gonna come back up and they're gonna sing two songs. If you're a follower of Jesus, I would love for you to take these elements. You don't need to be a member of this church or any church. But if you Say yes, I worship that king. I wanna be reliant on him. And maybe this morning your posture is just simply. I believe. I believe I wanna take these elements. I believe that you've died for me. But man, help my unbelief. I'm really struggling right now. And when you take, remember and rely on him utterly. Let me pray. Father, I thank you just for our time together this morning. To look at this passage as we look at chaos, chaos in our own life. You have, from the very beginning, shined your light into the darkness and you lit up that mountain thousands of years ago. And then you descended back into our chaos. You make chaotic things right again. And there's chaos all around us in every sphere of our lives. I pray that we would depend on you, that we would pray to you. Not with a bunch of ifs, but, God, you are good. You are capable. You know what you're doing. I've witnessed you miracle after miracle. I've seen your hand in this thing and that thing. Would you help me to depend on you now again and again and stop relying, stop pretending, stop performing that I've got it all figured out that we would just utterly rely on you. God, we believe. Help our unbelief. It's the name of Jesus. I pray. Amen.