Christ Church at Grove Farm

Rev. Craig Gyergyo: Well, good morning once again, everyone. My name is Craig Gyergyo. I serve as a pastor here. It is great to see you all. It is great to worship together, isn't it? Let’s show appreciation for those who are serving on our worship team this morning. Give thanks for them. And let’s give praise to God with our hands. Let’s put our hands together and clap and celebrate God, everyone, this morning. Thank you, Lord. Our God reigns. Hallelujah.

If you are a guest here today, and I know we have some guests in the house, we get really excited, genuinely excited about the guests who are here, and we love meeting new people. I’ve met several new people this morning, which is a great thing in the month of July. If you are either new today for the first time or just been relatively new coming around, we would love to meet you. I just want to underscore what Pastor Robbie has already said about the connect card and also just to come and introduce yourself to us. I’d love to meet you personally after the service.

We’re going to get into God’s word, but before we do, I want to put a couple of opportunities on your radar that fit beautifully with where God has us in this Life Together series. These are life-together opportunities. The first one, and this is one that I especially want everyone to consider—have an open mind about this, okay?—is our upcoming October mission trip to Poland. I would love for you to be a part of this.

Throughout this series in Exodus, we’re talking about discovering that God doesn’t just save individuals, right? He is forming a people to bless the nations. So this is really close to our heart, even this morning as we’re thinking about missionaries. You have an opportunity to join in mission work, even on a short-term basis. Look, God will provide the funds. Don’t let that be an excuse for you, okay? So we’ll be going to live out our faith and share the gospel with our partners in ministry in Poland. It’s called Proem, and you would love serving with them. It’ll be a lot of fun. I’m going to be taking part in this trip personally, and I would love to have all of you. You have an invitation to join us on this trip, be a part of it, and I pray God will move in your heart. When He does, come and talk to us.

The second life-together opportunity is what we call a faith tour. We do faith tours, which is an opportunity to travel and see God’s creation and look at it from a biblical perspective and go deep into His word. We’re going to do a faith tour to Egypt. I thought, man, this is a great opportunity to talk about this for a moment because we’re walking through Exodus. I want you to imagine standing at the landscapes that we’re talking about even today, standing at those landscapes and considering what God did and how He displayed His power in such a magnificent way.

The scriptures will come alive to you powerfully on this kind of trip and the community will be rich. So look, if either of these resonate—the faith tour or the mission opportunity—be a part of it. This is one expression of life together, and I know not everyone will do this. But the more people we get on mission serving together, oh, it’s beautiful. Whether it’s local or global, even opportunities like this faith tour, take advantage of them and you will find that you’ll grow. I’m looking at people out here who have experienced these kinds of trips and have grown in their faith and grown in their love for the Lord and even in their fellowship here in the church. So do that.

Let’s do this. Let’s pray right now. I found a prayer this week as I was reading, preparing from an old prayer book, and I want to draw upon that prayer. So would you bow your heads and pray with me this morning? Let these words be yours. O Lord, show us your way so that we could truly know you. Take us by the hand, Lord. We will follow. Lord, without your light, our hearts are dark and empty. Without your presence, Lord, our path is uncertain. Lord, let your grace be the compass that guides our steps.

Let your glory, Lord, be the ultimate goal of our lives. We are not asking, Lord, for the easy road, not asking for the path of comfort. We are not chasing, Lord, our own selfish desires. Lord, here and now, we want the narrow path of your holy will. In fact, Lord, if your presence doesn’t go with us, we don’t want to move forward. How will anyone know that we have found favor with you, Lord, unless you go with us? So be our guide, Lord, through this wilderness of life. Lord, be our shelter in every storm and be our ultimate, ultimate place of rest. All this we pray through Jesus Christ, our Lord. And together we say, Amen.

So this is like a family dinner. I like to think of it that way. And we’re sharing around the table this morning and I want to begin with this thought at the family dinner, and that’s this: every one of us, every one of us is becoming something or someone. We’re all in the process of becoming. And don’t you wish that you could just wake up one morning and you would be suddenly—fill in the blank—patient? Suddenly patient. Just wake up in the morning and boom, I’m patient just like that. Don’t you wish it worked that way?

Or don’t you wish you could wake up and you’d be generous all of a sudden? Or you’d be at peace? Or you’d be skinny? You know, it just worked that easily and you wake up and it’s like, boom, here I am. It just happened just like that. But we all know this: all those kinds of qualities in our life, they actually come about over time. They happen over time. And the same thing is true not just of individuals; it’s true of families. Families grow into something, someone over time. It’s true of teams. You hear about teams in the sports world that take on the identity of the coach or whatever it might be, right? There’s some identity that people are growing into and the same is true of churches.

A church is growing into an identity. So here’s my question for us this morning. I thought about this this week as I’ve been preparing to share with you out of God’s word: What is forming us? What is forming Christ Church at Grove Farm? It’s like this: What are we looking at so consistently that it is actually shaping who we collectively together are becoming? If you were to turn towards the middle of the Old Testament, there’s a book there called Jeremiah. Some of you have read that book of prophecy. And in Jeremiah, there’s a warning. Here’s the warning: they followed worthless idols, the scripture says, and became worthless themselves.

That’s the danger and that’s also the power of beholding something and actually becoming that thing that you’re looking at. And so the principle, I suppose, is this: what humans worship, they reflect. What you worship, you reflect. And that is true whether you realize what you’re worshiping or not. It is true. And so as we turn to Exodus 32, and Pastor Robbie’s already read a portion of what we’re going to look at, you’re going to find this: that the greatest threat to Israel—we’re talking about the ancient Israelites here—the greatest threat to Israel wasn’t outside pressure.

At this point, they’re delivered from Egypt, they’re wandering. What their greatest threat was was this: they were gathering around the wrong glory. That’s the greatest threat to them. And whatever glory gathers a people, that will eventually shape the people. Do you see? So big stuff here as we’re sitting at the family dinner table. Let’s turn again to Exodus 32:1-6. Now, here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to see here, I’m going to kind of stitch together three segments of Exodus 32, 33, and 34. Okay, so see if you can follow this. Let’s first talk about this: the false glory. If we’re talking about you become whatever glory you behold, let’s talk about the false glory because that’s where we pick up.

When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, "Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us out of Egypt, we don’t know what’s happened to him." I always love that line. You know, they’re throwing Moses under the bus. Aaron answered them, "Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons, and your daughters are wearing and bring them to me." And so all the people took off their earrings and they brought them to Aaron, and he took what they had handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf.

"These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt." And when Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of the calf and announced, "Tomorrow there will be a festival to the Lord." So the next day the people rose early and sacrificed burnt offerings and presented fellowship offerings. Afterward, they sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry. Okay, so I think most people have heard of this incident, this is the famous or infamous Golden Calf incident, right? And I want you to think as you hear those words, I want you to think about everything that Israel to this point had seen.

We’ve been talking a little bit about it in the book of Exodus, right? Because they had seen the Nile River turn to blood. Miraculous. They had watched Egypt collapse right around them. They walked through the Red Sea on dry ground. This is unbelievable. They ate bread that fell from heaven. Signs and wonders all around. They stood at the foot of a mountain wrapped in the fire of God. If anyone should have trusted God, it should have been the Israelites, don’t you think? And yet here we are 40 days later, not 40 years, 40 days later.

And they say to Aaron, "Hey, make us some gods. Would you make us some gods, please?" Unbelievable. And so what do they do? They melt down their jewelry and they have this calf, this cow made of gold. There’s an important detail here. This is interesting because Aaron, who is the priest, you know, he says, "We are going to have," he says, "a festival to"—who?—"the Lord." He says, "We’re going to have a festival to the Lord." When they say, "Make gods who go before us." And this is interesting. Israel, I think it’s fair to say, they didn’t want a different God.

Here’s what Israel wanted: they wanted the true God on their own terms. They wanted the true God on different terms. You know, they took God, who cannot be controlled, and they made for themselves a version that fit very comfortably within their own expectations. And I think this is a very contemporary thing to do, you know? They wanted a God who was visible. They wanted a God that they could predict. They wanted a God that would follow them instead of Him leading them. This is what they wanted. In other words, they no longer were desiring a God that they had to trust step by step, day by day, rely upon.

And again, I think this is very contemporary because we do the same thing. The human heart has not changed. We are prone to the same kind of thinking, to the same kind of wandering. And we drift towards wanting a God who will never, ever, ever interrupt our plans. I got a plan, God. I’m thinking about where I’m going, I’m thinking about where I’m headed, I know what I want to do. And we don’t want God to come along and expose our idols. I don’t want that. And we don’t want a God who’s asking us to surrender. And we don’t want a God who’s not going to exist for any other reason than to make our lives work.

Come and serve us, God. That’s really the attitude, and that’s what was happening here. You know, even people who aren’t religious, so to speak, or Christians—even people who aren’t Christians do this. And what we do is we create a version of reality that fits comfortably within our own preferences. And so everyone, whether you are a person this morning who is professing Christ or not, we all have a tendency to remake deity, to remake God in our own image. And so this golden calf, it seems crazy this is happening. It’s ancient, it feels like something that’s a long time ago.

But the impulse behind it is alive and well. And there’s a group of people in this room right now who are struggling with this. And here’s what happens: idolatry begins to creep into our hearts whenever we feel the need to edit God into a person that we would rather follow. When you start to make revisions to who God is and who His word says, so that He fits your pattern, that’s when idolatry begins to creep in. Let's continue in the story, okay? Picking up in verse seven. This is again Exodus 32. So the calf has been made, they’ve worshiped to it and all this stuff. And the Lord said to Moses—this isn’t lost on the Lord—the Lord says, "Go down because your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have become corrupt. They have been quick to turn away from what I commanded them and have made themselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf.

They have bowed down to it and sacrificed to it and have said, 'These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.' I have seen these people," the Lord said to Moses, "and they are a stiff-necked people. Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. And then I will make you a great nation." Okay, there’s some stuff to talk about because we talk about here, first, you know, the idea of the false glory. What I want to see here is the broken covenant. God says, He says this, this is great. I mean, this struck me this week. He says, "Go down because your people have become corrupt."

Now that struck me because there’s a change there. We just talked a couple weeks ago, if you just rewind a few chapters in Exodus, and God had repeatedly called this people what? "My people," He said. "These are my people, my people, my people." And now He says, "These are your people, Moses. These are your people." I thought that was kind of humorous myself. And so what are the implications? Like has God forgotten His covenant? No, God has not forgotten His covenant. Here’s what He’s doing: He’s revealing how deeply they have violated the covenant.

There’s a covenant. This is serious stuff. They didn’t just break a commandment. They are violating, breaking a covenant, way bigger. And so the very people that God has redeemed miraculously have turned on the God who redeemed them. And it led me to think about what I think could be considered a big question of these chapters we’re looking at. And the big question is this: it’s a question maybe that you wonder about in your own life. Can a holy God continue to dwell with an unholy people? Can God dwell with us? Listen to what God says to Moses. I’m going to read verse 10 again because this is—these are one of the hard sayings in the scripture.

Verse 10 says, picking it up here, "Leave me alone," God says to Moses, "so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you a great nation." Those are hard words to hear. It seems to run contrary to everything that we think about God. But what they—this is reminding us that the golden calf wasn’t just like a lapse in judgment. Again, this is covenant betrayal. The very people God redeemed have forgotten the God who redeemed them. And so like, right now, everything hangs in the balance. How it feels because God’s holiness and the people’s rebellion has collided.

There’s this collision. And listen, God will not stop being holy. He doesn’t stop being holy. But we know this, even in the second book of the Bible rather, Israel has shown over and over again that they will not remain faithful. So again, how can the relationship continue? The answer is this: everything, everything here, everything in your life right now, everything rests not on them, not on you, everything rests on who God is. Everything rests on who He is. You know, you ever think to yourself, why does this keep on happening?

Why do I keep on stumbling? Why do I keep on falling? Why am I like this? Why am I going back to the poison well over and over again? The Psalmist kind of helps us understand. If you look at Psalm 115, I wish I had time to read the whole thing, we got a lot of ground to cover, but I’m just going to read part of this, okay? Here’s what Psalm 115:4 and 8, I’ll just read two verses of this passage to you. It says, "Their idols are silver and gold, made with human hands." Okay, and then it gives you like the implications of that.

"Those who make them, those who make idols of silver and gold and stuff like that, will be like them, and so will all who trust in them." Maybe the reason we keep going back to stuff that we don’t want to go back to is because we put our trust in other things, idols. We’ve centered our life wrong. Because whatever occupies the center of life, listen, whatever occupies the center of your life, your existence, that will gradually shape you. You become, you look like that. So if success is at the center of your life, well then sure enough success is going to begin to shape your character.

And if comfort is at the center of your existence, well then comfort is going to be able to begin to shape your existence, your decisions. But if Christ remains at the center—O Lord, help us—if Christ remains at the center, then His life will gradually shape your life. Because we become like what we behold. What are you fixing your eyes on? Our worship will always shape our life. I was talking with one of the young men of our church family this week and we were sharing what God has been teaching us. It was a good conversation, one of the highlights of my week.

And he said, he said, "I’ve realized that I’ve been building my life around my desire to meet the right girl and to get married." Okay, some of the girls are like, "Well, who is this guy?" right? Like to meet him. Good young man. And that’s what he said. He said, "I’m realizing though that I’m building my life around that. I’m building my life around this." And by the end of our conversation, it was clear that marriage isn’t the problem. His desire to be married, that’s not it, because marriage is actually a good gift of God. The issue is this: it’s about expecting marriage to provide for him what only God can give.

And you can fill in the blank where marriage is and plug in whatever it is that you’re putting at the center. And so what he senses is that God is inviting him to build his life, his future around Christ instead. And so in this instance, for this friend of ours, this is actually what repentance looks like. It’s not abandoning a good gift. It’s not saying, "Well, I’m not going to get married. Marriage is bad. I’m not going to do that." It’s not that. It’s returning it to its proper place. And what is true of that individual or true for individuals is also true of churches.

And so again, if I’m thinking about what shapes us, the deepest question I think facing Christ Church isn’t about, you know, our ministries, our programs, or even the building program campaign that we’re excited about. The deeper question is this: What is at the center of us? What are we about? What’s at the heart of this people? Because every community eventually reflects what’s at the center, whatever it trusts most. Okay, let’s keep going. Are you tracking with me out there? Are we together? Let’s go to Exodus 32. I’m going to go there and I want to read a little more of this passage again, okay?

So Moses, this is where now you’re going to see a mediator. A mediator comes in. This is important. You see the broken covenant, you see the false idols, you know, the false gods. Moses sought the favor of the Lord his God. "Lord," he said, "why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, 'It was with evil intent that he brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth'? Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people.

Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self: 'I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever.'" Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened. Okay, so the covenant, you know, is hanging by a thread and Moses steps up. And notice—this is like why Moses was born. And notice how he prays. His conversation, prayer is talking to God.

Notice how he prays. He doesn’t minimize Israel’s sin. He doesn’t argue that God is overreacting. No, he doesn’t make excuses. Instead, he appeals to God’s own heart. And what does he say? He says, "Lord, remember your promises. God, remember Abraham and Isaac and Jacob." He says, "Remember the covenant that you made. Remember your promises." And so his petition is entirely based on God’s faithfulness, not an empty promise that the people will behave better, they’ll do better. No, it’s all about God’s promises and His faithfulness.

John Piper made a great observation that I really like, and he says that faith learns to talk back to God. That sounds kind of crazy, right? Talk back to God using God’s own promises. And so what Moses is doing here, it's exactly what he's doing. As remarkable as it is that Moses, you know, he knows God’s covenant and he knows it well enough to pray the covenant back to Him. And this conversation continues even. If you go to verse 12 of chapter 33, the conversation continues that Moses is having, this mediator.

Look, Moses said to the Lord, "You have been telling me, 'Lead these people,' but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. You have said, 'I know you by name and you have found favor with me.' If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you. Remember that this nation is your people." The Lord replied, "My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest." Then Moses said to Him, "If your presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here.

How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?" And the Lord said to Moses, "I will do the very thing you have asked, because I am pleased with you and I know you by name." And then Moses said, "Now, show me your glory." I encourage you to read all of this this week, 32 to 34. And you know, you’ll see that earlier God had declared that Israel would continue toward the promised land. That’s a part of these chapters.

And He but He also said that He wouldn’t go with them. So Moses pleads with God to reconsider. And he, Moses, immediately, you know, he’s recognizing what’s at stake here. Because he sees what Israel has forgotten. And what they forgotten is this: that the greatest gift that God ever gave His people wasn’t a land. It wasn’t deliverance from slavery. The greatest gift that God gave His people is Himself. God Himself. He is the treasure. And so Moses says, "Hey, if your presence won’t go up with us, don’t send us."

And I believe that’s like one of the greatest statements of faith in all the Old Testament. It’s got to be up there in them. Because Moses is saying, "I’d rather remain in a pattern of wandering than to go and inherit the promised land even without you." Because he knows something that we and the generations who will come after us have to learn. And that is this: the blessings of God can never replace the presence of God. What’s at the center of your life? You know, for them, it’s not the victories, it’s not the promised land, all that would be empty without God’s promises.

Even the community that they see, itself, that they have, that would just become another collection of people without God’s presence. The future of God’s people here in the book of Exodus doesn’t rest upon a destination. It’s not about the promised land. It rests on God going with them. He is the promise. He’s at the center. He is what makes His people different. So Moses, in light of this, he prays a big prayer. And his prayer, the last words I just read you, the prayer is this: "Show me your glory." He says, "God, show me your glory."

And he’s not asking for a fireworks display. That’s not what this is. He is asking to know whose presence—he wants to know the presence of God, the one he’s just been pleading for. And he says to God, he says, "Lord, our future depends entirely on you," he says. "And so show me who you are." And I think that’s remarkable. You know, I’m thinking about this again this week and I’m thinking, man, think of everything that Moses has witnessed. We just said it. Moses has witnessed again the burning bush. Moses has witnessed the parting of the Red Sea.

He has saw that manna fly down from the sky. He stood at the foot of the mountain and saw the smoke and the power and the fire of God. And yet his greatest prayer is "Well, Lord, would you do another miracle? Do another miracle, Lord, we need it." His greatest prayer isn’t "Give us victory" and it’s not "Solve our problems." His greatest prayer is "Show me your glory. I want more of you, God." And that’s because the greatest gift that God could ever, ever, ever provide, that He could ever give to us, is Himself.

He is the greatest gift. He is the treasure. When’s the last time you prayed like that? When is the last time that you prayed and didn’t say, "God, fix this" or "God, would you bless this" or "God, would you answer this," that you prayed and said, "God, show me who you are. O Lord, I want to know who you are more than anything you can give me." When’s the last time you prayed like that? Let’s do it right now. Right now in this space. I’m just going to pause here. And why don’t you take a breath?

The living God in this room, His presence is everything. And just adopt the scripture as the prayer of Moses for yourself. O Lord, show me your glory. God, show me who you really are. Lord, show us who you are. Lord, show us if there's anything that's taken your place. Show us your glory, Lord. We want to know you. Amen.

The future of God’s people rests on His character. Chapter 34, I want to read you one more bit here, okay? And this is verses 5 through 9. So Moses has gone and he’s been this one who steps in, a mediator. But now we get to see the true glory. I’m kind of fast-forwarding, but he says, "Show me your glory." He gets to see the true glory. Look. Then the Lord came down in a cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed his name, "The Lord." Whoa. He said, "The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin."

"Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation." And Moses bowed to the ground at once and worshiped. And he said, "Lord, if I have found favor in your eyes, then let the Lord go with us. Although this is a stiff-necked people, forgive our wickedness and our sin and take us as your inheritance." So Moses prays, "Show me your glory," and God answers Moses’ request. And if you know the story, you might expect God to answer with overwhelming displays of power—you know, lightning and fire and thunder.

And instead, when He answers the prayer "Show me your glory," what does He do? He speaks. He speaks to Moses. And He proclaims this: He says, "This is who I am. The Lord. The Lord. I am the one who’s compassionate and gracious and slow to anger and abounding in love and faithfulness." This is what He says about Himself. Are you carrying around an image of God that He’s never given to you? Maybe that’s why you don’t have Him at the center. Maybe you’ve bought into another image of God and you imagine Him as impatient. Or you think that, man, He’s disappointed in you.

Or you think that He’s just waiting for you to fail so He could crush you. Well, listen carefully when God describes Himself, when He shows His glory, this is what He says. He says, "The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness." Moses asks to see the glory, and this is the hinge of the whole episode, and God reveals what forms His people. What forms His people is who He is. His glory. His glory is who He is. Israel deserved the judgment.

None of us reading this would say they didn’t deserve the judgment. Yet what God chooses to reveal at the defining moment of the covenant isn’t His wrath. That’s not what He chose. He chose to reveal His heart and His compassion and His grace and His slowness to anger. Thank you, Lord. And His abounding love and His abounding faithfulness. So Israel, they don’t just get another chance. They are loved by their God who holds them and forms them into a covenant people. Are you following me? They experienced His mercy and how it flows from His very nature in a way that satisfies His holiness.

Everything that Moses hoped for, everything that the covenant depended upon, everything that the future of Israel would require—all of this rested on God. And God is who He says He is. And that’s why Israel today still has a future. That’s why you have a future. It isn’t because you finally become faithful. It’s because God has remained true to His character. This is the glory that forms God’s people. Praise God. Thank you. It should get you excited. It gets me excited. Moses, look, he prayed, "Show me your glory."

I love this, though. Listen. The New Testament is so powerful. Jesus is so powerful and beautiful because what does the Gospel of John tell us? 1:14. We’ll put the whole verse on the screen, but I want to show you one part. What does it say? It says, "We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son." Moses prayed it, John says you’ve seen it. You’ve seen the glory. How have you seen the glory? You have seen the glory through Jesus Christ the Son. Moses could only catch a glimpse of God. That’s all he could get.

But we have met God, we have seen His glory through Jesus Christ. And everything that God declares about Himself here in Exodus that we’re reading about, it is revealed in Jesus Christ. The glory that formed Israel now has a face in Jesus Christ. He embodies it. He is grace, He is truth, He is faithfulness, He is compassion. And this is why Jesus isn’t just any other mediator. He is the mediator. He’s the only one. Moses pled for God’s mercy; Jesus secured it. Moses longed for the presence on the mountain of God with the people; man, Jesus is Emmanuel, He is God with us.

His presence in the present Moses treasured, it’s no longer up on that mountain. God dwells with His people. He’s here with us right now. By His spirit, He’s here. He’s with you. And God is forming a people. The spirit is turning eyes even now. He’s turning your eyes towards Jesus. You’re not just feeling emotion; you’re feeling the move of the Holy Spirit and behold His glory. Because here’s what happens: He gradually will make you look like Him when you bring Him to the center.

And through the church, even a church like this, God’s presence becomes visible to the world. I want to show you one more thing here because there’s a great New Testament connection. The Apostle Paul, he comes along centuries later and he reaches back to this very instance in the history of God’s people. And you know, Moses, he came down from the mountain and he was reflecting God’s glory so brilliantly that his face had to be veiled before the people. Read that, you’ll see that. Well, Paul says that in Christ, the veil’s been removed.

The glory shines. Listen to what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3:18. Let me get there. 2 Corinthians 3:18 says this: it says, "We all, who 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 listen, what Israel could only long for, what Moses could only glimpse—this is what Exodus was always pointing towards. The Holy Spirit is taking people who gather around false glory, who are prone to putting other things in the center, and He’s transforming us into the people who do reflect God, who do reflect the glory of Christ in the world.

So do this. When you think about it on the level of the church, imagine a church where people no longer have to prove themselves. You don’t have to put a mask on. You don’t have to act. You don’t have to prove yourself because we are already being captivated by Christ in His beauty. And He’s changing us. Imagine disagreements—can you imagine disagreements in the church? Who would think? Imagine those marked more by intercession than they are by accusation.

Imagine people who are like slow to take offense because they have spent so much time with Jesus. These are the implications for us because Christ is at the center. People then no longer have to be at the center. And this is the community that the Holy Spirit is creating. Right here among us. Life together. Our world tells us all the time that community is built through common interest. And actually, the world’s pretty good at that. You can go find a bunch of hobbyist groups.

But scripture tells us a much richer story and it tells us this: that communities are actually formed around the glory they behold. And that is true of the church and that is true of the human heart. And so the question becomes this: What glory’s at the center? What glory is at the center? If you gather around comfort, you’ll become comfortable. If you gather around success, you’ll become competitive. If you gather around fear, you’ll become anxious. But when we gather around the crucified, risen—Hallelujah—"I walked out of that grave," Jesus said—then the full revelation of the Father’s glory and that likeness will transform you. It’ll change you.

And this has been God’s purpose all along. How do you get changed? How do you get transformation in your life? He didn’t merely rescue Israel by bringing them out of Egypt; He brought them out so that they could live in His presence. And He has redeemed us in Christ for the very same purpose. So listen, as you think about this and maybe think about it today, this week—I hope you do that—instead of asking, before asking, "What idol do I need to remove in my life?" there’s a better question, I believe. And the better question is this: Whose glory is shaping us?

Whose glory is shaping me? What is shaping my life? Because every one of us, every one of us is becoming someone. It’s happening. Where is your gaze fixed? Are you beholding Christ? Because the community we become will always, always, always reflect the glory we behold. Let’s pray. Lord, show me your glory. Father, show us where we have remade you into an image of our own fashioning. And Lord, draw us back to the beauty of who you have revealed yourself to be. By your spirit, make us more like Jesus. Oh Lord, show us your glory. All this we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

I was thinking about this song that our team is going to lead us in, and the word that came to my mind is "recenter." The opportunity as we sing this song—and again, these songs, it’s like a prayer. This is a prayer that we together with our mouths in unison are lifting up to God. This is a prayer of repentance, it’s a prayer of faith, and it’s a prayer of recenter. So would you please rise? And any person here today who feels the Lord saying, "Yeah, it’s—I put something else in the focus, in the center"—now is the time as we sing this song. O Lord, recenter our lives in Jesus' name.