Looking at the Face of Jesus, Part 3
2 Corinthians 4:3
It has been a rich and spiritually rewarding time for me to be studying in 2 Corinthians chapters 3 and 4, as you perhaps can tell from the series. So I invite you to turn in your Bible back to 2 Corinthians chapter 3 verse 18 through chapter 4 verse 6, which is a passage we've been studying for several weeks and will yet study for some time ahead. This is one of those rich mines of treasure that you find in the Word of God, almost inexhaustible. I was thinking as I had finally pulled all my thoughts together and sort of summed up everything I wanted to say about this passage and I had it all in rough notes and then I reduced it to a first draft and then I reduced it to a sort of a second draft and then put it in to some final notes. When I was completed doing that whole process I sat back and thought to myself, "I haven't begun to even do justice to this text, it just keeps yielding so much that only the Lord at this point when we'll have all that He would want us to have."
It is a profound text with immense implications about themes related to the issue of salvation and its proclamation. And I'm never in a hurry, as you know, because I want to be sure that I am faithful to what God intends to say and that His Spirit is given the opportunity to relate it to our own lives in the time in which we live. And this is a passage the theological riches of which are beyond measure and the implications equally significant to us. So it's been a very rewarding time for me as I have studied hour upon hour in this text and God has used it in my own heart and I trust in yours as well.
We've titled this section of Scripture, "Looking into the Face of Jesus," because in chapter 3 verse 18 we see there new covenant believers with an unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord. And down in chapter 4 verse 6, again God is the one who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. So here we are looking at the glory of God in the mirror which is the face of Jesus Christ reflected to us on the pages of Scripture. "Looking at the Face of Jesus," is the series, a very, very important foundational concept to all of the Christian life.
Now as believers what the new covenant has done for us is to allow us to see God revealed in Jesus Christ. That's something the Old Testament saints did not experience. They saw God move in history. They didn't see Him face to face. God is a spirit. They might have seen fire and smoke in one of His representations of judgment, or perhaps they saw the Shekinah cloud or a pillar of fire. They may have seen God in some whirlwind. They may have seen God in some cataclysmic event. They may have heard the voice of God from heaven. But they never saw the glory of God shining as clearly as in the face of Jesus Christ, and that's reserved for new covenant Christians, those on this side of the incarnation. As believers, then, we see things that Old Testament saints never really saw clearly. What a marvelous wonderful thing it is to be a new covenant believer. And that's what Paul is celebrating in this section of Scripture...the glory of the new covenant. There were always those teachers who dogged the footsteps of Paul who wanted to drag people back to the old covenant which was shadows and pictures and types. And Paul is saying the new covenant is reality and the glory of the new covenant is that God is revealed in the face of Jesus Christ and that is a complete enough vision, there's no need to retreat back into the shadows. The veil is off, there's no need to put the veil back on. The vision is unhindered. There's no need to go back to a hindered and shadowed vision.
And so it is that in the new covenant we see the revelation of God like it's never been seen. The Old Testament saint heard about God. He may have heard God speak. He may have seen some of the phenomena around the appearance of God but he never saw God as clearly as we see. Old Testament saints had faith in God. And Old Testament prophets had faith in God. But they never saw God as clearly as we do because we have seen the exact representation of God which Hebrews 1 says is in Jesus Christ. He is the exact representation of God. He is the image of God. He is God made visible. Jesus even said, "If you've seen Me you've seen the Father." What a tremendous truth to look at the glory of God shining in the face of Jesus.
And I might add as a footnote at this point that though we see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ in an unhindered way, looking into the mirror of Scripture in which the glory of God is reflected through the person of Jesus Christ who is the theme of Scripture, we still with all of that vision do not see Him as perfectly as we will some day, right? We're still waiting the perfect vision of Christ, we're still waiting that day when we see Him as He is and become like Him. In fact, in writing the first letter to the Corinthians Paul made this clear that as wonderful as our vision is, it's still yet not the perfect vision. First Corinthians 13:9 he says, "We know in part and we prophesy in part but when the perfect comes," the perfect, I think, is the eternal state, "when we enter into eternity the partial will be done away." Verse 12, "For now we see in a mirror dimly but then face to face. Now I know in part but then I shall know fully just as I also have been fully known."
The perfect vision, the perfect knowledge is yet to come, but the knowledge of Christ in the vision of God in the face of Christ that we have now is superior to anything that any Old Testament believer ever had. We see God in Christ in a way that Old Testament saints never saw Him. We see God in Christ in a way that even Old Testament prophets, the noblest of all those Old Testament people never saw Him. I'll go one better, we see God revealed in Jesus Christ in ways in which the holy angels never see Him. That is to say we look into the face of Jesus Christ and we see the glory of God in redemption in ways that angels can't comprehend because they are unredeemable. Holy angels don't need to be redeemed and fallen angels can't be. And so there is a sense in which the revelation of God as merciful and gracious, as kind and loving and compassionate toward sinners is revealed to us in the face of Jesus Christ to a degree that even angels can't comprehend.
So Paul here is celebrating new covenant privilege, the vision of God revealed in the face of Jesus Christ, seeing the glory of God. What is the glory of God? Just who God is. That's the manifestation of God. We see God in Christ. God becomes clear to us in Jesus Christ. We come to see Him and to know Him, what a tremendous truth that is.
That not only is the point of our salvation but that becomes the process of our sanctification...sanctification for us is looking into the face of Jesus and seeing God revealed. And all the issues of life and all the struggles of life and all the dilemmas and troubles and problems of life, we go to Christ and we look to Him to find the one in whom we can trust and put our confidence and our hope. Whenever life doesn't give us what we want, whenever we're embattled and whenever we're beaten and hurt and troubled and beset by temptation and trial and questions and dilemmas that we can't answer, the place we go is to Christ and we look at Jesus Christ and in Him is God revealed. And we find there a sovereign, holy, powerful God who transcends our trouble, a God there who is the God of all comfort, a God who has the beginning written and the end written from before ever they began or ended, a God who is absolutely in control of everything for our good and His glory. And we find in that vision of God in the face of Jesus Christ the comfort we need. We find in Christ the God who loves and cares, a God who forgives, a God who picks up the wounded, who becomes a friend to the lonely. God manifests Himself in Christ and that manifestation is a confident trusting...is the manifestation of a God who we can trust and put our confidence in.
You say, "Well what did an Old Testament saint do if he couldn't look at Christ and see God revealed and know that there was a God he could trust in the deepest part of life? What did an Old Testament saint do?" Well, he couldn't see God revealed in the face of Christ but he still believed in God. He believed in the God that had been revealed to him as far as he had been revealed.
Let me give you an illustration of how an Old Testament believer would react to distress. Go back to the little book of Habakkuk, it's just five books back into the Old Testament, fifth book from the end, a minor prophet, somewhat obscure. Habakkuk prophesied in the time of Judah, prior to the judgment of God by the Chaldeans. And Habakkuk had a dilemma. Habakkuk the prophet had a real burden, his burden was that God would bring a revival, that God would bring spiritual renewal and spiritual awakening, that God would come to Judah or the people of Israel and that He would convert them and regenerate them, that He would bring back righteousness, that He would turn them from their sin because they were the covenant people. They were the people of God, the people of promise, the people for whom the kingdom was to be given, the people who were to bring the Messiah, the Savior. And everything looked bad. They were in sin and wickedness and disobedience.
And so, Habakkuk is found as this oracle opens praying in verse 2. "How long, O Lord, will I call for help and Thou wilt not hear?" And he's pleading with God to come in and deliver this people from their sin. "I cry out to Thee violence, yet Thou dost not save." Lord, why do You allow this? Why do You tolerate a defecting people? Why do You tolerate violence everywhere and You don't step in and You don't bring righteousness and repentance? He's really praying here for a spiritual renewal. Then in verse 3, "Why dost Thou make me see iniquity and cause me to look on wickedness?" Lord, the society is getting worse and worse and more wicked and more iniquitous every moment. "Yes destruction and violence are before me and strife exists and contention arises. Therefore the law is ignored and justice is never upheld for the wicked surround the righteous, therefore justice comes out perverted." Boy, does that stuff sound familiar, sounds like reading the L.A. Times.
He says everything is gone wrong in this society. And this isn't just any old group of folks, this is the covenant people. So here is a prophet of God in a deep dilemma. I mean, he is in the bottom of the pit right now. He doesn't understand why God doesn't come in and turn His people toward righteousness. He has a real dilemma. And because he carries the heart of this people so much in his own heart, it's a heavy, heavy burden.
And then the Lord answers, and if he thinks he had a dilemma while he was praying, wait till he hears the answer. "Look among the nations, observe, be astonished, wonder." In other words, I'm going to...I'm going to act and what you're going to see you're going to be shocked at because I am doing something in your days and you wouldn't believe if you were told. I'm doing something that is so strange you wouldn't believe it. So I'm telling it to you first hand. "Behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans." What? You're lifting up the Chaldeans? That bitter and hasty nation, that fierce and impetuous people?
The Chaldeans were the most wretched, they were the scum of the earth. They were a cancerous sore on the body of humanity. They were a vile, pagan, godless people of whom it is said they never built a building without bearing a baby alive in the wall of it. They were a wicked perverted kind of people. What do You mean You're lifting them up? I'm asking You to lift up Your own people? "No, I'm raising up the Chaldeans, that fierce and impetuous who marched throughout the earth." They were a murderous marauding people. "To seize dwelling places which are not theirs, they are dreaded and feared, their justice and authority originate with themselves. There's no higher law than theirs. Their horses are swifter than leopards and keener than wolves in the evening. Their horsemen come galloping. Their horsemen come from afar. They fly like an eagle, swooping down to devour. All of them come for violence, their horde of faces moves forward. They collect captives like sand. They mock at kings and rulers are a laughing matter to them. They laugh at every fortress and heap up rubble to capture it. Then they will sweep through like the wind and pass on. But they will be held guilty, they whose strength is their god."
You know what He's saying? I'm going to answer your prayer. What I'm going to do is bring the Chaldeans to judge Judah. Well that's not what he wanted. He wanted a revival, instead he got a judgment. Now he's got a compounded dilemma, here's his dilemma. How can God use a worse nation to judge the covenant people? What's going on here? Not only is God not bringing a revival to the covenant people, but He's using a more despicable, wretched people to be the judge of His own people. This is a major problem. He does not understand this, this is incomprehensible to him and he is on the quicksand of his confusion and he's sinking and he's looking for a place to find footing.
Where does he turn? Where is he going to go? Like any faithful Old Testament saint he turns to God. His faith kicks in and he begins to remember his God. That's the only place he can find to stand firm. So in verse 12 he says this, "Art Thou not from everlasting?" What is he saying? He's saying, "God, You're bigger than this problem. This is a problem in history. This is a temporal problem. This is a moment in time and You are eternal. O God, You're transcendent, You're way beyond this problem. You were here before the problem came, You'll be here after the problem is done. You're way beyond this." And he affirms in his mind that his God is transcendent and he finds a measure of comfort and a measure of hope and a measure of security in the fact that his God is much bigger than this problem.
And then he says, "O Lord," and that indicates His sovereignty. Not only is God transcendent but God is sovereign and when he says "Lord" he is saying You're in charge, You are the absolute ruler, nothing is outside Your permission. This fits within Your sovereign purpose." And then he says, "My God, my holy one," and here he affirms God's righteousness. God would never do anything that was wrong. God is above and beyond this problem. God is sovereign over this problem. And whatever God is doing is right because He is a holy God. And then he says, "We will not die." Why does he say that? What does he mean by that? He means that God is a faithful God, God said He would never destroy His people. He would never abandon His people. He would bring them the promise and they won't die. And so he affirms God's faithfulness.
Here is a man in a serious dilemma, a dilemma that is racking his mind and racking his heart to a severe degree, as I'll point out in a moment, so much so that if you look over at chapter 3 he says in verse 16, "My inward parts trembled at the sound, my lips quivered, decay enters my bones, in my place I tremble because I must wait quietly for the day of distress." He says I'm shaking, I'm rattling, my knees are banging together, my bones are decaying. I am a wreck. This is severe distress. This is what somebody would call a breakdown, a severe emotional breakdown.
And where does he go in the midst of this tremendous dilemma? He begins to recite the things he knows are true about God. "God, You are beyond this problem. God, You are sovereign over this problem. God, You are absolutely righteous and whatever You're doing is the right thing to do. And, God, You are faithful and You will not destroy us. O Lord, I see it, You've appointed them to judge. O Thou, O rock, You've established them to correct. I see, Your eyes are too pure to approve the evil of our people. You can't look on wickedness with favor. I understand, You are a holy God, You are a faithful God, You are a sovereign God, You are a transcendent God."
And all he's doing, his faith is reaching out to grasp what he knows is true about God. Now what I'm pointing out is this. What does an Old Testament saint do when he hits the bottom, when he gets into the unsolvable problem and the dilemma that he can't really resolve? He turns to his God and he looks for a vision of God. That's what Isaiah did. God comes to Isaiah and says the same thing, "I'm going to destroy the people. I'm going to punish them, I'm going to wipe them out. I'm going to send an army in there." He describes in Isaiah chapter 5 the most fierce frightening army is going to come in and just destroy Judah. And Isaiah is in shock. And what does he do? Chapter 6, he makes a bee-line for the temple and he goes into the temple and why is he at the temple? Who lives there? Who is there? God is there. He goes to the temple because he desperately needs to check in with God. Are You still in charge? Are You still on the throne? What is going on? Your people have defected. They have fallen into iniquity after iniquity after iniquity after iniquity. They're in to grasping materialism, drunken pleasures, seeking moral perversion. And it's all listed in the fifth chapter. And You're going to come in and destroy them all. What is going on?
And he gets a vision of God. And he sees God high and lifted up. What does that mean? God is sovereign. He sees His glory everywhere. God is transcendent. He hears the angels,
"Holy, holy, holy," God is holy. And he gets a vision. Again he is reminded of the character of his God or the glory of his God which is simply the sum of His character.
So an Old Testament saint in the midst of a dilemma pursued a vision of God in which he would be assured by what he knew to be true about God. And, in fact, in chapter 2 of Habakkuk and verse 4, Habakkuk sums up a statement that becomes a byword for Paul in the New Testament when he says, "The righteous will live by his faith." You can't always live by sight, believe me. Paul said we walk by faith and not by sight, 2 Corinthians 5. And here Habakkuk says the just, the righteous will live by faith, I'm just going to trust God. My God is a faithful God. My God is a holy God. My God is a sovereign God. My God is a transcendent God. So go to chapter 3 verse 17, he says if the whole world goes nuts, if the whole world goes crazy, if the fig tree doesn't blossom and there's no fruit on the vines and the olive trees all fail and the fields produce no food and the flock is cut off from the fold and there's no cattle in the stalls...in other words, if everything, he's in an agricultural agrarian kind of society and this is life for them, if all that we know we can count on in life unravels, I will still rejoice in the Lord, I will rejoice in the God of my salvation, I will trust my God. And then he says, "The Lord God is my strength. And He has made my feet like hinds' feet," a hinds is a kind of goat. "He made my feet like the feet of a mountain goat and I can walk on the precipices." He found his sure footing in a vision of his God. He simply recited what he knew to be true about God.
Now you'll find that same pattern of behavior all through the Psalms. The psalmist gets himself in a dilemma and what does he do? He starts to recite what he knows to be true about God. One's understanding of God is the foundation of all living and God is never better understood than when He reveals Himself in the face of Jesus Christ, right? Never do you see God more clearly than you see Him in Jesus Christ. What a privilege for us to go beyond Habakkuk, to go beyond the psalmist, to go beyond the prophets and have a vision of God in the face of Jesus Christ that transcends every other vision. When Jesus said, "If you've seen Me you've seen the Father," He summed up the essence of new covenant privilege. As the writer of Hebrews says, "We see Jesus. And when we see Him He is the radiance of God's glory in the exact representation of His person." And we saw Him first at salvation, we saw the glory of God in the face of Jesus at salvation and we continue to look into His face as we are sanctified.
The Christian life for us then becomes what it was for Paul as we ended last week, "For to me to live is Christ." We live our lives then according to Hebrews 12:2 looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. So our whole life is looking at the glory of God revealed in the face of Jesus Christ. You just continue to look to Christ, see His glory revealed on the pages of Scripture, study the New Testament and see Jesus revealed. In the gospels is the story of His life and His works. In all the rest of the epistles is the meaning of His life and His works expounded. And in the book of Revelation, His glorious return. It's all about Christ. We who are new covenant Christians, new covenant believers look into the face of Jesus revealed in the mirror of Scripture and see clearly the glory of God there. What a privilege.
Paul needed that vision. As you remember, and I don't want to say too much about it cause we've done that, but Paul needed that vision because he was struggling at this time with some painful things. You can go back to 2 Corinthians 4. And the Apostle Paul was going through these terrible trying times. He was being assassinated as to his character. He was on the edge of death every day from persecutors. Jews wanted him dead. Gentiles wanted him dead. He had a terrible disappointment as the churches which he loved defected away from him and from the truth. The man's heart was grieved and broken as he writes this letter. In fact, down in chapter 4 verse 8 he says, "We are afflicted every way but not crushed, perplexed but not despairing, persecuted but not forsaken, struck down and not destroyed. We always carry about in the body the dying of Jesus." I mean, life is really pretty...pretty miserable. Relationships are a disappointment to him. The response of people to his preaching is a disappointment. Physical treatment is brutal. We've gone through the catalog of that, the litany of that before so I won't do it again. It's a very, very trying time.
And it's at this time of all times in his life when he needs a clear vision of the New Testament glory of God revealed in the face of Jesus Christ. And so, what he says here is right out of his own heart and right out of his own experience. Here was a man who never took his eyes off Jesus Christ. He could say, "Be ye f