“Show me your glory – looking away unto Jesus.”
I want to impress on you tonight the power of 2 nothings.
The first nothing is that I want you to see that God has only one method and one man – the Lord Jesus Christ. All our trusting of clever technologies, clever tactics, ever-new initiatives, all our reliance on our own achievements count for nothing. Indeed, God thinks our ministry, our ideas, our desperate attempts to do great things for God are all good for nothing. Do we get this? Do we understand this is precisely what Jesus meant when he said that, “without me you can do nothing”? God has ever had only one man, one method – Jesus Christ. All else is nothing worth.
The second nothing I want to impress on you is that nothing is impossible with God. The first is inevitable; the second is imperative. The more you live out of Christ, away from yourself; the more you live in Christ, and forswear all reliance on yourself; the more you live by Christ and his wisdom, and not your bright ideas – the more you will see the impossible coming real before your eyes.
You see, the Lord wants each of us to get to the point of saying:
Not I but Christ
Not I but Christ and his death
Not I but Christ and his life
Not I but Christ and his love
Not I but Christ and his faith
Not I but Christ and his power
Not I but Christ and his grace
And we get to that point by “looking unto Jesus” – or as it literally means, “looking AWAY unto Jesus.” That is, we are to deliberately fix our eyes on Christ, deliberately diverting our gaze from all that would distract us. In the ancient Olympics the athletes would train with weights tied round their waist. The reasoning went like this: if they could achieve in their training personal bests, then come the race day, when the weights would be stripped off them, laid aside off them, then they would feel so free, they would fly towards the finishing line.
And sin in our lives acts like those weights – dragging us down. It feels like we are always straining towards the finishing line – we have no joy in our service. Ah, but we are to look away unto Jesus.
And do you see, my beloved friend, what terms are used to describe Jesus? … “The author and finisher of our faith”. In other words, faith begins and ends with Christ. Faith continues in Christ.
How we have misunderstood faith! What matters is not the quantity of faith that we have – but the quality of faith. Or rather, the reliability of what we put our faith in - think thin/thick ice: when walking on thin ice, you need more faith that you won’t go under! Thick ice will hold you up – for it has more ability, more strength to hold you. So with Christ. You don’t need much faith – he is the Ultimate Strongman who will hold you up. What you need to make sure is that your faith acts like a constant disposition towards Jesus Christ, in which you recognize his authority over you and that he will enable his life, his truth, his love, his peace, his healing, his love, his power – his anything – through you.
And when Jesus rebuked the disciples saying, “O you of little faith” he wasn’t commenting on how tiny their faith was – how often we get this wrong! Rather, he was dismayed that their faith lasted such a little time, that it came and went. Read the account of Peter walking on the water and see the difference this more correct interpretation makes! Jesus starts our faith, works our faith, continues our faith and completes our faith – so that NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE WITH GOD.
The power of 2 nothings.
Very well then, what does the life of Christ fully expressed in us look like?
GLORY. GLORY. GLORY.
Turn with me to Exodus 33, and I shall read from verse 12 to verse 23. [Read]
Moses wants to find grace in God’s sight (13)
He reminds God that Israel are his people
And God replies, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”
Ah, but in effect, Moses says, ‘that’s not good enough. Anyone can have your presence.’ Indeed we could say the same – we have the presence of God in us by the Holy Spirit if we are truly born again.
So Moses states what he really wants (18): “Please, show me your glory.”
Look at the context - 32 and the first 6 verses.
“The people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play”.
That’s a telling description of the age we live in.
Now notes God’s reaction: “Go, get down! For YOUR people… I have seen this people …let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them.” And he says something extraordinary: “And I will make of you [Moses] a great nation.” Do you get this? Moses has led 2 million people out of Egypt – God has intervened again and again – and now He’s had enough. The people haven’t stopped complaining, even missing the leeks and garlic of Egypt.
And what does God say? He offers Moses this great chance of starting all over again. In effect, he says to Moses, “I want to finish the Israelites off, and I will choose you to be the father of a great nation. You will be the leader, you will be the forerunner. All your problems done away with at one fell swoop! All your leadership hassles stopped! Just let me at them!”
Oh here’s a great testing of Moses… His name guaranteed for posterity – a great leader of a great nation – his name in lights – his ministry honoured and feted all over the world – for ever.
But do you see what he says by reply?
“Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against YOUR people [they are not mine; I didn’t rescue them from Egypt; when I tried to do things my way I ended up killing a man, and fleeing for my life]…Why should the Egyptians misjudge you? You made promises to Abraham, Isaac and Israel – keep your word Lord.”
But he goes even further. In 32:31 Moses prays: “Oh, these people have committed a great sin …Yet now, if you will forgive their sin – but if not, I pray, blot me out of your book which you have written.” Amazing. Astonishing. He is saying, ‘I love them too much to see them destroyed; cast me into hell instead.’
AND THAT, my beloved friend, is the context of him praying in 33:18, “Please show me your glory.”
Have you ever wondered what makes someone a man of God, a woman of God? Have you ever asked yourself, what needs to happen to me before that occurs? Look at Moses here… Dear God, do we know anything of this?
Someone once asked Stephen Olford (a man Billy Graham said shone more with the light of Christ than any one he had ever met), ‘what’s the secret of being a Christian leader?’ And this earnest young man had a notebook at the ready to write down the pearls of wisdom coming from Olford’s lips. Stephen Olford said, “that’s easy…” and gripping the man’s cheeks with both hands, he looked straight into his eyes and said: “BENT KNEES, WET EYES and A BROKEN HEART.”
Please show me your glory.
Nothing shall be impossible with God.
We need the glory! We need the manifest weighty sense of God’s direct action in our lives! We want none of our own highfalutin thoughts and bright ideas. All that counts for nothing! Nothing. We need the glory. Please show us the glory! Please show us the glory! Please send revival. Let the powerful presence of God surround and saturate us that nothing may come of us – and that in Christ nothing shall be impossible of what he wants done.
2 more references. John 17:22 and John 17:24-26.
Jesus wants us to know that glory! Jesus has prayed for that glory to be ours. And the Father wants us to know the very love he has for his Son.
So I go on Sabbatical conscious that I know too much of one thing and not enough of the other. I know very little of “without me you can do nothing”. I know far too much of my own flesh life (as the Bible puts it) – my own sinful nature, which counts for nothing.
And I don’t know enough of the glory. I go to bend my knees, to cry and have my heart broken. I go to cry out, “Please show me your glory” in the very natural places that are, for me, most filled with his glory. I go with an increasing burden for revival – what else can stop the rot in both church and nation?
There is an old hymn that sums up what I want for myself – and with all my heart, what I want for you at St Andrew’s:
Dying with Jesus by death reckoned mine,Living with Jesus a new life divine,Looking to Jesus till glory doth shine -Moment by moment, O Lord, I am thine.
Moment by moment I’m kept in his love,Moment by moment I’ve life from above;Looking to Jesus till glory doth shine,Moment by moment, O Lord, I am thine.
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