Matt Chandler - The Glory of God

If you have your Bibles, grab those; we are going to be in Psalm 24. In fact, we’ll camp out there for the entirety of the sermon. Last week, we started our fall series, which we have entitled «Marks,» and we wanted to talk about how God marks His people because He does it differently than the world categorizes things. What makes us distinct as the people of God is not our ethnicity, our socioeconomic status, our history, our intellect, or our education. What makes us distinct, what marks us as different from the world around us, is that God has named us. He has given us a name, and it is a name that feels like it does not fit; then He grows us into more of what He has called us over a period of time. Last week, we looked at Matthew 5, where Jesus says, «You are the salt of the earth; you are the light of the world.» He does not say, «You will be»; He says that «You are.» He gives us this name that does not feel like it fits; we do not feel like we are being salt, we do not feel like we are being light. But Jesus says, «You are,» and you are because I am. You are, not because you are awesome, but because I am awesome, and I am saying you are salt, you are light. I am going to immerse you in this community of faith, and over a period of time, you will become saltier; you will become a brighter light. I argued last week that it is in the confidence of believing that what God has called us we actually are that real spiritual growth occurs; it is in that place. I mentioned that this is going to be difficult for us because we live in an achievement-based culture. What that means is that the measure of our worth is found in what we can produce. We looked a little bit at Brené Brown’s research last week, and her insights are spot-on brilliant. She states that women in an achievement culture feel completely crushed because the demand is perfection without effort: perfect moms, perfect lives, perfectly sexy, perfectly beautiful, perfectly talented—able to juggle without ever stressing, never freaking out. That is what you have to be. And men bear the weight in an achievement-based culture of never appearing weak, never looking fragile, always having the answers, never being questioned, always getting it done. The pressure on all of us is to do, do, do—more, more, more—and everything around us is a constant reminder that we do not measure up. Right? I mean, that’s everything we see on TV, everything we observe in our neighborhoods, and certainly what we scroll through before sleep at night is a reminder that we have not measured up to the standards of our day: perfection or ultimate strength. Right? You need only go to your Instagram feed, ladies, to figure out that you are not a great mom. You have to read a new book; you do not even have to trust your internal feelings—just open your Instagram. Organic goldfish took their kids swimming, seven kids all in different activities, and they managed it without sweating. Right? Look at her body; apparently, she got that by working out for seven minutes a day while eating M&Ms. And men, we can kind of drink it in and see that we are not allowed to be weak; we better have all the answers. We have to carry the burdens of our families, and we have to succeed at work. All we have to do is look around and see that that family went on a different vacation, or that family has nicer clothes, or they’ve got a better car. We were in the same neighborhood at one point; they’ve moved on to multiple other neighborhoods while we’re still in what they call a startup neighborhood. Whatever that is—growing up, there wasn’t a startup neighborhood. There was, praise God, we got a house! All right? It wasn’t until I moved here that I learned about a startup neighborhood. What is a startup neighborhood? It’s where you start, I thought it was where you finished—when you had a house, you were finished; you had shelter. That’s one of the ways we survive over time, right? This is the culture in which we live. So I said it’s really important; in fact, it’s imperative for us to understand that God sees us differently than we see ourselves and that God’s economy is not an achievement-based economy. It’s not how His words are. His demand is not do, do, do, do, do; His demand is that we rest in Jesus' finished work. I am going to keep arguing that the way spiritual, ethical, and moral transformation actually occurs is not through your striving but rather through your being, more than it is about you doing, doing, doing. It’s about you learning to rest in what God has called you in Christ. So I’m not making this up. If you think I’m a liberal, let me read the Bible to you. Second Corinthians 3:18 says this: «And we all, with unveiled faces—so we all, Christians—are beholding the glory of the Lord and are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another, for this comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.» So let’s talk about this completely counterintuitive text. Here’s what it says: we all, Christians, with unveiled faces, are beholding the glory of the Lord and are being transformed from one degree of glory to another.