Once again, this is not going to be a typical Presbyterian, finely thought out and honed message with all the various sub points and footnotes and so forth. That's a good thing a lot of times, but frankly, I'm just not capable of doing that right now. And it's going to be a summary of a great truth that I think we need to emphasize, and that is what Moses had said about him, he endured as seeing him that is invisible. And so we're going to discuss this question of seeing him that is invisible. I've always loved that verse. It always resonated. It always caused me to wonder so much what is really behind all of it. And I certainly am not going to probe the depths of that, but to just give us some ideas and hopefully point us to the Lord. Over the years, I have been amazed that every single doctrine that's found in scripture and every truth that's found in scripture, Satan manufactures a distortion and counterfeit of it. Now, sometimes he just simply says, that's not true, don't believe it. But most of the time, his tact is to say, well, yeah, that's sort of true, but Let me put the spin on it, you know. And this goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden. You know, yea, hath God said. And we're supposed to know his devices. He is subtle. He's a roaring lion going around seeking whom he can devour. And so what I'm going to speak on this morning was going to be kind of like taking our little flimsy boat and going between all the shoals and rocks and rip currents and so forth and try to navigate between some of these distortions that Satan has made in this area. Brother Whitten read for us three different passages. The one in Exodus about Moses asking the Lord to show him his glory. And then of course in Hebrews where it tells us about Moses enduring as seeing him that is invisible. And then, of course, the Lord Jesus talking to his disciples. And right at the end of his ministry, he'd been teaching them all these years, three years at least, and was sort of prepping them for what's fixing to happen. And out of this, they say, well, let us see God, basically. Can you show us God, the Father? Now, we've all heard the saying, seeing is believing. But that's really not true because I think all of us now with modern technology and Photoshop and all kinds of things can make up sort of whatever we want it to look like. And of course, Hollywood's real good at this and Satan is good at this. And so often just because you see something doesn't mean it's true. But it seems to be in the human mind that visual seems to trump everything else. We can just see something, you know. we'll swallow it. If we can't see it, it involves too much thinking to really decide what's going on. Now, Christianity, and all the way on back through the Old Testament with the Jews and everybody else, is basically a verbally based religion, if you want to call it just a religion. We depend upon words, literary figures, and Great societies and civilizations have flourished when they became strong in literary matters. And as they decay and begin to fall apart, they go into more visual stuff, even to the point of having to be stimulated with chase scenes and lurid sex and all kinds of things, constantly trying to stimulate visual appearance over substance and content. Politicians are some of the best at that. They call it spinning it. They know how to paint pictures and have flashy things. I think one of the great successes of YouTube, if any of you happen to go to that, I really like YouTube. You can look up just about anything and find a video on it. They've got some great videos on airplane navigation and flying. But even those, while it will have it illustrated with a view, it has substance that you have to really understand and all. But we've got all kinds of crazy folks on there that are setting themselves on fire and blowing up things and doing all kinds of idiot stuff. And it's kind of fun to watch them, you know, just to see how the human condition plays out. and you find some beautiful music on there, choir groups, just type up Welch hymns one time, and you can spend all morning just clicking each one of them with beautiful Welch choirs, and that's all on YouTube. Now, if you didn't have the visual part, you could still listen to it, but it does add a little bit. Music's one of my original loves, still is, They've done some real studies on how to teach music since I came along. And one of the things that's been found is that people will learn music quickly if they're learning it in association with other people. For example, a quartet, or a choral group, or a band, an orchestra. Sending little Johnny off to practice his piano for an hour by himself is often not very productive. There are people who are solo-type people. I remember when I went from piano to clarinet, clarinet was just normal to me. I picked it up and started playing it. And I did practice it as playing solos, but even clarinet solos, very few are self-standing now, have an accompaniment or a pianist, and we're just kind of made that way. And I was surprised when TV came along for our family, and the educational channel, which we loved. And you could tune in the Boston Pops or the New York Philharmonic. And I had listened to these for years on my little radio on Sunday afternoon, Longine Whitney Hour Symphony and the New York Philharmonic and Boston Pops. And then to see them on the video And the videographers were real good because if here was a clarinet section doing something, they would point over there to them, you know. And I always loved to watch the tubas and the trombones and, you know, and the bands and orchestras really do have a good time. And they're organized and they're under authority. And not everybody's doing his own thing except as it fits in with everything else. So visual does augment our ability to appreciate and understand. But I can assure you, I would not have sat there very long if I had no audio with it. I mean, it'd be interesting at first to watch a bassoon player do what he's doing, but so much more funny to hear him actually making noise, you know, and tying it in with their visual things. Well, we're sort of made that way. So here we come to the whole subject of religion. And Moses had received the Ten Commandments and the word of God. And Lord told him he was going to have this little minor job to do, taking a couple of million rebellious Jews out of Egypt and getting them all the way over to the promised land and setting up a new nation. And on several occasions, if you could link them together, Moses would say, Lord, I just can't do this. This is too much. On several other occasions, God would say, this is too much. I can't put up with this people. I'm just going to destroy them and start over. And Moses said, wait a minute, Lord, they're your people. Don't do this. Please. And God would hear him. And someone said that a prophet has reached the end of his line when he begins praying against the people he's ministering to. Old Jeremiah, the weeping prophet. You don't have Jeremiah saying, Lord, go on and smite these folks and do them in. I mean, I've had enough. They put me in this well up to my neck, and it's lime, and they won't listen. No, he never seemed to have a good day in his life, did he? And then he wrote Lamentations, which is just an absolutely beautiful book. I've got to look and see if Handel maybe put that to music. Just beautiful. But it was always with his heart heavy because the people just wouldn't listen. They wouldn't pay attention. In spite of God sending the prophets, and as Jesus said, and what do you do? You kill them. You know, y'all are really sharp, aren't you? And then we know, as Paul said, when the only perfect man, the Son of God came, they took him out and killed the Prince of Glory, at least temporarily. Satan had a big Hallelujah obsession and went charismatic over that until finally, all of a sudden, it discovered that it was really his knockout blow. He didn't plan on resurrection. People, just because they see or hear, doesn't mean they're going to be overwhelmed with truth and fall into it. Actually, this is a work of the Holy Spirit in their heart. Now the Holy Spirit doesn't change people just by himself with a zap. He uses means, which is the preaching and teaching of the word of God and the ministry of the church and so forth, and also circumstances. He can box somebody up to a point that they will listen. And if God wants to curse somebody, all he's got to do is just leave them alone and let them prosper. And they'll do that right on up to the day they die and go to hell. So God uses tools to bring people to the truth. So we go back to the Old Testament with Moses, and Moses didn't say, Lord, I want to see you. He said, I want to see your glory. Glory, think of it as the aura, the massive, you know, we have a picture of this in Ezekiel, when Ezekiel sees God and all that stuff with the wheels within the wheels and all that. You know, a big part of that was his throne he rode around in, and all those cherubims and this, that, and the other. He just saw some of the glory that was coming out of it, like we don't ever actually see the sun. If we look at the sun, we'll go blind, you know, if we do it very long. But we see the light and radiation from it. And Moses said, Lord, this thing's impossible. I mean, I got all these people, they've already made a golden calf down there. And Lord, if you notice what he asked, he said, let me know your ways. Let me understand your way. Lord outlined to me what's going on here. And then he kind of threw in, and let me see your glory, that'll help. And we know the story. God said, I'm not gonna see me, you'll die if you see me. And in the New Testament, it says, no man has seen God at any time. but I'm gonna let you see my trail as I come by. That'll be enough. And he went by, and what did he do to show him his glory? He proclaimed the name of the Lord. This is the Lord. This is Jehovah, the Lord God Almighty. Gracious, putting the nickel to the fourth generation, but bringing grace to the thousandth generation. And he passed by, and I'm sure the mountain trembled and lightning and bolts and all of that. And it kind of gave Moses a charge. So much so that he had to wear a veil over his face because he was glowing so much that they couldn't stand it. Just a reflection of the reflection of God's glory. And then later it began to fade away. So God does give us a visual confirmation of the symphony he's playing. We do get to see how he's working the instruments. We can even see his footsteps and his walking, what he's doing and the glory. All of this fits together in God's sanctifying purpose. But you look at how the Jews. Handle this. Paul says in verse grand, the Jews require a sign. The Greeks or Gentiles require philosophy or wisdom or argument. And the Jews at the cross said, come down from the cross and let us see. If you let us see, then we'll believe. They were taunting him. And God didn't answer that. Because the answer is you will believe and then you can see. God wants us to believe on his word, what he says. Same thing Adam and Eve did. They could see that the apple tree or whatever it were on an apple, but the fruit was good looking and delicious and make you wise. I mean, what possibly could go wrong? But should have been echoing in their mind, the trump card is you don't eat it. If you do, you die. So they went by what they saw and it looked great. And I see this all the time. People that just get in trouble right and left because they did something that just seemed right to them. I mean, the stars lined up and everything was good. What in the world could have gone wrong? And just run over what God has said. Now, sometimes, because they don't know what he said, the church has done a poor job of trumpeting, thus saith the Lord. But children should learn this at their mother's knee and in Sunday school and so forth. But unfortunately, we've gone past that. So the world and man by nature wants a visual religion, want to see stuff. And then if we can have some dialogue and words, that's okay too, but visual trumps it. Well, how did God do this with the Jews in the Old Testament? Nora and I have been reading through the Old Testament and the Geneva Bible, which is really good. Just like King James, just about. Building of the temple, Solomon building the temple. and all of this magnificent glory, cherubims and knops, which are really flower things, and all kinds of imagery, and it's covered over with gold and all that, and then the Ark of the Covenant, which we had back under Moses, but now it's a big one there, and he's gonna be in the Holy of Holies, and this magnificent building, and the Jews really caught on to this. This is where God lives. This is where his throne is. Well, yes and no, because the Bible tells us that heaven can't contain God. And so this whole temple and tabernacle before and the Holy of Holies and the gold plates and the Ark of the Covenant and the cherubim were merely figures or symbols of the true temple and throne of God, which is in heaven. In fact, if anything, the psalmist says the earth is his footstool. We should be honored that God would even put his foot on the earth, you know. But God made this so they would have a tangible, physical place. And he told them, you go to Jerusalem and worship, you offer your sacrifices there. And he had these physical sacrifices, visible priests with robes and miters, incense, lavers to wash, all of this very organized. And it did become a focal point to the Jews. And so when Jesus comes along and says, you know, guys, I'm a dispensationalist, we're fixing to move into the New Covenant, the New Testament. This other stuff was just cardboard symbols to show you the truth. But God doesn't require you to go to Jerusalem to worship. He told this to the Samaritan woman who was a Gentile. You know, it's not going to be a Jerusalem anymore. God says, you worship me in spirit and in truth. We're moving away from the cardboard symbols to the reality. And Jesus himself was the reality. And so when the disciples came along and they said, look, show us the father, give us something tangible. He said, you've seen me. I and my father are one. Now he wasn't saying I am the father, but he was saying that I'm the equivalent, I'm the same as the father. If you see me, you've seen the father. And I'm sure they were astounded at that. Because this brings us to the great doctrine of the Christian faith, which is the incarnation. God is spirit, dwells in heaven. Heaven is his throne. He put up a symbolic picture of him down here for the Jews so that being made like they were, that they have to see, they require a sign. And this was what so much time with preaching, when someone would preach, they'd say, wait a minute, pull a miracle first so we can know you're telling the truth. When Paul points out that Satan can do miracles, we ought to believe it based on its substance, not because of some miracle. And there are all kinds of folks going out here pulling miracles, things you can see. You know, bound to be true, isn't it? Wow, so-and-so did so-and-so, must be right. But there is the incarnational truth in which God himself became a man and dwelt among us, the Lord Jesus Christ. He was a physical entity. In the early church, the first 200 or 300 years, they argued back and forth about this. Well, how do we fit this together? If he's really God, he couldn't be Man, if he's man, he couldn't be God. And Satan sent along the Gnostics and decided, well, physical part is bad. So Jesus just appeared to be physical. What's important is this intellectualism. And we've got all this super knowledge that you can learn from us. We're the only ones that got it. So this was kind of right out of Plato's idea that spiritual is what counts and physical doesn't, or the physical is evil. And Christianity just ran into the face of that and said, wait a minute, Christianity is physical and spiritual. And Jesus Christ came down here and was born for the first time in history. God dwelt among us, tabernacled, actually the same word used for the Old Testament, tabernacle, and his flesh was his tabernacle. And Christ is and dwelt and was God of our very God and man of very man. And the Nicene Creed kind of summarizes all that after they fought over it and killed each other and excommunicated each other for 300, 400 years. And Satan still fights that, still fights it. Oh, Jesus was a great prophet or he was a great man or a great teacher. And C.S. Lewis has a wonderful little essay on that that said that, no, he's not a great prophet. He made claim to be God and the Jews hated him for it. That's why they took him out and killed him. saying you don't need the temple anymore. No, the temple's the visible sign of God. No, you don't need that. I'm the visible sign of God. So that was another reason to bump him off, even though he had miracles and he had preached. And people knew he was telling the truth, but they rejected this incarnational view. And the Gnostics are still among us. They are among Christians, this notion that Doesn't matter if you show up physically for church on Sunday, just worship in spirit, just be out there on the lake or whatever. And they want to play the clarinet by themselves and not in symphony. And it doesn't matter about physical things. In fact, you can do physically whatever you want to because that's disconnected from the spiritual. The spiritual is what counts. And so Satan's got a big old boulder out there for us to run into on that. Now, on the other side, he's got another boulder called idolatry. Calvin says that man's heart is an idol factory, and people erect idols. Some of them are visible, physical idols, but a lot of them are just putting things else ahead of God as more important than God. So what's the difference then in, say, the temple or the tabernacle and idols? Well, an idol is a physical representation of God, but the people who make idols say that it is God. This is our real God. And the Old Testament prophets just made fun of them, you know, especially Elijah and Elisha. And they would taunt them, you know, where's your God? Is he off asleep? Why can't he do something? And old Dagon, they had to nail his idolatrous feet to the forekeep from falling over because God just kept bumping him over there in his temple, remember. And God makes fun of them. They'll take a big old log and cut it off and burn part of it and take the other and carve it into an image, which is probably kind of like our totem poles today, and set it up and then worship it. So they heat themselves on one end physically and then they worship this idol. And if you don't think it's that, you just try messing with it. Say, I'm going to go up here and paint some glasses and lipstick on it. Well, they'll just take you out and kill you, because that's their god. I mean, you can't do that. And so a symbol is just a picture of a physical reality. The physical reality is there. The symbol is not the reality. But it is a teaching aid. It's pointing to it. Just like when we take verbal skills. What is a word? Oh, well, that's just some carbon ink and some little squiggles, and you make a little circle, and you make a line and put a dot here, and that makes the word. No, that's not the word. The word is what that symbolizes. So we do need a physical connection. But when we go and make that physical thing equivalent to God, Then we've stepped into idolatry and God hates idolatry. I'm amazed as I read scripture and read about the ethics and morality, there seems to me to be three things that really make God angry. One of them is idolatry. That's just something he seems like he won't forgive. And then the other one is shedding innocent blood. That's why it's so important with this abortion issue and all. 1.2 million babies murdered every year in this country. And that's got to be stopped because God hates it and God's promised his wrath. And at least the church and Christians ought to stand on that issue because it takes innocent life. And then, of course, there are a lot of other things that God hates, mistreating the poor and subverting justice and all that. But those first two things are just almost like God says when you fall into that blood, it's just, you don't have any hope. I'll tend to you. It's interesting, things like stealing, adultery and all that, God is against it, but there have been some great men of God who fell into some of those sins and God still used them. But idolatry and shedding innocent blood seems to be just permanently disqualified. And I don't understand all the theology behind that. I'll leave that to the to the theologians, that's just my observation of being an old guy that's been reading and watching. And so idolatry is a satanic substitute for the physical realities of God. He wants, first of all, to make us think that Christianity and religion is nothing physical. It's just all ethereal, just kind of like vapor in the air. And if that's the case, then you can see people will very quickly move away. But he also wants us to think that Religion is having a physical cardboard outfit and worshiping it and claiming it's God. And so all of this is the way Satan has to deal with us. We don't want to give Satan too much credit because God is all sovereign and he knows about all this. So it gets back to Moses. And the writer of Hebrews kind of summarizes it, said, Moses endured as seeing him that is invisible. or seeing the unseen. It doesn't say the unseen wasn't real. It's just that he didn't get to visually see it, but he knew it was there. He knew God was there physically. And then the word endure is tried to look up some Greek on it now, but it basically means hangs on or continues or really endure is probably the best way to do it. Moses was back to the wall so often with the Jews and physically and spiritually be impossible to do what he did. And the easiest thing would have been for him to bail out. I mean, for one thing, he bailed out just for saying in Pharaoh's household. He may have even ended up Pharaoh because he was adopted daughter of Pharaoh. Daddy was the Pharaoh. And he turned his back on that, even though doing that not only cut him off from all that wonderful Egyptian heritage, but It plunged him into the same problems and reproach with the Jewish people who at that time were slaves. So Moses from way back put one foot in front of the other and kept on going and every so often would cry out to God for some help. But he had this knowledge. It was based upon the word of God, not some thunder and lightning and earthquake or some cardboard symbol. or a golden calf or something like that. Those things are all so shoddy. I think one of the reasons it makes God so mad is that you're reducing the Almighty God down to a ox that eateth hay. I mean, anything you put up there is inferior. And then to bow before it and say, these be thy gods, O Israel. It's just awful. So Moses was able to keep on going because he had this knowledge that there was a visible God, physical, spiritual, everything. Even though he hadn't really seen him, he'd just seen his glory that came from it. Now, God physically reveals himself today through the word of God, number one, but also through his creation. The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth forth his handiwork. That's why this era of evolution is so bad. In fact, I've about decided it is the linchpin of everything that's bothering us today. It's why liberal churches and all go off into all this foolishness, because they're trying to reconcile to modern day so-called science. And if you'll notice, it's not the scientists that are falling in. Now, there are plenty of scientists who believe in evolution, but they're not going to give their life for it. They just believe it like they believe in the periodic table. but it's the theologians and the liberals and the soft people that they're the ones really touting it and pushing it because they don't know how to just say God said it and that settles it. So if that's the case, we'll let evolution stack up against that and see whether to save it or reject it. No, it's starting with the fact that evolution must be true. So we have to twist the Bible around and poetize it or spiritualize it ignore it or make it nomadic, bunch of desert people's book of stories or anything. So they start the wrong end and they end up wrong. So Satan has all of these, these tricks out there and he's trying to subvert us from the truth. He would like for us to believe in a totally spiritual Christianity that has no substance, whatever. or he would like for us to take our Christianity or religion and funnel it down into this idol made out of wood, gold, whatever you want, or a system that's idolatrous. Now, in the New Testament, the Lord Jesus, just before he left, left with us the Lord's Supper, and we have before us the elements of the Lord's Supper. Very simple, bread and a cup, the fruit of the vine. And he said, the bread pictures or is representative of my body. Now, if we start worshiping the wafer, then we've fallen into idolatry. We don't worship a wafer God. And we don't take the communion to say that this is how we connect with God. He does have grace that we receive by taking communion. But the symbols are that. They're symbols and pictures of a divine truth that is solid and physical. If Christianity didn't have a physical aspect, there would certainly be no need to have a communion table. And there are these hyper-spiritual groups. I think the Quakers got into this and some of the holiness people. They don't have baptism or the Lord's Supper because they're trying to become hyper-spiritual. And Satan abuses the communion table. He wants us to make an idolatry out of it. He wants us to make it magic so that the priest can stand up and say the magic words and turn it into the real body of Christ and we can eat it and partake of Christ and receive grace and salvation, which, mighty funny, it doesn't last very long. As soon as you make the next sin, you've gotten rid of it. But it subverts people away from the truth. But the New Testament church met regularly to remember the Lord's death. by the taking of this meal of bread and fruit of the vine and pointing us to Christ. Now, he said that when we gather, he's in our midst. So Jesus is here. Holy Spirit's here. But you can look around this room, you're not going to see him. We know he is here. The angels are here. Tons of angels, they're watching this. Satan's watching it and just absolutely galls him. and shouts of praise and singing hymns. I sure holy, holy, holy just really, he had to go off and take a Pepto Bismol or something after that. And we need to do that. And he comes back wanting to fight over it too and give us more trouble, but that's fine and good. We got the Lord on our side. And Paul tells us that we only see through the glass darkly. We're just looking through a mirror, a cloudy mirror. We're not actually looking God. If we did, we'd go blind and die. But when he comes, we shall see him as he is, face to face. And we will be glorying in his glory because we're going to be like him. He's going to take these old ragged bodies of ours, transform them into perfection. We are in his image, but he's going to get rid of all that dead stuff that's come along. And I think it was Dwight L. Moody. Everybody blames Dwight L. Moody if they don't know who actually said it. But I think it was Moody that he said, one day you're going to read in the paper that Dwight L. Moody is dead. But that's not true. I'm more alive than I've ever been. He said, we don't preach a sermon. Well, old Joe here has gone from the land of the living to the land of the dead. No, he's left the land of the dying. to go to the land of the living. That's the true reality. This place here has been all messed up by Satan, but he didn't zero it out. We're still physical. We still have Christ. Christ is in our midst. We are worshiping him and giving glory to him and remembering this tool he's given us to do that. So let's have a word of prayer and give thanks for the Lord's Supper. Heavenly Father, We thank you so much that you left this communion table for us that we can gather together and in symphony and concert, remember what you did and offer praise and worship. We thank you for this bread that pictures the broken body of the Lord Jesus in our place as he paid for our sins. And also the cup that pictures the blood, for without the shedding of blood, there is no remission. And he shed his blood. to get rid of all of his elects sin forever. And that we can come and take these symbols and picture that. And have communion with thee and with one another. We pray it might be a blessing that this grace is given to us might give us strength to do your will and help us all to endure like Moses, even though we haven't physically seen even like the disciples did. We have your word for it. Help us to really be people of the word and be able to minister in this world with all of its pain and suffering and fallenness and bring to bear the truth of the Lord's return and putting everything right. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.