Till We Have Faces

my team thank you pastor Levine sister Levine it's so good to be with you it's my first time here what a lovely country this is it's beautiful snow covered fields beautiful trees John Deere Parkway it's gorgeous this place is wonderful and i'm glad to be with my friend longtime friend and i'm so appreciative of the invitation to be here and i hope that we can share the word together over the next few days and enjoy one another's company with God's word. Romans 8 and 28 will be my text this morning and we'll read verses 28 through 30 and we know that all things work together for good to them that love God to them who were called according to his purpose for whom he did foreknow he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his son that he might be the firstborn among many more over whom he did predestinate them he also called whom he called them he also

justified and whom he justified them he also glorified i'd like to draw your attention first to a phrase in verse 29 that we were made in the mold and then secondly i need to draw your attention to the series of verbs in verse 30 predestinate past tense called past tense justified past tense and glorified past tense predestinate i can understand this is a decree from long ago called something that happens at the beginning of our christian walk but the next two are more difficult we were justified past tense and then the hardest one to grasp of all glorified already glorified i'd like to teach and preach on this passage this morning the title will become more clear to you as we proceed but i'll be speaking on the subject till we have faces would you pray with me father in the name of jesus i asked for your help this morning to teach and preach your word faithfully i pray that what i

say is true that it would be edifying that you would be glorified in your people would glorify you with their lives in jesus name we pray in jesus name we pray amen thank you for standing you be seated we use our we use our language on the subject of masks usually to speak of something that's inauthentic a mask is that behind which we hide masking your feelings masking your true self but i have a a different approach to the subject this morning of masks there is the reality that a mask often doesn't hide the true self but rather the mask creates a self it has a constructive first a destructive and then a constructive force the british philosopher of the early 20th century oscar wild said that if you ever really want to know a man wait until he puts on his chosen mask then you'll know masks tend to bring something out in us some truth out in us masks take many

different forms the technological mask first the car driving in a car down a highway nobody knows your identity nobody they only know the makin model and the color of your car your license plate it's a little hard to identify you with unless you have a state database andy so you can do all kinds of crazy things in the car and people do they're wearing that mask that machine that machine that somehow encourages within them a boldness they would not otherwise have can you imagine somebody cutting you off in the grocery store the way they might in the highway or perhaps the way you did this morning on your way here although it did snow so i'm not sure you took any risk today on the internet social media uh people use anonymous accounts on social media and the person the persona jackie eight seven one one five that persona was created so that some truths could be told that would not have otherwise

been told yes you put on the mask and the mask is how you know the man in the ancient greek stage two and a half thousand years ago there were masks laying out on a table and the actor would come out and he might speak of the persona he's playing in the third person when he's not wearing the mask but when he puts on the mask now he speaks in the first person there's this transition from the third person to the first person it's no longer he but i there's a a new self that's being generated there in hollywood on the stage but even preceding hollywood the russian theater in the early 20th century uh there was a figure by the name of um uh constantane uh constantinus stanislasov and he revolutionized the acting industry really he set the stage for hollywood unwittingly his idea was you didn't just become the part you were playing by learning a couple of lines and maybe

maybe wearing just a costume you shouldn't know that that's julia caesar on the stage just because he has a laurel wreath wreath around his head and and he he says a few things like etude brutay that shouldn't be the limit of the audience's connection with julia caesar up there on the stage his idea was you enter so deeply into the part you play that you lose your identity in the part and that persona that you're playing becomes you all right he called this method acting he wanted his actors to take the script and memorize the script but not just memorize the script he wanted he wanted you to contemplate what might such a character what might such a character in how might he interact with his family how might he what kind of dreams might he have how would he eat what kinds of things would he eat and so you took method acting with you off the stage you carried that part

with you until you had lost yourself in the part first you be first the mask uh is something apart you play but then the part starts playing you method acting is a alive and well in the acting industry today and sometimes the fatal consequences about 20 years ago or so there was an actor by the name of heath ledger that lost himself deeply in the part of a character by the name of joker i'm sure you're familiar with joker there have been manifestations versions of the joker throughout the last hundred years or so there was the uh cesar remaro joker on that old batman he was more of a trickster a low-key character he laughed a lot he just wanted to play pranks on people primarily um then there was the jack nicholson uh joker who was up quite a bit darker but still but still that smile on his face was there was something authentic about it but this joker the director

wanted a different kind of joker for heath ledger to play this joker was going to be a joker who wasn't a prankster he just wanted to see he didn't even want to be rich he didn't want to be wealthy he didn't want to be famous he wanted one thing he wanted to see the world to burn down so that he could feel something more he's the kind of joker that you don't paint a smile on he's the kind of joker you cut a smile on so take that part and so this promising young actor with from what i understand he had a an affable nature very optimistic and cheerful and very friendly and close to his family but he takes this part and they say on stage lights camera action and there's a darkness that exudes from him it's completely alien from his personality he plays his part they're on stage and they record him and then they cut the scene and they

call it a day and he goes off the stage but he doesn't drop the mask he keeps talking to everybody who will talk to him in the voice of tom waits that singer from the 1980s a kind of dark character that showed up a few times on the david letterman show he can't talk anymore with his friends and have a normal casual conversation his family no longer recognizes him he doesn't even answer the phone anymore like he fledger but it's like joker everything everything is joker he sleeps and he eats and he dreams joker and with such a dark persona he embraces it so deeply that he that he also embraces the philosophy and the theology of darkness and it's not long until he's drowning himself in alcohol and drugs and he dies by suicide before the film is released there have been many such cases over the last hundred years or so in hollywood it's uh an occupational hazard to play the

villain on the other side on the other side of the spectrum there is the perennial need to play jesus in some movie and again around 20 years ago maybe 25 years ago or not or so the passion of the christ was created and an actor promising young actor again by the name of jim caviesel who had played in some very important films and had won awards and and he wasn't always the greatest actor but there was something about the way he played the part he committed himself to the part and mel Gibson hires him to play jesus and jim you're not going to just you're not just going to wear a robe to play jesus and grow your hair out and have a beard that's not the extent of being jesus for you you're not even going to say a single word in english throughout the entire film you're going to learn the language that jesus spoke you're going to speak aramaic almost

completely lost in dead language today but you're going to learn it and so jim caviesel learned aramaic and he stopped speaking english while he was filming the part he would speak over the breakfast table in aramaic he would try to think in aramaic dream in aramaic and then he took it a step further i don't just want to speak like jesus but i want to be like jesus that changes the kinds of places i can go the kinds of people i can i can hang out with that changes the kinds of conversations i can have it's kind of hard to carry a cross into the bar and sit down i'm playing jesus and there's no off switch on this if i really want to play the part well he played it and he played it extremely well he was so committed to the part that on a cold 30 degree day in the mountains they had scheduled the cross scene and they had

to limit this just to one or two days i had to make sure they got it all right on that day and so up on that cross jim caviesel had himself bound wearing only a loincloth on 30 degree day and not coming down for eight hours completely destroyed his health his healthy apparently has never recovered he's never been able to put on weight since that hypothermia that he had developed on that day i thought about this quite a bit i thought about this idea of playing jesus and then i read the new testament and i see the apostle paul saying things like imitate me as i imitate christ and then he'll say he'll say if we imitate christ in the burial of baptism we imitate him also in the resurrection so if i die like him i'll be raised like him if if he goes on even to say beautifully in second Corinthians he says that there is a mirror that we look

into it's the face of christ that we look into and we are changed from glory to glory every day as we look into that mirror as we behold christ in that mirror we are changed and then we we read in in our text today romans aid we are predestinated to be conformed to the image of god's son and that is what is justified that image is what is glorified it has already been justified it has already been glorified and if you will be conformed to that image you too will partake of that justification and that glorification so this is if you'll pardon me at first in the early stages of the christian walk it's an act it's not true to my nature and this is really true of all the great things we do in life learning to play the piano my piano teacher she would place her fingers over the top of my fingers and i would imitate her movements and the

more i imitated her movements the better i became if you just wanted to put jeremy painter over on the piano without having gone through the process of imitation i couldn't make music it would just be noise but the beauty the music is the result of a series of imitations when i was 20 25 25 years old i had three children and my wife and we lived in a 500 square foot home and uh we had so so very little those are some of the best days of my life um i i was uh at 19 years old i got married as i mentioned and um i went out because i didn't have a way of supporting the family was supporting my wife and i so i really i got the first job i could find and i got a job at burger king and uh eventually they made me a manager but there's not really much of a difference between the employee and

the manager you just work more for less it's a pay cut and you learn a lot about people a lot about people at 11 30 at night in downtown burger king it was wonderful in reflection in hindsight but at the time hated it with my whole being i was typically the closing manager so my job started at two o'clock in the afternoon until midnight right close up well my kids little tiny kids we take them out to the park and we go play on the swings and throw rocks in the Puget Sound and we'd live like kings and princes and queens for a couple of hours and then we'd all have to get back in the car my wife would drop me off in that little sun dance off at the burger king and my my carriage would turn back into the pumpkin and i would get out in my uniform my red short sleeve shirt in my black pants and i would

walk through those doors and i would ask people if they wanted ketchup and if they wanted larger fries or smaller fries if they wanted cheese on their whopper i asked them if they wanted toys kids meals i asked them all kinds of questions like that and and that was my day and i started to have resent it you see when i was 15 years old the girl that i wanted to marry and i did end up marrying 15 years old i met her father and her father said so jeremy what do you want to do for a living and burger king did not come out of my mouth i promise you no i told i told him i i wanted to work it in the i'm gonna be top gun i'm gonna be in the air force i'm gonna fly an f14 and this is a long way from an f14 i do have i do have a headset on that's as close

as i got to the f14 but i welcome the burger king can i take your order well you know what though um it was hard to get out of that job once you have three children and you know you just can't step into the beginning of something then and i also though i i also thought when i'm when i'm when i grow up i'm gonna know things i'm gonna be smart i'm going to not have so many questions that's what i thought was gonna happen when i was a kid i had all kinds of questions dad how do these batteries work well you see there's this there's there's the negative and positive polarity and there is there is this acidic material within the battery that carries that current but why does it need acidic why why acidic why does that carry the current and and and pretty soon i would ask 50 questions like this and pretty soon dad would just end up

he'd he'd throw that whole explanation out and start over and say you see inside this battery there are two wolves well um i had i thought when i grow up i'm not going to have those kinds of questions anymore i'm going to have it figured out i thought i'm going to grow up when i'm 18 i became 18 though i stepped across that threshold and it was no different from when i was 17 or even eight i still had even i still had the same questions only i had more and i thought well maybe when i get married i got married at 19 didn't happen i'm still struggling with all of the little boy desires all the little boy ways well maybe it's 21 maybe it happens at 21 but it didn't happen at 21 but guess what by 22 i have three kids and you know what i want to do most of my day what i want to do when i'm

off i joined three softball leagues i wanted to be a part of every home run hitting derby i wanted to be a part of every contest i got summer league spring league fall league winter league everything and then and then when i go when i go home at night when i'm done i want to turn on espn and i want to watch sports center for a while my life is about will my team win and of course i live in seattle so no that's what i want to happen and meanwhile i have these three kids who are growing up in life and i have this wonderful wife and the most alarming thing happens to me several times a day and i can't get over it these kids when they learn to talk one of their first words is dad and they're talking to me you know when i use the word dad i had a completely different picture in my mind i was

talking to a competent adult when you're talking to me that's not me and so i have a choice to make what am i going to do am i just going to be authentically me all i want is a remote in my left hand my wife gets the kids ready for church jeremy you come into church and there's the moment i'd just be true to myself my kids and my wife what they were doing was they were crafting a mask and they were saying here put this on wear it it's called dad and dads don't do things like watch their kids go to church while they sit and watch sport center give them me oh heaven no no no no no never a thousand times no not me i was born in sin and shape and in iniquity there is no good thing in me even my righteousness is filthy rags i can't give them me not if i love them i've got to

give them something better and so as the little boy stands there calling me dad and the little boy inside of me is saying be me am i gonna do well my kids they told me i was the greatest thing my wife told me i was the best and i wanted to know who were they calling the best what were they seeing where it is you think i am think i'm great i'm going to try my best if you think i'm wonderful ethan carter morgan my children as wonderful as i can every day he was five years old and ethan had been taken into a conspiracy with my wife and all the rest of the ladies in the church for father's day father's day they were going to have all the boys walk up the center aisle of the church wearing their dad's uniform work uniform to celebrate their dad and i didn't know what was happening i just saw these kids walking up

the first you know like five ten kids i see here's police officer kids walking like this another one's wearing construction suit outfit another one's wearing a business suit security guard and then it dawns on me what's happening oh my goodness you guys did not consult with me oh i wanted my son to walk up in a military uniform in something respectable but you know what he walked up i saw him i wanted to slide down into some hole in the earth i saw him he was wearing my actual uniform rolled up even though it was short sleeve it had to be rolled up to the shoulders and my pants he was wearing my actual pants and they had to wear they had to roll it all the way up up to mid-thigh and he walks in and what would you think this boy he's carrying around his dad's uniform wearing it what do you think he's wearing burger king should he mope like

his father mopes into his restaurant oh my goodness no he had a thousand watt smile on his face and he had his chest puffed out and he had his chin up there to the sky and he had one little extra touch that he wanted to put on that on that ensemble and and it was this he wanted to wear a burger king crown which i never wore i promise not once and they had the burger king crown right down there to his forehead and he walked up there like charlemagne and he came up and took control of the stage puffed out his chest and said my dad works for a burger king it was a horror show at first and then and then i knew what was going on inside his mind you know what he was saying my dad is the best dad there's ever been and all these poor losers up here on the stage with me nobody makes people as

happy as my dad they come into burger king hungry and they leave full they want a milkshake they get a chocolate milkshake they want fries they get fries the kids walk in he's Santa Claus he's giving out toys my dad's the best dad in this whole town i watched that absolute amazement from horror to joy and i thought i wonder if the lord jesus christ when he leans out over the balcony of heaven and he looks down and he sees his children his sons and daughters wearing his own uniform they are forgiving the unforgivable like he did they are loving the unlovable like he did they're wearing the humble clothes the kinds of clothes that sometimes lead you to a cross and lead you to a life of sacrifice but he sees us wearing his uniform and it doesn't fit yet and it's awfully big paul said put on christ and throw off the old man i put on that uniform it doesn't

fit the sleeves are down to the floor i have to roll up those pants all the way but you know what every day i put on that uniform i grow into it just a little bit more day by day it's becoming a little bit more authentic to who i am it's not so much an act anymore i first put on the mask but now the mask is put on me and it's playing me and you might say well are you telling me preacher it sounds a little bit like hypocrisy no please understand please understand if you walk away with nothing else please walk away with this it is this here's what the hypocrite is the hypocrite wears a mask but has no intention of changing one thing it's gonna stay just who they are they're content with a fake show but that's not what i'm talking about and that's not what the apostle paul is talking about we're to be conformed to the

image of god's son everything old is passed away behold i make all things new put on christ wear the mask every day not on sunday just but monday and tuesday and when nobody else is with you you wear that mask you put on that uniform one leg at a time you put it all on wherever you are whoever you're with wear the mask in the 1940s there was a pickpocket who was arrested by the nazis in italy and the nazis wanted to get some information about the underground italian resistance movement and they thought this guy can con anybody we've been watching it so they pulled them in and they said we're going to kill you or you can play this part we want you to be general delo robert leader of the italian resistance resistance movement and we're going to put you in the underground system we're going to put you in prison where a lot of the resistance movement has been arrested

and we want you to get to know them and gain their respect and they'll give you information as to the rest of the leadership's the movement's leadership times places dates all of that we want you to get all the information you can bring it back up to us we'll set you free and give you a pension for life it's very well i'll do that i've been pickpocketing my whole life why not just take another identity so he did he learned the accent he learned the mannerisms of the higher classes and he was by the time they put him down in the prison a very refined general delo robert the pickpocket was gone they put him down there and the people see that there's a general amongst them and they've been hearing a little bit about general delo robert and they ask him questions they consult with him and he gives them the kind of answer that a general would give them hold on

be strong this will pass there are people who are faithful who are taking care of things everything will be fine he keeps on doing this day after day after day after day and pretty soon whenever he walks past the mothers whisper into their children's ears and the children salute he's given all of them hope and inspiration something to live for he's down there for a few months as time is up and they come and take him out of the prison and they put him in an interrogation room and they sit him down and they slide a piece of paper and a pencil across the desk and say write down all the names and dates and places and he looks at the paper he looks at the pencil he slides the paper back across the desk looks square into the nazi interrogator's eyes and behind him a soldier cocks his weapon and the interrogator says one more chance he slides it back across the

table and says ins former pickpocket become general dims up his teeth a frack did he die did he die on he was the greatest general that italy had ever had don't be pitying yourself too much for this power is not your own for the holy spirit within us changes us if you will put on that uniform if you will put on that mask if you will put on christ where your life will end only god knows but it's gonna be great it's gonna be marvelous when we have reached the end of our journey of wearing the mask we stand on that great day before the lord and striding out of the light comes the lord jesus christ stands before us looks deep into our eyes as we wear the mask his mask what's children now does not yet appear what we shall be but when we see him we shall be like him we shall see him as he is and everyone who

has this hope within himself purifies himself i can see the lord standing before you which is up to take off that mask though we have that face yet i live not i but christ lives in me loved ones this is the great hope of life what will you give those who love you unmade and misshapen the image and reality of christ what better gift could you give to those that love you that you love and what better gift could you give to god what greater praise is there than imitation when we talk about talk about praising god it's not just the volume of our voice or the motion of our hands but it is the choice to imitate long journey but it's a whole there's nothing like this life i'm inviting you to the altar i want you to come up here and and step back into that mask receive this mission with your whole heart and the various callings of your life

father mother son or daughter of god receive his holy spirit conform you to the image of