Using Pauls’ words from his Second letter to the Corinthians, starting with chapter 3, verse 12 and going through chapter 4, verse 2, this was given at the church in Lynnville, IL on February 22, 2004…

Many years ago I had decided to make more of an effort to get out and exercise a bit and started going out early and walk. To help pass the time I strapped my portable CD player to my belt, and with the headphones on over my cap and under my hood (it Was cold outside right then!), I would listen to some of the new Christian music CDs I’d been acquiring. I had been thinking for some time how nice it might be to use that same time to do some of the daily Bible reading, that I knew I really should be doing, by purchasing the Bible-on-CD that I had seen available, but time passed and one thing led to another and I didn’t do it.

       However, when I got back to driving over-the -road everyday I found that I could make that CD player work in at least some of the trucks, and when the subject of getting the Bible-on-CD came up again I searched for the best deal and ordered it. So it was that once it arrived I started trying to listen to at least one CD a day, though in all honesty that didn’t quite work out that way… the adapter didn’t work in the tape-player of some of the trucks, and even when it did, some roads were just too rough for it to play or the run was too short or too ‘intense’, due to weather or traffic, for me to put one in and concentrate on. Still, I listened to enough of them to know that it was going to take a while to get all the way through it… each disc is at least an hour long and there are 64 of them! And the first three were just the book of Genesis!

       I had bought the dramatized version, which means that they used different actors to read each of the characters, and added background music where appropriate. This really adds a whole new dimension and helps to visualize the story as it moves along. For example, if any of you have ever seen the musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, you may have noticed that one of Jacobs’s sons is usually cast as a black man. I realize that this may bring to light how much of the Bible I still need to really study, but I always thought that that was done tongue-in-cheek to allow for someone to sing the calypso song later in the show. But on listening to this dramatized reading of Genesis, I came to realize that Jacob had sons by different women, including his wive’s handmaidens and personal servants… at least one of which was a ‘person-of-color’!

Listening to the story of Joseph and his brothers brought to mind a revelation I had regarding it some years ago. We had been studying it in our Sunday school class when it hit me… that was how the Israelites came in to Egypt! I had always known both the story of Joseph and his coat-of-many-colors and of Moses’ crossing of the Red Sea… suddenly, it was like a veil was lifted and I realized that the two stories were connected… the one tells of the beginning, the other of the end of their stay in Egypt!

       Historians tell us there is 430 years between the two stories. So the book of Exodus starts over three-hundred years after the time of Joseph with the story of how the nation of Israel had been placed in bondage and were slaves to the Egyptians. It tells of the baby Moses and how God worked through him to bring out the people and set them towards their promised land. Verses 29-35 of the 34^th chapter of Exodus tell of him bringing the tablets with the Ten Commandments on them down from Mount Sinai, and how those who saw him were afraid because his face was radiant. We read how he put a veil over his face except when he entered the presence of the Lord, and how, each time he came away, the people would all see the radiance again on his face before he reached to put the veil back down. In these verses from 2^nd Corinthians Paul talks about that very veil.

       In the verses just before the ones we read, Paul has been discussing and comparing the old Law of Moses with the New Gospel of our Lord. The Life Application Commentary tells us that, “From his discussion on the superiority of the new covenant over the old, Paul concluded that the new inspires great boldness. The Greek word translated “boldness” is the word that the Greeks used to speak of the right to free speech. Here Paul used this word to indicate the public nature of his ministry. He would boldly preach the mysteries of salvation that had been obscured for centuries. Although the Jews had God’s promises regarding the coming Savior and Messiah in the Scriptures, not even their well-educated rabbis could fathom exactly what God planned to do. But to the apostles, God had revealed this mystery: God had planned long ago to offer salvation to both Jews and Gentiles through the death of the Messiah. Openly and publicly, Paul was proclaiming this great mystery in the cities all over the Roman world.

Paul interpreted the veil over [Moses’] face as an effort on Moses’ part to conceal the fact that the radiance of his face was fading away. In the fading away of this brilliance, Paul saw a sign that the old covenant, which Moses presented to the people, would also fade.” And all of that is certainly true. But I see still more in this story.

The term veil can be used in many ways. There are bridal veils and dancing veils… there are hanging veils and natural veils… it can describe a covering, a shroud, or a curtain… as a verb it can mean to conceal or obscure something. I recall some early visits to the History Museum in Forest Park, in St. Louis, when they still had a display of all of the costumes worn by the ‘Veiled Prophet’ over the years, and all of the negative connotations that I had with that… many people didn’t realize that the Veiled Prophet was a remnant of the KKK days… the veil was intended to hide their identity! And it is this negative image… that of hiding something… that I think we need to pay attention to today.

The King James translates this verse in this way… Seeing then that we have such hope, we use great plainness of speech:

To that end, Matthew Henry’s Commentary says that the verse, “Concern(s) the duty of the ministers of the gospel to use great plainness or clearness of speech. They ought not, like Moses, to put a veil upon their faces, or obscure and darken those things which they should make plain. The gospel is a more clear dispensation than the law; the things of God are revealed in the New Testament, and ministers are much to blame if they do not set spiritual things, and gospel-truth and grace, in the clearest light that is possible. Though the Israelites could not look steadfastly to the end of what was commanded, and is now abolished… we may. We may see the veil is done away with in that Christ… who was the end of the law and whom Moses and all the prophets pointed to, and wrote of …is come to all those who believe.

Over the years, it seems, there have been many who have tried to reinterpret the words of Jesus and His Apostles to mean what they think they should mean… that is, to make them fit that that they wish to believe! They may use the excuse of ‘updating it to modern times’, or of some new ‘revelation’ given just to them, or any number of seeming good, logical reasons… but it all boils down to them reinterpreting what the Lord has said!

For example, I recall have been both fascinated and appalled by some of the arguments for and against people seeing, “The Passion of the Christ” movie when it was first released… so much so that I intentionally started to ignore most of what I heard. At that time, as well as over all of the years since, I have heard, and hear, supposedly learned men take the same passage and make totally opposite points from it… I have heard non-Christians go into ‘great detail’ as to why Pilate would never have done any of the things attributed to him as doing… and I have seen great debates and discussions concerning who was at fault for Christ’s death! To any true Christian, the answer to that particular question is obvious… I am at fault for Christ’s death… it was for my sins that he went to the Cross!

My point is this… far too often we try to see things with just our eyes! We try to understand with just our head! And we try to feel with just our fingers! The problem is that those senses were developed for use on this world… they work fine for seeing the sunshine and understanding how it makes the wheat to grow and harvesting it to feed ourselves! But when we try to use those senses to understand God, they are far too inadequate… it is as if there is a veil separating us from the full understanding and appreciation of Him and His work! How do we see past this veil… how can we remove it from between ourselves… our understanding… and God? I think the answer can be found in verse 15 of today’s Epistle reading when Paul says, “Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts.”

There it is… a veil that covers our hearts! That is what prevents us, sometimes, from hearing the truth… that is what keeps us from feeling the love of God… that is what keeps us from seeing what He wants and needs us to be doing… a veil that covers our hearts! None of our physical senses can penetrate something like that! Indeed, unless brought to our attention by an outside force, none of our senses would ever detect something like that… we would simply go through our lives wondering why we had never had a really clear image of God’s love and desire, and would be open to almost any reasons given for that that we may hear, regardless of the source! And odds are that the most vocal, the most vehement, of some of those explanations are from those who also are not aware of the veil over their heart separating them from God! A true case of the blind leading the blind!

So… if the eyes in our head deceive us… if our hearing and feeling is impaired to the point of not functioning under these conditions… how do we see past this veil? By opening the eyes of our heart!

Have you heard that song? I must admit it become one of my favorites when it came out years ago, because it is so true.

“Open the eyes of my heart, Lord.

  Open the eyes of my heart…

  I want to see you.

 I want to see you.”

Yes, we each have that veil over our hearts that keeps us from sometimes seeing and feeling God as He intends for us to. But Paul says, in verse 16, that, “whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.” And that veil is ‘taken away’ when we learn how to see through the eyes of our heart and accept Christ wholeheartedly!

I am not going to sit here today and tell you what movies, tv shows, or songs you should see/hear or not see/hear… what I am going to tell you is to not let other people tell you what you are supposed to think about it! By the same token we must not let others make up our minds for us in any way! Open the eyes of your heart! Let God show you what He wants you to know… let God show you what He wants you to learn… let God help you to be the person he wants you to be!

Let me close with this thought from the Life Application commentary. “Thus, Paul’s boldness in his ministry lay in the eternal nature of the new covenant. Paul could act with greater confidence than the spiritual giant Moses, for Paul had been given an eternal message to proclaim to all nations. God’s plan for salvation was no longer hidden. It was not only a time to celebrate God’s great mercy; it was also a time for boldness. It was a time to declare God’s glory to all the nations, making disciples of whoever turned to God for the gift of salvation.”

People, it is still that time! Time to declare God’s glory to all nations! Time to make disciples of whomever will turn to God! And we can only do that when we ourselves understand and accept that discipleship… and we can only do that… when we open the eyes of our hearts and see the truth of God’s message to us! As Paul tells us in the last of todays’ reading, reading this time from the New Living Translation… “And so, since God in his mercy has given us this wonderful ministry, we never give up. We reject all shameful and underhanded methods. We do not try to trick anyone, and we do not distort the word of God. We tell the truth before God… and all who are honest know that.”

Tell the truth before God! Tell the truth to all the world! And to know that truth, read your Bible! Read in carefully… thoroughly… and diligently! And most of all, be sure you read it through the eyes of your heart!