It feels like a long time since I’ve stood up here, but every time I go abroad and come back to church the only thing I really feel like saying is, “it’s good to be home.”
I’ve been visiting the Middle East as part of my job now for about 6 months – and it might surprise you to learn that when I was given the job, nobody, not even the organisation I worked for had any concept of what it was that I was supposed to be doing – apart from a vague idea of trying to help Christians in Holy Land.
It sounds kind of cool, I suppose, someone saying, I’ll tell you what, I’ll pay you some money and stuff if you can kind of do this thing around this sort of idea.
But it’s not that cool – at the end of the day, a lot of what has happened in the last six months has just been kind of feeling around in the dark – trying to understand the people and their faith before I can even do anything to support them.
So I decided that one of the best ways to understand Christians would be to visit and worship in as many churches as I could. For two reasons really (i) so that I can get to know people, and (ii) so I can hear what the hopes and aspirations and dreams of believers are and see how if I can, in some way help to bring those about.
So a big part of my work is about bridging the gap between Christians in Nazareth or the Middle East and Christians in the rest of the world – to see how those on the ground in the Holy Land can be supported and empowered to live their lives and to make their lives there a little better – a little bit more tolerable.
I think I may have already explained that Christians are very much a minority religion in Israel – perhaps only around 2 out of every hundred people would admit to being a Christian.
But, you know, even here, where Christians are so few, there are many, many different flavours of Christianity – there are still all of the denominations vying for people to affiliate with them – to be baptised with them. To give you some idea, since I started visiting the Middle East (which was only in the middle of July) and bear in mind, sometimes I only go for a week – so since then I have worshipped in:
• A Baptist church
• Then another Baptist church split from the first Baptist Church
• Then another Baptist church split from the split of the Baptist church if you now what I mean.
• A Greek orthodox church (in a service that last 4 hours)
• A Brethren church (during which maybe 25% of the time was spent in respectful and yet complete silence, while we waited for the leadership to be given inspiration).
• A Nazarene church – which I think I already told you about – the church I found completely by accident when I got lost.
• An Anglican mini-cathedral – in which it was astonishing to hear the old British hymns sung with the same tunes – with an organ, but completely in Arabic
• And a Messianic Jewish synagogue.
And I have yet to visit the Russian Orthodox Church, the various independent churches and one or two of the Catholic churches.
Believe you me, for such a small city – which is maybe no bigger than south shields - there are an awful lot of churches.
But the church that was the inspiration for the sermon this morning was the church of Messianic Jews – situated on the slopes of Mount Carmel – no less.
Now just to remind you, Mount Carmel is the place described in the book of Kings where Elijah challenged 450 priests of Baal to prove the existence of their God by them getting their God to burn their sacrifice they with a supernatural fire. Basically saying to them, “I’ll get my God to burn my sacrifice – let’s see if your God can burn your sacrifice.”
Of course, Elijah is making this challenge in order to prove the existence of God to the Israelites because some of them were starting to following Baal.
Actually I love the bit when Elijah starts mocking them. It’s in I Kings 18 – starting at verse 25:
Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, "Choose one of the bulls and prepare it first, since there are so many of you. Call on the name of your god, but do not light the fire." So they took the bull given them and prepared it.
Then they called on the name of Baal from morning till noon. "O Baal, answer us!" they shouted. But there was no response; no one answered. And they danced around the altar they had made.
At noon Elijah began to taunt them. "Shout louder!" he said. "Surely he is a god! Perhaps he is deep in thought, or busy, or travelling. Maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened."
So they shouted louder and slashed themselves with swords and spears, as was their custom, until their blood flowed.
Midday passed, and they continued their frantic prophesying until the time for the evening sacrifice. But there was no response, no one answered, no one paid attention.
And the account continues, Elijah had his sacrifice drenched in water 3 times and the Lord consumed the whole thing with fire from heaven – even down to the alter itself – He burned the entire thing away.
So Elijah built a new alter – and believe it or not they have found what they believe to be the remains of that alter at a place on the side of Mount Carmel that they’ve now called El-Maharrakah, which means “The Burning”.
So the place in which this congregation I visited was situated – Mount Carmel - itself has it’s own mystique and it’s own sense of wonder - and I had been invited to worship with a Messianic Jewish congregation.
A Messianic Jew is someone who is fundamentally Jewish – but rather than believing as Jews believe that the Messiah has not yet come – Messianic Jews are still Jewish, but they believe the Messiah has come and that the Messiah is Jesus.
They call Jesus Yeshua – which is the Hebrew or Aramaic name for Jesus.
It is actually hard for Messianic Jews – because they are not accepted by the State of Israel, so they can’t get automatic citizenship and they are not accepted by other Jews – they are, of course more close to Christians and Christianity, and yet they are still distinct because they are Jewish…
So I had no idea of what to expect. The proceedings were due to start at 10:00 am, and I had gotten there in good time – maybe 9:30. People were milling about and a few people came up and welcomed me, and then I saw this guy – I don’t know maybe in his late fiftes, walking around. And on his left arm, entwined all the way up was a Ram’s Horn – this long! A genuine Horn of a ram.
And as 10:00am arrived he went out of the front of the building and he blew it 7 or 8 times as a call to worship.
I’m not sure if I can convey quite how astonishing this was – surrounded by Jews who believe in Jesus as the Messiah – as their Lord and Saviour, listening to an ancient call to worship blown through the horn of a ram on the slopes of Mount Carmel where Elijah had called down fire from heaven…
…I never thought I would experience such a thing.
What a testimony of God’s grace in itself.
And then the service started – like every other church service – it started with praise and worship. Now this was incredible. The church was semicircular, so you had the stage in the front at the middle and the chairs coming out as a rainbow in rows.
So the band started singing and leading the worship - and what worship – what joy – what passion and exuberance and then, quite spontaneously, unrehearsed, a chain of dancers started to wind their way through the congregation like a growing conga line - a line of women and girls from maybe 60 years old all the way to little 4 and 5 year olds – all dancing in the spirit – trailing through the congregation on and off the stage – dancing before the Lord.
It was an incredible thing – it felt as if the joy in that house of God could have lifted the roof – it was just outstanding.
And then – as they do - things started to slow down a bit, and became more worshipful – and on the overhead they had the words in Hebrew and underneath in English – but they used English Hebrew – so instead of Hebrew letters – they used English letters to spell out Hebrew words.
And there was one song we sung, which touched me deeply. It just repeated a few lines and then the chorus. Now I didn’t understand what it meant in English, but it just touched e and moved me to tears.
In Hebrew the line was: “Panim el Panim Adonai”
At the end of the service I found the worship leader and I asked her what it means – Panim el Panim Adonai means ‘face to face Lord’
The song says, ‘I want to be face to face with you Lord, Face to Face Lord’
Panim el Panim Adonai
And this is what I would like to explore this morning.
What it means to be Face to Face with the Lord.
Well surely the first thing indicated by such a lovely idea of being face to face with Jesus must be the intimacy of that place. Being face to face with someone means that there isn’t anything between you – you can see each other clearly – in is a place of real intimacy.
And there is very real significance in this – think about when two people get married and they exchange those vows – those promises to each other – those intimate promises they intend to keep – they don’t make those promises while they are facing the minister – they turn to each other and they make those promises face to face – Panim el Panim.
But being face to face reflects a whole number of other types of relationship. Is it not also about friendship? Do we not prefer to speak to our friends face to face? We enjoy seeing them, we enjoy interacting with them – they are our friends – Listen to Exodus 33 7-11
Now Moses used to take a tent and pitch it outside the camp some distance away, calling it the "tent of meeting." Anyone inquiring of the LORD would go to the tent of meeting outside the camp. 8 And whenever Moses went out to the tent, all the people rose and stood at the entrances to their tents, watching Moses until he entered the tent. 9 As Moses went into the tent, the pillar of cloud would come down and stay at the entrance, while the LORD spoke with Moses. 10 Whenever the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance to the tent, they all stood and worshipped, each at the entrance to his tent. 11 The LORD would speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks with his friend. Then Moses would return to the camp, but his young aide Joshua son of Nun did not leave the tent.
Imagine, talking face to face with the Lord as friends. Being visited by the Lord Himself, and talking face to face. And I don’t know about you – I might be over-interpreting here, but I get this sense that both Moses and the Lord looked forward to those meetings together – meeting the almighty God as a deep and personal friend…
It’s mind-blowing.
But actually if we think about it – should this be something that we wonder about and imagine – or is it actually something that we, as Christians, should already know about?
Being Face to Face is also the most honest and transparent place to be.
Think about it – if you speak to someone by telephone, or via e-mail or letter or whatever, all we have is a very two dimensional insight into what is being said.
Things like e-mail confuse our social sensibilities. E-mail can be very instantaneous, so it’s almost be like a conversation, but it’s very two-dimensional because we can’t see the face of the person you are communicating with.
Try this experiment you can do at home. Get someone to turn their back to you and then try and have a conversation with them.
The difficulty is caused when we can’t see what is spoken as well as hear what is spoken.
We decipher the majority of any face-to-face conversation by what we see in the other person’s eyes, their expressions, the tiniest movement of their eyebrows…
And so being face-to-face is the most honest and transparent place we can be – it is harder to hide something when you are face to face.
And if we are seeking any kind of relationship with the Lord we must be as honest and as transparent with Him as we possibly can.
We have to try and stop hiding things from Him.
But you know there are some requirements before we can get face-to-face with the Lord. It’s not just a case of wanting it to happen and it will.
Let’s turn back to the only man on earth that has been physically face to face with God the father – Moses.
In Numbers 12 verses 1- 9 it says:
1 Miriam and Aaron began to talk against Moses because of his Cushite wife, for he had married a Cushite. 2 "Has the LORD spoken only through Moses?" they asked. "Hasn’t he also spoken through us?" And the LORD heard this.
3 (Now Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth.)
4 At once the LORD said to Moses, Aaron and Miriam, "Come out to the Tent of Meeting, all three of you." So the three of them came out. 5 Then the LORD came down in a pillar of cloud; he stood at the entrance to the Tent and summoned Aaron and Miriam. When both of them stepped forward, 6 he said, "Listen to my words:
"When a prophet of the LORD is among you,
I reveal myself to him in visions,
I speak to him in dreams.
7 But this is not true of my servant Moses;
he is faithful in all my house.
8 With him I speak face to face,
clearly and not in riddles;
he sees the form of the LORD.
Why then were you not afraid
to speak against my servant Moses?"
9 The anger of the LORD burned against them, and he left them.
And what is the key factor that God Himself said here? Look at verses 7 and 8. 7 But this is not true of my servant Moses; he is faithful in all my house. 8 With him I speak face to face, clearly and not in riddles; he sees the form of the LORD.
He is faithful in all my house – He was faithful in all the Lord’s house – what does this mean? Well it’s obvious – it means that Moses was faithful to God in every way, in everything He did.
And this is the first thing we should be striving for if we want to be face to face with the Lord – we should seek to be faithful in all we do, in every aspect of our lives – seek to be faithful in all the Lord’s house.
And what about the second requirement – again, let’s look at Moses.
We find it in Deuteronomy 5: 1-7
1 Moses summoned all Israel and said:
Hear, O Israel, the decrees and laws I declare in your hearing today. Learn them and be sure to follow them. 2 The LORD our God made a covenant with us at Horeb. 3 It was not with our fathers that the LORD made this covenant, but with us, with all of us who are alive here today. 4 The LORD spoke to you face to face out of the fire on the mountain. 5 (At that time I stood between the LORD and you to declare to you the word of the LORD, because you were afraid of the fire and did not go up the mountain.) And he said:
6 "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
7 "You shall have no other gods before [a] me.
You see what it was? It was courage – and courage that made Moses stand out from the rest of the people – a distinctive courage.
Verses 4 and 5
The LORD spoke to you face to face out of the fire on the mountain. 5 (At that time I stood between the LORD and you to declare to you the word of the LORD, because you were afraid of the fire and did not go up the mountain.)
The people were afraid of the fire and afraid to go up the mountain – I’ll let you draw your own analogies there.
But nonetheless – Moses was the only one of all the people to speak to God face to face – because he had the courage to go up the mountain.
And what of the outcome?
Well turn to Exodus 34:30
29 When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the Testimony in his hands, he was not aware that his face was radiant because he had spoken with the LORD. 30 When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, his face was radiant, and they were afraid to come near him. 31 But Moses called to them; so Aaron and all the leaders of the community came back to him, and he spoke to them. 32 Afterward all the Israelites came near him, and he gave them all the commands the LORD had given him on Mount Sinai.
After Moses had been face to face with God his own face became radiant.
It became evident to everyone else that he met that he had been in the presence of God. Imagine that – imagine every one we meet knowing we were Christian just by looking at us, because it was so obvious that we had spent time with the Lord.
Panim el Panim Adonai
Face to face Lord
We are going to take communion this morning, and while we are I would like us to reflect on whether or not this is a place we want to be.
Whether we want to be Face to face with Lord
Is this something we want?
Do we want to be in that intimate place with the Lord? Face to face with Him? Hiding nothing, being completely transparent and honest, meeting Him as a friend?
Is this what we want?
Being recognised by the Lord that we have been faithful in all His house?
Having the courage of our faith to go beyond everyone else and to not be afraid to walk up that mountain?
To see the Lord face to face?
Is that a place where we want to be?
Panim el Panim Adonai?
