[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching from God's Word you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to Him. If you're ever in the Madison, Alabama area, we'd love for you to worship with us on Sundays at 8:30 or 10:30am if you have any other questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, find
[email protected] Be sure to also check out our Bible study podcast, Madison Church of Christ Bible Studies. Thanks again for stopping by.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: May I ask you a question real quickly just for your thought, just for you to meditate upon? And that question is, how do you see Jesus?
How do you visualize him when you think about his appearance? What do you think? There may be a lot of different answers that would come. If you're my age or older, you probably grew up with flannel grass and you saw Jesus plastered on those flannel grass quite a bit. If you're a little bit younger, you might have had, like, Bible story books that would give you kind of an imagery of Jesus. If you're, you know, a little bit even young, more younger, you, you probably have watched the Chosen, and that's giving you a little bit more of an idea of who Jesus was and how we could see maybe his personality and those kinds of things. I guess the point is there's a lot of different ways to view Jesus. And here are a few examples of just photos or drawings, depictions of, you know, a Middle Eastern man that would have lived about in that time. And there's all kinds of ways to look at that face and maybe see Jesus. We all kind of have in our mind the look of Jesus, right? The thing that we notice and recognize about him. But I want to move past the exterior, but I do want to say about the exterior. I think one of the things that we could be guilty of that perhaps happens from time to time is that when we think about Jesus, we want Jesus to be more like us.
We kind of want Jesus to get our personality, to have our sense of humor. We want him to connect with us. And I think partially what happens is we all create a vision of Jesus that satisfies our desire for who we think Jesus is.
But if we're not careful, we can slowly but surely begin to think that Jesus needs to accept me for who I am and not be willing to transform and to change who I am for the sake of becoming more like him.
So if you could for just a moment imagine Jesus, not his facade. You know, the Bible says he had no comeliness. There wasn't anything about him that we should desire him. It wasn't necessarily the most handsome guy. Maybe he was, but we wouldn't have looked at him and thought, oh my, that's a good looking fella.
But I think the beauty of Jesus is if you got around him and if you walked with him and if you spend time with him, you began to look past the facade and to see who he was in character.
And there comes a point where you start saying, wow, in every circumstance, in every way, the bar that he has set is here.
His faithfulness, his kindness, his goodness, his willingness to hold people accountable, but also do it with such clarity so they understood where they were wrong.
And the more you're around someone like that, the more you kind of just want to be with them.
Don't you know that Jesus was super observant, that he caught everything, that he just was super aware of everything that was going on? Don't you know that he was a great listener? Don't you know that he was a great conversationalist? Don't you know, as we read Scripture and we see his interactions with people, that he had a flair for compassion, that he led with that kind of love, that he could look to people and even in their sinfulness, he could look at them and just see who they were to the core and still not be so offended that he didn't love them.
Can you take yourself away from the vision of Jesus to begin to see the character that Jesus had?
The reason I want to remind us of this is because I think in this process we're talking about discipleship and we're saying that it's important for us to be with Jesus. And we spent several weeks talking about that. We've tried to spend some time just walking alongside him, observing what he did, kind of to be in the dust of the rabbi, so to speak, and to let some of those things kind of hit us and challenge us and maybe take some of the things that we believe and thought and reorganize our world a little bit better. And then after we're with him for a while, we're in the second section of this discipleship process where we're not just being with him, we're becoming like Jesus. And then ultimately we continue to do the things that that he did.
We're in this series and we're calling it the Way of Jesus, because that's what the Christian movement early on was called. It was called the Way.
And Jesus often talked about the Way. He said, it's not easy, it's difficult. He said, you know, there's a wide gate and there's a broad way that leads to destruction, but the way to righteousness is narrow and it's difficult passage.
But all of those things are about a process that takes us from being who we are into more of what God needs us to be and how we can be more like Jesus in our life.
It's a transformation of sorts. And I don't know how they were able to get everybody still in this photo. We can't do that with any of our family photos.
But this visual here gives us an idea of transformation, right? You got like the. The monarch caterpillar. And then the monarch caterpillar feeds and feeds and just absolutely takes on everything they can until they're about to just pop. And then they get into this chrysalis and they stay there. They stay there for a time. And in the middle of all that, all that that they have stored up is poured into energy to metamorphosize, to change a little bit, to be transformed. They start sprouting these wiry legs, and then they start breaking into the wings that they're going to fly with. They go from, like a more simple eye to a compound eye structure. And all this takes place fairly rapidly. And then the chrysalis opens up and what you see is a monarch butterfly. And so we look at this and we go, that's quite a big transformation. And we love that. We love this visual of transformation.
I was thinking about, like, how long do they stay in this situation? How long do they get into that chrysalis? And how long does it take for them to fully transform?
Well, it's only 10 days. And their lifespan is about 10 months. You know, considering there could be environmental problems or, you know, something to eat it or something like that. But if it's left alone, it can live up to 10 months.
So that means 10 days. They estimate to be about 2.7% of their life is in this little chamber. And all of a sudden they are transformed. They come out and they're fully transformed into this monarch butterfly. Well, that's cool, isn't it? We love that idea. But as a result of that, it does not help us when we think about our own transformation, because we've been conditioned to kind of think about things like quickly.
We want stuff happening right now.
You know, we don't wait for anything.
And as a result, we want change to happen super fast. We want shortcuts, we want simplification. We try to find ways to gel things down. It's kind of like what the rich young ruler was trying to do, right? He's like, what is it? I've done all these great things. What is it that I really need to pare it down to, to what I need to do? And of course, Jesus looks in his heart and realizes he's wealthy and says, well, get rid of all those things and, you know, give your things to the poor and come and follow me.
We want the quick fix. We want the simplified version. We want it gelled down for us.
And yet that's not really the transformation in scriptures. Last week, Andrew talked about this. He said, you know, it's not going to be by our willpower that we're going to suddenly become like Jesus. We're not strong enough. We're going to fail. We're going to falter from time to time. We can't be who he was because we don't have the capacity to put away our sinfulness and our temptations and those kinds of things. Willpower alone is not going to get us where we need to be. Nor is reading the Bible and just quoting scriptures to people or spending time, like filling our hearts and our minds with the scripture if it doesn't do anything to change the way behave.
If all we're doing is memorizing things and storing those things up, but it doesn't impact us to make changes and adjustments to our life based on what we're reading, then it's facts. They're all truth. God's word is powerful, but we're not receptive to its power working on us. But there's also not like some kind of heavenly zap that takes place. There's no quick fix to transformation.
It's truly a process. That's why when we get into Romans chapter 12, in verse one, you remember it says to yield our bodies as living sacrifices. It's the idea that I will render myself completely and totally to God.
And it says that we're not to be conformed to the world, but to be transformed by the renewing of our mind, so that through that testing, we will discern what the will of God is, that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. So when I look at this text, if we were to break it down just a little bit, one of the things that I want to remind us of is when we talk about the idea of being conformed that's like doing what the world does. Being transformed means that something is taking place inside of me. In fact, the word for transformed. There is the idea that after being in the presence of something or someone, it changes our perspective and it changes the way we live.
That's the idea of being transformed. It's, I have been in the presence of something or someone, and in this case, Jesus, and that changes the way I live.
But it says we're transformed How? By the renewing of your mind. So there is something to reading scripture. There is something to hearing what God has to say and seeing what Jesus had to say and how that shapes the way we live our lives.
But that word for renewal is almost the same thing as the idea of renovation. It's the idea of something that is constantly being fixed and upgraded and done over and over again. It's like that perpetual renovation. And it says it starts on our mind. But we know that our mind is the thing that directly connects to our heart. And so when we fill our mind with things, it should have an impact on how we think about things and how we live.
But notice the last part. It says that by testing, you may discern.
And the concept with this is that we're going to go through difficult times.
There's going to be struggle in this life.
There's going to be things that push back against this transformation that's taking place in us, this process of us becoming disciples of Jesus. There's going to be things that push back on it. And it's through that testing, when we stay the course, when we do the things that God has asked us to do, that through that testing, we will begin to discern exactly what God's will is.
And it's good and acceptable and perfect.
But the word that's used for perfect there also gives this idea that there's an ongoing part of this. It says until a person reaches maturity. And so when I think about spiritual transformation, and we're talking about us being formed into disciples of Christ, when I think about that, it's a lifelong process.
And that spiritual formation is more like a perpetual renovation. You know, whether we want to admit it or not, we do this all the time. We upgrade different things. We change one thing to the next. We're always evaluating. We upgrade our vehicles. We do projects around the house. And I was thinking about in this particular one, you know, like, you can say, well, they had this kind of tub, and they went to a different kind of tub. It's like, do you remember there was a time when it was the cutting edge, most amazing thing to get a garden tub that had jets in it so you could have like your own jacuzzi in your bathroom. Well, now we're looking at soaker tubs. That's the. That's the new thing. You understand what I'm saying? That's been a renovation. It's been a change over time. It's the things that people want and need. And what's likely to happen is at some point this same bathroom will get another transformation, another. Another renovation that will change it from what it is to meet the need of the moment.
Well, that's kind of how we can view spirituality.
It's the idea that I am the way I am right now, but there's always going to be some repair, some maintenance, some work, some, you know, things that make improvements and lead it to a better, more functional, more efficient thing.
So when I think about that, I want us to imagine that we could do a renovation.
And I guess if we didn't have a limit of resources and if our backs could manage it, we would probably be renovating all the time.
But the ability to do it and not have a hurt back and the ability to do it with resources is a part of that friction of that situation. It's the kind of thing, it's that opposing force that pushes back against it and says, you just can't do it all the time.
Well, I want us to think about our lives, spiritually speaking, and the friction that we face in our lives. Again, that's the opposing force that works against us. It would be great if Jesus said, hey, it's easy if you follow me. Just come and follow me and you will just have everything you need. It'll always be great for you. You'll never have struggle, you'll never have problems. You know, you come and you will be blessed. And. And we say that sometimes. And we get the impression that all I have to do is just follow Jesus and all of my problems go away.
But that's not it. There is friction. There are things that create a struggle that fight back against us, growing and developing into the disciple we need to be. I don't know who it was, but that dude that created those little discs, those little frictionless discs that you put under couches that you can move, scoot around the room. That was an amazing invention, right, because it took away the friction. It makes it much easier for me to move things around.
So I want you to have that in your mind when you think about friction. Because the friction that we face in Our formation is sin.
It's not the only one. We'll go back and talk about some others as well. But in reality, the thing that pushes back against us as we're trying to grow in Christ and as we're trying to make decisions that are good and healthy for us, the problem is sin is out there. And we all have a sin problem. And in fact, the reality is that not only do we do bad things, but sometimes we want to do bad things.
And in that sometimes wanting to do bad things, sometimes something checks up in us and we say, hey, I'm not going to do that.
And we still find ourselves slipping and doing those things because we've created bad habits. And it's, you know, one of those things that's kind of addictive to us and we found some kind of payout for sin that keeps bringing us back to that same thing over and over.
That's friction against our transformation. That's something that's pushing back against us, becoming who God really wants us to be.
And in fact, there are a couple of passages that talk about not just the fact that we sin and that we make mistakes, but there are also passages that kind of give the idea that there is a possibility to be sinning ongoing, like living a life of sin. These three passages here, these are all in First John, chapter three. And you see the practice of sinning, the keep on sinning, the practice of sinning. The reality is that if we really stop and look at this, it's possible for us to live a life that involves sinful behavior all the time.
And so we have a problem. Sin has become a challenge for us.
And it is that thing that keeps us from being transformed. And as long as we're holding onto sin, then it gets us.
So in order to make progress in this formation, we have to face our sin.
And you say, what does that mean? We gotta confront it. We gotta be real about it. We have to be willing to expose it. We have to be willing to say, this is a real problem that I have. Because if we don't, it's kinda like having an ultra marathon runner, you know, you know, go out and try to run a race with a broken leg and scoliosis, you know, it's not going to happen. That's not going to be an effective way to run that ultramarathon. You have to deal with that. You have to fix and repair the things that are broken so you can more efficiently do that. And so if you think about your life and the sin that you have in Your life, you can't be transformed if you're gonna hold onto those things and keep them for the long haul.
So I wanna talk about three elements of sin.
The first one is sin that's done by us. Again, this is the one that we focus the most on because these are things that are, like, overt things that we intentionally do. We know what the line is. We know what God has said. We transgress. Literally, we step across the line, and that causes us to have a distance between us and God because we rebelled against what he said in 1st John 1:8 reminds us if we say we don't have sin, then we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. And of course, Romans, chapter 3, verse 23 reminds us that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. So we know this, we talk about this. This is a good bit of our preaching where we want to address that and have people, you know, come clean with those things. We talk about confession and repentance and those kinds of things. And sin is one of those things that we understand.
I knew it was wrong. I did it anyway. We get that right?
But also, there's other sin that we have that is friction against this formation, and it's the sins that are committed to us or the sin that has been done to us.
Now, I wish I could spend a little bit more time with this, because whenever you talk about this, there's a lot of hurt that is stirred up. There's a lot of feelings and emotion that comes with it.
And there are people that are in this audience that have gone through some kind of struggle that someone else did to you.
You were either abused, you were slandered, you were gossiped about, you were abandoned, you were physically or mentally or even otherwise abused.
And I look out into the room, and I used to remember hearing Donnie Hilliard would say, there's pain in every pew.
And so as I look across the crowd, I can see, and unfortunately, I've experienced some of the sorrow and the pain that comes from what people have done. They've been victimized over time.
And of course, as we look at that, our hearts go out to people because that is sin that happened to them.
It's something that they weren't looking for. They didn't ask for. It just happened to them. And as a result, they're hurt. And that burden carries them for a long way.
And so I think about this, that sometimes our wickedness is often tied to our woundedness. In other words, we can take this a Little too far. It's okay to be hurt. It's okay to be going through a difficult time.
It's okay that you have experienced hurt and that you still feel the consequences of that.
But oftentimes what we see is that people who have been wounded, also wounded.
Sometimes people who have been hurt hurt other people. In fact, there's a saying, hurt people, hurt people.
We can take this too far and create a victim mentality that allows me the freedom to say, well, I've been hurt. So therefore you don't understand what I've gone through. And so this is a hindrance to our transformation. If you catch what I'm saying is it doesn't give us the ability to really deal with the struggles that we have. We give ourselves excuses and those kinds of things.
Now, I will say that there are people in this room who have endured that kind of sin against them.
They have been hurt, they have been discouraged, they have been spoken evil about.
But they found a way to move forward in their faith and they got through it. And now they're able to. To help other people and protect other people and be healers of people who are going through those same tough times as well.
Listen to this passage, because I think it's important for those of you who have experienced the sin of someone else that when we harbor frustration, anxiety, anger, and we hold onto it forever, we have to be reminded that that imprisons us. It does not do anything to hurt that other person. It causes us to. To grow in that bitterness and resentment. And so we have to be careful that we are ready to let those things go. So here's a couple of passages where Jesus himself says, hey, if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you don't forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.
Mark 11. When you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.
I think about maybe the people that I've hurt over time, and maybe it was someone that I knew I hurt. Maybe it was something that I did that I don't know hurt, but maybe it affected our relationship.
I would certainly want to make that right.
I would want them to forgive me.
And I think what God is reminding us of in this is that we don't need to hold onto that hurt forever, that we need to find a way.
As he's talking to Jesus, he says, hey, I'm not asking you to take them out of the world. They're Going to be in the midst of a world of people. But I'm asking that you keep them from the evil one. But then also in First John 2:15, it reminds us that all of these things, the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, the pride of life, that those things are not of God, they're of the world. And so God knows that we have been planted in this place to shine our lights, to glorify him, and to lead others closer to Him. But we are surrounded by things and people and stuff that's going on around us that is harmful to us, and that we didn't ask for it, we didn't invite it. It's just a part of our environment. You can't watch TV without an ad popping up or something that, you know, is just projecting sinful behavior.
And we see this all the time. We can't avoid it. You can close your eyes, but you cannot miss the fact that these things are all around us. It's kind of like spiritual secondhand smoke. Okay. I loved my grandparents. My grandparents were wonderful people.
They were fun. I loved being with them. They were great.
But they smoked about three packs a day, both of them. Okay. So when you went to their house, like, you walked in and that hit you. But it didn't just hit you in that moment. It, like, absorbed into the every fiber of your clothing and everything. Some of y' all know what I'm talking about.
Well, my grandparents grew up in an era where every single night in their apartment complex in Michigan, them and a bunch of young couples would swap which apartment they went to every night, and they would get coffee and they would smoke cigarettes and just visit. That's all they did.
They didn't know the negative impacts. They had no idea of cancer and all those kinds of things. And ultimately, those cigarettes probably sent my grandparents to an early grave.
But I didn't avoid them.
I was with them. I stayed at their house. When I was sick, that's where I would go. It's like, you're sick, but this is what you're taking in. And we know that there are effects that secondhand smoke has on people and their ability to breathe and all kinds of things. And I look at that situation and I go, I wouldn't have changed. I was going to be with them. I loved my grandparents, but I also had to absorb the consequence of that behavior of theirs.
Again, good people that had a bad habit that unfortunately, all of us who went over there were a part of it. And that's kind of how it is. In this life, we're in this world and there's lots of evil going on all around us.
And whether we like it or not, it begins to have a wearing effect on us. It's friction against our transformation.
So let me share with you just several different views of sin and how we can connect them. These are called paradigms. It's the idea that there is a kind of a system of understanding about something, maybe a way to believe something that helps us connect with the concept and helps us understand exactly what sin is. And so I'm gonna throw these up on the screen. The first one is guilt and innocence. We kind of understand that one, right? A person who has sin is guilty. A person who has been freed of their sin and is found innocent. And it works the same in all these others. Whether it's honor, shame, power, fear, clean, defile, belong, lost, peace and rest versus chaos, or hope versus despair. We understand that sin, when we put it in these contexts, that we get a little bit better idea of what sin is. And so there's all of these. All of them are biblical. All of them are real. But I've got one highlighted up top because that's the one I think we find most comfort in, and it's the one we talk about most.
We like the idea of a courtroom for whatever reason. We like the fact that there's a judge and that there is a verdict, and we've gotten very, very comfortable with that. And we also love the visual. And by the way, all of these are biblical. They're true teachings that Jesus, when we're a child of God, he is our advocate, and he comes into that courtroom and he speaks on our behalf and we're pardoned not because of our goodness, but because of his goodness. It's a good thing to think about.
But if you just settle on that concept of sin and you just focus your mind on that, understand it becomes more of a legal approach to things, and it can create the ability for us to think. It's all about following these commands in ritualistic obedience, without the heart and the love for God and wanting to be with him and wanting to be with Jesus.
And so what that does to us, if we're not very careful, and again, I've been guilty of this in my life, is we can look at other people who are not doing the same things that we're doing, they're not following that list exactly the way we are. And so we look down upon them in condescension like they're guilty.
I'm innocent.
They're guilty, and I sure hope Jesus will save them. And what happens is, whether we like it or not, we find ourselves maybe looking at other people with some condescension, thinking they have to follow the rules as I see them, you understand, like that sin can, can, can create this, this idea of us thinking we're right, but other people are not.
And that, that gives us a little bit of a dysfunction because it's not the full picture of what sin is.
Until we come to see sin as far more than just the breaking of a judicial law, we're going to end up being stuck in this kind of dysfunctional approach to it, that it's about my standard and not what God's standard is. Again, it's a true paradigm, but it can be one that if we just focus on that, we can miss out on all those other things that have more of a connective part with us in Jesus. So let me give you one in particular that I want us to view this morning and think about with regard to our sin. And it's about this. It's the idea that our sin can be represented as an illness or disease and that Jesus is the one who brings salvation, that he is the physician who can heal us of that. And of course, we can see that that paradigm works in Scripture, right? There's several things. First of all, this is Ignatius. He's one of the early Church fathers. And this is how he, along with the early church, viewed Jesus Christ. It says, but our physician is the only true God, Jesus, the Christ. He became subject to corruption that he might free our souls from death and corruption and heal them and might restore them to health when they were diseased with ungodliness and wicked lust. Again, not scripture, just a quotation from a guy who was right there being mentored by the apostle John. And as he saw things, Jesus was the healer of the disease and the disease was sin. You can see how those things are used interchangeably.
And that's not far from our understanding of what Jesus said. Right? In Luke, chapter five, those who are well need no physician but those who are sick.
So I have come to call not the righteous, but the sinners to repentance. Do you see how he connects the disease, the illness, sin, and he, the one who saves us is also the one who heals us of that infirmity.
So repentance, if we see it this way, repentance is not just us pleading for mercy before a judge, right? It's more of us opening those wounds up to a physician. Think about this when we find out that we've got something that's not right, okay, Experiencing some symptoms of something and we're not feeling good, and we feel like we're just not working at efficiency. And maybe we say, hey, maybe I need to go just get blood work and get all this checked out. And so we go to a doctor, and they uncover something that is awful, that scares us.
I mean, what happens in that moment when you find out that that is what you have?
Well, you move heaven and earth to figure out what to do next, right? You do whatever it takes to. To get to the bottom of what is the root cause, and what do we need to deal with? What is it that we need to do to address that very thing? And so you'll go to Mayo Clinic, or you'll go to MD Anderson, or you'll go somewhere where there's a specialist who deals with exactly what it is you're doing. Why? Because we believe this has got to be fully exposed. We'll run whatever test it takes to reveal exactly what's going on so we can be healed of this thing, that we can have a procedure or a treatment or. Or something to deal with this very big problem that we have in our life. Imagine what would happen if all of us, instead of thinking about sin and guilt, if we began to see our shortcomings in life as something we need to pour out in front of the physician.
It's interesting. This word sozo is a Greek term that's always used for saved.
It's a term that's used for the word that's saved, like, for he who believes and is baptized shall be saved. Sozo.
But it's also a word that, if you look into the definition, it has as its core meaning that of healing.
So it's not just about being saved. It's about being made whole. It's about being healed. And so, to give you an example of that, a couple of different translations translate this word differently. You know the story where the woman who has the issue of blood for 12 years, she comes, she dives at the feet of Jesus and touches the hem of his garment, and she's healed. It's in that moment that Jesus says to her, daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace.
That's from the English Standard Version. But the young's literal translation, which is really kind of tied very, very closely to the Greek, says this. Take courage, daughter. Thy faith has saved thee. Be going on to peace. You see how healing and salvation were kind of interchangeable there Just a way for us to see and to imagine this transformation that takes place inside of us.
And there's friction. It's sin. It's all kinds of things that are keeping us from being real and being open and openly sharing those things.
So salvation is not just about getting back on the right side of God's mercy through judicial acquittal.
It's also about having your soul healed by God's loving touch.
That's transformation. That's walking alongside Jesus and becoming who he is. It's being so open with him and so real that we will share.
So this journey to healing actually begins with naming your illness through confession.
Again, what happens when we begin to see our problem not as a sin that people can see externally, but something that is taking place inside that is causing problems in our life?
It happens through confession. Well, a couple of passages to encourage you in this one is a warning about concealing those transgressions. Says, he who conceals his sins does not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy. Think about it.
We have to share that with a doctor. If we had an illness, we'd have to share that with them for them to be able to know what to do with us.
Right? Also, if we confess our sins. Catch this. He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and listen to the terminology and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
James 5, 16. In talking about our relationship with each other, but also bringing these things before God, he says, confess your sins to one another and pray for each other so that you may be. What?
So that you may be healed, man. If we transitioned our thoughts, how much different would confession look like when we didn't have to wear the burden and the guilt of the sin from the stands of, like, you know, lostness. But we look at it in a sense of, hey, I'm broken and I need repair, I need help, I need to be fixed, I need to be cleansed, I need to be nurtured. And I need whatever it takes to bring me into this transformation with Jesus. And so until we name it and open that wound up to God, we can't be saved from it.
So I said, there's other frictions too. Sin is obviously a big one. There's others that we could talk about. And I won't get into the depths of it too much here. But just think about these three in particular, the stories we believe.
You know, we were brought up to believe certain things, and sometimes people equated certain stories with scripture. Sometimes they told Us, things that we just believed, it sounded spiritual and we held onto it.
That can create some friction in our transformation. And the reason is because we have to trust fully in God's truth.
God's truth is the only thing that's going to convict us and shape us and move us where we need to be. We know that, right? Jesus said this. Sanctify them or set them apart in your truth. Your word is truth.
And it also tells us that truth is the scriptures that we read are given to us for all kinds of things. How we teach and reprove and correction and instruction and righteousness. It gives us all of these things so that the man of God can be, what, Perfect again? What's that word?
Fully matured. It gives us the things that we need to bring us to maturity. So if we are believing things that are not of truth, sometimes people will say, hey, I have this conviction that's just where I stand. I mean, you may have your own, but that's just where I am. And it's not very biblical. That's a falsehood that's going to keep you from being transformed in the way you should be.
But then also we have some habits, some addictions, some things that we do that can also keep us from giving our hearts fully to God, from being fully changed from within. If we hold onto those things, if we keep them, we hold them tight and we say, hey, this is just one of those things I gotta have. Then you're not giving yourself the ability to be changed by the Holy Spirit of God.
And then also our relationships.
We know if you have a good friend, it means the world, right?
A good friend that holds you accountable, that helps you in your faith, that prays with you, that comes and walks alongside you in your struggles and your grief. They study the Bible with you and you work things out together and you have a good, strong bond. And no matter what you go through, you just get stronger and stronger because you have kind of the same vision and the same passion for life.
But, man, if you get the wrong friend, and I'm afraid some of us have friends that we give a pass to and say, oh, well, that's just who they are.
And our problem is we end up staying with them, doing some of the things that they do, and try to keep those things quiet.
One of the greatest falsehoods of this life is that there's such a creature.
Secret sin.
Hebrews 4:13 reminds us that everything is laid open and bare to the God to whom we will give an account.
But somehow we have it in our mind that having these associations with people that are harmful for us spiritually are okay somehow.
But in reality, they're keeping us from giving ourselves fully to God for Him to transform who we are from within. Those are all frictions. They opposing forces against us really being changed.
So what can we do to allow this spiritual transformation to take place? We kind of talked about these some already, so I'll kind of quickly go through them. First of all is you got to know the truth of God's word. You got to believe in it. You got to give your whole heart to it. You got to embrace it, because that is the truth. That's the very line of what's right and what's wrong. And so when we find any other source, we're asking to be led astray. We're asking to have struggles in this. The second thing is, not only do we embrace what it says, but we practice what it says, that when we read it, we say, how do I apply that? And then we begin to shape our lives and our actions and our thoughts and our patterns of life based on those things.
The third thing is to be in spiritual community. We do need each other. I mean, listen, going through this life is very difficult. If we didn't have each other, it would be so difficult. But we do. And be open to be supportive of each other, but also be open to challenge each other, to hold each other accountable, to bring us back where we need to be. That's what that Galatians 6 passage is all about. It's like, if someone's caught him a sin, go get them and bring them back, you know, with meekness and gentleness, so we can all find ourselves back into that relationship with God, as we should be.
But then this next one is probably the most difficult.
Open your wounds to God.
Share with him where you failed.
Specifically, ask him to help you. Ask him to refine you from within.
Ask him to cleanse you.
Ask for his help in getting you to a better place.
And in the middle of all this, know that the Spirit is working on us. We said, it's a lifelong process.
So what we can be excited about is maybe we're not where we need to be, but through time and doing all of these things, God will continue to work on you and bring you closer and closer to the very person of who Jesus was.
And then finally this.
In Jesus life, there were struggles. And he said this to his followers. He said, hey, you know, no servant is greater than his master.
No student is greater than his teacher.
Basically, if I'm going to suffer.
You're gonna struggle too. You're gonna have difficulties, you're gonna endure persecutions in this life.
But all of those things, when we stay the course and we do all these things that we're talking about here and we relinquish that control over and we say, hey, not my will, but yours be done. What takes place in our hearts and in our lives is we become more and more an apprentice of Jesus Christ.
And as we're walking along in this life on the way, other people will begin to see his work in our hearts as well.
So this morning I want you to look past the image of Jesus and I want you to think about what it would be like to walk alongside him again, to be shaped by him and to let the things that you witness and see in him move you to change.
If there's anyone this morning who needs to come forward, please come while we stand and sing.
