Hope of Transformation

Awesome. Hey, it’s great to be with everybody today. Super excited to have Carter on the team officially, man. Welcome to Sauldam Baptist Church. We’re really grateful for you being here and helping serve. Don’t just take it from me. He’s a great guy. Our kids have already really warmed up to him, so they’re really excited for him to be here with us.

So as we begin this portion of the service, like we’ve been doing for the last month or so, if this is your first time with us, or if you’re first time back with us in a while, we’ve been beginning this part with a few moments of prayer. So every Sunday I’ve been giving a new prompt. This morning, we’re going to be praying for our individual and corporate holiness. You know, in Hebrews 12:11, Hebrews 12:1 and 2, God’s Word says we are all running our race to Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. So we cast aside every sin and every weight that would hinder that pursuit of Him. So that’s just what we’re going to pray about this morning. So what I’ve been encouraging our folks to do is just buddy up with the neighbor and pray that God would make you more holy and that in that He would make our church, our church body, more holy. And then I’ll cap us off here in a second. Okay. All right. Let’s pray.

God, I need You to purify me. Lord, I make no bones about it. I don’t stand up here with any pretense of having arrived spiritually, whatever in the world that means. God, I’ve got desires that go against Your design for me. Lord, I get angry about the wrong things. God, I get jealous about petty stuff. Lord, I’m still tempted in ways that I thought I’d be over by now. And I’m just, I need You to transform me, Lord. God, I beg that as You would purify me, You would also purify us. Lord, that we would be a family of believers that would be wholly devoted to You. God, that we’d be satisfied in You, please. Lord, that we would yearn after You as one that we would thirst for You. Father, I know from Your Word, You draw near to the brokenhearted. You draw near to the humble. You draw near to those that walk in purity with You. Lord, we want that. We want You to be near to us. We want Your presence to be tangible and palpable in here with us. But God, we also know that that will not happen if we are giving ourselves to lesser things. Start with me and help us, Father, to be wholly given to You. God, I pray that You would guide my words and my thoughts right now as I open Your Word. Lord, let everything I say come from this book. God, I believe that Your Word is beneficial in every way, that You would build us up into maturity. We love You, Lord. And it’s in Your great name we pray. Amen.

Thank you for humoring me. This is something I’ve been really struck by. I think all of us in the room, we want the Lord to be here. And there is a sense in which when Jesus said that when there’s two or three gathered in My name, I’m there with them, and we can rest on that. But I think that we also want a deeper experience of that. I think that when we come to church, we don’t just want it to be something that we attend. We don’t just want to listen to a well-meaning guy say a few things from an old book. We don’t just want to sing songs. We want an experience. We want to experience God. And you see all throughout the Old Testament and the New Testament, those experiences with the Lord only happen when there’s a certain purity and yearning for Him. So that’s why we need to continue to pray to that regard.

Now, what I am not talking about is self-improvement. In fact, I kind of looked up what is the history of self-improvement. I’m just curious. Is this a uniquely American idea that we’re just so obsessed with ourselves we can only even think about ourselves and improving ourselves? I’ve discovered something. Back in the 1980s, September was officially noted the self-improvement month. Did y’all know that? Anybody know that? Is that on anybody’s calendar? September 1st, you’re just ready to give a month to self-improvement. I had no idea. So then that launched me on a rabbit trail, as I would normally do. And I started looking up, when did these self-help books start coming out? I discovered something. 1888 was the first time a self-help book was published. The title, Heaven Helps Those Who Help Themselves. The book is totally dedicated to how you can improve yourself and how heaven, whatever heaven means, will help you in that process. Obviously, I’ve never talked with the author. I’ve got no idea where the spiritual backing comes from. But what I do know is no book can offer the self-improvement that we are all yearning for. And heaven forbid, we actually live with the premise that God only helps those who help themselves. Because I see myself as someone who was lost in sin and wayward and totally in disruptive desires, and God helped me. I was not helping myself. God helps those who actually cannot help themselves. It’s just whether you recognize it or not.

This idea of self-improvement has taken America by storm, in fact. In the early 2000s, a hit TV show started to air. And we’ve all seen an episode of it. It’s called The Biggest Loser. Anybody watch that? Okay, so we’ve got four honest people and then like 55 dishonest people that have also watched the TV show. So the whole premise is there’s these celebrity trainers and they help folks that are obese come into health by putting them through this rigorous diet and nutrition plan. That spawned the careers of multiple folks like Jillian Michaels. Some of us may have had Jillian Michaels tapes at home and we had the step-up things and we did all that stuff. I’m a little too acquainted with that.

But I think it just gets to this idea that we want to be better. We want to be better. I think there’s a universal desire inside of every heart in this room and in our community to be better. Whatever better means. I’m not sure how you define better. Maybe you define it in financial terms. Maybe you define it in family terms. Maybe you define it in nutrition and exercise terms. I’m not sure what better means for you. But we all want to be better. And we even have that desire in this kind of spiritual realm, right? We want to be better Christians or we want to be just better people. We want to be kinder or nicer. But there’s a gap between what we want and what we experience. Because just like there’s a universal desire in every heart to be better, there’s also a universal deficiency in where we are now.

So we are beginning a series this morning that’s going to take us through June and July. It’s called The Life You’ve Always Wanted. I distinctly believe that God’s Word is authoritative on everything for life and godliness. And it has a lot of practical teaching and instruction for us. But also God’s Word teaches us about how to get that life that you want. The life that God has put a desire for in your heart. You would not be here this morning unless you believed that there is some way God could help you live. You wouldn’t be here. There’s other ways to spend a Sunday morning. So you are here and I trust that you, you want to be transformed. You want to grow. The question is how can we be transformed? Can we be transformed?

C.S. Lewis is a gentleman that lived about 60 years ago. He wrote some incredible Christian literature. And he said this about people. He said, “It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses. To remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long, we are in some degree helping each other to one or other of those destinations. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.” No. “Nations, cultures, art, civilization, these are mortal, and their life is ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit. Immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”

Here’s the thing, you and I are all becoming something. We are all transforming into something. Some of us are transforming into whatever image we think is better. Some of us are transforming or devolving into whatever image we would at this point be afraid of and abhorred of. God, though, wants to transform us. The question is, how do we become the people we want to be? How do we pursue the transformation that we want? And that’s what this series will address. And thankfully, God’s Word is not silent even on divine self-improvement, whatever that might be. So how about this? We’re going to read God’s Word together and jump into it. This is out of 2 Corinthians chapter 3. 2 Corinthians chapter 3. The scripture will be on the screens. It is so much better in your hands. But 2 Corinthians chapter 3, verses 17 and 18.

God’s Word says this, incredible life-giving promise that God has just anchored. God has just anchored my heart to for the course of my believing life. And we will unpack this just briefly this morning. The main point of what I have to say today, that I believe that if the author of these words was standing right here, he would say, okay, what I really want to say is this, beholding Christ fuels transformation. I’ll say it again. Beholding Christ fuels transformation.

But first, we have to look at what in the world does that word behold mean? That’s a word that nerds like I use. It’s not a word that normal people like you guys use. Behold means to seriously focus on, to give attention to, to meditate on. We look at a lot of things. You might look at the stop sign as you are doing a California roll to the right. You might look at the menu as you are picking out the California roll at the sushi restaurant. We look at a lot of things, but we don’t behold very much.

Now, the first time that I saw Becca Rush at Charleston Southern University, I beheld her. I looked at her. I focused on her. I meditated on her. And that image is still in my mind. On August 1st, 2015, I saw Becca Rush to be Becca Simmons coming down an aisle in a white dress. I beheld Becca. When our first child was born, now Luke’s special too. There’s something different about a first child, right? And I’m holding Annie, and I’m weeping, and I can barely see through my own tears and snot. I beheld that baby. That’s what we’re talking about. Beholding Jesus fuels transformation.

Now, see, there’s a relationship between beholding and becoming. There’s a relationship between beholding and transforming. We see this all the time, like in athletics, like sports. Like, you got Seabrook back in the AV booth. I guarantee Seabrook pulls up ESPN top 10 highlights, and he is just watching guys stroke a ball out the park. Right, Seabrook? You doing that? Okay.

We also, we behold work success. We might look at a corporate ladder, or we might look at, hey, that’s the job I want. I want to be VP of such and such at my company. So I’m just going to do whatever it takes to get there. And I’m going to focus on, meditate on, fix my eyes on the path that it takes to get there.

We also behold our family. I was watching a TV show a couple weeks ago, and two of the main characters were upset about the fact that they had become their dads. They had focused so hard on not becoming their dads, they became just like their dads. In their effort to become something different, they beheld and they became. The same is true of us with Jesus. What you behold is what you become. Behold. Thankfully, the same is true of our relationship with Jesus. If we behold Him, we will become like Him. If we focus on, meditate on, give serious attention to, we will be transformed.

Transformation into Christ has three Ps that come out of these verses I’ve read. The first is the person of transformation. I’ve talked a lot about Jesus, but we need to first back up and look at the Holy Spirit. You see, verse 17 begins with the Holy Spirit, and verse 18 ends with the Holy Spirit. Now, in a general sense, only God can provide the transformation we need. Only Him. There are all sorts of transformation outside of the soul that won’t last past death. Truly, all those contestants on The Biggest Loser may have lost some weight over a three-month TV show, but that will not last into eternity. And the same is true of us. We can have all sorts of fitness or diet goals, and that will cease the day we stop breathing. Or you might have financial goals. You might need some financial transformation. You might need to pay off some debt and to get yourself right with the bank. You can put all the money toward that. You could snowball all your loans. You could take care of all of that. But whether You are rich or poor, whether you are indebted or free, at the end of your life, that does not matter. There’s also a different type of transformation, like a work transformation. You can have some serious goals as a salesperson or just as a blue-collar worker and say, by the end of this quarter, I want to hit these quotas, and I want to be able to do this. And at the end of our lives, whatever we do for work, all of those successes, that transformation, it just won’t last.

Only God can provide the transformation we need. Only God can give you the life that you truly want. See, God’s nature, though, is to transform us. God’s nature is to make us different. God’s nature is to change us from who we are to who we are supposed to be in Him. You see, transformation is God’s work, and it is the Holy Spirit’s work in particular.

It’s like in 1 Peter 1. It says this, that according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to be obedient and be sprinkled with the blood of Jesus Christ. You see, God the Father plans it. The Spirit applies it through sanctification, which means He is transforming you. And that’s all because the blood of Jesus has been sprinkled on you.

Or you look at 2 Thessalonians, you see, again, the Holy Spirit is the one that transforms. It says this in 2 Thessalonians. We ought to thank God always for you, brothers and sisters loved by the Lord, because from the beginning, God has chosen you for salvation through sanctification by who? The Spirit and through belief in the truth. The Holy Spirit is transforming.

Or in Galatians chapter 5, this is a passage you know well. The works of the flesh are obvious. Sexual immorality, moral impurity, promiscuity, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambitions, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and anything similar. I’m warning you about these things, as I’ve warned you before, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the who? The Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. The law is not against such things.

I cite these verses just to help you see the Holy Spirit, His job is to transform us. His job is to secure salvation in us and to transform us from the inside out. And to experience the transformation that your heart craves, you must have a vibrant relationship with the Holy Spirit. To live the life you’ve always wanted, a life of peace, to live the life you’ve always wanted, a life of joy, gentleness, faithfulness, a life of self-control, a life of goodness and kindness. To have that life, you need a relationship with the Holy Spirit. And He is after that with you.

You are here this morning because the Holy Spirit has been lining up details for you to be here, for you to hear this invitation from God to you. He’s saying, I got you here. Just come into this with me. Open up your heart to my presence and let me make you new. That is the person of the Holy Spirit.

And He’s got your second P, promises of transformation. There’s a person of transformation and He’s got promises of transformation. If you go back to verse 17, it says that the Lord is the spirit and where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. Freedom, freedom, freedom from a lot of things. I think about freedom from the need of the law and the penalty of sin.

You see the law, the Old Testament law, it was like a tutor for the people of Israel. That’s what Paul says in Galatians. A tutor is someone who reinforces what the teacher is saying. A tutor is somebody that helps a student understand the teacher’s lesson. The law was like a tutor because Israel could not understand the teacher. They couldn’t understand God. So God gives them a law to guide them and to teach them.

But the law also would curb their sin. The law would be like a fence that you put on the inside of your property line because you’re like, hey, that’s a dangerous road out there. I don’t want my kids in the road. And they seem to be unable to remember, don’t go in the road. Any parents like that? Or do your kids just obey everything you say once? So you put up a fence on the inside and you say, this fence is for their good. It’s gonna protect them from themselves. That’s What the law was. It was a protection from themselves. The fence couldn’t actually save them from an oncoming car, but the fence could keep them out of traffic. That’s what the law was. It was a tutor for them. It curbs their sin. But where the Spirit of the Lord is, there’s freedom from that because the Lawgiver Himself lives inside of you. You don’t need a fence to keep you out of the street if you’re the one giving the rule. If you’re the one telling your kids, “Hey, stay out of the street,” then you don’t need a fence for yourself. And in the same way, God lives inside of every single person who places their faith in Jesus Christ so that they don’t need the law because the Lawgiver lives inside of them. The inspiration for the fence is with you. So you don’t need something. You don’t need the fence. Does that make sense? There’s freedom from that. Where the Spirit is, there is freedom, but there’s also freedom from the penalty of your sin.

Here’s what I mean. In the book of Romans, Paul writes that the wages of sin is—say it again, say it again. The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God—what’s that? Eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. The law would curb sin, but it couldn’t transform us on the inside because it’s rules. But Jesus came to live a perfect life in our place, to fully satisfy God’s righteous requirement. Jesus Christ came to live a perfect life in your place and in mine so that we would no longer be bound by the penalty of our sin, but we could be offered freedom from it. We could be offered forgiveness because of what Jesus has done.

The Bible describes a process that happens in your heart when you personally trust in that. It’s called regeneration. The Bible says that naturally our hearts are like stone. God, in saving you, the Holy Spirit does a heart transplant. He takes that stone heart out. He puts a flesh heart in. So you start beating for the first time and His blood is in your veins because you are forgiven. And for that to have happened means that you have trusted in the gospel, which means the Holy Spirit is with you. So if the Holy Spirit is with you, you have freedom from the penalty of your sin. If you in any way are disgusted with your sin, if you in any way want freedom from that, if you in any way want forgiveness from God, that means God is at work in your heart, transforming you already. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. That is a promise of transformation for you. If you know Jesus or if you want Jesus in any capacity, God is at work in your life. And I would beg you to just take Him up on it. I would beg you to stop listening to me and just tell Him, “Thank You, God.”

If you’re not sure that you know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, I would say genuinely, stop listening to me and tell Him, “Lord, I’m not sure that I actually know You, but You’ve got me sitting here in this church listening to this well-meaning guy who’s telling me that You’re good. So I’m going to take You up on it. God, help me see that You’re good.”

I’m talking with a guy yesterday. Becca and myself, we went to a birthday party for another family. And I knew two people at the party. That guy knew one and it was his wife. So naturally we just kind of buddied up and we just stood on the periphery drinking our little waters and we’re just talking. And he’s being real honest with me. I really appreciated his vulnerability and his honesty. And we’re talking about church and all that. And, you know, sooner or later, the fact that I’m a pastor just kind of comes out in conversations and we’re talking about that. And I just asked him, I was like, “Hey man, it’s like, where do you stand with all this? Do you have a story of how you met Jesus, how your heart came alive, how you gave yourself to Him?” He’s like, “Honestly, no, I really don’t. I go to church because they’re nice. I have community there. That’s why I go to church.” I just encourage them. Say, “Hey man, one, I appreciate your honesty. God loves your honesty too. And God can handle any question or objection or frustration that you have.”

Please take all that to Him and ask God to help you hear His voice. I don’t know what’s going on in his life right now. I trust that he’s at the church that he goes to. I hope that he and his wife talked about it after they got their kids down and said, “Hey, this, I don’t know, kind of awkward, well-meaning pastor guy was, you know, hogging me for an hour last night at the party, you know.” I hope that they talked about that and that he could know freedom.

And I want the same thing for you. I want you to have freedom. I want you to walk a life that is filled with joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, love, gentleness, self-control, and faithfulness. I want that for you. And that only happens with the Holy Spirit inside of you. That is His promise for you. He not only promises freedom, but He also promises transformation.

Look at verse 18 with me. It says this: “We all with unveiled faces are looking as in a mirror at the glory of the Lord and are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory. And this is from the Lord who is the Spirit.” That word “transformed” right there, it also shows up in a different part of your Bible that’ll be on the screen. You might find this kind of shocking. This is out of Matthew 17. It says this: “After six days, Jesus took Peter, James, and his brother John and led them up on a high mountain by themselves. And He was transfigured in front of them. And His face shone like the sun. His clothes became as white as the light.”

Transformed in 2 Corinthians 3 is the same thing as transfigured in Matthew 17. In this incredible moment where Peter, James, and John got to see Jesus transfigured, He was revealed in His true form. He was shining Himself. He was shining so brightly that He was brighter than the sun. That was Jesus just kind of pulling back the curtain just a little bit to say, “This is who I really am.” In the same way, you can have that. You can be transfigured. You can be transformed. But it’s not because we start shining. It’s not because I’m going to start glowing in the dark. It’s because God is changing me from the inside out.

John Ortberg, in a book called The Life You Always Wanted, says this: “Morphu, the word for transformed, means the inward and real formation of the essential nature of a person. Going further, when morphing happens, I don’t just do the things Jesus would have done. I know. I find myself wanting to do them. They appeal to me. They make sense to me. I don’t just go around trying to do the right thing. No, I become the right sort of person.”

When you behold Jesus, the promise of the Holy Spirit to you this morning is transformation, transformation. Becoming like Jesus from the inside out. Here’s the deal. God accepts you as you are. You do not have to clean yourself up to come to God. You do not have to get your life straight to come here. You do not have to be a right type of person to enter a relationship with Jesus. You don’t have to get your act together. He accepts you as you are, but He does not leave you that way. Oh no, He does not leave you that way. He changes us. He accepts us and He changes us. He embraces us and He transforms us.

God’s plan is to transform you into the image of Jesus Christ. That is His plan. In fact, that word right there, “image” out of 2 Corinthians 3, verse 18, it’s this Greek word, icon. The icon of God, Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit is actively, proactively, aggressively making you into that image so that when people see you, they’d see Jesus. They would see the one who loves them, who sacrificed for them, and who was raised for them. When people see us, they ought to see God in us.

Now we’ve seen the Holy Spirit is the person of transformation. He has some promises of transformation. So then what’s the process of transformation? If you’re a note taker, that’s your third P, the process of transformation. You ought to get it at this point. I’ve already said it multiple times. It is beholding the glory of the Lord, looking at Him, looking as in a mirror at the glory of the Lord, beholding Him. Seeing God in His glory is how you are changed. There is no self-help book. There is no diet plan. There is No athletic success or any sort of work accomplishment that can give you the life you want. They are all fleeting and unsatisfying. The moment you think you’ve grasped it, it’s gonna get out your hands. The moment you think you’ve arrived, the destination will change. The moment that you think you’ve got it all is the moment that it all goes out your arms. You gotta gather it up again. There’s no change or transformation that lasts or matters outside of being conformed into the image of Jesus. There’s just not. But beholding Jesus in His glory, that’s the fuel for the whole process.

I need to explain some things though. I need to look at something with you because there’s some words here that just don’t make sense to us. If you have your Bibles in your laps or on your phones, just scroll up to verse seven. This is 2 Corinthians 3:7 through 18. Now we’re gonna get some context for what Paul’s writing about.

He says that if the ministry that brought death chiseled in letters on stones, that’s the 10 commandments, the tablets, if that came with glory so that the Israelites weren’t able to gaze at Moses’ face because of its glory, which was set aside, how will the ministry of the Spirit not be more glorious? Nah, for if the ministry that brought condemnation had glory, the ministry that brings righteousness overflows with even more glory. In fact, what had been glorious is not glorious now by comparison because of the glory that surpasses it. For if what was set aside, the law, was glorious, which endures, which will be even, what endures, sorry, what endures will be even more glorious. Since then we have such a hope, we act with great boldness. We are not like Moses, who used to put a veil over his face to prevent the Israelites from gazing steadily until the end of the glory of what was being set aside. But their minds were hardened. For to this day, at the reading of the old covenant, the same veil remains. It’s not lifted because it is set aside only in Christ. Yet still today, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their hearts. But whenever a person turns to the Lord, that veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. So we all with unveiled faces are looking as in a mirror at the glory of the Lord and are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory. This is from the Lord who is the Spirit.

Now, if you are not aware, Moses used to talk with the God of the universe face to face like a friend. This is way back in your Old Testament. You hang a left from where we are and go 90% of the way and you’ll find Jesus in a tent in the desert talking with God. And this whole ministry that Moses was doing was chiseled on stones, the Ten Commandments, you know, and then the rest of the law in the Old Testament. When Moses would talk with God about that, some of God’s glory would kind of like rub off on Moses and his face would be shining, literally shining, glowing. So he would come out of the tent and people would be looking at him. Moses, what up with your face, man? And they’re confused. Why are you glowing? And Moses is like, I’ve been talking with God. And this apparently becomes a problem. So Moses starts wearing a veil so that people would not look at him but would be more concerned with God’s word.

Now that was set aside when Jesus came. And when Jesus came, it was not so much about rules chiseled on tablets of stone. No, it was about a law that God puts in our heart. It’s not so much about one man talking to God by himself. No, it’s more about God embracing us and coming to us and proactively embracing us and addressing us and calling us friend. It’s not about one guy. It’s about a whole group, a whole body of people that God is relating to that way. What Moses had with God, talking with him as like a friend, you can have with God too. And that is way better than what Moses had. Way better.

In fact, when Jesus was on His proverbial deathbed in the upper room, He tells the disciples, hey, in a few hours, I’m going to be betrayed into the hands of the Romans and the Jews. Don’t worry though. I’m sending the Spirit and He is way better than me. You see, Jesus, God in one spot, the Holy Spirit, God within all of us, all around the world at all times. Now they’re both God. Jesus is God. The Holy Spirit is God. The Father is God. They’ve got different roles. And the Holy Spirit’s role is to live personally within you, making you look more like Jesus Christ. And that is the Father’s plan for your life.

Some of us are so caught up with wanting to know, what is God’s plan for me? What’s His will for me? God’s will is that you would look like Jesus. So whatever it takes for you to look like Jesus and help people look like Jesus, that’s God’s will for you.

Sometimes we think that God’s will is like crosshairs on a rifle scope. And if I don’t get it exactly right, if I deviate just a little bit, if I go just above the deer, I’m out. I’m outside of His will. The Bible doesn’t speak about God’s will that way. The Bible speaks about God’s will like a playground with a fence. And God’s will for you is that you would play. Just stay inside the fence because there’s a road out there and I need to protect you from you because you don’t listen to me all the time. Amen? That’s God’s will for you.

So we behold Jesus. So whatever it takes for you to look at Jesus, that’s what you need to do. Now the Pharisees, the reason they were so frustrated with Jesus is because they would read the law and they wouldn’t understand that it spoke about a Messiah who is going to come, who is going to flip all their expectations upside down. So when they see Jesus, they don’t behold Him, they just see Him and they’re mad at what they see. But we, with 2,000 years of history, we get to look at Jesus and not just have a passing glance or gaze at Him, we get to behold Him. And beholding Him, enjoying Him, that’s what transforms us to be like Him. We become like Him from one degree of glory to the next. We are transformed into the image, the very substance of Him.

We do not become God. That’s not what I’m saying. But we become who God made us to be. In the very beginning, when God created all things, He flung the universe out. He dotted the night sky with stars and He created planets and He made bushes and deer and birds and fish and oceans come onto this place. And He planted two people, Adam and Eve. And it says that He made people in His image. But because of sin, we have fallen away. And that image of God is tainted in us like silver tarnishes with time. There’s a smudge over it.

Us that we through our good effort we keep trying to wash off we keep trying to get it off but we don’t know we’ve got to be cleaned by God we can’t clean ourselves we’ve got to be transformed and made new and redeemed by Him and that’s what God wants for you He wants to return you to your original design He wants you to look like Himself He wants you to stop looking at yourself and look at Him that’s the frustration I have with self-help books that’s the frustration I have with people placing their hope in stuff like diets and finances because you’re just looking at you looking at you just makes you you more of you and none of us want that I don’t think anybody in the room says I am totally satisfied with myself I think I am the man none of us actually believe that we all have an aching desire to be better we all have an aching desire to grow we all have an aching desire to look more like something that’s kind of general and vague in our minds this is the path this is the path so where are we going the next nine or so weeks we’re going to look at various practices that are all meant to help you not look at you but to look at the glorious Jesus Christ so that you and we would be transformed my full intention is that the practices of your daily and weekly life would change it is not my intention to give okay sermons for y’all to thank me for on your way out you don’t need me for that you can get that on YouTube you don’t have to put on your nice clothes and get out of bed for that what I want to stir up in you is a desire for transformation and then just Walk the path with you. So we’re going to look at things like celebration as a spiritual discipline, secrecy, slowing down, servanthood, confession, following the Spirit, prayer, Bible meditation. These are all ways to help us behold Jesus so that we would be transformed. I read it earlier out of Galatians. There are various fruit of the Spirit, which is really just Jesus’s character inside of us. If you want to be a more loving, a more joyful, a more peaceful, a more patient, a kinder, a better, a more faithful, a more gentle, or a more self-controlled person, the next two months is for you. If you do not want that, the next two months is not for you. It’s just not, because the point of the next two months is transformation. That’s my prayer for us. So the question: Do you want to be transformed? Do you want to be made new? You want to look more like your daddy? God wants you to look like Himself. He wants you to have His own character inside of you.

Jesus did not just die to pay off some ambiguous, vague spiritual debt against a heavenly Father that you can’t prove or disprove. Jesus came to redeem you from yourself and to make you new. That’s God’s design. If you want to talk about that with me, if you want to begin a conversation, if you just want to pray, I would love to pray with you for a minute as we begin to close out our service. I would love to pray with you, and you just say, “Hey, Jeremy, I want to be more peaceful.” They come down front, and I just say, “Jesus, make so and so more peaceful.” Say, “Jeremy, I just want to be a kinder person,” to come and pray with me. I hope that the next nine weeks begins a transformation in your life that never ends.

Let’s pray. Jesus, I really mean it. I know that You mean it. I know that Your desire is not that we would just be the same. I know that Your desire is not that we would just persist in our frustration. It’s not that we would just languish, Father, in our spiritual slump, our stupor. But God, Your desire is to change us, is to make us new, is to transform us into the image of Your Son. And Holy Spirit, I believe You are aggressively and kindly and proactively after that. God, I know You’re doing that in my life. I know You’re doing that in the lives of some of our folks. I’m begging You to do that in the life of everybody that would look at Sauldam and call us their home. Lord, I pray for the souls in this room that You would open their eyes to Your goodness, Father. For the person that needs to come forward, that You would give them the boldness and the submission to Your leading to do that. I pray You would reward them for that. I pray that You would bless them for that, Father, that that moment, that step, would catalyze something in them that we cannot help but just look at and say, “That is beautiful and amazing.” Please, Lord, make us holy. Make us like You. Amen.