Into the Light: Let Love Define You

I love that little video. Puts me to sleep every Sunday. By the time I get up here, I’m like, “So, you want to talk about anything, guys?” Anyway, I’m the one who came up with it, right?

So, anyway, good to have you. I’m Matt. I’m the pastor here. It is Sunday morning, and hi, interns, right up front. Love you guys. We are jumping into the next part of our series, Into the Light, from the book of First John.

So, here’s a couple ways to prep for the day. One, if you have a Bible, you can open our Bible app to First John. We’re going to be in chapter 3, verses 1 through 3. If you don’t, you can also download the Bible app. That’s a really good idea. Or you can download the Eagle Creek Church app, and you’ll have my points.

How many of you have heard of the very kind of disgusting pattern that’s happening in American culture today where people are mailing their spit to strangers? Isn’t that gross? And what’s really gross about it is a bunch of you have already done it in this church. In fact, I have as well. Somebody, you figured it out, didn’t you? I could tell Nikki’s like, “Oh, I know what he’s talking about.” 23andMe DNA testing. Oh, I got you on that.

How many of you have done any of those DNA tests? You do the swab, you stick it in the thing, and they tell you what your background is. Tell me someone besides me. I have done that. Has anyone else done their DNA testing and you know where you come from? Okay, someone holler out. Where do you come from? France. France, we got a French person. I don’t meet a lot of French people. Someone else. Where are you from? Okay, I heard all of that. Did you say Greenland? Denmark, Ireland. Okay, there you go.

I’m Irish background. It turns out I’m English, Welsh, Irish. Basically, if you’re in the British Isles, I’m from there. When I learned that, Sherry knew I was really into this. They had those commercials out. I was like, “Oh, that would be so cool.” I don’t know. My family’s been in America so long that all we say is we’re mutts right now. I would like to say something more than I’m Heinz 57 or I’m a mutt. How many of you would agree it’d be nice to be able to say something about yourself?

My wife, she has Polish heritage. She claims her Polish heritage because she’s about one quarter Polish. However, she’s three quarters English Isles as well. So anyway, our family is primarily English Isles. And when we learned that, you know what we did? We went to the grocery store and we bought English breakfast tea, and we drink it every day just to prove to ourselves that we are really from the English Isles. No, we didn’t. We were already doing that. By the way, if you want to know what kind of tea my wife likes, it seems like every birthday someone gets her peach tea. She hates any kind of tea with a fruit flavor to it. Hates them. Nasty. Floral. Oh, it’s worse than fruit. She wants black, dark tea. Does she put sugar in it? No. Does she put cream in it? No. That’s because she’s one quarter Polish.

Because a true Englishman puts cream and sugar in his tea. And I learned that from my mother as a child growing up. And her father taught her because he was a true Englishman. In fact, he had seasonal teas. He had green tea in the winter and black tea in the summers. Okay, so whatever, he had seasonal teas that were appropriate. It’s a good thing I did not find out I was Norwegian, or I’d be having to go buy an axe and take up axe throwing and pillaging a villager too. I don’t know, be a Viking, you know. I’m Norwegian, I’m a Viking. How many Norwegians do we have in the room? Okay, any Norwegians? Watch your wallets, everyone. The Vikings have come. They may plunder us. We don’t know.

But it is interesting though. I make all this point because I do notice that people have a tendency to sort of live up to what they identify as. Not that they want to aspire to it in every single way, but there’s some piece of the culture that they would like to keep, some piece of the culture that they still find cool to identify with. And I found this with families that maybe a child is adopted and they learn something about their biological family, and because of that, sometimes they reject it totally, and that’s a form of identity. You’re rejecting identity, but it’s still informing your identity because it’s kind of the counter identity. And others will adopt a piece of it, and they’ll say that’s kind of cool that I’m from that background and this is my family, or I didn’t know why I was so into math and science, turns out my whole biological family is into math and science, or whatever it is. But there is this thing where identity does shape us.

And I’ve learned this over the years with people that are followers of Christ, that there are people that have a very, very strong sense of their spiritual identity in Christ, and it’s very formative for them in the way they think about their life and what they do, what they don’t do. It shapes them definitely, and you can see it in their life. And there are other people that, while they technically know they’re a child of God, they don’t feel it. The phrase would be it doesn’t vibe with them. It doesn’t settle in very well. And so because it doesn’t vibe with them, they don’t live it out. It’s just not who they see themselves as. So it’s not what they tend to do.

Now, when we get into 1 John chapter 3, he starts dealing hardcore straight on with this is actually who you are. Not who you’re aspiring to be someday, but right now, today, in this very moment, you are something. This is your identity. Therefore, why not live towards your identity in Christ? Why not move towards that?

And I’m going to tell you upfront, there’s two portions to this that people are, one portion you’ll get hung up on, and I don’t want you to. It’s true, but it’s only a portion of the truth. And then the other portion is unseen, but more true. Here’s what happens. People hear a message like this, and they say, “Okay, so what this means is I need to try harder to be more like Christ.” Yeah, okay, that’s good, but that’s not really the point. There’s a mystical part of Christian experience that is something more than what we do or don’t do or try to do or don’t try to do. A mystical portion where God does something that we otherwise could not achieve in our life. How many of you have had a few moments where you’re like, there are things I could not overcome without God’s help in my life, right?

Okay, the mystical portion is the thing that makes you what you are and empowers you to actually live that out. But is there a sort of identifying physical piece too? Yeah, I just think that way, and does it work out naturally, physically, to some degree? Sure. If you’re around good influences, thinking good thoughts, filling yourself with these things that’s true, that is helpful, but that is a portion of it, not the whole. So don’t get caught up in kind of that self-improvement mentality from the message. And I’m going to make sure that you don’t. By the way, I preached the message today, I’ll try to help you with that.

So, here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to give you three thoughts. Again, everyone’s always like, “Why do you give three thoughts?” Because I have four or five and they’re too long. And if I preach four or five, I go over by about 15 to 20 minutes every time. That’s one reason. And because if I preach four points, then everyone comes to me in the lobby and says, “I lost track, what was the third point?” And I’m like, I don’t know what the third point was anymore. My brain is all scattered after I preach. Now I have to get my notes out and look it up for you because you didn’t take your notes, right? No, I’m not really. I don’t get worked up. I’m okay, I’m calm.

But here’s the thing. I do three because everyone remembers three. Okay. What’s the point of preaching to people if no one can remember what you preached and live it out, right? So my whole goal is to help people live the life that God has called you to live. So I want to make sure it’s super understandable, super right here, easy. You get it and you can live out what God has for you.

But in this particular message, there’s going to be some mystical, some mysteries of scripture that we won’t fully understand today, but at least we’ll observe what they are and the effect that they have.

Your Identity Should Define You

So here we go. Number one, as we walk through this, our how our identity shapes us. Number one, your identity should define you. It should define you, okay? So let’s all say that one together. By the way, why do I have you do that? Because I want you to learn this and remember this and grow from it, okay? So let’s all say this together. Your identity should define you.

Now let’s look at verse one, 1 John 3:1. This is what it tells us. It says, “See what kind of love the Father has given to us.” I just want to pause for a moment right there, because there’s a cool little note, a little Greek phrase here. See what kind of, this is, in the original Greek, that was a word, potapos, and what it was is it was a reference to a foreigner or a foreign place, and this concept was, see what otherworldly, foreign kind of love that men don’t give to men. This is the love that is foreign to mankind that God gave to mankind. It’s different than what people would normally do. People don’t normally love this way.

See what kind of love the Father has given. Oh, so not earned. Not like everyone, you know, you had the what was Trump’s gold passport thing, you could pay $500,000 or $5 million or something and become a US citizen. You didn’t have to pay anything. You don’t have to do anything. This is given by God, not earned by you. So, behold what? Well, this is now I’m going to King James. “Behold what manner of love the Father has given to us that we should be called the children of God.” That’s, sorry, I memorized that as a kid in King James.

See what kind of love the Father has given to us that we should be called what? Children. What?

So it’s like God just stopped, and he said, “By the way, I know you mailed in your DNA and you’ve been waiting for the last two weeks. Let me open the envelope with you. Let me pull it out and let me read it to you and let me tell you what it says.” You are 100% child of God. Amen. Amen. God is that good. And he says, here’s the good news, God made us children of God. The world doesn’t do that kind of thing, but he did that not because we earned it. He just gave it to us that we should be called children of God.

And then I love this phrase by John. He says, “And so we are.” In other words, it is settled. You can feel super secure about this. “Behold, what manner of love the Father has given to us.” I know I’m quoting King James, I don’t have the ESV yet. “That we should be called,” now that is ESV, “children of God. And so we are.” It is definite. It’s determined. John’s saying, guaranteed, we really are the children of God.

And a lot of people struggle with that identity. It doesn’t shape the way they live yet. If you’re struggling to let your faith shape the way you live, it’s not because you’re not trying hard enough. It’s because you haven’t rooted your identity fully enough in who you are. You are a child of God. That’ll help you to start living like a child of God. If you’re like, “I’m not living like a child of God,” you might be struggling with your identity more than your behavior. And we’ll see that more as we go through scripture here.

We are called the children of God, and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know Jesus when he came either. They didn’t recognize the life. They didn’t recognize the love. They didn’t recognize the values. They didn’t recognize his forgiveness of people. The level he gave, they didn’t do in their culture. He turned eye for an eye and turning the cheek instead of eye for an eye. Their culture was, “Hey, you do it to me, you’re going to get paid back the same way.” And he’s like, “No, I’ll turn the other cheek.” They strike me on one cheek, I’ll turn the other. If a soldier says, “Hey, carry my pack a mile,” I’ll go two miles to help him out. I like, “What?”

And what happens to people that start understanding their identity in Christ? After a while, the group they used to hang out with is like, “I don’t get you. I don’t know what you’re doing. Why are you acting this way?” It’s like, “What do you mean?” “Oh, you just forgave them. We’re all mad at so and so and you’re like trying to talk us all off a cliff. You saw what they did. You know what they did.” “I know, but I mean, we all mess up, you know? We’re all, we all have problems and we got to just,” “You can’t hold on.” “What do you mean you can’t? You used to hold on to everything. You were mad at so and so for like a year.” “I don’t know, I just feel like things are changing.” “Yeah, like everyone knows it. We don’t even get you anymore.”

He says that’s an indicator that this child of God thing is setting in deep. That’s an indicator that this child of God thing, it’s setting in deep, because the world is starting to not recognize you. You’re living otherworldly. In fact, you’re living like Jesus lived. How many say that’s a pretty good target?

And a lot of you, you’re torn right now. If you’ve been a Christian for very long, you probably have gotten to the place as a Christian where, I don’t know how long, for some people it takes them two weeks, and for others it takes them two years, and for others, I mean, they’re still working on it. But after a while, all the people you hung out with, that were really good people, but they were just bought in, the way the world operates is the way they operate. If they have to cheat someone at work to get ahead, you just do. You do what you got to do to get ahead. If they’re all talking about a girl that’s not their wife, you laugh and talk about it with them, and then suddenly you’re like, “But I don’t. My brain, I wasn’t even thinking a thought like that. I wasn’t even processing that I might cheat someone.” And then they’re like, “Yeah, you used to have no problem with this and now everything’s a big issue with you.” And you’re like, “I guess I’m changing.” “I guess you are, I don’t know what’s the deal.”

And here’s what happens to people. They get in this process where suddenly they realize they’re still in the world they were in, they just don’t feel like they’re of it anymore. They feel like their mindset, their heart, everything’s starting to change in them. And then they have this deep love and heart that says, “I don’t want to be one of those goody-shoe Christians that’s too good for everyone.” And then they’re torn a little bit. So do I need to go out and drink a couple beers to show I’m not too holy? Do I need to cuss a little bit to show I’m not too holy? And then they’re like, “Oh, well, that doesn’t feel right.” Some of you have done it where you’re like, “I’m going to go back and live a little bit like the world and a little bit like God.” And you’re like, “That’s the answer.”

How many of you know that’s not the answer? How many of you know that Jesus did not have to act like the world to influence the world? He absolutely didn’t. The most influential man in human history was not at all like the culture that he stepped into, in his love and values and grace and mercy and truthfulness, and he was a radical on every single level, completely otherly and separate from everyone, and they all begged to be around him, because love penetrates through all these differences in ways that are so unique. And you become not really recognized by the world. The world doesn’t know us, and that’s okay. It didn’t know him. And it turns out we’re starting to look a lot more like a child of God now. And the more you look like a child of God, the less you look like someone from the world, right? But you can still love them with all the grace and all the power of God.

And so your identity is going to be very, very critically important. And I’m just going to put this note out to you. For some of you, literally, you’ve never even processed through your child of God nature. You’ve just lived trying to be a good Christian. You’ve never stopped and said, “I feel bad around God in church.” Like, should children feel bad around their parents, or should they feel like really happy to see them and loved and accepted in their presence? How many say a child of God should feel really loved and accepted in God’s presence, right? And then you think, but why do I feel bad when I’m in God’s presence if I’m a child of God?

It tells me you haven’t accepted that you’re loved even when you mess up. That you can’t mess up too much to be loved by God. That you think every time I blow it, then God cuts me off and I don’t have access, and I don’t feel good in his presence, because you have a wrong message about yourself. And can I tell you how I know that? Because I was that for years. I was that until my early 30s. And I was a Christian who didn’t feel connected unless I was crying my eyes out at an altar repenting for being such a bad guy. And if I could tell God how bad I was enough, then finally I would feel loved. But I couldn’t feel loved until I felt bad.

Ain’t that screwed up? I’m so bad, I got to cry and repent enough, and then I feel good, until the next time I mess up and I feel terrible again. And I come from, you know, a broken home, broken, lost my dad to cancer, stepdad and challenging relationships. And so I know I had a lot of father figure and didn’t see a God as a God who would be there and God who would love me and God who would stay with me, and I had to earn love and all that sort of stuff. Literally, in my early 30s, I’ve said this before, I’ll say it again, at some point in time, I read a Christian book by a Christian author called Search for Significance.

And in that book, I was like, “That’s me. That’s my problem. That’s what I’m doing.” And it took me like a year of rereading. I wrote out a whole sheet of everything from that book that I needed to be true from scripture about me. And it took me a year to where my identity changed from rejected to accepted and loved child of God. At times I would literally shout the quotes from the scriptures at myself in a mirror. That’s how radically I got, I got so radical about, I am going to be changed and loved and accepted by my Father God. Even though I didn’t get that from my father on earth, I’m going to get that from my Father God. And my problem isn’t that he won’t give it to me. The problem is I can’t accept it from him. And that’s me. And I’ve got to do something because I got to feel loved. And you know what happened when I did that? The shackles of sin, the shackles of stronghold, the shackles of distance dropped away, so that when I came into the house of God, I felt loved every time I walked through the doors.

Amen. Amen. That’s identity transformation. But that is what I’m telling you. If you’re like, “Yeah, I sound like that,” before you God can do this process in your life of making you a child of God, fully loved and fully accepted.

Now, I took a lot more time on that one because I really think it’s critically important that everything else flows out of that. You got to get that one down. I do want to mention this verse from the same passage, or the same author in the book of John, not First John. John 1:12, it says this, “To all who received him.” So, you believe in Jesus as the son of God, sent by God to earth to live a sinless life, to die for mankind’s sin, and you say, “I received that into my life, him come in, forgive me, cleanse me.” He says, “To all who received him, he gave the right to become,” what, “children of God.”

And then John later on in 1 John 3 says, “And so we are.” If you believed on him, you have the right to become a child of God, and John later on says, “And so you are.” And everyone say, “And so I am.” So I am. Okay.

So, you have to get this settled for everything else to work out right in your spiritual journey. And if you don’t get your identity right, nothing else is going to be right. I don’t know how many ways I could say that to get you to believe that. If you focused on any part of developing your spiritual maturity, I would say develop your spiritual identity as a son and daughter of God, because that thing shapes everything after it. And if you don’t get that right, you’re doing a lot of legalistic good works that aren’t coming from the right identity in the right place, and it’s not going to get you where you think it is. It’s going to get you to being one of those religious church folks that thinks you’re better than everyone. It’s not going to get you to be a son or daughter of God. It’s going to get you to be a religious person.

Now, you say, “I’m not really shooting for that. That’s not why I’m here, right? I’m shooting for child of God. I want to walk that way.”

Your Destiny Should Encourage You

So, that’s the first one. The second thought, number two, is this. Your destiny should encourage you. And I’ll explain that. It’s really good and it’s really encouraging. Everyone read this one with me. Your destiny should encourage you.

And that’s 1 John 3:2. This is what it tells us. “Beloved,” by the way, he says, “And so we are the children of God.” So now when he gets to verse two, he’s like, “So y’all get it? You’re beloved. You’re children of God, that you’re loved. So let’s just say your identity out loud now that I’ve told you your identity.” Who are you? You’re beloved. Everyone say, “I’m beloved.”

You are. You are. “So beloved, we are God’s children.” How many say he’s trying to get that across? “We are God’s children now.” Everyone say now. Right now. Did you have to earn it? He says no. You’ve been given the right to become children. It’s a gift. It’s a different kind of love, not like the world loves. God just gives it to people. Okay?

And when does he give it to you? You become a child of God if you pray the prayer, if you’re not a Christian here today, and at the end of this service, when I give you an opportunity, and I will, to pray and to receive Christ, forgiveness for your sins, and to be adopted by God the Father as his own child, with heaven as your home. Do you know when you become a child of God? Is it when you walk out and do really good for the next week and don’t mess up, or is it now? It’s now.

“We are God’s children now. But,” not yet something, “now we are children of God, but,” not yet what, “what we will be has not yet appeared.” Okay. So, we are children of God, but we will be something like even more than a child of God. I’ll explain that, but it’s not appeared yet. It’s not appeared.

“But we know that when he,” Jesus, by the way, when Jesus appears, there’s a term called the rapture of Christ, or rapture of the church. When Christ comes again from heaven to take his church to be with him, you can, I always forget, 1 Thessalonians 4, 1 Thessalonians 4, yeah, there you go. So, if you go there and you start reading, you’ll be like, “Oh wow, that talks about the rapture.” Don’t do that right now, do that later on, write it down. Okay, so when he appears now, the other time we’re going to see Jesus is when we die and we go to heaven, right? Okay. So we’re going to see him either way. Whichever comes first, we’re going to see him.

So, and “what we will be has not yet appeared. But we know that when he appears we shall be,” what, “like him.” Like him. That is the not yet. What we will be is not yet, but when he appears it will be what will be? We’ll be like him. We won’t have to try to be holy anymore. We won’t have to try to not sin anymore. We’ll be like Jesus, who is completely and perfectly and utterly pure and righteous and holy, right? “Because we shall see him as he is.”

This is the mystery of the passage that’s unexplained. Not unexplainable, but it’s unexplained. Somehow just seeing him, not seeing him as he was on earth, but seeing him as he is in heaven, is so powerful that it will utterly change you into his image in the moment you see him. Like the moment I die and I see Jesus eye to eye, the power, unfathomable power, unimaginable glory, holiness that is untold of, we don’t have words to express it, will so utterly penetrate my every fiber and being and past and thought and desire, that in that moment I will be glorified in a certain measure as he is. I won’t have all power and all knowledge as he does. I’ll know what I need to know. I’ll have the power I need to have. I’m not going to become God, but I’m going to become like him in this way. I literally will never for all eternity want to ever mess with sin again. I will never have a sinful thought and never have a sinful desire, never wanted.

How many of you would say, “If I could push an easy button right now and never have to ponder sin again and just be utterly pure, my wife would like me a lot better, my kids would, everyone, I’d just be a better all the way around person, and I would never be stressed out about my sin in my life.” How many say, “I think I’d be awfully tempted to hit that no-sin button.” Boy, I’d punch, I’d be beating that button, I’d be jumping up and down on it, I’d be like, “Yes, I want that.”

It says that’s going to happen. This is the hope of the believer. Okay, I want to process this hope with you. So, you’re really messed up right now. Maybe not a lot of you aren’t, but some of you are. You’re like, “You don’t know how messed up I am. You don’t know how deep I am into habitual sins, and I don’t know how to break free. My thoughts are so angry right now, and unforgiving and just vengeful, and I cannot stop the ruminating thoughts of anger that I have. I can’t let go.”

And you’re telling me that one day, in a moment when I see Jesus, I will utterly be transformed to never feel the weight of the depression I feel, the anger that I feel, the desire and the lustfulness that I, yes, I’m telling you that. For every child of God, whenever we get there, it says, “And it hasn’t appeared yet, but we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, because we will see him as he is.”

There’s a mystery to the power of God. There’s a transforming nature of God’s word, which is, reading God’s word can make you a better person because it’s good thoughts, it’s good life, it’s good behavior, it’s good principles, it’s good proverbs, it’s just healthy. It’s normally healthy for a normal Christian to live by God’s plan, because God created mankind to operate in a certain way. So it makes sense when you operate by your operating instructions, life works better. But it’s something much more than that. There’s a powerful spiritual dynamic of God that is unleashed in the believer’s life, so that we can be changed and be like him. Now that’s the hope. The hope is right now that someday we’re going to get to this place, and when we see him, we’re going to be utterly changed by him.

And the Apostle Paul reiterates this same concept in 2 Corinthians chapter 3 and verse 18. And let me read that. It says, “And we all, with unveiled face.” This is an important little thing, I’ll mention it to you real quick, I’ve mentioned this before, if you’ve been around here, you might have caught this piece of the teaching before. Moses goes up to meet with God to receive the Ten Commandments. When he comes down from meeting with God, his face is shining the glory of God, like God’s glory is absorbed by a human and emanates from him when he comes down, and it terrifies all of Israel so that they beg him to cover himself, and he does, and he wears a veil. And the point is that they were seeing through sinful eyes, dimly, towards God’s glory. A veil was being set up because of their sinfulness where they couldn’t fully see God.

And it says now for us, God has taken away the veil so that we can see God as he wants us to be seen while we’re still on earth. We’re not seeing him face to face, that’s different. But we can understand Jesus more, our hearts can connect and identify. And to the world, he’s something totally foreign and other, and they don’t get him and don’t understand, they don’t accept him, but for us now, with unveiled faces, we’re like, “Yeah, I can look on and see God and understand him and feel his love.” And I can see him “with unveiled face beholding the glory of the Lord.” What’s happening to those, though, that are doing that? It says “they are being transformed into the same image, from one degree of glory to another.”

So right now he’s saying, literally, we know in the future what will happen when we actually see him face to face. That will happen, and in that moment you will be utterly and forever brought to a wholly glorified state. How many you say amen, let it happen, right? But what about now? What about now? He says, “What if you get the veil of sin out of your life, the garbage out, and start looking on Jesus more? What would happen if you did that?” Well, then you would just start being transformed into the same image, Jesus’s holiness, a little at a time, right here on earth. This process could happen now. How many say if this process could happen now, that why don’t I get to where I can see Jesus a little more in my life, right?

Why don’t I get to where I open up the word of God and I start reading the word of God, I let it change me and I let it speak to me, and I enter into these worship times with a hope of meeting God in worship and seeing him a little bit more, and just let one little degree happen in my life. Maybe your family won’t notice the one degree that happens today, but how many you say if you have one degree, shape in your life over the course of three months, you’re almost there. That’s 90 days, that’s why I picked three months. Okay. You know, you could make a lot of change by being in God’s presence a little at a time and letting him change your life.

I know that God can do that in your life. And you see people that are not transformed after 50 years of following Christ, and you see people that are utterly transformed after two months of following Christ. And you say, “What’s the difference?” Exposure to God’s glorious presence is the difference. That’s it. You get in God’s glorious presence and you change really quick. You stay out in the world and you’re like, “Why didn’t I change any?” Well, it’s where you’re living. Are you in proximity to the glory of God? You’re going to change. If you’re living distant from God, you’re not.

And so my challenge to you, and I’m going to throw this out, people say, “But I read the Bible every day.” Reading the Bible every day can change you, or it might not change you. Okay? Because here’s, I don’t know how to explain this any better than this. If you read the Bible every day, what you did is you got into the word of God, right? The word of God, you’re like, “I got into the word of God, that’s great.” But can I tell you, secular professors read the Bible and it doesn’t do anything to them. They study it as a matter of literature. Did you know that there’s literature courses on the Bible where you can be an atheist and read the Bible, right?

And so the question is not, are you getting into the word of God and are you opening up the word of God. I hope that’s true of you. But this is a little bit of a trite saying, but it’s memorable, and I hope you’ll remember this. The thing for me when I open the word of God is that I want to meet the God of the word, right? The Bible is an avenue to the God of the word. And if you look at it and say, “I just am reading the words of God,” you’ve got to understand the word of God is an expression of something behind it. There’s something behind your Bible that you’re seeing the words on the paper, but the words on the paper were not meant to be the thing that you see. The words on the paper were to help you to see the thing that was behind the word of God.

“All scripture is God-breathed,” Timothy, right? All scripture is God-breathed. So if I just get the scripture and not the God who breathed it, I didn’t get the change that was meant to happen in my life. Okay? So when I open up the scripture, I want to meet the God of scripture, not just the scripture of God. I want to meet the God of the word, not just the word of God. Right? And that is utterly transformational. It’s these little principles that change your growth trajectory. You’re like, that’s such a little thing. And it’s everything. It’s you meeting the God who changes lives. It’s you being changed from glory to glory by connecting with the God who is the glorious image you’re being changed into and has the glorious power that changes your life. It’s his glory that changes us, and it’s his glory that we’re being changed into. So we got to connect with him, right?

So, there’s a bunch of people that want scripture, want God without the mystery. They want God without the miracle. They want the practical proverbs of how to live a good and better life financially and have a better marriage. But I want to tell you there is a miraculous, all-powerful creator behind all of this. And he is going to transform your lowly body into a glorious body for all eternity. And he’s going to resurrect all those from the dead that were dead. And he did miracles like parting the Red Sea and calming a storm and walking on water and casting demons out of people and raising up people that were dead. So yes, there is a mystery beyond the observable. But that mystery is what is transformational.

Amen. Amen. That is the truth of the matter. And so if you try to get to this thing without coming through him and who he really is, you just never get there. You just always run in this circle, man-made circle of try harder, try harder, try harder, and you find your Christian life very challenging and very frustrating. It’s not meant to be that way.

“Behold what manner of love the Father has given,” that we would be called children before we did anything. Adopted into the family out of pure love, unimaginable love. And it would so transform us that the world doesn’t get us anymore and we don’t make sense. But we’ve been utterly changed from one glorious moment to another, from one degree to the next.

Your Hope Should Motivate You

And the third and final thought I want to give you today is this. Your hope should motivate you. Everyone read that one with me. Your hope should motivate you.

Now, there is a quick copout to the whole message. Some of you already found my loophole. We’re all going to get changed in one glorious moment when we meet Jesus. So why worry about it now? Just do what you want to do because someday it’ll all be good. Transformed in a moment means, why worry about transformation today, for some folks.

1 John 3:3. “And everyone who thus hopes,” everyone say “thus hopes,” “in him purifies himself as he is pure,” as Jesus is pure. It’s, he said, this is how you know that you have this hope in you. Everyone who thus hopes, everyone who hopes for what, that you’re going to see him face to face and you’ll become like him, because you’ve seen him as he is, that’s the hope of your Christian life, is I’m going to see him as he is. Everyone who has that hope does what? Purifies himself.

Now, why would that be true? Why would someone purify themself when you know when you see him you’re going to get purified? I think because it’s an indicator that if you really have been loved that much, if you really have been forgiven that much, if you’ve really been adopted as a child of God, then it would so utterly change your identity that it would compel you to live a life of mercy and love and grace and transformation. You would almost be saying to yourself, “I want to look good for my Jesus when he comes. I want to be pure. I want to be spotless. I want to be without blemish. I want to honor his death for my sins by my life lived for him today.”

Out of love, I’m compelled to live a life that honors his work. I’m driven towards it. It inspires me. It makes me think about things. And how do I purify myself from this unrighteousness? Well, I just try harder. No. How many of you know that God has given us the word of God so that we can meet the God of the word, as I told you earlier, but that purifies us of unrighteousness? That the word of God is a cleansing tool in the life of the believer. Amen.

How many of you know that confession, in 1 John 1:9, it tells us to confess your sins to God and he’s faithful and just to forgive you of your sins, to cleanse you of your unrighteousness. How many of you know that confession is part of cleansing, purifying, right? So you’re confessing. How many of you know in James 5, “Confess your sins to one another and pray for each other, that you might be” whole and “healed” in your life of sin. Restoration there. How many of you know that that’s part of your cleansing process, right?

And so over and over and over, how do we purify ourselves? We do what the word of God says to do to be purified. Start allowing the word of God to wash us. Spirit of God to wash us. Prayer and repentance to wash us. The Holy Spirit to come in and wash us. Other brothers and sisters to pray for us and to hold us accountable and to share our struggles with, to wash us. Because we just love him too much to stay the way we are.

“I’m a child of God. That’s the way I’m going to live my life. I’m going to think like a child of God. I’m going to clean up like a child of God because I know I’m going to see him face to face.” And in that moment, all the leftovers, he’ll wash away in a moment. The moment I see him and his eyes be mine, boom, I hit the button, no more struggle, no more sin, no more battle. And I can’t wait for that moment. But until that moment, I’ll honor him with every moment. From one degree of glory to another. Amen. Until that moment, I’ll honor him with every moment. From one degree of glory to another.

You’re a child of God. You can accept love right now today. You can accept mercy right now today. You can accept forgiveness right now today. No longer identify as a child of shame. No longer identify with your past. You’re not that. Stop telling yourself you are that. You’re not that. You are a child of God. “Behold, we are the children of God, and so we are,” for real, right now. But what we will be has not yet appeared. But when it does, it’s going to change you. Change you forever to the core of who you are.

Let me say this is a good God. This is a good gospel. There’s a powerful faith behind all this and a powerful working of God to transform.

And if you are not yet a Christian, a child of God, forgiveness is yours today for the asking. Jesus, forgive me. And you become a child of God now. I believe in you, Jesus, the son of God who gave his life for me. I believe that, and I receive your grace, your forgiveness, your life. “I received that.” “To all who believed in him, to those who received him, he gave the right to become children of God.” This right is yours. Will you take it?

When I invite you to pray in a moment, if you’ve never done that, I’m going to ask you to raise your hand and confess, “I’m following Jesus Christ. I’m surrendering my life.” I’m going to lead you in prayer right where you’re seated. Okay? In fact, I’ll invite the whole room to pray along with us, because it’s a reaffirmation of everyone’s faith when we do this. I love reaffirming faith across the congregation. But when we do that, I’m going to ask you to raise your hands. Jesus said this, “If you confess me before men, I’ll confess you before my Father in heaven.” Boy, I want that. I want that.

So, I’m going to encourage you in this moment to acknowledge Christ as savior. Would you bow your heads all across the room for prayer? With everyone’s heads bowed, everyone’s eyes closed, if you’d say, “Pastor Matt, lead me in this prayer, I want to be a child of God, forgiven and adopted into the family of God, and allow God to begin to change and transform my life,” would you raise your hand real high right now and say, “Pray with me.” I’m praying with you. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.

Amen. All across the room, people are, this is a big moment for people. This is a serious moment. Anyone else? Amen. And others that are just like, this is my moment. Amen. Many people, this is a big moment for your life. Amen. I’ll pray with you as well. Amen.

Church, would you just pray along with us if you raised your hand? I want to lead you in this prayer right where you are. Let’s pray this together right now.

Jesus, thank you that you gave your life for my sins. I deserved to pay the price, but you loved me and you paid my price. Forgive me. I believe in who you are, the Son of God. I believe in what you’ve done. You gave your life, and I receive you as my Lord who directs my life and as my Savior. I believe you rose from the dead and you’re with your Father God, and you’re caring for me now. So, I surrender my life to follow you for the rest of my days. Amen.

And amen. Would you give a hand for everyone that just prayed this prayer? Wow. Yeah, woo. There are moments you remember as a pastor, and that’s a moment. That’s a moment. So many people finding the grace of God in one moment is a beautiful moment, right? That’s a beautiful moment.

I’ll tell you what, God is pulling you out of the world, I know that. But he’s also sending you back into the world to be a graceful witness to that world, right? And I don’t know the right measure for every person. Maybe you got to pull out for a while before he sends you back. But can I encourage you to keep allowing God to use you to reach people that need this grace that is so freely given to everyone who comes through these doors. Amen. Keep reaching out and bringing that grace.

We’re going to do something, we have just a couple minutes. Here’s what I’d love to do. While this next song is sung and you worship God as we sing this next song, I want us to just release the things that have been our bondage. Maybe you’re in bondage and you feel just terrible about yourself all the time. Receive this child of God thing for you. God, just confess it during the song. I know I’m your child. I know I’m loved. Help me to receive this this week. Help me to live like it, to walk with it, to walk in the grace of God. Maybe there’s some things you’ve got to lay down, some sins that God just touched his finger to and said, “You’ve got to deal with this. You’ve got to deal with this. You’ve got to deal with this.” Lay them down while we pray. And I’m going to invite our prayer team to come up and pray for you as well. Come on up. Let’s all stand up together right now and let’s begin to just worship.