“YOU WERE CREATED TO BECOME LIKE CHRIST”
Sunday, May 16, 2004
Welcome back to the 4th week of 40 Days of Purpose where we have taken 40 days out of our schedule and set them aside as a church and as individuals to discover the answer to the question “What on Earth are we here for?” How are we going to spend the rest of the 25,510 days of our lives?
So far what have we learned? We have learned that the key to life is that life is not about us, it’s about God. We were created for God and we were created by God. We were created for His purposes out of His love. Secondly, we have learned that we were planned for God’s pleasure and what brings God pleasure we call worship. Worship is anything that puts a smile on God’s face which includes corporate praise, how we live our lives, acts of obedience, how we conduct ourselves in the workplace and a lot of other different avenues for pleasing God.
We learned also that we were formed for God’s family. God loves us and he wants us to love what he loves, and God loves people. God loves the church and, in fact, he has died for the church. We were never meant to live life alone and on our own. We were intended for fellowship; fellowship takes time to develop - friendships take time. If we want to fulfill God’s purposes in our life and discover the fullness of his life in us, we need to accomplish his purposes.
Where do we get this stuff? We get this stuff from the owner’s manual and this is our owner’s manual [holding Bible] that God has provided for us so we can discover why we were created and how we work.
Recently I read an article in the Wall Street Journal which reminded me of the importance of reading the instruction book. Alan Smith wrote it. If you are technologically challenged, you’ll be able to sympathize with some of the problems below. The following is an excerpt from the Wall Street Journal:
• Compaq is considering changing the command “press any key” to “press return key” because of the flood of calls asking where is the “any” key.
• A Dell technician advises his customer to put his troubled floppy back into the drive and close the door. The customer asked the tech to hold on and was heard putting the phone down, getting up and crossing the room to close the door to his room.
• An IBM customer had troubles installing software and rang for support. I put in the first disk and that was okay. It said to put in the second disk and I had some problems with that. When it said to put the third disk in, I couldn’t even fit it in. The user hadn’t realized that insert disk two meant to remove disk one first.
• Another Dell customer called to say he couldn’t get his computer to fax anything. After 40 minutes of troubleshooting the technician discovered the man was trying to fax a piece of paper by holding it in front of the monitor screen and hitting the send key.
• A confused caller to IBM was having trouble printing documents. He told the technician that the computer had said it couldn’t find the printer. The user had also turned the computer screen to face the printer but his computer still couldn’t see the printer.
• Another customer called Compaq tech support to say her brand new computer wouldn’t work. She said she unpacked the unit, plugged it in and sat there for 20 minutes waiting for something to happen. When asked what happened when she pressed the power switch, she asked, “What power switch?”
So, it highlights the importance of reading the manual. It is important for us to read God’s manual to discover his purposes because his purposes are like power switches; unless we flip them on, nothing happens in our lives, or not much.
Today we are on God’s third purpose for our lives. That third purpose we call discipleship or “We were created to become like Christ.” Again, you will want to use your bulletin insert. There is an outline that we will be referring to and reading passages from. Genesis 1:26-27 this comes from: “Let us make people in our image, to be like ourselves. So God created people in His image. God patterned them after Himself.”
From the very beginning it has always been God’s desire to make us to be just like him. Not to be God. Notice the word like. Now like is a simile, not a metaphor. You will never be God. We can be like God, meaning like God in character. At the very beginning God created us in His image. What happened to us? Are we in His image? Are people godly today and God-like? Well, no. What happened? How did things get messed up? That is where Genesis 3 comes in. It is written that there was a fall; something took place, people decided to go their own way. They thought they could do things better than God did. The effect of it was like taking a solid glass globe and dropping it onto a concrete floor. What would happen? It wouldn’t totally shatter, but it would crack. It would have a lot of spiders in it; that is what happened to us. When we decided to live our lives our own way, the image of God in us cracked. It became marred. It became skewed, so the image of God was blurred in some way. In response to that God decided to restore His image in us and he did it by sending Jesus down to Earth to pay for the damage done by our sin. It is in Jesus Christ that we become new creatures. God, in Christ, recreates us in His image.
Ephesians 4:24: “You must display a new nature because you are a new person created in God’s likeness.” We were “created” means “recreated” in God’s likeness. Romans 8:29: “For those God foreknew He also predestined (purposed from the very beginning) to be conformed to the likeness of His Son.” God does this through the Holy Spirit. In the Old Testament the Holy Spirit worked outside of a person. In the New Testament the Holy Spirit works in a person. You see this in Ephesians 4:15: “By His mighty power at work in us, He is able to accomplish infinitely more than we would dare to ask or hope for.” So my third purpose in life is to be conformed to the image of Christ and we call that discipleship.
God wants us to develop character, his character, in us. What is that? You can read the gospels and see the character of Christ. You can also find different lists of character in the Scripture. You can find it in Matthew 5 through 7, the Sermon on the Mount. It lists seven characteristics that were all to be part of our lives. Galatians 5:22-23 talks about the fruit of the Spirit. I Corinthians 13 describes what love is in attitude. Romans 12:9-21 describes love in action. 2 Peter 1:5-8 is a series of teachings on what it means to be a loving person.
I think I did a series on character - three years of character studies and 54 different characteristics - there are a lot of things in scripture that God wants to form into our lives. We are to become like Christ. Becoming like Christ does not mean that we lose ourselves or we lose our personality. God has come to transform our character, not to change our personality. That is an important thing. God doesn’t want a lot of ‘mini-mes’ running around. God loves you; he created you to be unique. God loves you and your personality. All he wants to do is tweak your character, form your character in the likeness of Christ. So many people think being a Christian means that they X out who they are to become like Jesus, and wander around like zombie Christians. That is not what God desires. God created you to be you. You can be yourself and then allow God to form His character in your heart and in your life.
Note too that God did not say that he was interested in our comfort but that he is interested in our character. This throws off a lot of Christians. We assume that the abundant life, according to scripture, is that, as Christians, we will experience a life where nothing bad happens to us, that we will live in perfect health, that no one in our life will ever die, that we will live a comfortable lifestyle, that we will experience instant relief from pain, that all of our requests are answered and that we will live a stress-free life. When we discover that life is not like that, we become very frustrated and disillusioned with God. What is the problem? The problem is our image of life. We assume, or we try to make earth into heaven, and Earth is not heaven. We are confusing heaven with earth.
What is earth like? Earth is probably more like a gym or boot camp. God wants us in this life to help us grow up and toughen up. In fact, he knows that the only way we are going to make it through this life is if we do grow up and toughen up. A lot of you have gone to a gym. What is key in a gym? What is key to growing healthy bodies? All exercise is based upon one simple principle and that principle is resistance. Every form of exercise involves resistance because it is through resistance that you grow and become stronger, become healthier. You become more energetic, you get more out of life. The same thing is true in our lives.
Someone created a biosphere. They tried to create the perfect environment for growing things. Trees grew up in this biosphere, and when the limbs and leaves formed, the trunks snapped in half. Why? Because the trees never experienced the resistance of wind, the trunk never became strong enough to hold the leaves. It was through the wind resistance the strength was developed. The same thing is true in our lives: If we are going to make it in this life and bear what life will throw us, we need to experience resistance; and through resistance we grow, and we grow through choices that we make.
There are four resistors or four tools that God uses in our lives to develop his character. The first one is his Word. You might say well, the Bible, that’s good stuff. The truth will set you free. That is true, but before it makes you free the Word will also make you miserable in your life at times because it exposes us. It exposes our motives. It exposes our sin. It points out our faults. It challenges our lifestyle. It expects us to change. It pricks our conscience. The Word is called the “sword of the Spirit” for a reason. Sometimes it hurts. Psalm 1:1-3 says this: “Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by steams of water which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither.”
I love that analogy. The vibrant tree has its roots in the ground and it represents the person who is meditating upon God’s Word, who saturates his life in God’s Word, and what happens? The tree grows and becomes strong. Jesus said in John 7:37: “If you are thirsty, come to me and drink.” It is like the image of the potter. If you have ever seen pottery, the only way for the clay to become moldable, and remain moldable and yielding to the hand of the potter, is by saturating it with water. It must constantly be wet. The same thing is true in our lives. We must constantly be wet and saturated in God’s Word.
So I encourage you to take time to read his Word. It takes just 15 minutes. I challenge you to take 15 minutes. We are talking about ½ of a sitcom. All of us watch sitcoms, I know that. Spending 15 minutes a day in God’s Word is far more beneficial than any sitcom you’ll ever see. In thinking about it, we are talking about God’s very foundational purpose for your life, just 15 minutes a day saturating yourself in God’s Word and letting him keep you wet and moldable.
As you read, some things that may be helpful are to go where there are no distractions; and find a modern translation like the New International Version, Contemporary English Version, the Good News Bible, the New Living Translation, Today’s English Version. I know that Rick Warren likes the Message. I am not quite sure about it, but it is a modern translation. As you read the Bible, to get even more out of it, it is important to receive it as God’s Word- to research it, study it, to reflect on it, to meditate on it and, more importantly or most importantly, to practice it, because it will take no effect unless you practice it.
As you read it, ask questions - the normal questions you’d ask of any book: who, what, when, where, why and how. As you ask questions, it will come alive to you. That is the first tool. I am not sure we will get through all these tools but we will do our best.
The second tool is people. God will use people to develop your character. If you want to know if that’s true, just ask your spouse. Proverbs 27:17: “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” Marriage is the quintessential example of this. I find it so funny whom God brings together. I talk to a lot of married couples and I find that almost all the time, God bring together opposites. Hot people marry cold people. What I mean by that is not hot, as in attractive, I am talking about physically hot people marry physically cold people. I am a hot person. I exude warmth. I married a cold person. When my wife gets into bed with me, she puts her cold feet on me and it causes me to think unchristian thoughts. Why did God make me marry a cold person? Because he wants to form my character. I find that God puts morning people together with night owls. Why does he do that? He puts emotional people together with emotion-withholding people, introverts with extroverts, socialites with quiet people, and organizers with slobs. How many of you married an organizer? How many of you married a slob and it just irritates you? Why did God do that, because God knows that is how you grow. He doesn’t do it to irritate you- that is the only way you are going to grow. How do we ever learn to be patient unless God puts us around people who will try our patience, who will cause us almost to explode? How can we ever learn to be loving unless we are around people who are hard to love? How can we ever forgive if we are never around people who will hurt us? How can we ever be salt and light if we are never around people who need the salt and the light? God brings people into our lives to form his character in us.
In fact, this past week, when was it? When did we have softball? Wednesday, Wednesday, I learned this. They put me in left field. We played a team who just shelled me out there. Every time the softball got hit, I said this: praise God for that man because he is God’s instrument to get me in shape out here. Not really.
Spiritual maturity is not a subtle activity. So often we have this image of a spiritual person as this Buddhist monk in the Himalayas. That is not spirituality. That is easy. It is easy to be a Christian alone. It is much harder to do it in front of other people and love other people. It is harder to do it in a crowd.
What is the third tool God uses in our life? He uses troubles. I wish God wouldn’t do this. I hate this tool. John 16:33 says this (we would do well to accept Jesus’ words here; these are true words): “In this world you will have trouble…” Can everyone say “Amen!” Do you experience trouble? Absolutely! Take Jesus at his word. In fact, Jesus himself experienced trouble and if Jesus experienced trouble, how can we ever think that we should not experience trouble. Romans 8:17 says this: “We go through exactly what Christ goes through. If we go through the hard times with Him, then we’re certainly going to go through the good times with Him.” Now troubles, get this in you, are a part of life. You can ask the question infinitely, why, why, why and try to determine the cause, but it doesn’t matter whether God caused it.
There are times when I think that God does intentionally create trials in our lives to test us and to form our character. He did this with the disciples when he sent them out on the lake and he knew the storm was coming. It was a test, a way of developing faith, but not all troubles are caused by God. Most of them are caused by us or other people. I don’t believe that God causes tragedy. I think that makes God cruel; God is not a cruel God. They simply happen. They are a given in life; they are unavoidable. You can’t get out of this world without experiencing trouble.
If that is a given fact, there are really only two choices that we have. We can either let our troubles work for us or against us. We can either allow them to cause us to become better, or we can allow them to cause us to become bitter. It is our choice, but they are going to be there anyway so we might as well make something good out of them, instead of allowing them to be caustic and like acid in our lives, and wreck them.
Romans 8:28: “In all things God works for the good of those who love Him, and who have been called according to His purpose.” God promises that about all things - everything in your life: the good, the bad, the ugly, the tragic- if we trust him with them. Instead of allowing them to become bitterness in our lives, he will redeem them; he will take them and turn them into some good in our lives. That is a choice that we have to make. Will we allow God to use these things in our lives?
A great example of it is the sitcom Frasier. It is a popular show. If you saw his interview, he is a perfect example of it. He experienced tremendous tragedy in this life. He lost his father, although he didn’t know him very well, to murder and he lost his sister to murder as well. It was the death of his sister that he says was a faith buster in this life. He lost hope; he gave up on God, and what was the result? He became a very bitter man. To soothe his bitterness he started taking drugs and consuming large quantities of alcohol. He started living the very fast life and it nearly killed him, until his friends on the show intervened in his life.
In the counseling process he discovered the root of his anger. The route of his anger was that he couldn’t save his sister. He said a really poignant thing, that he also learned something else, that he couldn’t even save himself because he was not a good savior at all. In fact, that is why God provided us a Savior; we can’t save ourselves and we can’t save anyone else. We need a savior. When he put his faith back into God, when faith became part of his life again, what happened? Well, God turned it all to good. It is interesting that over his lifetime, in the last 10 years, God restored to him everything he had lost. He said his entire life he craved to have a family because it is something he never had. He discovers today that he has a family. He has a wife and a child and life is good.
Genesis 50:20 says this and Joseph experienced hard times himself. Joseph said this and it is important for us to learn. “You meant to hurt me, but God turned your evil into good to save the lives of many people, which is being done.” If we allow him, God will take our troubles, redeem them, and turn them into good and form character in our lives if we let him.
The last thing God uses, the fourth tool, is temptation. Now, this is a cautionary one. I think that saying God uses temptation to build our character, is a wrong way of stating it because we read in James 1:13 that when tempted, no one should say God tempted them because God can not be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone else. God does not use temptation as a tool, but temptation can be a tool in our lives. I think a safer way of saying this is that, like troubles, temptation is a given of life. We will all experience temptation. Does anyone here not experience temptation? It is a given in life.
Temptation is an opportunity for us to show God that we love him more than the object of our temptation. If there is a tempter, it would be Satan, not God. Temptation is a given in life; we can either allow it to work for us or against us. We can either allow it to cause us to fall into sin, or to develop faith and become more like Christ. Again, it is a choice. Character is developed through a choice. How will you ever know if you are a person of integrity unless you have been tempted to be dishonest? How can you say you are a faithful person if you have never been given the opportunity to become unfaithful? Temptation can be an opportunity.
Jesus himself was tempted. Matthew 4:1 says this: “Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil.” “Get out of here Satan,” Jesus told him. The Scripture says to worship only the Lord God and obey him. Hebrews 4:15: “For we do not have a High Priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way just as we are – yet was without sin.” Jesus was tempted. We will be tempted. Temptation is not a sin. A lot of Christian people get all bugged out about what goes through their mind and it is not a sin. Temptation is not a sin. You have all kinds of crazy ideas and sometimes the tempter puts those there. Temptation is not a sign of weakness or worldliness. It is a sign of a moral workout occurring in your life.
How can you make temptation work for you? There are a lot of things you can do. One is instead of fighting the thought (and becoming focused on it trying to drive it out, continuing to think about it), it is better to replace the thought. Philippians 4:8 says this: “Fix your thoughts on what is true and good and right.” The better way of fighting temptation is not to fight away the thought but to simply change the thought; think on something that is good, that is noble and that is true, that is right.
If you have a particular problem with a particular sin, look for a pattern, the pattern for temptation. Always ask the who, what, when and where question. Most often you will discover that you are tempted when you are tired, bored, stressed out, depressed or on a spiritual high, as in just having completed a big project. So often people are tempted when they are alone or if they are in a peer group or with their buddies who have a great influence over them. Note your pattern and then protect yourself. Call on God. Ask God for his help and he will give it to you. Remind yourself of the owner’s manual. Romans 6:4: “We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.” So yield yourself to God.
Every owner’s manual has a huge column of do not dos. They are in bold. We need to have the same thing in our hearts and lives. There are some things that we were not created for and it is important for us to say this: I was not created for lust, I was created for self-control; I was not created for materialism, I was created for generosity; I was not created for self-centered living, I was created to be a servant; I was not created to be an angry person, I was created to be kind and patient. It is important for us to face every temptation and say I was not created for this- I was created for God.
The last thing I will say about this is Hebrews 11:25: “He chose to be mistreated with the people of God rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a short time.” Moses is a good example of looking at things in light of God and looking at things in light of eternity. Is it really worth the salvation? Is it really worth his position with God? Troubles, temptation, trying people, the tests of scripture can either make you or break you. It is your Father’s intention to allow these things to form your character, to allow them to make you into what he has always desired you to be, and that is to be an image of his Son, to build your character, to transform you into his image. As we develop our character, we will experience dignity, respect, honor and value.
I am going to end with this illustration of the more iron is worth the more it is worth. F.B. Myers explained it this way. A bar of iron is worth $2.50. When wrought into horseshoes, it is worth $5.00. If made into needles, it is worth $175. If made into pen knife blades, it is worth $1625.00. If made into springs for watches, it is worth $125,000. What a trial by fire that bar must undergo to be worth this, but the more it is manipulated, the more it is hammered and passed through the heat, beaten and pounded and polished, the greater its value. The same thing is true in our lives. God will build His character in us; it takes being beaten, pounded, heated and hammered, but in the process, he instills our value and our nobility.
[Let’s pray.]
