The Image of Jesus

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

Okay. I'm good now. All right. We're going to be looking at those verses today in Colossians, chapter 1. So if you want to turn there, we're going to be there pretty soon. I know many of you got toys for Christmas. Well, many of you got either kid toys or adult toys for Christmas. When I was a kid, the best toy was the Star Wars collectible. And here is Luke Skywalker, my favorite Star Wars character and that's a box on pretty much how it looked whenever I was a kid and excuse my call it wasn't these Star Wars characters were not my favorite toy just because I could move them around right in other words they weren't just a doll you know they were a figurine they weren't just a doll I could move around. They really were something more and it wasn't, you know, it's not over the semantics of doll or figurine, but it was that they looked like the characters that I wanted to be, right? In other words, a doll with a different face

would not have been the same, right? I wanted one that looked like Luke Skywalker because I wanted to be Luke Skywalker. I wanted one that looked like Han Solo because I wanted to be Han Solo. And I think that's true for a lot of the toys that we play with. For me, when I played with those toys, I wanted them in the image of the heroes that I admired. I really cared a lot about that, actually. If you would have given me, for example, the same figurine, but it had Darth Vader's head on it, then I wouldn't have wanted to play with that, because I didn't want to be Darth Vader. I wanted to be Luke Skywalker, okay?

Recently, the idea of image has come up several places. According to a recent court ruling, universities must now share the revenue that they make with the athletes whose name, image, and likeness that they use. So they can pay athletes now. So all the money that they're making in merchandise and selling tickets, the athletes are now getting some of that revenue. And the reason is because the university uses the name, image, and likeness of the athlete, right?

In normal conversation, we use the word image. We talk about somebody's self-image, or we talk about a celebrity's public image. We talk about image all the time. And when it comes to Christianity, image takes on a particularly significant meaning. The Bible goes to great lengths to call human beings image bearers. The idea of image matters. In fact, the Bible forbids making images that are supposed to look like God, right? The idea of an image is very important. And at the peak of this image discussion is Colossians 1:15,

is Jesus himself at the peak of this image conversation. Whenever it opens in Colossians 1:15a, it says, he, Jesus, is the image of the invisible God. And this is more than just a clever turn of phrase. This holds significant meaning. This has huge implications for us, because the Bible says in 2 Corinthians 3, 18, that we Christians are being transformed into Jesus' image. It says in Romans 8, 29, that God is conforming us to the image of his son. It uses this language on purpose. So we were made in the image of God, whatever sin entered the picture, That image was marred, that image was broken, torn, messed up. We have vestiges of that image, but we aren't really complete. We aren't really in the finalized image of God yet. We are still image bearers, but that image is pretty messed up from sin. Jesus then is the image of the invisible God. In other words, he is the template.

He is the person, He is the role model. And it shows that our lives, by talking about Jesus being the image of God, it shows that our lives can take the shape of Jesus. That if we are being transformed into Jesus' image, that it will shape the kind of people that we are becoming, how we approach people. How we approach people that we love or even strangers, it should shape that. It should shape how we extend kindness. And if it shows that our lives can take the shape of Jesus, it should also show us that our lives can take the shape of another image. In scripture, whenever it talked about these foreign images, it talked about idols. So I realized that talking about idols in the Old Testament is a bit foreign. It's a bit weird because when we want to attribute something good in our lives, we don't feel the necessity to actually make something out of gold and then worship it.

Okay, I get that. The idea of idol worship in the Old Testament really had way more to do with people worshiping something that they could control. It was something small. It was something they could say, hey, this great thing happened to us, and we can attribute it to this thing over here, but this thing over here isn't gonna ask anything of us. It was an end around.

So in the scriptures, this image, it took the form of animals or angels or just made of metal or wood. In the present day, it doesn't take that form, it takes the form of a selfie. To put it simply, we can either be shaped into Jesus' image or we can maintain our own image. Those are our choices. When it comes to image, we don't have a lot of options. We're either gonna be conformed into the image of Jesus, or we are gonna try to maintain, to manufacture our own image. And so this morning, really what I wanna do, I wanna run through Colossians 1, 15 through 23, and I wanna contrast both of these, the idea of being shaped into Jesus' image and maintaining our own image.

And I wanna see just what Colossians 1, 15 through 23 says about Jesus, and then what does that say about us being shaped into Jesus' image? And then what would be maybe the opposite of that or what would be different than that? So back to Colossians 1, chapter 15, Jesus is the image of the invisible God. So if that's true, then Jesus is God revealing himself, opening himself up to people. When you read the Bible, a good way to understand it is, and we talk about it all the time, as the revelation of God, okay? But this is God specifically revealing himself to people. And I don't know if you've ever thought about it this way, but when you reveal yourself to someone, you kind of open yourself up to criticism. You kind of open yourself up to have to explain why you've done things. You're gonna have to open yourself up to why you made this decision or not, or that decision or not, right?

And what you see in scripture is a lot of that. You see a lot of God saying, this is who I am, this is where we're going, this is what I'm doing with these people, Here's why this had to happen. Here's, and it's not always so direct, but it is that. It is God revealing himself to us. God's plan for salvation includes self-disclosure. It includes vulnerability if we can speak of God that way. God opens himself up to us in the form of Jesus. Jesus is the image of the invisible God. Jesus is God revealing himself to people. And if that is true, then being shaped in Jesus' image is going to mean hospitality to really to unchurched people. It really means hospitality to everybody. If we're going to be shaped in the image of Jesus, then we need to understand that revealing ourselves to people, being vulnerable with people, opening up to people is actually walking in a way that is imitating Jesus.

You think about whenever Jesus came to earth, what did he do? He opened his life up to these 12 guys, actually a lot more people than that, and he lived life with them. He opened himself up to them. He taught them. He reasoned with them. He helped them understand things, that it was vulnerable. It was a self-disclosure. It was opening up. And so if we're going to do it, if we're going to be that way, right? If we're going to imitate Jesus, we're going to be shaped in His image.

Think about it this way. Every person that Jesus interacted with were people that were far from God. And Jesus opened up his life to them and started the kingdom movement. I really can't put it more simply than that, that Jesus opened himself up to them. And so if we're going to do that same thing, then we need to understand that our lives aren't just for us, that our lives are for other people, that we open up not just our lives, but our homes, not just our homes, but our time, not just our time, but friendships. We open all of those things up to people. Recommend and reading on this, there's a book called The Simplest Way to Change the World, Biblical Hospitality as a Way of Life by Dustin Willis and Brandon in Clements. And it's actually on our bookshelf. If you want to just grab a copy, like just, it's for borrowing, don't you dare steal. But if you would like to borrow a copy for

a couple weeks and then bring it back, that'd be great. We have a couple of copies out there. I think three or left. We had four, somebody already got one. I know. That's why we can't have anything nice. If you go out those doors and to my right, your left, there's a small bookshelf right against the wall and on the top left of that bookshelf is that book, the simplest way to change the world. I would recommend that you read it. They promote ideas like calendaring open time for your home. You say, okay, Monday afternoons, our home's going to be open or Thursday nights, our home's going to be open. They talk about one of the ideas they say, you always make the time to meet a new neighbor. You always do it. No matter what you're doing, you stop and you meet the new neighbor or you say hi. My favorite part is that they recommend taking your grill out of your backyard and putting

it in your front yard. And it's so dumb, right? So simple, but it's so profound. It can be at least as a way, because you're just sitting there grilling. You know, you're begging to be talked to, right? You're saying, I'm open for conversation. My grill is in the front yard. We'd probably have to pour some cement, but maybe we can make it work. I don't know. We got to figure out a way to be in the front yard a little bit more.

As 2022 approaches, and that's coming up in just a handful of days, we are going to be emphasizing connection a lot more. We're going to be talking about this a lot with Vision Sunday, which is going to be in mid-January, but we're going to be emphasizing connection a lot more with connect groups. And really, our connect groups are gonna help extend our church's hospitality to the surrounding community, to proverbially pull our grill into the front yard, right? The front yard, the three acres of green that we have right next to our church building, we wanna put the grill there. Not really, don't put the grill there. But what we really wanna do, We want to metaphorically put the grill out and make time for conversation with people. Guys, that's what VBS Rec Week is all about. That's what National Night Out is all about. Those are connect events. And it's about really putting our...

For National Night Out, we actually do pull the grill out in the front yard. So there, we're out of the metaphor. Now we're into the reel. The reason that we do that is not just to smile. The reason that we do that is to build connections with people, to open up to people, to make make ourselves available to people. And so, if we are being shaped into Jesus' image, then it's going to look like hospitality. But if we are trying to maintain our own image, really, that just means isolating. Here's a few ways you can know that you are trying to maintain your own image, right? If you're more worried about people believing that you are holy, then believing that Jesus is real? Like if that's actually a dichotomy for you, then you might be isolating it. If you just can't get over the way unchurched people act and you can't... You somehow miss that connection that God extends that grace, that same grace to

you, right? If you can't do that, if you just can't get over how some unchurched people act, then you probably are missing some of the idea that God... You don't act good enough for God either. And that God needs to extend a ton of grace to you just to listen to you pray. And me too, right? All of us. And so for you to have some kind of limit of just, I just can't take it when somebody does that or talks about this or votes this way or sees this issue this way, man, look, there is so much grace going your way. The fact that you can't connect that to extending grace to somebody else, it probably means that you're more worried about your own image than being shaped into Jesus' image. There's a lot more here, so let's keep going. What else about Jesus? In the latter half of 15 through 17, it says that Jesus is the firstborn or preeminent over all creation,

and that by him all things are made, created in heaven and earth, visible, invisible, thrown dominion, rulers, authority, all things were created through him and for him, and he is before all things, in him all things hold together. This is a very poetic way to say that Jesus is supreme power. And let me be really clear, I'm not saying that Jesus is powerful, I'm saying that Jesus is the composition of reality itself. I'm saying that Jesus is planning, has planned, is carrying out the plan of all existence from beginning to end while you sleep. right? That Jesus is not simply powerful, He is power, He is supreme power. Being shaped by Jesus then is finding His supremacy, particularly in your crazy. You need to find Jesus' supremacy and I think we can see it like in nature. We're like, oh yes Lord, I see your supremacy in the trees and the mountains and the majesty of the sunrise and all that.

But when it comes to work and you're backed up and you've got everything kind of jammed up and it's kind of your fault, it's hard to see Jesus's supremacy there. Right? But we need to find his supremacy, his supreme power, even particularly in your crazy, in your chaos, the darkness that you can't see past. Jesus is over it. thing that is ruining your life right now, Jesus is using that for his purposes, is not surprised, is ready to do something with that. It's ready for you to cooperate with him in the midst of your crazy. Jesus has a plan and he wants to walk through that with you. He wants us to walk through that together as a church. In fact, the only reason that your life seems crazy is precisely because you are not in control.

If you weren't in control, you know, other people might freak out, you're like, everything's in control. Sorry, some of you, the voice might be higher, but the only reason that your life seems crazy is because you think it's out of control and it's not. Your life's in control, It's just not in your control, which I admit is hard. I like control. I like knowing where things are, and I like having to order in the plan and all that. I mean, I get it, I do. But this surrendering to Jesus' plan in your life, man, that's the reality. The reality is that Jesus is in control, and that plan's happening without your permission. It's going to be happening, and you can either cooperate with it or you can kick against it. But the Lord has blessing and joy and grace and goodness and kindness and all these things that are shaping you into His image when you cooperate with Him. So if being shaped in His

image then is finding His supremacy, then maintaining our own image would be finding your own supremacy. Okay. I know that a ton of you just took family portraits, right, Tis the season, family portraits, and here's how they work, right? You set up the camera, you pose, you get a good image, and then the postcard is set. Then you like print it, and you mail it, and everything is good. That is great for a postcard. That is a terrible way to conduct your life. It's a terrible way. You cannot live for the postcard image. You can't always have a smile on. You can't always be doing great.

You know, like, I know that we're always blessed and you're always right whenever you say, how are you doing? Well, I'm blessed. I mean, I get that. That's true and accurate. I know you don't always feel blessed, right? We're not always needing to look like things are great on the outside. Sometimes, man, and I would just encourage you on this, And sometimes when somebody asks you how you were doing and you're not doing great, just say, I'm not doing great. I don't know how to talk about it right now, but I'm not doing great. Just pray for me. I mean, it, man, you better hope they mean it when they ask you how you're doing, but, and if they didn't, they will after that, that's for sure. But the encouragement is, yes, the encouragement is though, man, be okay sharing your week weaknesses. Be okay saying, yeah, I'm still a work in progress. I'm still figuring this

out. Look, man, I'm a pastor, right? I probably deal with this pressure more than the average bear of just needing to look like everything's okay. It is grueling. It is hard. This is why I have a life group, right? Where I can go to my life group and just get like, guys, I feel like my life's a dumpster fire right now. I feel like I'm not in control of anything. I feel like I'm not being intentional with anything. It's all just going to hell in a hand basket. It's terrible. My life's terrible. I feel terrible about how the way things are going. I need to be able to say that to some people. I don't always need to say that on Facebook, right? But I do need to say that to some people, okay? I do need to be able to be real with people, postcard living is difficult to pull off. It's really impossible. Jesus invites us to trust him in the midst of our crazy and admit

that we are at work in progress. You need people in your life that you can admit this to. So Jesus, he reveals who God is to others, and we do the same thing in hospitality. Jesus reigns supreme. He is supreme power and we can give him our crazy. What else is true about Jesus? Just verse 18 says that Jesus, and it's a weird turn here, he is the head of the body, the church. That's kinda, this might be like a, wait, we're talking about like creation and thrones and the minions and all, and then now he's the head of the body, the church. Okay, let's just keep going with it. Jesus is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. So Jesus leads the church as its head. Jesus, and I want to explain the language here, Jesus is first born from the dead exactly because everyone that Jesus sets free goes from death to life. And Jesus was the first one to go

from death to life eternal, life everlasting, right? So Lazarus was raised from the dead, but then he died again, okay? And it sounded like it didn't take, okay? It was that it wasn't this eternal resurrection, okay? That Jesus, and we talked about this a lot last week about how Jesus defeated death, that slavery to sin and death. Any church is made up of people who are made new in Jesus, and Jesus is their leader, right? And look, I know that I have been given authority in this church, and I appreciate that, but I am not the leader of this church. Jesus is the leader of this church. In Scripture, I'm called an under shepherd in a couple of different places for a reason, because Jesus is the shepherd.

And Lord willing, we don't see a lot of power struggles in our church and our future, but anytime I feel like there's a power struggle going on, my go to is to say, listen, you think you're wrestling with me, and you're not. You have a problem with Jesus, so you've got to go wrestle that power away from him. I'm going to be over here. I'm just going to be trying to do what Jesus asked me to do. You could be with that. You could be not. But we're all following Jesus. And man, for our church, excuse me, for our church, Jesus being the head, it's a big deal. deal. If we're gonna be shaped into Jesus's image, then we need to function as a part of a local church. Now, I know that might sound crazy to you, but go with me here for a second.

And I know I need to be gentle here because our American sensibilities, they come out strong. We are individualistic. We don't default to being collectivistic, like we like to kind of assert our own individuality, pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, etc. And I don't think that's necessarily bad. However, I do think you can cloud what's going on here. A local church, in other words, a physical expression of a church. So we can talk about like the universal church, the big C church, and that's cool. And I'm not saying that doesn't exist or whatever. What I am saying though, is that if somebody says, I'm part of the Big C universal church, I'm just not part of a local church,

they're mistaken on what those things are. A local church is a physical expression of the Big C church. There's a couple of reasons for this. That's a really long conversation, but it is enough to say this, that the local church, the physical local church, people that you are in covenant with, that you know, that know you, that are kind of, you're just kind of, you know, like rubbing up against them, they're rubbing against, you know, you're kind of like, your faults, you know, are kind of exposed, their prickly parts are kind of hitting you every once in a while, you know, it's not always fun and games, right? But it's being a part of a family. It's being a part of a family. When you're a part of a family, you're just emotionally, spiritually, you're in close quarters, right? You are committed to one another, and it is difficult in a way that is different than if you just say, well, I'm just part of the big C church.

And from the wording, you can actually see that the church is not a place, the church is a body. Jesus's head of the body, the church, those are the same thing. Jesus is not physically like some head on a building, he's the head of the body. And so maintaining our own image then would be trying to be a church unto yourself. Again, an appeal to our rugged individualism is very strong here. We, in fact, even the appeal to compassion is strong. We hear and we've seen and we've experienced people that are disaffected by church, by a local church, a local expression of a church. They're disaffected, they've been shunned, they've been shut out, they've been hurt, they've been lied to, they've been manipulated. Those things happen. Man, those things happen. They do. And there's no excuse for them, for those things happening.

And when people go through something like that, the temptation is just to hunker down and to shut everything else out. And in those situations, we are and we should be sympathetic. We should treat that carefully. However, and this bears repeating, a church is not a space, it's not a physical space where you individually connect with God. Okay. Now I know plenty of people, plenty, and I've heard this my whole life actually, where we say, well, you know, we're not part of a local church, but I go and I go hike on Saturdays and that's my church. And I know what they're trying to say, but they're using really bad words to say it, okay? Because they're confusing what the Lord has set aside as a church with saying, I'm just going to go and pray out loud and talk with the Lord and spend time with the Lord, spend time in His presence. All that is good, right, holy, needed, and I encourage it. It

It ain't church though. It ain't church. It just ain't church. A church in Scripture, I will describe it positively, is a family with whom you have a shared promise or covenant. This promise is to care for one another, to share resources, to submit to one another, and to submit to authority. It's to promise to outdo one another in showing honor. And hear me, even when some of us break that promise, it doesn't mean we quit being a part of a local body. It doesn't mean we get to just walk away. Being under that promise together is not a promise to be perfect. Just like your wedding vows, right? same story. It's not a promise to be perfect. It's a promise to talk about it whenever it's not. It's a promise to have a discussion. It's a promise to work through when there's infighting in our church. And look, now I don't wish that, but it's gonna happen. We got 100 or so sinners in a room. It's gonna happen.

We're gonna fight. We're gonna disagree. We're gonna say things we don't need to say, we're going to be tired, we're going to be angry, something. I'm going to preach too long, you're going to be mad at me for it. And so, and so when, when those things happen, the promise that holds us together is the promise to talk about it. It's not saying, Oh, you broke your promise. You talk behind my back. I'm out. That's not how this works. It's a promise to talk about it, not a promise to be perfect. and by the Holy Spirit's help, man, we stay together, we stay united, we work things out. That is hard work. That is tough sledding. That is conversation after conversation. I needed to have a conversation. I called Dan Hay. Was it 10 days ago I called you? And I said, I was in a meeting with Dan Hay and I said something and I was super gruff, right? I was just, I know it's hard to imagine,

but I was mean and flippant, I know. But it didn't occur to me that I was being mean and flippant until a couple of days later. But then a couple of days later, I was like, oh, so I called them up and I said, hey, I was mean and flippant. I'm really sorry. And he's like, I forgive you. And we moved on. Testify. Yes, sir. OK. It happened. I was like, I ain't lying. If you follow Jesus, you are part of his church. But being part of his church is being a part of a local expression of that church, a physical expression. Let's keep reading. 19 and 20, Colossians chapter one. For in him, in Jesus, all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. Jesus is our sacrificial reconciliation to God.

We find our humanity in him, We find our worth and our meaning in Him. Jesus displays to us a breathtaking faithfulness at great cost. Jesus, He displays His fidelity toward us while we were sinners, while we were giving Him the finger, while we were telling Him to go somewhere else. He was saying, no, no, no, no, no. I'm going to be faithful to you. I'm going to die for you, and I'm going to work to make you holy. I'm going to work to put you into my image. That is breathtaking faithfulness and self sacrifice. So then being shaped in Jesus's image then is embracing a self-sacrificing life that we spend our entire lives at His behest, on His behalf. Whatever plans and dreams that Jesus has for us, that is what we need to embrace. And the sacrificial part is when we have plans for our own life. I was struck again by the Christmas story, whenever we were talking about Mary. And it's hard to really understand

how Mary's life was turned upside down. We're so used to like, oh, Mary, mother of God. But like, before Mary was Mary, mother of God, she was Mary the teenager, right? And Mary the teenager, I'm sure had hopes and dreams of just, I don't know, living life, right? Not being the mother of the Messiah. And I know she was thankful, I get all that. But there was still a part of her that needed to just put all those other things away. All those dreams needed to go by the wayside. It wasn't gonna happen. Normal wasn't gonna work out. We need to embrace that. Trusting that we will not be put to shame, that Jesus' plans for us are good. Maintaining our own image then is just one word, man. It's just winning. Just winning. In any conversation, relationship, partnership, anyone, one side is going to gain more than the other. It's just going to happen. Nothing's ever perfectly 50-50.

Any conversation can be life-giving or life-draining. Any relationship can work that way too. Any partnership can work that way too. There's a way to direct your life, even at the conversation level, so that you always Maybe you only talk about things that you know the most about. Maybe you only talk about things that kind of serve whatever purpose you want, like keeping the peace. So you're not going to have any troublesome conversations, right? And so you direct conversation that way. You disallow arguments that you don't think aren't important, right? There's a way to live your whole life to try to win everything.

That is maintaining your own image. Even at the conversation level, I would encourage you be self sacrificing. What if in the next conversation you were having, well, the next interaction that you were having, you took the form of a servant by letting them steer the conversation, by letting them say what's going to happen next? Even the topic of discussion. Just letting it go, living that way. It allows you to understand even in conversation what it is to be a servant. Let's keep reading. Verses 21 through 23, and you who once were alienated and hostile in mind doing evil deeds, he is now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him. If indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven,

and of which I, Paul, became a minister. I wanna focus on the first two verses first. Jesus is our holiness, right? So Jesus died in order to present you blameless and holy. Okay? And I'm quoting here, right? He died and reconciled us to God in order to present us holy and blameless before Him. Being shaped in Jesus' image then is walking in that holiness. Right? This is a holiness not that you need to earn. Right? And I know, man, we could get so sideways on this, but this is really, really important for you to understand. You don't earn the holiness by walking in the holiness. You've already been given the holiness. right? So you don't need to earn it. There's nothing you can do to earn it actually. The only thing you can do is to cooperate with that. Walking with Jesus is walking in a holiness that you have already been given. It's already yours. It's already there. You don't need

to invent it. You don't need to manufacture it. It's already there. You cooperate with that. So how does this work out in real life? Okay. Many of us are going to fight whenever we are doing something good, right? If we're in the middle of doing something good, we're in the middle of doing dishes without being asked. Oh, baby, that is five stars right there. You're in the middle of doing something good, right? You're doing something good. Well, what if, before you were doing that, what if the Holy Spirit came to you and said, like, hey, why don't you do the dishes? Somebody would really like it. Or why don't you do the dishes? It would be a blessing to so-and-so, or something like that. What we want to do at that point is we want to take all of our motivations and put them under the microscope and be like, well, why do I want to do this? Am I trying to

get favor here? Am I trying to, you know, maybe I'm trying to make myself good. I don't know. Some Some of you don't go through this rigmarole with dishes, you do it with other things, which is fine. I do it with dishes. When you go through that, when you are dealing with all of that, there is great comfort in knowing that all you're doing is you're cooperating with holiness that's already been given to you. It doesn't matter if you're good enough.

On some level, on some level, It doesn't even matter why you're doing it. Just do it, right? Just do it, just be a blessing. Just cooperate with the holiness that's right there, right? And yes, motivations are important and they're gonna come along, right? But at some point, man, cooperating with that holiness is just shutting all that internal conversation down and just doing it. Just being obedient to what the Lord is setting in front of you. You were never good enough. If you say like, oh, I'm not good enough, like I'm not good enough for God to love me, I'm not good enough to do this thing with the church, I'm not good enough to, yeah, exactly. Indeed, you aren't good enough. Neither am I, we never were. Jesus's holiness makes us what we are. So then without this understanding, without really understanding that Jesus holiness is given to us, what theologians call

an alien righteousness given to us. Without that, the only choice is to maintain our own image and to fabricate our own holiness, fabricate our own holiness. This is, in verse 23, it says, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you've heard. The way that you deviate off that is thinking that you need to earn what's been given to you. When you begin fabricating your own holiness, when you begin having to justify everything that you do, when you begin having to look right, when you begin having to blame other people when something goes wrong, even when it's your fault, when you're so preoccupied with making sure that your motives are pure, that you're clean, that you're... You are working feverishly to maintain your own holiness. That is a terrible way to live. It's not the gospel.

And so to kind of sum up all of these, in all of these, right? If we're gonna be shaped into Jesus' image, if we're gonna be conformed, transformed into Jesus' image, what is that gonna look like? That's gonna look like hospitality to unchurched people. it's gonna look like functioning as part of a local church, it's gonna look at like embracing a self-sacrificial life and walking in Jesus's holiness, not your own. Let me just say, all that prescription, that's impossible to do by yourself. You cannot do it. If you say like, okay, I've read... I wrote all this down, okay, checklist, I'm gonna do this every day. Okay, well, good luck with that, but it's not gonna work. I'll just spoil the ending for you. You need help. You need a local body, right? You need people in your life.

This is why our church has life groups. So life groups are two to four people that help each other reach out to un-church people. They help each other embrace sacrificial living. They help each other confess sin. They help each other walk in holiness, in the holiness that they've been given. The reason that we have life is because we need reminders for each of these. It is impossible to do on your own. It's impossible to remember all of these things. But when you have people in your life group that are saying, Drew, something's off. Let's talk about it. Or, you know, Drew, you're doing a lot of blaming. What's going on? Those are the kinds of conversations that can help you begin to untangle this idea that you're maintaining your own image or that you're making yourself into your own image and can free you up to be shaved into the image of Jesus. We all need help doing that.

If you want to learn more about life groups, you can take the gospel course. The gospel course starts January 9th, and it is a great way to really help understand, help you understand what's going on in your own life and outside perspective is always really good. Our student ministries are going to be starting life groups in the wake of our disciple now. So our disciple now is going to be at the end of January. And when that happens, we're going to be using some of that to launch into our student life groups. And so you can be looking for that in the months to come. But right now, what I want to do is I want to... I just want to ask you a few questions as we close, as we enter into our time of imitation.

If whenever I was talking, it just sounded like a laundry list of things that you could never do, then it could be that you are not walking in cooperation with that holiness, right? That you are working to maintain your own image instead of being shaped into Jesus' image. My encouragement to you, the first step on being shaped into Jesus' image image is giving up. You got to give up. You got to let go. Jesus is going to come to you. He's going to present himself to you. He's going to be the image of the invisible God. He's going to make himself real to you. But there's a point at which you've got to say yes. You've got to take his hand. You've got to say, okay, I'm in. Whatever's going to happen, it's going to happen. But I want to follow Jesus all the way. If you're interested in doing that, we're going to have our time of invitation, and you can come forward, and

I'll be right here in the front row. You can come forward and receive prayer. We can talk through a decision that you want to make. For some of you that's going to be joining the church, for some of you that's going to be being baptized, in any of those scenarios, it starts with a conversation. And so as we stand and sing, let's have that conversation. Ladies.

O come, let us adore Him O come, let us adore Him O come, let us adore Him Christ the Lord O sing, choirs of angels Sing in exultation O sing, all ye citizens of heaven above. Glory to God, glory in the highest. O come, let us adore Him. O come, let us adore Him. O come, let us adore Him Christ the Lord, all hail, O Lord, we greet Thee, born this happy morning, O Jesus, for evermore be Thy name adored. Word of thy Father, now in flesh appearing. O come, let us adore Him. O come, let us adore Him. O come, let us adore Him. Christ the Lord. O come, let us adore Him, Christ the Lord.