Confidence in God’s Transforming Power [A]

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Transcript:

We’re going to be in Philippians chapter 1 this morning. Philippians chapter 1 and also Romans chapter 12 if you want to mark your spot there as well. I started two weeks ago talking to you about the subject of confidence.

I didn’t share anything with you last week because Brother Williams was here. I appreciated him being here and sharing the work in Mexico. But I started talking to you about the subject of confidence, and there are several places where the Bible, where the New Testament addresses this idea of confidence and some things that the Bible says that we as believers are supposed to have confidence in.

And one of those areas, and the fact that we lack confidence in God sometimes in this area, can be illustrated by a little story. I used to be a much thinner person. I know that tends to, I see hands going.

That used to be, I’m sure that’s true for all of us. If nothing else, you know, we were a few pounds when we were born and now we’re many times that. But for years, up until I moved back to Oklahoma at the beginning of last year, as a matter of fact, my driver’s license said something very different from what was reality.

Not that I was purposely lying, but that’s just what it said. They never asked me to change it. It said my weight when I was 16 years old.

I need to get a little closer back to that weight. And I have confided in friends about how much weight I need to lose, and their answer is always the same thing. From where?

I mean, I guess that should make me feel good if they don’t think I’m huge. I guess I’m just dense. And not in the head.

Maybe they’re two. But I guess I’m just dense because they don’t seem to think that I look like I weigh as much as I do when I tell people, and I’m not going to, if you want to know, I’ll tell you, but not from the pulpit. When I tell people how much I weigh, they never believe me, which again, I guess should make me feel good.

I was much thinner until I had kids, and I don’t know how it’s their fault, but it must be, because I started putting on the pounds when they came along. And it’s not a big deal. It’s not a big deal in the sense of I’ve got to lose this to look a certain way. Obviously, I don’t care how I look.

Health-wise, I’ve talked to my doctor. She says everything’s fine. I go for a full workup every May.

But I can feel the extra weight I carry around. Some of you may be in the same boat. I feel those extra 30-plus pounds that I think, my goodness, how much more energy I would have if I wasn’t carrying around a sack of dog food.

essentially that amount of weight. If I just got that weight off, I think I would feel better. I would have more energy to chase the kids.

I would have more energy for this. Maybe I wouldn’t be so tired all the time. Excuse me.

Anyway, I’m not here to talk about my weight this morning except to say that as I’ve thought this, at various times over the last couple of years, I’ve thought, okay, I’m going to do something about it. Shortly after I came back to Oklahoma, I joined a gym. I started doing the right things.

I was going and walking. That’s a story. I’m really bad at exercise.

That’s a story for another day. It often looks like a dog on a treadmill. More than once, I’ve fallen off the treadmill.

I always put on a big show for the people at the gym with something funny that ends up happening to me. Joined a gym, started trying to eat right, and very quickly got frustrated. Here’s where I’m going with this.

Very quickly got frustrated. when I didn’t see pounds dropping immediately or inches dropping immediately because it’s just supposed to happen immediately. It’s just supposed to come easily.

To remind myself, I didn’t pack those pounds on in one day. They’re not coming off in one day either. But you do the hard work of going to the gym.

You do the hard work of eating right when you just want Whataburger. And you do all the hard work and you expect to see results immediately and when the transformation doesn’t happen, when you’re not seeing results every day, when you’re not seeing the pounds drop off, it gets to be very frustrating and you think, or at least I think, I’m just never going to lose the weight. I’m just never going to, no change is happening here.

Nothing is happening. In reality, in reality, ladies and gentlemen, it’s been a week. There probably were some at least ounces coming off.

There probably was the beginning of some change happening, But what happened was I got too frustrated with the slowness of the transformation and began to despair that any transformation was even taking place. You don’t have to raise your hands. I’ll probably just know by the look on your face, but have any of you been in the same boat?

And it doesn’t even have to be about weight. You’ve thought, I need to do better about X, Y, and Z. Maybe it’s being more disciplined about weight.

Maybe it’s being more disciplined about finances. Maybe it’s, I need to start doing this better. whatever it is where you’re thinking in life, I need to make a change here, I need to make a transformation, and you start doing things toward that, and you get a few days in, maybe a few weeks in, and you don’t see the drastic transformation that you think should be there, and you begin to think, well, there’s not anything happening at all.

Have you ever been there in your life? Folks, sometimes we despair in the same way when it comes to the power of God to transform us. I say this all the time that God’s sanctification of his people is both instant and ongoing.

There is a sense in which God changes us and it’s immediate. Now for every believer who comes to Christ, for every believer who trusts Christ for their salvation, there’s an immediate change where God says, now you are mine. Just because I say so, you’re mine now.

You belong to me. You’ve been purchased by the blood of Christ and your mind. So when it comes to who we are in God, who God says we are, that has immediately changed.

And there is some change, some transformation that begins to take place in the heart. But as we all know, especially if you’ve been a believer for more than a little while, you know that there’s not a complete transformation that takes place overnight where everything in your life suddenly is great, where suddenly you are just sinless perfection and nobody can touch you. We realize that that transformation, that total 180 degree transformation does not take place overnight.

It is something where God begins from that moment of conversion, that moment where he sets you apart and says you are mine. God begins to work on us and begins to shape us. And yes, there is ongoing change and there is gradual change.

And sometimes it comes in in leaps and bounds. And sometimes it comes in dribs and drabs. But it’s something where God shapes us for the rest of our natural life to be more and more like Jesus Christ, but it doesn’t happen overnight in that sense, where our behavior is suddenly completely different.

And even folks, even people with a dramatic conversion story where you can tell a difference in their lives and behavior overnight are still not completely transformed into what they should be overnight. The Apostle Paul was a great example of this. Jesus spoke to him on the road to Damascus.

He immediately stopped persecuting, stopped murdering Christians and started helping people become Christians. That’s a pretty immediate change. That’s a pretty drastic change.

But even Paul would say later on that I’m less than the least of all saints. I’m the chiefest among sinners. He would talk about how the things that I should do, I don’t do, and the things that I would not do, I do them anyway.

Paul struggled with sin for the rest of his life. And we probably all know people who’ve come to Christ and have had a dramatic conversion where there’s just been this immediate change in their lives, and yet even they would say, I’m not completely what I ought to be. And folks, we can look at our lives as believers.

And I am speaking to believers this morning. We can look at our lives as believers and say, well, I still feel like I’m the same person I was a year ago. I feel like I still struggle with the same things that I struggled with 10 years ago.

God, I’m still falling into the same old sin that got me 20 years ago. And we can feel like, is there really any change, any transformation taking place? Maybe I’m that one person that God can’t change.

See, we start to doubt God’s power to transform us. But transformation, ladies and gentlemen, the transformation that takes place that God works in our lives is not something that He reserved for a super spiritual first class of Christians. The transformation of our lives is something that God intends for all of His people.

And you know, sometimes, as I said before, it may come in one giant leap. Sometimes it might come in a lot of baby steps. Sometimes the baby steps are so small that we don’t notice the changes as they’re happening until we really look back across them.

You know, I see my kids every day. I don’t realize how different they look from what they used to look. I was uploading photos to my computer last week.

It’s really nifty. It categorizes them by the date the photo was taken. And this kind of creeps me out a little bit.

it can recognize the faces and put them in their own category. It says, this is Madeline. This is Benjamin.

This is, you know, whoever. And so I can click on Madeline and scroll down from the photos on the day she was born and scroll down and day by day, week by week down to where she is now. Oh my goodness, I forget.

I forgot when she looked like that. And you can see from 2012, September 2012, when she was born to now three years later. My goodness, the transformation that has taken place.

But see, you don’t notice it when it’s every day and just baby steps. Folks, a lot of times our spiritual growth, our spiritual progress is the same way. God has told us that it is his will for us that our lives be changed.

It is God’s will for us that we be transformed. That’s why he said in Romans chapter 12, now this is Paul writing, but it’s under the inspiration of the Spirit of God. Romans chapter 12, verses 1 through 2.

I beseech you therefore, brethren, I beg you, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, wholly acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. He said, I wish that you would sacrifice, you would surrender your entire body, your entire being to God. He says that’s the only reasonable thing to do.

You know, when we give our whole lives to God, when we say this all belongs to you, I’m going to do exactly what you want me to do. We’re not being super spiritual. We’re not earning extra credit in God’s economy. We’re just doing the reasonable thing.

We’re doing what’s expected of us. But he goes on to say, And be not conformed to this world. That word, excuse me, word and world apparently are tripping me up this morning.

Be not conformed to this world. That word conformed means to take the shape of, to look like. You want an example of that?

How about a chameleon? They tend to take on the appearance of whatever’s around them. They blend in.

Think about a man out hunting in camouflage. He’s conforming to his environment so that all the little creatures of the forest don’t realize he’s there. And not just camouflage.

Apparently they put all kinds of gross things all over them so the animals can’t smell them too. You can tell I’m from the city. You know what?

I don’t have a problem with anybody doing that. They are conforming to the forest. They are blending in. God says do not blend in with this world.

Do not begin to act like this world. And a lot of times that’s the problem with our churches today is that we’ve begun to, instead of changing the culture around us, we’ve allowed the culture to change us and dictate to us what is acceptable. God says don’t conform to the world around you.

The world that rejects God, the world that rejects God’s principles, don’t conform to that. He says, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind. If you’ve never thought, I know we’ve all heard this verse, but if you’ve never thought about it before, that word transformed comes from the same Greek word from which we get metamorphosis.

A caterpillar spins a chrysalis. I know we were all taught it was a cocoon. It wasn’t until I started teaching science I realized a cocoon is for moths and a chrysalis is for butterflies.

A caterpillar spins a chrysalis and goes into this thing for a period of time and undergoes a process that we still don’t completely understand and comes out as something completely different. That’s metamorphosis. That’s it in a nutshell, a completely unscientific explanation of it.

It goes in one thing and comes out something completely different. The caterpillar, chrysalis, butterfly. I can’t explain that.

And yet that’s exactly what happens. That’s the same thing God is saying here is be transformed. Be metamorphosed into something else.

He says by the renewing of your mind. Now that is a command to be transformed, but it’s not a command to renew our minds. God is the one who does the renewing of the mind.

God is the one who comes in. And folks, all these words, renew, regeneration, they all hearken back to what God does when we are born again. That he transforms us.

He transforms our heart, our soul, our mind, our way of thinking. Let God change your mind. And when God changes your mind, when God renews your mind, it will show itself in your actions.

My actions are a direct result of my belief system. You know that? Your actions are a direct result of your belief system.

Whatever it is, whatever it may be, from somewhere within you, it comes from your belief system. Somebody steals, it’s because they’ve convinced themselves stealing is okay, at least in that circumstance and at least for them. Somewhere in their belief system, it comes from the fact that stealing is okay, at least in that circumstance.

You know, certain things I do or don’t do, I do or don’t do because I’m a Christian. And that forms my belief system. Or because I, you know, because I believe in responsibility to your family.

Or because I believe in free markets or whatever it is. every, I’m not just talking religion here folks, but every behavior that you have comes from somewhere in your belief system. And when God changes our mind, when God renews our mind, we will be transformed.

And so he says, be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Let God change you from the inside out. It’s a command and it’s a promise and it’s an expectation, not just for the super spiritual, but for all of us as believers that we be transformed.

And yet we lose hope and we lose faith in God’s ability to transform us because we only see every day what’s happening. And again, we say, God, I’m still who I was yesterday. God, I still have the same struggles that I had a year ago.

God, I’m still dealing with the same sins. They’re still tripping me up after all these years. I guess you really can’t transform me.

But folks, the transforming power of God is one of these things that the Bible wants us to have, that God wants us to have confidence in. His ability to change us from the inside out. I know that sometimes when we don’t see it every day, when we’re with ourselves every day and all we see is right here and right now, it’s easy to lose sight of what God is doing.

But God has commanded transformation. God has promised transformation. And God can provide transformation.

Those sound like they would be great points for the message. Those aren’t even the points. Those just came to me.

But God promises, and folks, He has the power to deliver what He promises. And it’s one of those things that the New Testament tells us, be confident in. Now where I get this is from Philippians chapter 1, if you’ve not already turned there.

Philippians chapter 1, and we’re going to start with verse 3. I thank my God upon every remembrance of you. These are people that he knew and thought of fondly.

Because every time he thought of them, he gave thanks to God. There are those you pray for and there are those you pray about sometimes. And praying about someone is not always a compliment.

But folks, these were people that every time they came to mind, there was no animosity, there was no.. . It was just, God, I’m so thankful that you put them in my life.

He said, I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all, making requests with joy. So he was remembering them. He was giving thanks to God for them.

He was asking God to bless them in things. That’s why he was making requests for them in every prayer with joy. It wasn’t a drudgery.

I’m going to pray for you because that’s what I’m supposed to do. It was an honor and it was a joy for him to pray for them. He said, for your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now.

He said, I’m grateful for the fellowship that we have had in the gospel from the first day until now. From the day that they were converted until now, they had a fellowship in the gospel. Now that fellowship comes from, first of all, the unity that we have in Jesus Christ. Folks, if we have nothing else in common, I’m talking about us in this room, if we have nothing else in common this morning, we have Jesus Christ. We have Jesus Christ. Now, this is a fairly small town.

Many of you have lived here for decades and have known each other, grown up together. If that weren’t the case, though, if that weren’t the case, you would still have Jesus Christ. I’ve been in churches before where I’ve thought, these people are some of my best friends in the world. These people are like family to me.

We have nothing in common. We probably wouldn’t be friends if it weren’t for Jesus Christ. And yet we have this, and I don’t mean that to say that I wouldn’t like you, but just for an example, these people are all Razorbacks. All Razorback fans.

We have nothing in common here. And yet because of Jesus Christ, there’s this bond. There’s this connection.

There’s this unity that we have. And folks, you can go across the planet today. You can go across the planet today and meet up with people that you’ve never seen before.

you don’t even share a language and yet you share Jesus Christ. And there’s going to be some instant bond, some fellowship in the gospel. Not only that, but they have worked together in the furtherance of the gospel. When you do ministry together, when you do ministry, okay, when you really do ministry together, I’m not talking about we go to church together and we work together and we collect a paycheck together and we don’t really like each other.

When you really do ministry together, when you really do ministry together, there’s going to be a bond. And these people had not only had the bond in Jesus Christ, but the bond of serving him together and the bond of suffering for him together. And so Paul remembered them fondly and prayed for them.

And he says, I remembered you from the very first day up until now, and goes on to say in verse six, something very important, being confident of this very thing. In all my remembrance of you, I’ve been confident of this very thing, that he which He said, I’m confident. And I don’t expect you to be able to remember it word for word.

But I told you two weeks ago when I started this series what confidence means. It’s not pridefulness about I’m the best there ever was. It’s not arrogance about I can do whatever I set my mind to.

I’m the greatest. Folks, the confidence the Bible describes as an uncommon courage. I’ve written this down so I remember it. An uncommon courage that comes from being firmly convinced that what we believe is actually true.

We don’t just believe it. We know it to be true. I started out as a Christian believing these things because they were what I was taught.

Then I went and studied and examined and questioned for myself and became convinced that the things that we believe and teach are actually true. It’s not some story I believe because my parents taught me or because my Sunday school teachers taught me as a child. I am absolutely convinced that Jesus Christ existed, that He died on the cross just as the Bible said He did, that He rose again from the dead just as the Bible said He did, that He is exactly who He claimed to be.

I know it as surely as I know anything else. I’m convinced. I don’t just believe it.

I’m convinced. And when we’re convinced of something, then to be able to step out on a limb about it. And God gives us a courage that we wouldn’t normally have because, you know what, this isn’t just something I think, not just, I know this to be true.

I gave you the example two weeks ago, we were arguing about fourth downs in the car on the way down here. And I thought I was right and she thought she was right. Eventually, I backed off the argument because I believed I was right, but I wasn’t absolutely convinced.

There’s a difference. You see that difference, don’t you? between I believe it, question mark, and I’m absolutely convinced that this is the truth.

There’s a difference. And when you’re absolutely convinced, you should be willing to step out on faith and do something about it. That’s what confidence is.

Not, hey, I’m the greatest there ever was. Not, I can do anything. I’m fantastic.

But it’s the conviction that this is absolutely true. And so it doesn’t matter what it costs me. I’m going to stand for the truth.

I gave you the example. I gave you the example of the young people in Nazi Germany. who knew that they were risking their lives.

And folks ended up being beheaded because they had the audacity to stand against Hitler. They had the audacity to print pamphlets urging people to stop Hitler and the Holocaust. They gave their lives for it. And why?

Their rationale was their Christian beliefs, their understanding, many of them, their understanding of the Bible and what God taught and their conviction that it’s absolutely true what God said. And it’s absolutely true that Hitler was wrong and that the path Germany was going down was sinful. When you are that convinced of the truth of something, you’re more fearful about not doing something than you are about doing something.

Does that make sense? If you’re that convinced that what Hitler’s doing is an abomination to God, you’re going to be more afraid of standing before God having not done anything than you will be of standing before Hitler having done something. That’s what I’m talking about, about confidence.

It’s the absolute conviction. And he says, I am confident of this very thing. I am absolutely convinced.

Folks, he’s not guessing here. He’s not hoping. It’s not wishful thinking.

I think God’s going to change you into something great. He says, I’m confident of this very thing, that he who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it. He which has done a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. Now, who is the one who started a good work in them?

It was God. It was God. what was the good work well what is the good work that god does in us and continues to perform it’s our sanctification it’s changing us it’s as the bible says conforming us to the image of his son making us to be more like jesus christ as we go on through our lives and paul said that he was confident he was he was convinced and willing to stake his reputation on it that god the same one who had begun this work of transformation in the lives of the people of Philippi, that God was going to be faithful to continue it and perform it until it was complete at the day of Jesus Christ. See, we don’t ever reach perfection on this side of eternity.

God’s never finished working on us. We don’t become all that we’re supposed to be on this side of eternity. But one day we will stand complete and lacking nothing before the Lord who died for us.

And Paul is expressing here the absolute conviction, the absolute confidence that God would continue to transform them. Again, not wishful thinking, not wishful thinking, not a hope so kind of thing, not a suspicion, but he said God began this work of transforming you, and I know that he’s going to bring it to completion. Folks, I see nothing in the book of Philippians that tells us that that’s because the people at Philippi were special, somehow different from us.

Somehow they were the ones who were going to be allowed to be the spiritual ones. Folks, I believe this is God’s will for believers. I believe this is what God does for all believers, that he who began a good work in you will be faithful to perform it.

Folks, the one who began the good work in you, it wasn’t your good work at the moment of conversion. When you trusted Christ as your Savior and that forgiveness of sins came over you, folks, it wasn’t your work that did that. It was God’s grace.

He who started that good work is the same one who will continue that work of transforming you and renewing your mind. And he said, even as it is for me to think this of you all, because I have you in my heart in as much as both in my bonds and in defense and in confirmation of the gospel, you are partakers of my grace. He said, it’s fitting.

That word meat means it’s fitting. It’s only right for me to feel this way about you. I have you in you share my bonds you share my defense and confirmation of the gospels and you’re partakers of the same grace that I am in verse 8 he says for God is my record we might say here for God is my witness how greatly I long after you in the bowels of Jesus Christ that sounds odd to our modern western ears but for them the bowels were the seat of the emotions we would say in my heart they would say in the bowels Now, if you’re curious about where that came from, have you ever had a knot in your stomach over something, you know, not because you’re sick, but something emotional?

I know every time there’s conflict, I get that knot in my stomach. So I can kind of see where they’re coming from. But he’s essentially saying, God is my witness.

How greatly I long after you will say in the heart of Jesus Christ. And this I pray that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment, that you may approve things. That word approve means often to test and to prove by testing. You may approve things that are excellent, that you may be sincere and without offense until the day of Christ, being filled, not just having a few here and there, but being filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ unto the glory and praise of God.

So these are things that Paul prayed for for the people at Philippi, but they’re things that he prayed for being absolutely convinced that God was going to provide them. He was absolutely convinced that God was going to provide these things to the believers at Philippi. And I believe, based on everything else we read about Scripture and God’s desire and His ability to transform us, that these are some things that God still has the power today to transform us into.

Some things that we need to be confident in His power to transform. We may not always see it. We look at the short term and say, I’m still dealing with this.

I’m still struggling with that. Maybe God really can’t transform me. We have the promise from God’s word that He really can transform us.

He really does have the power to transform us. And it’s something that we need to be confident in. Not our own ability to change ourselves, but God’s ability to change and transform us.

The first of these things is that God enables us to love one another. God can transform us into loving people. Now that’s not to say that non-Christians don’t love or can’t love.

We’re human beings. We’re born with a natural capacity to love. But it’s not the same as God’s kind of love.

It is hard. It is hard to love people who hate you. It’s hard to love people who’ve wronged you.

It’s hard to love people. Oh my goodness, it’s hard to love people who continually wrong you. In a Bible study Wednesday night at the end, they were saying, pray these things.

I’m going to give you some things to pray about. Pray that God will help you have the capacity to love whoever. .

. And afterwards, I said to Charlie, I said, I could not pray that last part. She said, why?

I said, I know I need to love so-and-so, and I try to love so-and-so, but every time I pray for God to give me the capacity to love so-and-so, they do something that makes it hard for me to love them. So I’m just going to keep trying, and God knows the need, I just didn’t, you know, I realized that sounds really unspiritual to tell you, but I’m just being honest. In my flesh, it was hard to say, God helped me to love that person because then I knew I was going to need it. And sometimes it is easier to love people from a distance.

I’m just being honest with you and telling you here, reminding you here that it’s hard in our flesh and in our human nature to love the same way God loves, because that’s not at all the way God loves. We as humanity had him. We’d rebelled against him.

We’d spit in his face. And the Bible says God commended his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. While we were still in the act of sinning, he loved us enough that he died on the cross for us.

Saw something on the internet the other day about how horrible God was that to show his love, he insisted his son be tortured. Folks, nobody felt that torture more than God the Father. Nobody felt the separation of that sin more than God the Father.

I shouldn’t say nobody felt the torture. Nobody, apart from the Son, felt the torture of Calvary more than God the Father. For the first time in eternity, there was division in the Godhead.

Folks, He loved us enough that He sent His Son to die on the cross for us while we were filthy, wretched sinners. He loved us that much. God’s kind of love does not come naturally for human beings.

God’s kind of love does not come naturally for us. And yet time after time after time, we’re told with that word, agape, to love people. We’re told to love people.

We’re told love your enemies and bless those who curse you and despitefully use you. I think I’m fusing two different verses there together. He said, I pray that your love may abound yet more and