Follow Me I: Observation and Imitation | Behold Your God Podcast

Welcome to another episode of the Behold Your God podcast. I'm Matthew Robinson, director of Mediagratiae, and I'm here again with Dr. John Snyder, the pastor of Christ Church New Albany, here where we record most of our podcasts, and the author and host of the Behold Your God study series for Mediagratiae.

John, it's good to be back with you. Yeah, good to have you guys back. We're looking this week at a short series that you've put together called Follow Me. And just to introduce it, I think about in the first Behold Your God study, in the Rethinking God Biblically study, you introduce a category of true things that you call true truths, and I think maybe that language comes from A .W. Tozer.

Yeah, I stole that, certainly. Well, as we say often, innovation is not good in this business. We're not making truth up. But this category of true truths, something that's so basic and so essential to Christianity, that of course we know it, but do we really think about what it means?

Well, you can't read the Gospels. I just did a search for Follow Me on my Bible app, and you see Jesus saying over and over to specific people, follow me. You see people saying, if anyone's going to be my disciple, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.

And so, of course, one of the baseline things of the Christian life is that we follow Christ. We're Christ's followers. But what does it mean to follow Christ? And so you've put together a short series just using this analogy of follow me, and also to walk with Christ.

What does it mean to walk with the Lord? So why don't you introduce those two analogies for us?

Walking with the Lord and Following Christ

Yeah, there's so much we could say here. Really, our struggle is to kind of limit it. But if we use those two analogies, I think it keeps things so simple that it's the kind of thing we can carry with us through the day.

So I find that helpful personally. When we think of following Christ, it really does sum it all up. There is trust. There is love. There is submission. There's faith and repentance. And there's the picture of this ongoing activity.

So that helps us to think about it. Now, let's take the other metaphor first. Let's take walking with the Lord. In Ephesians, Paul writes, Therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you've been called.

Later in Colossians, he says, Therefore as you've received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him. So we find that repeated throughout Scripture. Walking with the Lord, walking in Christ, walking worthy of the calling in a way that matches, coordinates with the gospel call on our life.

When we think of walking, it's very simple. We think of a couple of things. One of them is that walking in life is made up of thousands of little decisions to put your one foot in front of the next that at the moment seem so insignificant.

Sure. Matt and I were talking this morning. How many steps have you taken today, Matt?

Yeah, my phone knows. I don't have a clue.

Right. And how many steps do I remember in my life? I mean, out of the millions of steps John Snyder's taken, 50 years of steps, how many of them stick out in my mind? Well, I might think of like walking into the chapel where I got married, or walking into the hospital when your kid's going to be born, walking into a room of a loved one, you know, to say goodbye to him.

I remember walking in my grandfather's room because he had cancer and he was a godly man, so it was a sweet party. But I remember walking in that room. But really, walking, not many of those steps are remembered.

And yet, if you want to describe a man, you just take the cumulative, the summary of his life is really bound up in his steps. The tens of thousands of little decisions that you don't notice really make a man.

And so spiritually, it's the same way. Christianity has very few epic events. I mean, we would like to think, you know, when you read the life of Abraham or someone like that, it's just one extraordinary event after the next, one meeting with God after the next.

But really, it's about one every 20 years, one notable event. And for the Christian, it's that way. Tens of thousands of small, apparently insignificant choices that when you step back, that's what makes the man.

And so to walk in the Lord, to walk worthy of the call, is to live in all those tiny decisions in the reality that I belong to Christ or to live in a way that is in harmony with the call.

And we really see the wisdom of the Lord there. I mean, he could have used any analogy, obviously, but knowing what the Christian life would be. He uses this analogy of walking, like you say, that not mountaintop experience after mountaintop experience, significant stand that I make for the Lord or significant thing that I do for the Lord after the next, but just walking, follow, follow me.

And when we get to John's letter in 1 John, we find that there's a connection between walking and this whole issue of following Christ. 1 John 2, verse 6, John writes this, the one who says that he, that's the Christian, or I abide in him, that's Christ, ought himself to walk in the same manner as he, Christ, walked.

So again, the one that says that he abides in him ought himself to walk in the same manner as he walked.

Observation and Imitation in Following Christ

Yeah, and there's a connection there. I mean, so you mentioned what Paul says in Colossians 2, 6, therefore, you know, Paul does this all the time, as so, right? So therefore, as you've received Christ Jesus, the Lord, so walk in him in the same manner, walk in him.

And now we have John saying similarly, the one who says he abides in him ought himself to walk in the same manner as he walked.

So what are these guys, what are they saying? Yeah, well, obviously, let's get this off the table. We're not supposed to go back to live like a man did 2000 years ago. If we dress in robes and ride donkeys from town to town and preach in the streets, it's not going to honor Christ.

And I mean, I know that, you know, that's facetious, but honestly, I mean, sometimes you look at the scripture and especially young Christian will think, well, how am I supposed to follow? So what we're talking about is we're talking about following Christ in two great spheres of response, his responsiveness to his father and his response to humanity around him.

And we can, because he was a true man, we can follow him in that way. But following is going to include two things. And it is different to follow a person, say, you know, Matt, I mean, if you were to say to me, hey, John, follow me to this restaurant.

And I say to you, well, Matt, I don't know my way to that restaurant, which often is the case. So you would say, well, just look, just get in your car and follow me. What goes into that? Well, that's very different than following directions.

If you said, well, let me just like in the old days before the smartphone, you would write out directions, say, like, just follow these directions to my house or follow instructions. I buy something new.

I'm looking at it. I don't know how it works. And my wife says, well, what are the instructions saying? I think, well, I'll look at the instructions if I need to look at the instructions, following directions, following instructions.

You're still in charge. You're in charge of the pace, following a person, relational, totally different. You are always responsive to them. They're the initiator. So think of two things in following, like two things in walking, two things in following.

There's observation and imitation. So observation, if I'm following you to a restaurant and I'm in the car behind you, I am not free to zone out and come back to think about Matt Robinson at some other point in life.

Right, you have to keep your eye on the car.

Yes, if I think about other things, you're gone. And then I think, where am I? So following Christ means I am to observe the Lord Jesus Christ's behavior as a man. And I am not free to just zone out and come back some other point in life a few months later and say, well, I wonder how Jesus would do this.

But then there's imitation. If Matt turns left, I have to turn left where Matt turns left. I mean, you know, you follow people and they you're coming up to a yellow light. You think, oh, what are they going to do?

And they they shoot the light, you know, and you think if I don't keep right on their bumper, they're going to be like five blocks down the city and I'll never find them. So I got to do what they do. And if they if they put their left blinker on, then I got to do that, too.

Now, is he just passing that older lady or is he actually going to turn left, you know? And so we know that in the physical world, but spiritually, it's really the same. A keen observation and a determination, I'm going to do exactly what that fella in front of me does.

So following Christ is the same. Right.

Except Jesus is not driving a car, right? Right. And he's not we're not actually able. So you might say, well, if I lived when if I was one of the disciples and I lived with the physical Jesus for three years and I was able to watch him and I would I would know, you know, would Jesus go into this kind of a place?

Would Jesus go into, you know, would he do this? I would know a little bit more specifically how that is. So we might envy people who actually literally followed Christ. Are they in a better situation than we are as Christians in, you know, the year 2019?

Yeah, that's a very tempting lie, isn't it? That if I could have seen him, I'd be a better Christian. Of course, that goes flies in the face of what Jesus said, that it's actually better for you that I leave, not just that I go to the cross, but I go to sit on the throne.

And from the throne, the father and I will send the spirit. So there is the spirit of Christ with each of us in a way that is, you know, in a fullness that the new covenant provides. So we have the picture of Christ in Scripture and we have the spirit of Christ within.

And that we need to stop and say something about human nature, even apart from those two things. We are formative creatures. I think it was Tozer that I first read, you know, say that. That is, we are created in such a way that what we look at with yearning, with admiration, really, let's be honest, with worship, we think what worth this person has, what worth this lifestyle has, this ideal.

We become fashioned in the image of the thing that we think has great worth. As a teenager, I have never been the aloof, cool kid. I was always the spastic, mouthy kid, you know, but I always admired this, you know, any Hollywood character that was the kind of untouchable, aloof person.

And I remember before I became a Christian, kind of unconsciously imitating this ideal. But when I became a believer in college, the man that led me to the Lord, Clyde Cranford, said to me like, John, you got to set that aside.

There's a new man now. There's a new ideal for you. It is the person Jesus Christ. So if he's not aloof, you can't be aloof. And I remember thinking, man, like I thought following Jesus meant quit doing this, quit doing this and start doing that.

I didn't know it was the alteration of my entire identity. Now, I have failed at that more than I have succeeded, but that is the only option for the Christian. And there is a new man.

I mean, there is a new ideal. What is the great man? And that's, gosh, that's hard for everybody. I mean, we all have ideas of what a manly man is. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Formed by What We Worship: Isaiah and 2 Corinthians

So when we think about that, formative creatures, let's take a couple of examples from the Bible, negative examples. In the book of Isaiah chapter 40, you know, the first Behold Your God study, we use that phrase, you know, Behold Your God.

Things are bad in Israel and Isaiah is given in chapter 40. It's like that. It's like the hinge on the door. Everything turns. The door opens and the dawn of hope begins from chapter 40 to 66. Isaiah begins to describe the coming of hope in the person of the Messiah.

It is so different than chapters 1 through 39 that liberal scholars say, well, this must be a different author. Well, of course, that's rubbish, but it is a stark difference. We don't want to miss it.

So in the doorway, it's like he throws the door open in chapter 40 and says, Behold Your God. But when we look at those descriptions, it's the coming of God in the person of his son. Chapter 42, we have the first of these songs that describe the coming of the Messiah.

So between the opening of the door, chapter 40, look, look at God. Chapter 42, let me start to describe him. Chapter 41, it looks like a kind of a dead chapter. What it is, is it's a chapter where God calls them to account for their idolatry, but not just the idol worshipers.

It's kind of like a court scene where he calls the idols as well. And so he says, OK, in a summary way, bring your idols, you idol worshipers, and let's just kind of let's sit across the table from each other.

Let's have a we're in a court scene. I'm going to give you an opportunity to give evidence that you're worth the heart of my people. So and then he lays some requests before them and they can't do anything he asks.

So let's let me just read those descriptions there. The first is a description of the idols and the second is a description of the idol worshipers. And I want us to notice the similarity. So verse 24 of Isaiah 41, to the idols, he says, Behold, you are of no account in your work.

What you can do amounts to nothing. He who chooses you is an abomination. Then in verse 29, to the idol worshipers, Behold, all of them are false. Their works are worthless, the things they've made with their hands to worship.

Their molten images are wind and emptiness. We see the similarity there. Men become like the thing they worship. So if you're going to give your heart to an empty, worthless idol, then your life starts matching that.

Whatever packaging you've got on the outside, on the inside, you're like your idol, empty, worthless. So there's the negative example. Men are transformed into the image of the thing they worship. But a positive example is found in 2 Corinthians 3.

Paul writes this,. But we all with unveiled face, beholding as an emir the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image, from glory to glory, just as from the Lord the Spirit. So there we have Paul talking about a mirror.

Very simple image for us. A man looks in a mirror and he's being transformed by the intensity of that gaze. He's slowly being transformed into the image. Now to understand the benefit of that metaphor, we have to remind ourselves that in Paul's day, they didn't have a nice piece of perfect glass with a silver backing on it that you could just walk into your bathroom.

I mean, in my bathroom, we have, you know, my wife has her side of the bathroom. I have my side of the bathroom. And she's got this gigantic mirror. I got this little mirror. And then she has another mirror, a mirror that does a close up on your face, you know, which has daytime light and evening light.

Awful thing. Yeah, yeah. I don't know what to do with it. So I look in my mirror and I can, without any real effort, it's immediate. I know what John looks like. Oh, I forgot to do that. You know, I need to do something about that.

In the ancient world, a mirror was made out of a polished piece of metal. And so there's imperfections. And so you can imagine if a man were to look in a mirror and he wants to make sure that he's got the right picture, he would have to give some, you know, it'd be an intent gaze.

He would have to look at it from different. OK, wait. OK. Paul's picture there is so helpful. We are we are creatures that are formed into the image of the thing we gaze upon. And this all goes back to focusing on Christ observation and imitation.

The Holy Spirit is working within each believer. And as we intently gaze on the portrait of Christ in Scripture, even before we make any other decisions, there is the sweet and and ongoing transformation by the Holy Spirit from one level of Christ likeness to the next, to the next, to the next, until we see him face to face.

Now, having said all that about being formative creatures, that what we gaze upon with it, look, let's be honest, a quick glance at Jesus on Sunday morning without the heart being captivated by that doesn't transform me.

It's the it's the worshippers gaze. And to to the degree that the lens of the soul, like a camera is open to that degree, that image is embedded on me. So there isn't any substitute for for, you know, a long soak in the Scripture or for the the continuous habits of meeting with the Lord in the Scripture.

And not just individually, but corporately. Now, when we think of that, though, here's the lie that I always want to believe. If I were Paul or if I were the disciples, all right, let's take the disciples.

If I were the disciples and I saw Jesus every day, I would be a better Christian. We mentioned this earlier. But really, the apostle Paul explodes that lie, doesn't he? We don't get the picture in Scripture that Paul walked around watching Jesus from a distance, hating him.

And then after the resurrection and the ascension, he decides to hunt him. We get the idea that, of course, he's acquainted with the movement of Christianity. But the first time Paul meets Jesus Christ appears to be on the road to Damascus.

And certainly the first time that any significant meeting has happened. So, how does Paul know how to follow Jesus Christ? Paul doesn't even have a New Testament. So Paul has the Old Testament Scriptures and he has eyewitness accounts and he has some New Testament documents.

And he takes those together and he has the work of the Spirit illuminating those, making those effective. So, we read things in Paul's letters like this, 1 Corinthians 4, verse 16. Be imitators of me.

This is Paul speaking. Yeah. Now, that's a pretty scary statement. We know people imitate us. I know people imitate me as a pastor. We know people imitate us. Our kids imitate us, you know, as dads. We can see that.

And we admit that. But it would be pretty scary for us to turn and say to them, OK, here's what I want you to do. I want you to follow me around all week. I want you to imitate me. The way I live, I want you to live.

But Paul says that with no fear of someone saying that's pride. Later in Philippians, he says, follow my example that I gave you. We find that over and over in the Thessalonian letters. How can he say that?

Well, in 1 Corinthians 11, he says, be imitators of me, just as also I am of Christ. So I'm following Christ. So I'm a safe guide for you to follow. How did he follow Christ? He wasn't looking at him like the other disciples had.

So all Paul has, the means that he has, the means of grace, he has Scripture and he has the Spirit, the Word and the Spirit, and it's enough. So if Paul can open Old Testament scriptures and see pictures of Christ and imitate him, and if he can sit down and listen to eyewitness accounts, and if you can read New Testament documents that are being put together, and the Spirit can change Paul into a Christlike man, then he can do that with us.

Same exact tools. Now, we're going to be talking about this in the next couple of episodes, but let's just introduce this. We have two great, you know, halves in our Bible, so to speak. We think of it, you know, it's not really divided Bible, but we have the Old Testament, the New Testament.

In the Old Testament, we don't want to neglect the pictures we have of Christ there, because that's going to be helpful in following him. So in the Old Testament, what we kind of have, in my mind, it's like old black and white photos.

It's like sketches of the coming of Christ. Or you might think of an old photo album at your grandparents, and you go there, and you open it up, and you see pictures of your grandparents, or your parents, you know, when they were younger.

And the pictures aren't, I mean, they're kind of fuzzy, you know, and maybe some of them are a little damaged. And you look at them, and you think, oh, wait, that's grandpa. Like, he's got the same ears, you know, or that's grandpa when he had hair, but I can still recognize him.

The believer goes from that vital acquaintance we have with Christ, and that clarity in the New Testament. We look at the Old Testament, and even though it's a black and white photo, and the detail is not there that we find later in the New Testament, we recognize Christ, and the descriptions of Christ in the Old Testament are essential to us following him today.

So we're going to be talking about that in our next podcast. But in the New Testament, we do have this high definition thing. Matt, you've done documentaries. So in documentaries, you combine two things.

Original footage, I mean, I remember seeing pictures of Lloyd-Jones walking around with his grandkids. I never saw that before. And then you have expert commentary, people who actually knew Lloyd-Jones, who say, well, yeah, I was there that day, and this is what he was like.

The New Testament's kind of like that. It's like a documentary for the believer. In the Gospels, in the book of Acts, and then again in the Revelation, we have actual footage of the life of the God-man.

But then in the Epistles, it's like we have expert commentary guided by the Holy Spirit himself to explain what we're looking at in a way that's custom designed for Christians to be able to imitate. So we'll be talking about that in a couple of weeks as we look at following Christ in the New Testament as well.

Application: Scripture, the New Testament, and Christlikeness

Well, let's take a short break here, and then we'll come back and wrap up what we're talking about this week, and we'll talk a little bit more about what people have to look forward to next week. One of the things we love most about going to conferences is interacting with people who have gone through our studies or seen the films and hearing the way that they've influenced their families, their small groups, or their churches.

Eventually, we started asking if they would let us record those stories so that we could share them with you. Scott and Paul took their church through Behold Your God, Rethinking God Biblically, last year, and they're currently taking the church through Behold Your God, The Weight of Majesty.

I thought the first one was wonderful from the perspective of all the church history. It was a really neat element that added to that I had not been exposed to in other Bible studies. Hearing about the great fathers of the faith and learning about them and then applying that to the studies of God and how they emphasized who God was, you just don't hear that.

We hadn't heard that in the churches we've been attending.

It just tells us about and helps us with understanding God biblically, and really got into understanding, have a high view of God and a low view of self, which is usually the reverse of what we have. It talks about really the understanding, well, what does God say about evangelism?

What does God say about worship? How does God want to be worshipped? Is it about us or is it about God? What's the most important? And so there's just so many great things that we learned and really want to share with others, and this is a great mechanism for doing so.

For more information about Behold Your God, The Weight of Majesty, visit themeansofgrace .org. So John, to sum up what we've talked about, what's some application that we can make from this?

Well, the first application, I think, is how have we used the scripture? Have we treated the Old Testament as if it's just a bunch of what we would think of as kind of Sunday school stories that maybe, you know, are useful, but not really essential to following Christ, but they are essential and nothing is extra.

The scripture for us. So Old Testament, New Testament, have we used the Bible for lesser purposes? You know, not just to get to know God in this immense, incomprehensible perfection, but to get to know Him in the person of His Son, to become better acquainted with the God-man, Jesus Christ, than I am with any other man in the world, you know, to set my heart to know Him so that I might adore Him, so that I might imitate Him.

And so, you know, that really is a good question for us. Have I used the Bible correctly? Have I been a lazy follower? Yeah, I remember days when I was really intently gazing on Christ, but it's been a while and I've kind of gotten lost.

I don't know where he turned left, but I don't see him anymore. Repent, go back to where you got off track. But my last application would be, it's so encouraging. Matt and I were talking before the podcast.

When we talk about these kinds of things, I feel like I'm a baby Christian. I've been a Christian 30 years. I feel like it's day one. And Christ has called me out of the grave and reminded me, John, this is what the Christian life is.

With all the thousands of little things you could say, just get up alive from the dead and walk with me today. And I just think, man, Jesus, is it still true? Like, would you still just call me to walk with you today?

And I feel so enticed that when the podcast is over, I'm excited about whatever else comes today.

Christ in the Old Testament and the New Testament

Well, it's a great introduction, brother, and I'm looking forward to next week. So you guys be sure to tune in next week. We're going to look at some specific Christological passages in the Old Testament with practical application to imitation.

How do we imitate Christ in the typological and Christological passages that we have in the Old Testament? So we'll see you back here next week. Through our YouTube channel or subscribe via iTunes, Google Play, or anywhere you get your podcast feed.

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