FIRE Session 2: The Beauty of Christ That Changes Us

LaRue Baptist Church, OH

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My friend Caleb Hackworth is going to be speaking this morning. Caleb is the pastor of Redeemer, Redeemer Covenant.

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Yes. Okay. I'm really bad with the church names. I just know the guys really well. In Arlington, which is just north of us a little bit, some of you are in Canton there,

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Caleb's just a little bit north of there. I've known Caleb now for a few years.

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I remember the first time I met him, we were at the Midwest Regional down at Grace Covenant in Beaver Creek.

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He was there with this pastor who at that time had cancer and soon passed away. Caleb assumed the ministry responsibilities at Redeemer and have really, really appreciated his ministry.

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I don't have any stories about Caleb that I can tell you. But anyway,

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Caleb's going to bring the word of God this morning and I'm looking forward to his ministry. Caleb. Thank you,

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Brother Tim. It's, to be honest, just nerve -rattling to be up here because there's so many men here that I've just met recently and men that I've known that I'm sure have forgotten more than I'll probably ever know and have ministered better than I'll ever minister.

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But we'll do our best by God's grace. Please turn with me to 2 Corinthians chapter 3.

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2 Corinthians chapter 3. And the title that we have online, at least, is

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How the Beauty of Christ Changes Us. And I'm going to work a little bit against that to tell you that I don't know how the beauty of Christ changes us.

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The focus that we have is that the beauty of Christ does change us.

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We make an end of speaking where the Bible makes an end of speaking. We have a wonderful and glorious mystery of how gazing at Jesus Christ, especially as presented to not our eyes but our ears in the gospel, transforms us, bears fruit, and makes us new creations in him.

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Now, as I was trying to think on how to introduce this subject, I think it's an inviolable reality that what we focus on in our minds, our hearts, in our lives, it inevitably transforms us in who we are.

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Our various habits and duties and responsibilities, they change us into different people because we're staring at something for so long, we tend to bear the image of that particular thing.

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And we have positive examples of that. In the church itself, as we gaze on men who live out the

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Christian life in a faithful way, we set a mark on those men and we follow after them.

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We tend to be conformed into their image as we gather with friends in the church and their manner of speech and the stories they tell, they become a part of who we are.

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But we see that in a negative way as well, don't we? Psalm 115, we know the text, as the psalmist speaks about the nations, he says in verse four, their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands.

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They have mouths, but they do not speak. Eyes, but do not see. They have ears, but they do not hear. Noses, but do not smell.

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They have hands, but do not feel. Feet, but do not walk. And they do not make a sound with their throat.

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In verse eight, those who make them become like them, so do all who trust in them. I think a simpler way maybe of saying that is, these idols are not the living

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God, they're dead. And everybody who gazes at their corrupt and false beauty becomes dead even as the idol that they worship.

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And all of us in our natural state, we either gaze to a corrupt and false world of corrupt and false gods, or we turn ourselves inward and look at our own corrupt and false heart and worship those things, and we dip and sink deeper and deeper into depravity and a lack of God -honoring consciousness.

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But the gospel reverses that trend, doesn't it? It points us outside of ourselves to a perfect God, a perfect mediator in Jesus Christ.

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And the promise that we have is, as we gaze on that beauty, we become more and more like our savior, our redeemer, and our friend.

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And today I hope that we'll get a glimpse on the reality of that in some capacity.

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Please stand with me, if you will, as we read God's word today. 2

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Corinthians chapter three. And if you're like me, I was gonna focus on verse 18, and then

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I started to look at the context and my notes proliferated. And so we're gonna be looking at verses seven through 18, but I'm gonna be pulling different elements.

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I can't exhaust this, I can't wring it out. So we're just gonna pick some elements, some themes, but I trust that the overall emphasis is the same.

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Verse seven, Paul, the apostle, writes these infallible words to us this morning.

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Now, if the ministry of death carved in letters on stone came with such glory that the

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Israelites could not gaze at Moses' face because of its glory, which was being brought to an end, will not the ministry of the spirit have even more glory?

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For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, the ministry of righteousness must far exceed it in glory.

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Indeed, in this case, what once had glory has come to have no glory at all because of the glory that surpasses it.

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For if what was being brought to an end came with glory, much more will what is permanent have glory.

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Since we have such hope, we, ministers of the gospel, are very bold, not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face so that the

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Israelites might not gaze at the outcome of what was being brought to an end. But their minds were hardened for to this day when they read the old covenant, the same veil remains unlifted because only through Christ is it taken away.

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Yes, to this day, whenever Moses has read a veil lies over their heart. But when one turns to the

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Lord, the veil is removed. Now, the Lord is the spirit and where the spirit of the

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Lord is, there is freedom. And we all with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the

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Lord are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the

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Lord who is spirit. You may be seated. The central idea

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I propose to you of this text is that Paul shows us the beauty of Jesus Christ by way of contrast, having us look to the greater beauty of Christ in contrast to the lesser beauty of the law.

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Now, I want us today to do three things and have three focuses. First, we must recognize that the law is a glory.

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Revelation, a beautiful revelation. We must recognize, secondly, that the gospel is a far more glorious revelation.

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And thirdly, for us brothers in particular, we are to put forth because this is true, every effort to preach the beauty of Christ.

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So first, we must recognize the beauty of the law and the beauty of the law.

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We might say, how is it shown? It's shown in showing God's character to us.

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Now, the context that we have here in 2 Corinthians 3, just briefly, we have

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Paul defending his ministry to some degree to the Corinthian church.

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And he's writing to them saying, I don't need a letter of commendation from you for you are the letter of recommendation that's written on our hearts.

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The change has been wrought in you through the gospel of Jesus Christ is evidence enough. But Paul, as he always does in all of his letters, no matter what pastoral issues he's facing, he turns everything to the gospel, doesn't he?

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In a masterful way that I have not been able to replicate in the slightest, but Paul is able to do it very well.

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And the way he does it is by focusing the readers in Corinth back to the old covenant and back to the law to show this contrast.

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And so we have to try to think about what does Paul mean when he talks about this ministry of death and the ministry of the law?

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I'm sure we're aware that Paul uses the word law, namos, in a variety of ways. And sometimes it can be confusing to see what he's actually referring to.

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Sometimes he would refer to what I would call the ceremonial law. Sometimes he would refer to what

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I would call the civil law. Sometimes he refers to the whole Old Testament. But here,

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Paul refers to the righteous moral law of God, but not by itself, if that makes sense.

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Because if we think about the moral law, the commandments that God gave to Old Covenant Israel, when the psalmist in Psalm 119 and Psalm 1 reflected on it, it was far different than the groaning agony under the ministry of death they worshiped.

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God, because of the beauty contained in the law, they meditated on these things. It was their delight day and night.

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I would propose to you today that this law is that law, but in the context of sinful, unredeemed humanity.

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What I would feel comfortable calling, and you may not, and that's okay, and we'll get past all of that, I promise.

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I don't know how else to say it. What I would call, Paul's talking about the law as a covenant of works.

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The law put upon sinful man that I must obey if I don't obey, I die.

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In that way, the law is a ministry of condemnation, a ministry of death, not a rule of life and righteousness to show us the proper way to walk, but rather shows us merely my sinful condition and what

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I owe to him. So if the law is a ministry of condemnation, a ministry of death, the question

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I think that should come into my mind, the question that came into my mind is how could it be glorious?

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How is it glorious? And I just have two ways that the law should be seen by us as a glorious revelation of God.

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First, as we've already mentioned, it shows God's character.

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It shows God's character. Now, I think the first place that we need to look is creation, especially the creation of man to see this.

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Now, we've been reading many people in our church, at least been reading through Herman Baldwin. He has that wonderful works of God.

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I don't know if any of you have seen that. It's a wonderful work that condenses his four volumes, systematic and dogmatic theology.

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But he talks in there about God and his condescension to reveal to us, right?

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We glory that God would be a God, not a deistic God that started the world and left it be and is separate from it, but rather a

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God who comes down, condescends to us to teach us who he is. And he uses everything in creation to do that.

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We look at creation in nature and we see the imprint, the thumbprint of our God upon everything and with correct eyes that aren't stained with sin and ours are, we can see

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God's power in creating this universe and world, his intelligence.

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We see his goodness and mercy and truth and the rain and the seasons and all of these different things, brothers.

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But the law placed upon man's conscience reflects his goodness, reflects his goodness.

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And what I want us to consider today is that we're made in the image of God. We know that very well.

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And there's many scholarly debates. What's meant by image of God? I would say from the Bible, we can certainly say that it means dominion over the creatures, but it means more than that.

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If we would compare scripture with scripture, I think we get a very clear indication that what the

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Puritans wrote in their catechisms was true, that man was created in the image of God and knowledge, but also in righteousness and true holiness.

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Turn with me to Ephesians chapter four. And again, what we're looking at as you're turning there, lest I've lost you, is why are we glorying or why is the law a glorious revelation?

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It's because it shows God's character. And the first place it shows God's character is in the creation of Adam and Eve in the garden, that they had a moral nature imprinted on their heart.

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And in Ephesians, we see the image of God spoken about in this particular way.

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Notice with me, Ephesians chapter four and verse 22, Paul commands the

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Ephesian church and us to put off the old self, which belongs to the former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires.

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And notice verse 23 and 24 and to be renewed in the spirit of your mind and to put on the new self.

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What is that new self? It's in part created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

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What Adam and Eve lost in the garden was a true righteousness and holiness that was imprinted on their heart and acted out in their nature.

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And when we're born again, that image of God is more fully restored in us to where we reflect

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God's character in that way. This is the natural law placed into the heart of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden.

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This conscience that we were given reveals something beautiful. That every time

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Adam and Eve thought about what God had taught them by nature is good and bad, they could say, this is just a reflection, a dim reflection of the goodness, the moral purity and perfection of our

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God. The law even placed into the heart of Adam and Eve before it was inscripturated, it was a glorious revelation because it showed the goodness of God.

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But on Sinai, which is more to Paul's point, we see this law, what

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I would say inscripturated. I'm a little bit annoyed with my Apple computer because every time in pages when

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I write the word inscripturated, it tells me that it's wrong. They haven't read the Puritans. So this natural law put into the heart of Adam and Eve at creation had become so corrupted because of human sin, false idolatry, searing our conscience to do what our flesh wanted to do, that God in his mercy, his mercy, he came down on Mount Sinai and as the

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New Testament quotes by a myriad of angels and handed the law to us, inscripturated, chiseled even on stone.

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And this law, again, it revealed God's beauty to us, right?

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It was meant to show us who this God was as we've corrupted it in paganism and false worship and made gods in our own mind.

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This was to say, this is who God is. And more than that, you, Israel, are to conform yourself to the image of this

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God in morality, in morality. And we see this in various places in Scripture and the clear language that I hope that we see is repeated.

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But in Leviticus 19, we have an example of this. And as I read it, you will notice immediately what

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I'm saying. Leviticus 19, and the Lord spoke to Moses saying, speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them, be holy, for I, the

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Lord your God, am holy. When God desired to give a motivation to the people of Israel, why they're keeping the law and the end goal of keeping the law is you're to be holy,

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Israel, not arbitrarily holy. You're to be holy like I'm holy. The faithful, true, life -giving, loving

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God, you are to become like me. And this is in some ways what that looks like in the law, to become like me.

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And this is repeated several times in the Old Testament and in the New as Jesus Christ preaches in Matthew 5.

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You must be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect. The goal of the law is to show us the goodness and grace of God.

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And Israel, every time that they would look on those laws chiseled in that stone, they would be reminded of God's goodness and righteousness to them by revealing his own character to them in the law.

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And that is a truly glorious thing, brothers and sisters. We make gods in our own mind all the time and I'm tempted by Pastor Joey teaching through our

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Sunday school, gave an illustration of a build -a -god workshop. You know, if you go to a build -a -god workshop like a build -a -bear workshop, what kind of God would you make?

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And without the scripture, brothers and sisters, telling us what God requires from us and thus who he is in his character, what he loves and what he hates, what kind of God would we have created?

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I would propose to you it'd be much like the gods of the Greek pantheon that are just, as my brother said today, a little bigger than me, but basically me.

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Right? Maybe a little more powerful and therefore a little nastier because I can get away with it, but basically me.

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Now, this law, I just want us to see that when Paul says that there's a glory in that ministry of condemnation, it's true, it's truly glorious that God would reveal himself, but more to Paul's point, the law is glorious because it exposes sin.

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It exposes sin in the human heart. Just as Calvin, when he opened up the institutes, he said, and I'll butcher what he actually said, but close to it, true knowledge of God and true knowledge of man must coincide with each other.

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When we know God and his righteous character, I look to myself and realize that I'm not anything like that.

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The law is glorious because it exposes our sin first. It exposes our sin as exceedingly sinful, as exceedingly sinful.

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I want us to notice here that when Paul writes about the law, he says, and I think the wording is so fascinating, it ministers something, right?

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And it ministers condemnation. It ministers death to us.

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And Romans 7, please turn with me there.

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Every time I go to Romans 7, I have a terrible time knowing where to stop and where to start.

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So please, this is going to be the longest section I'm going to read through. And the temptation, I think, is to read, for me, if I read a longer section, we lose the train of thought.

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So please stay with me. My point is that the law is glorious because it exposes sin as exceedingly sinful.

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OK, so notice with me in verse 7 of Romans 7,

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Paul dealing with this aspect of the law says, what shall we say then that the law is sin?

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This is by no means. Yet, if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin.

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For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, you shall not covet.

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In Paul's pharisaical mind, he could twist the law to such a degree where he could look at nine of the commandments and say,

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I've kept that pretty well and good. But I came to the 10th, as Francis Schaeffer said, the hub of the wheel, the 10th commandment, the commandment that you break on the way to breaking all the other commandments.

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And when I understood you shall not covet, it killed me. It killed me.

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Notice his language in verse 8. But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness.

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For apart from the law, sin lies dead. And I believe what Paul means is it appears to lie dead apart from the law, but the law shows it's alive in my heart.

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The very commandment, notice, that promised life, it promised life, proved to be death to me.

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For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me.

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So the law is holy and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.

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And verse 13 is my focus. Did that which is good then bring death to me?

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By no means. It was sin producing death in me through what is good in order that sin might shown to be sin and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure, as the

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King James says, exceedingly sinful. And I want us to understand what Paul's saying here. He says,

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I look to the law and my mind says that's a good law. That's a good law.

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It's not a bad law, right? It's not as if we're living in communist China or Russia and the one child policy in communist

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China and we want to disobey it because it's a bad law, right? It's like looking at the commandment to you shall not murder or something like that.

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It's a good law. I know in my heart it's a good law and therefore when I break that law, I'm convicted in my heart.

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I'm not breaking it because it's a bad law and I have the right to do it. It's good and I broke it and therefore I'm more condemned in my conscience, right?

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You see what I'm saying? The law is good and when it's shown to be good, when I'm convicted that I broke a good law

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God gave me, it's exceedingly sinful. I have no escape, nowhere to run, nowhere to go.

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I've broken something good. I've broken something good. This beautiful aspect of the law ministering condemnation to it, it's beautiful because it leaves sinful men and women like me and you nowhere to hide.

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We can't go anywhere. We can't claim that God is mean and puts arbitrary bad laws upon us.

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They're good and I still break them. God's beauty is seen in exposing our sin.

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It ministers condemnation, but the law also kills and it ministers death.

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We know 1 Corinthians 15, 56, the sting of death is sin and the power of sin or the strength of sin is the law.

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It's the law. It's the power of sin. It condemns, it kills us because we know it's against God's righteous holy decrees and the law leaves us without doubt of what we face without Jesus Christ.

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That is, the law not only shows me to be guilty as a prisoner in a cell with condemnation chiseled in stone above my head, but I know that the penalty of the chamber, the gas chamber is coming as well and that without Jesus Christ on that final day when

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I stand before him in judgment, the law is glorious because it leaves me no excuse in my heart of what that judgment will be.

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Oh, we know this text, don't we? Romans chapter 3 and verse 19. Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law.

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Who are those? So that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world may be held accountable to God.

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For by works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

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And so to sum this up, brothers, not to, I hope not go too long here. We should be grateful because of the beauty and glory of the revelation of the law because without it, we would not know our sin.

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We would not know the penalty that it deserves and we would not know the perfection of God's character that it reflects in some dim way.

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But as we know here today, as glorious as the law is, and I hope that to some degree, we see the law as a glorious revelation, a mercy of God given to us as glorious as it is.

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It cannot save us. It's impossible that it would save us. No amount of work would ever do it.

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As Martin Luther said, if any monk was saved by monkery, it would have been me, but he couldn't.

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It is with the glory of the law in mind that Paul wants to point us to the contrast of the glory of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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That is, we must not only recognize the beauty of the law. We must recognize that the gospel is far more beautiful, so beautiful, in fact, that it makes the law seem ugly.

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When we look at it, it seems to have no glory, as Paul says, when it's compared to it.

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Now, it's first of all glorious because of its clear ministry, and we see that in the apostle

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Paul in 2 Corinthians, don't we? We see that it's a light that shines clearly that doesn't have a veil cast over it.

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The law was shadowy and murky in a lot of respects, but it has perfect fulfillment in the person of Jesus Christ.

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And as we think about that, we have different beams of divine revelation throughout the

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Old Testament. You have a promise of a seed coming, you have a temple being built, you have a prophet, you have priests, you have kings, you have sacrifices, and all of these things are going, and you know that they terminate on a particular point, but you can't quite see in the

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Old Testament what that would be. But in the New Testament, all shines forth with beautiful clarity.

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You might look at a blueprint of a house and it has various aspects of how the house is going to go together in different pages, but then when you see the completion of it, you see how all those beams of thought come together.

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So it is with Jesus Christ. All come together in one perfect mediator.

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And the text that I love, and I'm ashamed to say this, I never saw the prophet, priest, and kingship of Jesus Christ in Hebrews 1 -3 until probably this year.

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But notice that with me, that all these beams come together in clarity, that the gospel is far more beautiful because it's clear.

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Long ago, and at many times, and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days,

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He has spoken to us by His Son. There's the prophetic ministry whom He has appointed the heir of all things through whom

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He also created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature and He upholds the universe by the word of His power,

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His kingship. After making purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of majesty on high, making purification the prophetic office.

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We have a glorious mediator in Jesus Christ, the clarity. But what

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Jesus Christ ministers, He doesn't minister condemnation. He doesn't minister death. The gospel ministers life and it's far more glorious because it ministers the exact opposite of what the law was meant to minister by itself.

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Jesus Christ ministers righteousness to us. You see how that's different,

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I'm sure. My unrighteousness is what brought condemnation upon my own head, but in the gospel, true and free righteousness is offered to sinners in the gospel.

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All you must do is cast your weight and your hope in a fiduciary kind of trust upon this

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Savior and He will give you all the righteousness that He has.

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Everything you need to stand before God. In fact, as Roman says, God's own righteousness, He gives to His people.

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And the beauty of it, brothers, is that this righteousness comes completely outside of the law. Nothing that I can do.

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The law tells me to run, it gives me nothing to run with, it gives me neither feet nor hands.

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But the gospel, and I'm not going to quote it right, I shouldn't have started quoting it, I'm just excited, okay? But the gospel gives us the ability, it gives us the strength to do it.

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Furthermore, the gospel gives us the liberty to do it. And when

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I read through, and it's probably sinful of me, brothers, but when I read through 2 Corinthians 3 and I come to the part where it says, and where the

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Spirit of the Lord, there is freedom, I feel like almost every time that I've heard that, it's been in some sort of American patriotic context where you need to have, you know, fireworks going off or something, that we're in America and therefore the

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Spirit of the Lord is here because we have freedom. Oh, the freedom offered in Jesus Christ is much more than that.

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We have freedom from the dominion, the power, the condemnation of sin. More than that, we don't have a freedom from battle.

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We're free to battle. We're free to choose righteousness when before we were only free to choose sin.

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This comes to us by nothing we could ever do, totally outside of the law, or as Paul says, but now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law.

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Although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.

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And this is all through the work of our Savior, Jesus Christ. His active and passive obedience did all that we could ever do.

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And, you know, in my pharisaical attitude that exists in my heart, brother, sometimes I can think that I'm doing pretty well, but I'll tell you, when

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I read through my devotions and I come across the two great commandments, every time I do, it brings me to my knees.

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I've never done it once. I can't think of a moment where I've come close to loving my God how he deserves to be loved and loving my neighbor as myself.

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I fall so far short of that. But Christ came in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemns sin in the flesh.

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Where the law convicts and condemns the ministry of Christ far exceeds it.

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Because of true righteousness, life and grace is ministered in the new covenant. And it is the free gift of righteousness offered and given in Christ Jesus that makes the gospel all the more glorious, all the more wonderful, all the more beautiful.

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We thank God that he has revealed his son to us because without it, we would be left with only condemnation, death and misery.

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And the focus I want us to consider here with all that background is how the ministry is more beautiful and glorious beyond the righteousness given in its effect that it has on us.

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That is, as we gaze at that righteousness that is given to us, as we've seen our sin and the blackness of what we need and we understand now that we're like a beggar on the street that has nothing, no food, no clothing.

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And when somebody offers me something, it's all the more wonderful. We now see that when we look at that and gaze on it, when we think about the righteousness freely offered, it has an effect on us.

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It changes us. And isn't that true in our regeneration? That when you heard the gospel for the first time, and when

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I say heard it, heard it with spiritual ears, where the Holy Spirit superintended the word and worked a new work in your heart, when you turned to the

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Lord, the veil was removed and you saw the beauty of Christ and everything that it was. It changed you.

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The Bible, when it uses the word sanctification or sanctify almost every time, it's not talking about progressive sanctification.

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It's talking about the moment of your conversion that God didn't save you and start you at zero.

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He saved you and started you at 30 or whatever it would be. He changed you in conversion.

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He really did. He made you a new person, all the faculties of your being.

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The beauty of the law does something that we could never do. And this is because we're truly united to our head.

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And we don't have time to go into that right now. So also the beauty of Christ, it not only changes us in our conversion.

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We know brothers, don't we, that when Jesus Christ comes back on that glorious day to take all of his people home, that it glorifies us.

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That the work started in regeneration when we saw Christ for the first time with our spiritual eyes, when we see him with his physical eyes in a way that I don't comprehend or understand, he changes our entire body to be a spiritual body.

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That is a body that is free from the presence of sin and completely controlled by the Holy Spirit's work.

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No more battle. It glorifies us, but the beauty of Christ also sanctifies us.

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Isn't that the point of verse 18? When we look at the beauty of Jesus Christ, when we gaze upon the righteousness freely offered to me, it bears the fruit of righteousness.

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And that's not to say we don't work at it, brothers and sisters, but we don't work as the law demands. Rather, doesn't

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Galatians call it the fruit of the spirit? That is when we look on Jesus Christ, when we're deep in sin and misery and we go to Christ for forgiveness and repentance and mercy, that's what bears the fruit in our life.

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That's what prunes us and changes us. When Christians see the unmerited grace offered to them in Jesus Christ, it really changes them, doesn't it?

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And I ask you pastors that are involved in biblical counseling, how much that's true? I know before I really knew of biblical counseling, but trying to get people to change,

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I'm ashamed to say, I would often just drive them to the law. Well, this is what the Bible says. It says you're a really big sinner and you need to quit it.

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And I still, they're still dead. It's true. That's true. That's how

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I preach to myself more often still. Okay, but true change comes when you point the sinner to the fact that they are freely justified in Jesus Christ.

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Brother, do you repent? Do you believe? Well, Jesus Christ himself says, blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted.

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Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of God. We can freely offer these things and that's what changes the heart.

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I'm free to go after Christ. I don't have to do penance to God in order for him to save me and change me.

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I don't have to weep. Sufficiently to come to him. I can come to him with grace and brothers,

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I would say our sanctification is always in direct ratio to our faith that we have in Jesus Christ.

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The more we believe that we're freely justified because nothing we could ever do, the more

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God is pleased to attach his glorious work of sanctification of it because it proves that it's his work and not mine.

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And therefore, brothers and sisters, we must in our ministries exalt the person and work of Jesus Christ to the highest degree.

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If it's true that it's the gospel that saves us, the gospel that changes us, we must put every effort to make that the central focus and point of everything that we do.

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We must calibrate our ministry away from lesser things. And I don't mean to be confrontational.

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Maybe I do. But I feel strongly about this. And you can correct me.

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I'm open to that. We have to calibrate our ministries away from the pressure that the culture puts on us.

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We have a stewardship to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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And I hear from conservative and liberal angles they come into our TVs, come in on the Internet, and they try to tell us the church needs to be talking about this.

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The church needs to be preaching about this thing. We need to become experts in creationism or sexual ethic and all these things.

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The Bible talks to those things. Don't get me wrong, brothers, and we must talk about them. But if it diverts our ministry from the focus of Jesus Christ being the object that we gaze upon rather than the culture so bad we have to go out and change or else

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I'm going to lose my freedom. Brothers, this is substandard to what we're called to do.

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This is below what the ministry of the gospel tells us. I'm sure you have.

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Have you ever seen that portrait of Martin Luther? It was drawn him preaching and it shows the congregation on the left -hand side and Martin Luther behind the pulpit on the right.

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But in between, obscuring the vision of Martin Luther to the congregation is the cross.

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Have you seen that? And that was the idea that whoever was in Luther's ministry at the time said that when you heard

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Martin Luther preach, you lost sight of the man and all you saw was Jesus Christ and him crucified.

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It's a gazing on Christ that changes us. It's gazing on Christ. And the question is, can your congregation say the same thing?

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I don't say that accusatory, brothers, because again, I esteem the men in this room higher than I esteem anybody else,

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I think. I think I can say that in the world. The question is, can your congregation say that?

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Can it say that the focus is Jesus Christ and crucified? We are brought Lord's Day after Lord's Day to think about him.

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And the effect of this cultural emphasis, why it burns so deeply in me, it's because of my history come from a very strong, independent, fundamental

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Baptist church. And what I mean by strong, I don't necessarily mean that positively. Okay. We would have every

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Wednesday night a meeting where the pastor would get up and tell us these are the political issues on the table.

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These are the bills that are going through. You need to call your representative. But we left the church eventually, not because of that, but because for two years, we didn't hear the gospel, except for in raise your hand at the end.

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That's all we heard. And we were convicted that at what point does it become not

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Christian? If Christ isn't being talked about here and the question

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I have in my mind, brother, that I would put to you is perhaps an ill and silly warning, but a warning that I fear is could that change be imperceptible in our ministries?

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Instead of choosing the application of look to Jesus Christ, we say, let's, let's look a little more to the world and what's going on in the world here.

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Let's look a little more at the political angle and see what can be changed. And after a time, the gospel just is all of a sudden absent from what we say or what we do.

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I'm just going to sum up in conclusion. We have to put effort in not just calibrating our ministry away from these things, but we must put effort into exalting

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Christ's beauty in all things, extolling the free offer of the gospel to all sinners to come to him, whether they're lost or saved, coming into the counseling office rather than having them go into self -examination of whether they're a

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Christian or not and seeking marks of election in their own soul. The offer and the warrant of the gospel is not in whether I perceive myself to be elect or not.

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It's in the offer of Jesus Christ. I tell people, brother, I don't know if you're saved or not.

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I can't discern if you have true spiritual fruit in your heart. I think you do. But the offer is the same. Repent and come to Jesus Christ.

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Come to him. He takes all sinners freely. Exalting union with Jesus Christ.

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That when we became new creatures, we were really joined to our savior in a mystical way that we don't understand that we're one flesh and one bone with him in some way and that all the life that we have in us is because we're attached to that mystical vine.

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And then lastly. I think the aim because of all that we're getting people to change.

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We want them to be more moral. We want them to conform to God's law. But the motivation for that must be thankfulness.

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Thankfulness because of what Jesus Christ has done. He's changed us. He saved us. And we see this throughout the scripture.

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And I'm just going to leave you with with one text that spoke to me this week of thankfulness as the motivation for piety.

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The psalmist in Psalm 56 and verse 12 says this. I must perform my vows to you.

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Oh, God, I will render thank offerings to you. Verse 13, the reason for you have delivered my soul from death.

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Yes, my feet from falling that I may walk before God in the light of life.

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And so I hope brothers and sisters, we've seen in some way, shape or form that the beauty of Christ truly changes us and it truly continues to change us.

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And therefore, we we must put all of our effort into that thing. If we have time left over, sure, we can do other things, but we must make the primary thing the primary thing so that God would be glorified, that Jesus Christ would be exalted and so that we would change into his image from glory to glory by the spirit of the

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Lord. Let me pray. Lord, we come before you. I thank you for the opportunity to stand up here today.

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I I pray that your name would be glorified. I pray that you would. You'd help us to see the.