Be Transformed

This morning we looked at Mark 8 and reflected on the idea of following Jesus requires us to deny ourselves and pick up a cross to follow him. Then we heard from David Platt about what it would mean to delight in God. Tonight, I want us to be transformed. As we start bringing our second night to a close, I want you to think about how you’re going to leave this place. More specifically, I want you to go back to a time prior to your conversion. Maybe some of you were converted so long ago that you don’t even remember, but just think about this: How have you changed since becoming a follower of Jesus?

Me: I was recently eating a Philly cheesesteak with a Hindu co-worker of mine who had just learned that I am the Christian equivalent of a guru. Which made me laugh because I can’t get the picture of Austin Powers out of my head every time that word is evoked, which is extremely racist of me, to think about Canadians when a Hindu tells me about their religious teachers, but that degenerate story is for another sermon illustration.

He was telling me about how one day, when he was younger he was at the Ganges River, a holy body of water—it is their equivalent of the Jordan River (where Jesus was baptized) except it probably looks more like our Hudson river. The Ganges is a place where according to Vedic traditions that is the source of spiritual purification—so they wash themselves in the river to be purified from sin—just like our baptism. So he asks me, how is Christianity any different than Hinduism? He’s been to church and read our Bible and it boils down to “follow certain rules and observe specific regulations and perform ritual duties. Pursue a particular path.” He was right all religions are essentially the same.

The big problem was that we so easily forget that Jesus never called us to convert into a religion. He calls us to “Come. Follow me.” Matthew 4:19-20 says, “’Come. Follow me,’ Jesus said. ‘I will make you fishers of people.’ At once they left their nets and followed him.” Our retreat is baselined on this idea and return to this question: How have you changed since becoming a follower of Jesus?

In this one statement of “Come. Follow me.” Jesus invited his disciples into a new life. You can say that they were transformed from ordinary fisherman to fishers of men. But that only happened when they left their nets and followed him. I don’t know what has changed in your life since you decided on becoming a follower of Jesus, but I probably know why you decided to follow Jesus, so let’s start there. Open your Bibles to Matthew 11.

25?At that time Jesus said,?“I praise you, Father,?Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children.?26?Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do.

27?“All things have been committed to me?by my Father.?No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.

28?“Come to me,?all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.29?Take my yoke upon you and learn from me,?for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.?30?For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

V25-27 – Allow me to elegantly sum this up so you don’t have to try to pound on your heads about this to raggedly: You can try to get to God through religion or rituals but that doesn’t work. The only thing that works is a personal relationship with the Son. That is what gives you intimate knowledge of God, the Father.

I’m not going to get into the burden of rules because you all know that rules are designed to be broken and rewritten. So instead we’re going to turn to verse 28 and start with the statement: if you are tired of religion because it is wearisome and burdening, we need something more. We need to stop believing certain points or observe certain practices. We need to cling to the person of Christ as life itself.

V28 – Christ is the rest that we seek. When we rest we start the transformation process because we are no longer in weary mode working on damage control from the burdens we live in life. I want you to understand that there is a fundamental difference between being a “Christian” and being a “transformed” being in Christ. You cannot begin to be transformed unless you are “resting” in Christ.

Me: when I was in seminary, studying religion, I came to this haunting thought in the basement of the library one late night after being in school earlier that morning for class and having come back to the library after working a full shift at work—what if everything on the outside is good but something on the inside of me was dying or dead.

Do/did you ever feel like that? Like your Christianity consists of nothing more than a list of truths to believes, things to do and boxes to check? Sometimes I feel like that with the kids. Then I cling to Jesus and find rest for my weariness and burden knowing that our greatest need is not to try harder. Our greatest need is a new heart in Christ.

V29 – Jesus says, “take my yoke…” He continues to say “learn from me.” Which are two very different ideas that I need to tackle so that you can understand how much you need to be transformed and what a transformed life means in 2014.

“Take my yoke” means that when you follow Jesus you’re not even alive any more. Jesus is alive and he is your life. You essentially die. Romans 8:10-11 says, “But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.” Jesus doesn’t merely improve your old nature; he imparts to you an entirely new nature—one that is completely united with his own.

Is that really true in your life? Be honest with yourself.  Have you lied your way to telling yourself that this is what you did but live an untransformed life? If so, you need to really question what it is that you believe. I want to push the envelope on this a little bit because this is why Christians falter. This is why we are here, so that we can clearly distinguish within our own lives that there is transformation happening. If there is no transformation happening, there is no point to our “faith” and we are better off spending our Sunday mornings watching NFL countdown or playing golf because this would make our faith a waste. Just think about it.

Now, let’s say that our lives are transformed because there is a clear distinction between before Christ and after Christ in our lives. Then I want to ask, “What have you learned from Jesus?” That’s verse 29, isn’t it? Let me make it more clear, how has Jesus’ will become your own will? How has his purpose become your purpose? How has his power become your power?

Transformation (or supernatural regeneration in technical theological terms) involves God reaching down into our lives and forgiving our sin and filling it with His spirit so that we no longer are spectators of God working around us but become the active work of God transforming the world through us. This brings us back to Matthew 4. Have we left our nets (former lives) and decided to become the agent of transformation in the lives of people? More importantly, have we found rest for our souls through the process of transformation? There are five areas in our lives that we should look at to measure how Jesus transforms us—Jesus changes everything, after all.

Jesus transforms our thoughts. It’s obvious that we don’t become instantly perfect when we start following Jesus. However, in the process of transforming us from the inside out—because he’s teaching us and we’re learning from him because we picked up his yoke, it becomes evidently clear that our perception of things and the way we process information should be transforming. Check out 2 Corinthians 2:14-16: 14?The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are?folly to him, and?he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.?15?The?spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one.?16?“For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But?we have the mind of Christ. When Jesus transforms what we think, he also transforms what we believe. And as He transforms our core beliefs, we begin to separate from the world and live instead as members of God’s body.

Jesus transforms our desires. Yes, the things we want in life should change. Let me caveat this because I know some of us have the tendency to look at the extreme of this like child porn or CEOs robbing people of their pensions. But let me bring it down to real life—the time we spent glued to or dollars spent on: internet, TV, movies, music, shopping, sports, food, celebrities, I can keep going but I’m not going to.

Jesus transforms our will. This is related to our desires being changed, so let me bring this point home quickly. We spend so much time trying to curb our desires but fail because our will [think intention] is just not strong enough. When we follow Jesus we are willing to desire what God desires and so our fight with our own desires becomes moot.

Jesus transforms our relationships. Yes, transformation happens when we start expressing sacrificial love for one another. In particular, when we start expressing sacrificial love for other Christians and for people who need Christ. Our relationships with other people begin to change in that it stops becoming quid pro quo and stops thinking about what others can do for you or me.

Lastly, Jesus transforms our purpose. This means that when you start following Christ you beat to another drum beat. You don’t do things the way other people do it. You do things the way Christ calls you to do it. In doing this, you create a fruit in your life that transforms other people around you.

God wants you to be transformed by finding rest for your weary and over burdened soul. He wants you to follow him so that you can be transformed. The question really is, do you want to? What’s stopping you from being transformed, and would you rather live burdened by that? It is pretty clear that we can’t pretend religion our entire lives because that is a waste of time. I don’t’ want to play religion. I want to experience transformation. If this is something you want for you life, let’s pray for that right now. I want you to find a buddy right now and pray that we can know Jesus and God to reveal a transformative work in our hearts, starting with our inner most being and desires and push them out into the action items that are moving and shaking and transforming everybody who interacts with us. Let’s pray.