Reflecting on 2024

[00:00:05] My name is Dean Annan. I'm the discipleship pastor here. If we still haven't met, I'd love to meet you. I'll be down here afterwards. I know also that Village Kids is really not meeting right now, which means that we have a few younger folks here in the crowd. I'm looking around if you could raise your hand if you're, like, age zero. I don't know if zero can, but age zero to maybe like, 8, 9, 10. You got any young ones in the. Yeah, we do. We got a couple right there. Thank you. Thank you. Another one right there. I got something for you younger ones. Are you ready? This is. I hope it's not that hard, but this is for you. I'm gonna put a picture up there. You ready? Put a picture up there on the screen. All right. You can shout it out. What do you see? The young ones. I heard a beetle. Yeah. [00:00:52] Anybody else? [00:00:55] I heard a bug, I think, too. [00:00:58] Tarantula. Yeah, tarantula. I thought you said giraffe. Yeah, it's not a giraffe, but it's good. Yeah. School's good, too. [00:01:07] So, what's important about this? Well, when I see that one of the things I see up there is something coming out of their heads. Now, again, for the younger ones, do you know what those things are coming out of? The bugs? Heads. What are they called? Antennas. I guess that's the technical term. You know what I always called them? Feelers. But you're right, they're antennas. They're feelers. Antennas. And what these things coming out of their heads are sensory organs. And they're to look at their. Or feel their surroundings and try to make sense of what's going on. And then they feel and then they act. [00:01:43] They do stuff out of impulse because of those feelers. Now, this is really for everybody. You can look behind you or left, to the right, the people next to you, and take a look. And are there any feelers coming out of anybody's heads next to you? [00:01:56] I have to go like this so I can see back there. No, I don't think so. That's probably good. Why not? I think it's not because we're not designed as human beings to be led directly by our feelings, for sure. Or maybe God didn't give us feelers coming out of our heads because he gave us these brains. And in these brains he wants us to know his truth. And his truth comes from the word of God and the Holy Spirit that lives in us. Then as believers in Christ, we get. Now this opportunity to live by truth way more than even feelings. Now, I have a statement here, and it says this. God has given us truth in his word to lead us. [00:02:42] Not our feelers out here or our feelings. But the truth is, you know, his ways for us are in his truth to lead us. His purposes for us are in his truth, His Bible for to lead us. You know, we're all surrounded by all kinds of influences, right? And sometimes there's even these influencers today, if you know what I'm talking about. We have teachers, we have friends, some better than others, maybe, but some of these things sometimes aren't good influences, but honest. And so here's a question, and this is something that can maybe help, just in general, to help you make. To make a decision or to move forward. And here it is. Let's put it on the screen. It's kind of a filter that I use sometimes. And I say, will this. And this is the important word. Will this help me to become more or less like my savior? Whatever this is, it really doesn't matter. You know, this next season, are you gonna go out for the basketball team? Are you gonna be friends with this person? Maybe there's some class choices that you have to make. Maybe you're looking for a new job. What is that? New job? Will this help me be more like my savior or not? It's a good question. In general. [00:03:56] You know, Christians are not supposed to be the weirdest people on the block. Did you know that? I mean, sometimes we are, but that's not our calling, right? Our calling is to live for Christ, frankly, to live even differently at times. And so this sermon today is gonna be a little bit shorter than normal. It's gonna be the end of the year sermon. I hope it's encouraging. I hope there's something here that's gonna be helpful. Helpful for you that you could take away. We're gonna be in a few different passages, but we have two verses of our main passage today. And I hope this is gonna resync, reset, maybe recalibrate our brains as we. [00:04:32] And here it is from 2 Corinthians, chapter 5. And it's. Paul says this. He says, therefore, if anyone. That's a call to anyone is in Christ, and we'll talk about that in Christ. He is the new creation. The old has passed away, and behold. So behold is not this idea of behold. The idea is, look at this. This is really important. Look at this. The new has come. That's what Paul's saying. All this is from God who Through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. I'll be spending most of my time just on that first verse 17. This passage, it says we're to be a new creation. [00:05:13] Why? How? Well, how can we even do that? Well, we can do that if we are in Christ. [00:05:21] And the new means not an improved version of the old you, but new, a brand new thing that God is doing. When we are in Christ, some end are good to have. Some things that are old are good to let go and to move on. A big idea for today is simply this, believers, if you believe in Christ, you should live like who we are. And that is a new person, a new creation. We live out our faith and we live it out in truth and in Christ. We can encourage one another to do the same. [00:05:55] So there's an outline here, three things that I want to do today. I want to start with this. I want to recall what God gives us before we move on to. [00:06:04] And then we're gonna look at God's goal for us. We're gonna look at one aspect of that and then at the end with some. So what's. We're gonna reflect and respond. And so first, let me start with this first point. What God gives us. And it's this. God gives believers the most unique and special relationship you will ever have by far that's possible even in all of the universe. And that is this thing that Paul calls being in Christ. So we'll look at that. It's very unique. It's a privilege to be in Christ. Verse 18 that I read a moment ago says all of this meaning being a new creation, getting new things, being in Christ. This relationship is all from God. It is God's doing. God is sovereign. That means that God is in control of everything. So he's even in control of this relationship, being in Christ, he's in control of this. And if you're already a Christian, I mean, if you've already believed the gospel for salvation, if you've already come to him and said, I'm sorry for your sins, and you believe he died on the cross to pay for all of your sins, and you know you're secure in heaven because of that. Not cause you're good, but because he's good and you believe in his third day resurrection, then all of this is for you today that I'm gonna talk about all of this. No matter how young you are, no matter how old you are, if you've put your faith in Jesus Christ, even if you're very, very Young. All of this is for you today. That passage again, 2nd Corinthians 5:17, says, Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, I'm going to stop there. In Christ. So unless we are in Christ, we cannot be new. We will always be a version of our old self. We will always act like and be like. I don't know what our old self is. Your old self might be different for you than me. Think of the version of you that you don't really like. Thinking of those things defined by the things maybe we've done or the things maybe we've thought. That's the old version. That's the old version. We will always be that, always be that. If we are not in Christ. Well, I need to explain a little more about this. In Christ. Now, this might make sense if I'm talking about in Christ. So what it's not, is this. It's not unzipping Jesus and climbing inside of him, okay? That's not being Christ. [00:08:20] It's being in union with Christ. It's this deep, deep union with Christ. The New Testament says that the Holy Spirit of God, for each Christian comes inside. We are united with Christ. We are one with Christ. We draw our very lives from Christ. [00:08:39] Specifically, what we're united in. Well, when the Apostle Paul talks about this, he uses this phrase all the time. I'll put a list up here on the screen of things that we. We are in Christ in his righteous life, the Bible says. And I'm gonna have to talk a little about this. His crucifixion, his death, his burial, his resurrection to new life, and his ascension to heaven. Paul talks about all of these things in the Bible. When he talks about we being in Christ, us being in Christ, it sounds a little mysterious, doesn't it? What about the crucifixion and death? Well, see, when we're in Christ, this crucifixion and death of Christ, it covers us completely. It completely covers us. His punishment takes care of our punishment. We no longer have to be punished, of course, for our sins. We are not going to face spiritual death that we deserve because of his crucifixion, because of his death, and of course, his burial. All of this stuff covers us because we are in Christ, including the resurrection, his resurrection. Because we're in Christ, his resurrection covers us. We are assured of our own bodily resurrection one day, if we believe in Jesus because we are in Christ. And this is unlike any other, isn't it? This is like any other relationship, unlike any other relationship, because Christ walked through all these Things. He walked through all of those things perfectly so that one day anybody who would believe in him would have all these benefits, all these rewards, all these privileges. [00:10:13] But what's the foundation of all of this, really? We can't just talk about it without going back to the basics. The basics of. And I hope if you're not a Christian today, that maybe you haven't trusted in Jesus. You're going to see, hopefully, that I intend this as a loving invitation from Christ to you to come to him as Savior. And all of this will be true. [00:10:35] Now, we can only understand the Christian life today in the present if we go back and we grasp and hold onto the foundation of what all this is built on. It's very simple. We've heard this many times in church. It's about repentance and faith. This is what all this is built on. This is where it all starts. This is the basic. It's our foundation. Remember, repentance is changing your mind, agreeing with God and doing what he says. And how do you know that you've repented? Well, you're doing what God says. [00:11:09] It's really not that hard. Faith is this. I like to think of faith as a new assignment. Faith is a new assignment of my trust. A new assignment of my trust in what it used to be no longer there, into something now it needs to be. And what it needs to be, my trust now needs to be in God's provision for salvation. And that is Jesus. Jesus himself. Repentance, faith. Sometimes the Bible says for faith, it says believe, right? We believe or we have faith in Jesus at the beginning of his ministry, when he's a man, he's starting his ministry. And Mark, the gospel writer, starts talking about what Jesus did at the beginning. Now, you might think, or I might think, that Jesus, when he starts the ministry, he's gonna take a survey, right? He's gonna try to figure out, get the sense for what's going on, how people are feeling, meet their needs. Maybe to some degree he does that. But that's not what Mark tells us he did. What did he do? Mark 1 says this. [00:12:10] Now, after John, this is John the Baptist. Mark is writing. Now, after John the Baptist was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God. Well, that's good. And saying, and here it is. The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. And then he says this. Repent. This is right at the beginning. And believe the gospel. [00:12:35] It's that simple. It's that clear, really, 100%. [00:12:40] Even if you're already a Christian today. [00:12:42] Even if you are a Christian today. I know sometimes it's hard as Christians. Wait, I thought I've already. Well, wait. Because repentance and faith, repentance and believe is what we need today. How? What do I mean by that? Continually we repent. We rethink. In other words, we rethink our brains to again believing what is true about God and growing in our faith. Because our faith grows as we believe, our faith grows as we act. So it's important for us. It's a regular part of our lives to be in Christ. [00:13:16] If we don't, it's like being in a rowboat. A rowboat in an ocean. A rowboat in an ocean. Without an oar, without any oars, let alone one oar. We'd be doomed, desperate, perhaps, without hope. But God calls to everyone with a lifeline. And that lifeline is Jesus Christ. Paul writes this. This is Acts, chapter 17. He writes this. We'll put it on the screen for you. It says, the times of ignorance, God overlooked. [00:13:47] But now he commands all people everywhere to repent, to reconsider, to reevaluate your wrongs and come to him and abandon those thoughts and abandon those ways and abandon what you were doing before and come to him, to faith in Jesus. [00:14:08] So that's the call today, really, for everybody. If you're not a Christian, if you are a Christian, are you willing to give up those ways, give up those thoughts, give up what we were doing, whatever is not honoring of God, and come to him? [00:14:21] But then the Apostle Paul, again, he doesn't hold back verse 31. I want to put it up there because verse 31, here's what he says next. Why would I do this? Why would I repent? Because he, meaning God, has fixed the day, fixed the day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed. And who is that one he has appointed? And of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead. You see, the one who is raised from the dead here, that's the one who will be the judge. And who is that? That's none other than Jesus, the first raised from the dead. He will be the judge. That Scripture says, and there will be a day. Actually, there is a day. That's the point. There is a day. It says fixed. That means that day is set. That means it's in stone. There is a day that he will come and he will judge and the way to be saved. The Bible's clear going back to the basics going back to our foundation is repentance and faith in Jesus. We can never forget that when we talk about all these privileges and benefits and begin Christ. Never forget repentance, never forget faith. Even if you're already saved. [00:15:32] Well, if you're in Christ, Bible says you're in a new creation. That's our main passage today. But you get new things. [00:15:40] That's what I love. It's new things. Not better than the old kind of new things. I hope these things encourage you. All right, Christmas. Some of you celebrated Christmas this year. Maybe at home. Do some of you celebrate with presents? Some of you younger folks, you celebrate with presents? Yeah. So what if. With presents. What if you open to presents and in that present were your old socks? [00:16:08] You didn't like that one, did you? No old socks. Yeah. That's kind of not the idea here. Right? And the Apostle Paul, I think, agrees with that. Look what it says here in 2 Corinthians 5. This is verse 17, actually. Yeah, verse 17 at the end. Here again, behold or look at this. The new has come. This is the new. Being in Christ means you get new things. Said these words before, benefits, rewards, these privileges, being in Christ, being incorporated in Christ, in Christ are new gifts. Now, this isn't a complete list, and it's not in any particular order, but here are some of them. These gifts are adoption, forgiveness, justification, the gift of the Spirit, that's the Holy Spirit. And new birth. These are some of those things in Christ. These are privileges. Adoption, meaning if you believe in Jesus, you don't leave your old family. You're somebody. But you get a new family, too. A new family as well as God's forever family. Children of God. And you will be with him, and he will love you forever. I think that's great. The forgiveness of sins. We know about that, don't we? Isn't that the core of the gospel? Forgiveness of sins. How do we even get that? Because at the moment we receive Christ as savior, past, current, future sins, all forgiven. That is a done deal. Justification. That's a big word, right? And if you're maybe newer to church, justification is this idea that when you've come to in faith, to Jesus Christ, that God does this. He declares, he speaks. He says that you are right, you are right before him, because your sins then were taken care of by Jesus on the cross. You are justified also. Gift of the Spirit. A few weeks ago, I know, we had a sermon about that, talking about the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God lives in you. That gift will Let you. God himself would let you live a life for him. And then, new birth. Yeah, we have this new birth. The Bible says we were spiritually dead before. We weren't even able to move towards him yet. God gave us new birth. The Holy Spirit stirred in us this new. This rebirth, this faith to trust and move forward. And we are born again. We're given this new birth. This is the new that has come, these things. [00:18:36] So the first thing we were talking about here today again is recall what God gives to us. This deep union, this very deep and unique relationship that Paul calls in Christ. I think it's a little mysterious, but I think it's really cool as well. But what is God's goal for us? I mean, if this is true, we are in Christ. What's his goal? I want to look at one piece of this. Remember, God's goal for us is the second piece of our outline today. Remember, God's goal for us, because being in Christ impacts us. We are supposed to move, we're supposed to change, we're supposed to evolve. That's by design. [00:19:19] I'm gonna be in Romans 8:29 in a moment. You can go there to Romans 8:29. It'll be a minute before I get there. It's probably the second most important passage today. But the goal of the Christian life is to be conformed to the image of Christ. [00:19:36] To be conformed to the image of Christ. The image is a representation of something, right? Image means a representation of something. Does anyone know? I'm gonna put a picture up here. Does anybody know? And you can, if you're there, you can shout, does anybody know who did this drawing and whose image it's. Well, I'll give you a hint. It's that 2% answer in church that it's not Jesus. Okay. Cause at 98% of the things in church, I think Pastor Michael said the other week, you know, is it 98? But it's always Jesus. No, no, this is not Jesus. This is that great Renaissance artist, Leonardo da Vinci. It's a self portrait. Well, I should say most people think it's a self portrait of him at age 60. This is Leonardo da Vinci. Well, God is saving people for himself, to represent himself in a portrait, in a way. And that's you. That's me. To be like him, to represent his image. And so when people see us, it reminds them of Him. When people see us, it reminds them of Him. To be conformed into that image means being more like Christ. So to be more succinct, Then being conformed to the image of Christ means to be more like Jesus Christ. [00:20:56] Warning. What God does not do is make you into a God. [00:21:01] He doesn't make you into a mini me, mini God. He doesn't make you into a demigod. Anybody see moana or moana 2? Yeah, I confess too. I saw the moana 2 with my daughter a little while ago. There's a character in there named Maui, and Maui is a demigod. He's a godlike character, a deity. But God's not gonna do that to us. [00:21:23] He made us human for a reason, because that's exactly who we're supposed to be. I wanna be more specific, though. What does God do, what he does in this, Making us into his image? The Holy Spirit lives in us, God himself, and he lives through us as we cooperate. In other words, when we cooperate with God, what I mean is, we obey. And as we obey, then. Then we begin living like this new creation in our primary passage earlier, like Christ. [00:21:55] Well, I want to be even more specific. What does this look like? Well, we saw what Leonardo da Vinci supposedly looks like in that drawing. But what does it look like for you to look more like Jesus Christ? What does that look like if that's God's goal for us? Well, first of all, our character. Our character will change, and our character needs to change. I'm not saying our personality necessarily, but how you think and your qualities and your moral qualities will change. They'll become more like Jesus. So your heart will be more like Jesus. Your thoughts will be more like Jesus. Your attitudes will be more like Jesus. Your actions will be more like Jesus. Your words will be more like Jesus. [00:22:45] Your character will be more like Jesus. And so evidence of that, that's character. But what else does this look like? There's evidence of that. And that's what I love about being part of this church, being part of this church. I see this evidence all the time. What are some of this evidence of the image of Christ if this is our goal? Well, very simple faith and growing, faith and obedience, following what God says. And certainly good works follow. There's sacrificial living and sacrificial giving. There's being a part of and caring about God's mission. Maybe that's to your friend that's hurting. Maybe that's to your neighbor or neighborhood. And maybe that's to your city. Maybe that's inside the church. Helping out inside the church and serving. Maybe that's even overseas, whatever that is. God's mission work at the beginning of time. [00:23:39] God created us. [00:23:41] Well, he also created dogs and spiders and ants and alligators. But, you know, he didn't make them in his image. Right. The Bible says this. Let us make man in our image. This means men, women, this means boys and girls. You are created in God's image in our likeness. It says this image or likeness is this idea of we're supposed to resemble God. That's the simplest terms. We are to resemble God. And so now we get to the New Testament, and here we are that Romans, chapter 8, verse 29. I mentioned before. Paul starting to write. He's writing to believers. And here's what he says. For those whom he, meaning God, whom he foreknew, he also predestined to what? To be conformed to the image of His Son, Jesus Christ. There's that goal then. It says, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. [00:24:37] See that interesting phrase there? In order that he might be firstborn among many brothers. The firstborn here is Jesus, meaning Jesus was the first resurrected. So it's not just that we're to be more like him now. It's not just that that being in the image of Jesus, we're to be more like him from now until the day we die. It's not just that we're predestined, which we are predestined beforehand by God for salvation. He has chosen us. It's not just we're predestined to be more like Jesus now. It's so that in the future we will also share as brothers and sisters in Christ. We will be with him forever, glorified as well. [00:25:25] We will be sharing with Jesus in heaven for all time with our new resurrected bodies, where he will be our king. This is this idea. It's not just now being conformed to his image, but it's then also being conformed to his image. [00:25:42] Romans 8:30 says this. And those who he predestined, he also called, meaning he called us to salvation. And those whom he called salvation, he also justified. Talked about that a moment ago. And those whom he justified, he also glorified. He will do this work. He will do this work. And this is being conformed into his image. This is the experience that you and I will get to have. That's great. The goal of the Christian life is to be conformed to the image of Christ both now and then. And that's really, really good news. And you can say amen if you wanted that one. I think it's the best news I'm gonna end this sermon. And someone said, yay, I'm gonna end this sermon with our so what's a reflection and response here? [00:26:28] Sometimes people ask this question and they ask it and they're not very nice about it. Cause maybe we didn't do something too smart. And they'll say, why did you do that? You ever heard that? Why did you do that? Sometimes we say, well. Cause I felt like it. Well, I hope today we're not gonna have to answer that way anymore. Instead we can say something like, well, because this reflects my Savior as well. That would be great. The first so what is this? Reflect and write down and then share some of the amazing privileges, some of those amazing gifts that you heard about that you have as a believer who is in Christ. I mean, this can be an action step. I know it feels a little mysterious because God is so amazing for Fill your hearts with gratitude. The end of 2024. Fill your hearts with gratitude what it means to be in Christ. Maybe you can share that even in the foyer today you could just share, just take one minute. Just share what that means to be in Christ and why that matters to you. If you have children, you could talk about this phrase in Christ and help them understand that a little better. This amazing, amazing truth. [00:27:36] Well, our last so what? And this is my favorite. [00:27:41] I see that our women's ministry director, Lisa Lewis, she does this all the time. She talks about this and she utilizes this really important Christian growth discipline. She shared it with me before and mentions it. And I love this. [00:27:57] It's this. It's reflect and respond to your life events in relation to your Christian faith. [00:28:08] So if you believe God is sovereign, that means he is in control even in the hard things. And we can learn from them. You know, do sometimes you make the same dumb mistakes over and over again? Well, I know that can happen, right? But like anything else in life, if we just do some work, we will reap the benefits. And this is that work that I'm talking about. If we want to be conformed into the image of Christ, then let's look like the new creation. Then starting now, before the end of the year, we can do some of these things. And here's what it is. I wanna put another slide up there. We can reflect back on the events of 2024. We have to assume, because God is in control, that these things have all come through his fingers, every single thing for us. So let's look at those experiences, look at God's presence, and look for God's presence in those experiences and ask ourselves, where was He? Understand the difference that his presence made. Can you imagine going through life's experiences without knowing the Savior has you and that you're His? Look for him, then also in these experiences, begin to understand the difference that his presence made in those experiences. But take your time with this and then no, no. Third thing is know what God expects as a result of this knowledge. Because the goal is to go deeper. The goal is to gain wisdom in this new vision and understanding and motivation so we can go forward and we can be conformed then into the image of Christ. [00:29:42] Well, let me just read our main passage again. Paul says this. Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. [00:29:55] Pray God, thank you for your love. Thank you for Jesus. Thank you. Through that repentance and faith in him and by his grace, by his sacrifice, God, we are saved. Thank you that this allows us to be in the most amazing, awe inspiring relationship ever. Even the angels long to have what we have. And that is this deep, deep union with you, God. As we continue in our worship service, God, would we praise you and will you work in our hearts so that we be more like you, Jesus, we pray this in your name. Amen.