Grace Means Change: Gospel Transformation

I'm the associate pastor here. You might have remembered I was here preaching last week. Some of you are looking at me like you're confused or concerned. There's not been a coup. Nothing has happened to Jeff. Everything's fine. Normally I don't preach two weeks in a row, but I'm excited to have the chance to do that. I was supposed to preach many weeks ago—that sermon I preached last week—then I got COVID and it got scooted forward. That's how this happened. It's gonna be okay. A couple of you have expressed concern. Thank you. I appreciate all of your prayers.

So we've been doing this series on the Means of Grace. What a great series that's been. I've really enjoyed it, both hearing it and being a part of preaching it. It is a blessing to remember the grace that we have received in Christ and to be pointed to ways in which we can regularly, ordinarily be reminded of that grace.

From the Means of Grace to What Grace Means

We're gonna pivot from that series on the means of grace now. We're gonna pivot like Ross and Friends—you remember the couch? Pivot, pivot, pivot. Some of you have seen Friends, some of you are like, whatever. We're going to pivot from the means of grace to talking about what grace means. We're talking about how we receive God's grace, how we're reminded of the grace that we have in Christ Jesus, to what it means, how it changes us, how it transforms us.

The classic Reformed expression of this pivoting move is this: we talk about how we are saved by grace through faith alone. But a saving faith is never alone—that's right. We are saved by grace through faith, but a saving faith is never alone. It always changes us, and that itself is a grace.

Classically, in theological circles, we talk about justification. Justification is the once and for all declaration that because of the work of Christ, you are declared righteous. You have the righteousness of Christ. You put it on like a robe, and when God looks at you, that's what he sees. You have been declared righteous. No one can bring any charge against you because you've been justified.

But the truth is, there is still sin in your life. Jesus Christ doesn't stop just with your justification. God isn't just satisfied with declaring you righteous. He wants to change you. That's where theologians talk about what we just read about with the Heidelberg Catechism—sanctification. This progressive process by which the Holy Spirit, working mysteriously with us, transforms us more and more into the image of Christ. Not only are we declared righteous, but we are being changed into the image of Christ, into being righteous. That's really good news.

We are so excited about that at this church. We built that into our vision. You heard Sandra read it at the beginning of the service. She prayed about it. By God's grace, we want to be deeply transformed. We don't just want to be declared righteous. We want to be changed as a people. That's our vision: to be different in ten years than we are now, to be totally different, to be looking more and more like Christ and bearing fruit. Specifically, we've identified things like planting churches, pursuing biblical justice, becoming cross-cultural disciples. That's our vision. If you're not familiar with that, we have a pamphlet out on the bookshelf. I hope you'll grab it. It has an illustration with a tree that makes all of this very clear.

Sanctification: The Good News Within the Good News

Here's what we're going to talk about today: that deep transformation, our commitment to it, our desire for it. I'm aware of the fact that sanctification is the bad word in the good news. We love talking about justification. Your faces light up when I start talking about it. It's so great. I didn't have to do anything and I'm justified. This is wonderful. Let's stop there. Don't start talking about how I actually have to do something along with the Holy Spirit and I have to go through this painful process of change. I don't want to talk about that. Let's just stick with justification.

Sanctification often feels like the bad word in the good news. But I want to press on you: it is a good word. It is a good word within the good news. It's good that Jesus doesn't just stop with our justification, that he actually transforms us. That is good. I've often said this: if you take away sanctification and God just gives you, "Hey, you're declared righteous. You get to live forever," it's like being a vampire, right?

Vampires live forever, right? The point is, you don't want to be a vampire because you're going around sucking blood out of people. You're terrible, horrible. You have to live with your sin and the impact that has on people forever. That's a terrible existence. No matter how attractive Hollywood makes it look, that's the idea of being a vampire. That's terrible. You don't want that. That's justification without sanctification—live forever but be terrible. That's closer to hell than heaven.

A lot of times we like to skip from justification right to glorification. That's the one we like, right? And that's good. We should be praying for Jesus to come back and for us to share in his glory forever and ever. Amen. Maranatha, Lord, come Lord, right? We want him to come, but if we skip over justification to glorification, we forget about sanctification.

What we're basically doing is implying that God's not really doing anything of any kind of importance with us now. Like we're in a waiting room. But I want you to see that sanctification means that God is using the now on you. He's changing you. He's transforming you, using your experiences in this life to totally make you like Christ. What a gift. But it also means that God is using you now. We have a purpose, brothers and sisters in this world. It's not just like God was going to leave you there for a little while and then zap you up, right? No. There's a reason why we are here. There's purpose in our life. So it shifts our time on Earth from being a waiting room to a race. And that is the view that we see in scripture.

We've been using a lot of passages from Hebrews to look at the means of grace. We're going to use one from Hebrews this morning to look at what grace means. So if you would turn to Hebrews 12:1-12. We're going to read it together. It's on the screen. This is God's word.

Therefore, since we also have such a great cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us rid ourselves of every obstacle and the sin which so easily entangles us and let's run with endurance the race that is set before us. Looking only at Jesus, the originator and perfecter of the faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider him who has endured such hostility by sinners against himself so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin and you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons. My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord nor faint when you are punished by him. For whom the Lord loves he disciplines and he punishes every son whom he accepts. It is for discipline that you endure. God deals with you as with sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? But if you are without discipline of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them but he disciplines us for our good so that we may share his holiness. For the moment, all discipline seems not to be pleasant but painful. Yet to those who have been trained by it, afterward, it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. Therefore, strengthen the hands that are weak and the knees that are feeble. — Hebrews 12:1-12

Lord God, we pray that you would illumine your word, that we would see Christ through it, that you would indeed strengthen our feeble hands and knees, that you make us strong, and you would help us to run the race that you've set before us as a church. We pray this in your son's name, amen.

Outline

Well, this morning, I want to follow the passage in terms of the outline. Here are the three points for today. For those of you who like that sort of thing.

First, we're going to look at running—that's in verse one. Second, we're going to look at looking at Christ and the importance of that in running—that's in verses two and three. And third, we're going to look at transformation and discipline—that's verses four through the end.

So we're going to look at running. We're going to look at looking at Jesus. And we're going to look at being transformed. Alright, first of all, running. I can't talk about this passage without talking about the Robin Williams movie, Dead Poets Society.

I just can't think of this passage without thinking about that movie. Do you remember that movie, some of you? I was a teacher for a number of years, so teachers like teacher movies. We like those movies because it gets at the beauty of what teaching is. That movie really does because Robin Williams is this inspiring teacher. And do you remember how that movie begins? He brings all of his students out into the lobby of the school. And there are these posters of all the graduates who have gone before them. It's this really old school. So a lot of those pictures are from like the 1930s or earlier, really old. And all of the people in those pictures are dead, right? But they were boys in the picture, and Robin Williams kind of sneaks up behind his students. They're looking at the pictures, and he pretends to be the voices of the dead boys in the picture and he says, "Carpe diem." You remember that? It's really creepy. Robin Williams, man. Carpe diem. That's what he says the dead are saying to the boys. That's Latin. It means seize the day.

That's what the author of Hebrews is saying is happening with us. There's this great cloud of witnesses. If you read Hebrews 11, it goes through a laundry list of all of these Old Testament saints and all of the great things that God did through them, right? And it says they're now in the stands and they're watching you and they're cheering you on. They're saying, "Carpe diem, seize the day. Our day is done. We're in the stands. You're on the field. Go get it. Go get it for Jesus, right?"

And I don't know about you, but I find that incredibly encouraging. I want you to do something for me. Think of a saint—someone who is a believer that has gone before you, that's in the stands. I want you to think about the fact that they watch you, that they cheer for you, that they're present, they're seeing what you're doing. Isn't that encouraging? Isn't it also frightening? Because here's the thing—I can fool you guys. I can kind of give signs that I'm running a good race, but I can't fool them and I can't fool God. It's an incredible amount of accountability, but here's the thing I want you to see. If you look at the lives of those saints, they weren't great. There's a lot of sin in their lives. Imagine how terrified they must be that their lives are recorded in Scripture for all time and we all read about it. So they have a lot of grace for you and they're cheering, right? They're cheering, but they want you to put off anything that gets in your way because they see now more than ever the importance of the beauty of the race. And they see the opportunity that you have that's no longer theirs but is yours to run.

A Friend in the Stands

You know, recently, I have this friend. I don't know how to describe him other than to say he's my best friend. He's really my brother. I didn't have a brother growing up. I'm an only child. I have a stepsister, but we didn't live together. So the closest thing I had to a sibling was this guy. He was the David to my Jonathan, if you will, and he really was David. In many ways, he was stronger in the faith when we were growing up and he pointed me to Christ.

Anyway, I love this guy. In late December, early January, he came down with COVID. And he wasn't real smart about it. He was very slow to go to the hospital. He waited a little too long. So they couldn't give him any of the treatments that they have now, the medicines. He got to the hospital and his breathing was just getting worse and worse and worse. I remember talking to him on the phone—the last phone conversation I had with him. He's just trying to breathe and talk, and it was one of the hardest phone conversations I've ever had, just hearing him suffer and talk about what he was going through. It was only like a two-minute conversation, and then we hung up. Shortly after that his breathing got worse. They had to put him in a medically induced coma and they had to put a ventilator in. So there was a machine breathing for him for a number of weeks. And then at some point his kidney stopped working. The doctor came to his wife and said, "You know, we can keep him on the ventilator. We can deal with one organ not working, but two—there's not a lot we can do. He has very short time to live." The doctor said, "It's going to probably be two days or less. We're going to reduce the COVID restrictions. You can call any of his family members and have them come in."

She called me. She was in the chapel at the hospital, Mission Hospital in Asheville, and she said, "Would you just pray? They say he doesn't have a chance." And I remember in that moment we prayed, and I said something like this.

I said, Lord, you're going to save my friend's body one way or the other. But would you do it in a way that shows your glory to this hospital staff and to his wife? Would you bring glory to your name by saving his body now and revealing to them the power of your work? Would you do that for your glory and for their encouragement? I said something like that because that's what they told me to say in seminary.

In my heart, I was grieving. My friend was going to die. I knew it. And so I rushed to Asheville because I didn't want to be late. I wanted to see him before he died. We got there and right after that, his kidney started working. And then slowly, his breathing got better. And I remember last weekend, we were on the leadership retreat. I got a call from his wife and it was kind of up and down for a while. She calls me and she's in tears and she says, he passed. And I said, "Oh Felicia, I'm so sorry. What happened?" And she said, "No, he passed the breathing test. They're taking the ventilator out." And I said, "You need to go be with your husband and support him." And then I hung up and I was like, I'm going to kill her. I had a moment on the retreat. I needed it after that.

They took the ventilator out. Long story short, he's recovering. He's now on a step down. He's watching right now. I spent all day on Friday with him. I was working on this sermon and I was sitting in the hospital room with my friend. He's talking to me and I can't believe it. And I said, "What do you think about this passage? What do you think I should say?" And here's what he said. I'm paraphrasing. He said something like this: "I took my life for granted. I don't anymore. I feel like God has given me a second chance and I don't deserve it. I don't know what he's kept me alive for but I want to find out and I want to live for that."

He understands the value of the race more than I do right now. I wanted to share that with you because I think all of us should say that: I took my life for granted but I don't anymore. I don't deserve to be alive. And I want to say this—just to Pastor Riley because I know there's some people in this room you've lost loved ones during this time. And that's really hard. A bunch of people came to me and they said, "You're a righteous man. You prayed and this man was healed." Let me tell you. I'm not a righteous man. I didn't think he was going to be healed. There was no faith in that prayer. Just mechanics.

And here's the thing: God poured out his grace undeservingly on my friend. But I want to say this—if he had died and he had gone to be with the Lord, God would have poured out far more grace on my friend. So if you're in here and you've suffered loss, I want you to hear: there is grace for those running the race and those who finish the race. But for those of us who are here, we are called to run. We are called to run and we're called to value the race.

Look at the way that the author of Hebrews talks about us running. It's not this passive activity. It's not something that we engage in lightly. He talks about getting rid of every obstacle or hindrance. Right? Get everything out of the way because I don't want anything to trip me up. I want to go as fast as I can. I was watching the other night—the Olympics and the speed skating. I don't know why anyone would do speed skating. It just seems so incredibly unfair. There's those little cones and one of those things moves an inch and some guy all of a sudden is flying into the wall. Boom. He's out. Get rid of every hindrance. We don't want to slip and fly into the wall. We want to go as fast as we can. Get everything out of the way. All the people we want to run, run.

Distractions and Sin

And what that is—that's an analogy for all of the distractions that we find in the world. And I think we are so distracted. We're caught up in the different things that we see, right? Instead of the race. Why we're here. That's what my friend was saying. He's like, "I took it for granted. I was distracted." We're distracted. We're called to get rid of those distractions, to see the beauty of the race, and to run.

And then it talks about the sin, the sin that so easily entangles. Sin like that can get in the way. It holds us back. You can think about it like being flabby. Athletes, they don't want anybody fat. They want to get lean and cut and they want to do everything they can, right? To make their bodies into kind of like a racing machine. Athletes in the olden days would strip down almost naked or naked in some cases. Now we have runner shorts, which I'm not sure is much better. But we'll shave our legs. We'll do whatever we have to do to get that extra little bit.

That is the commitment to the race that we're called to. God has left us here for a purpose. Let's run and let's run as fast as we can. And let's run with perseverance.

I think we often times think about this race like, "I put my trust in Christ. I'm done. I'm finished." No. The race of faith goes on. It's not just justification, it's also sanctification. God is doing something in us now and he's using the now to change us. There's more going on here. It's not just a one time, we're done.

We're not sprinters. We're running a marathon. Our entire life is an opportunity to press forward the kingdom of God into a broken and fallen world and to allow that broken and fallen world to press in on us and make us more and more like Christ. It's an incredible race and it's a race that is marked out for us. We have an individual race marked for us.

We often like to compare, right? You read about some sort of person in the Bible and you're like, "I wish I lived in Bible times, when they were seeing Jesus do miracles." Not now, but this is our race. This is our time and we've been given more than they've been given. We have the Holy Spirit. This is our time.

I've taken to saying this during the pandemic: it is a privilege to serve Christ with you in this dark time. Because what I found is that if I don't say that to people, what I think is, "Gosh, it's terrible that I have to live right now." God in his sovereignty has appointed this now for you and you for this now, to make Christ manifest here. Do you want to run? I want to run. But I will be honest, it's not easy right now. I am tired. Are you tired? It's tiring.

Looking to Christ

The author of Hebrews understood that and said, "Look, if you're going to run this race, there's something very important you have to do. You have to look to Christ."

Consider Jesus so that we do not lose heart. — Hebrews 12:2-3

I can't think about that section of this passage without thinking about the late nineties Keanu Reeves movie, The Replacements, with Gene Hackman. All the football players quit because of contract disputes. They're all about the money. Keanu Reeves steps in as an amateur and plays quarterback of this ragtag bunch of nobodies who get to the playoffs. At that point, the professional players want to come back. At halftime, they're losing. Gene Hackman, the coach, is walking off the field and a reporter comes and says, "Hey, coach, what do you need to win in the second half?" And he says, "Heart." That's code for Keanu. I need you back. I don't want these people that are all about the money. I want the people that are about the game. And Keanu comes back and of course they win the game.

We need heart. We need to not lose heart. We will lose heart if we look away from Christ.

It's funny to me that I'm talking about a marathon because there are people in our congregation that have run marathons. Some very, very good at it. And I'm up here talking about it. It's kind of weird. I haven't run since I don't think 1992. Here's why: when I run, I start hearing myself breathing and I'm like, this can't be good for me. I'm so focused on me and what's going on with me, I can't do it. What they say is that you gotta put some headphones in or look away from yourself.

In this race, we're called to look to Christ. What are we to learn from looking at Christ? Why did he run? He ran for the joy set before him. Do you know what that was? Jesus was up in heaven. He had everything he could ever want, but he wanted to come and get you and me and us. The joy set before him was basically achieving our salvation, bringing us in, bringing us into the race.

The joy set before us is him. When we fix our eyes on him, we're fixing our eyes on the prize, but we have to remember that the goal of the race—his race and our race—was our unity. Him saving us. Us coming back into relationship together. Being together. Love. It's the joy set before him and the joy set before us.

So we have to fix our eyes on him. We have to remember that joy and there's something to be learned from the pattern of his running.

The author says, look at how he ran. He endured, he scorned, and he sat. He endured all kinds of suffering, right? Read the gospels. They're not happy tales about Jesus skipping through the forest and singing. That's not what happens. He's a suffering servant and he endured all of that. Why? For you. Look at his endurance. Look at the depths of his love. How far he was willing to go for you. He scorned the shame. Look at all the abuse he took. Scorning the shame. I love that. It's like, I'm shaming the shame. He made fun of it. Why? For you. He endured it and he made fun of it. All of a sudden, he's like, nothing. It's nothing compared to what I'm gonna get for this. You. And then he sat down. He finished it. He finished the race. Do you see? We're running his race which he's already finished. There's no heat on this.

He goes on to press this really hard. The author of Hebrews, what does he call Christ? He does not only look at the pattern of how he ran, look at why he ran, but look at who he is. The author and perfecter, some translation says. This translation says, the originator and perfecter, some say the champion and consummator. You see? He's the originator of our faith and the finisher of our faith. So, we're called to run this thing that he starts and he finishes. Do you see? We're running his race. It's like we're caught up in it. He's already done it. It's not like we have to do it. It's not like there's a lot hanging on this. He's already achieved it. You just get to run. You get the joy of participating in the race that he has already won. There is no way you lose. No way. Do you want to run? You can't lose. It's not like you might mess it up. If you step out onto the field, you can't because Jesus has done it all for you.

And this verb where it says look to Jesus, fix your eyes on Jesus, some translations literally is look away to him. We live in a world where it's all up to us and we look at all these different things and all these different distractions. Look away to Jesus. Remember that this is his race, that he's already won it, that he's done everything and just practically, how do we do that? How do we look at him? Well, there's some ordinary ways that we do that. We might have talked about them recently. Prayer the word, the sacraments, regularly coming to church and gazing upon his grace. Get your mind off of your own breathing and on to the victory he's already won. And there's a hundred different ways that there are unordinary ways in which he shows his grace. Like saving your friend's life and convincing you that you had nothing to do with it. Praise God. Lots of ways that God shows himself to us but we need to look away from this world and look to Jesus if we're going to complete the race, if we're going to actually run.

Be Transformed

Okay, last point, be transformed. The author switches his metaphors here. Did you notice that in verses one to four? It's all about races and athletes and things. So, it would have been really consistent from an English perspective if he had continued by talking about a coach disciplining his runners, right? That's what I really want him to do here but here's why he doesn't do that. Here's why he has to switch his metaphors because a coach doesn't love his athletes the way a father loves his sons. And so that's what he shifts to. He shifts to the discipline of a father to show that God doesn't do this in a way that is absent of love. That discipline doesn't come as though there's just some sort of abstract goal and that's it. The goal is you. The goal is you and your transformation. That is what fathers are about or what fathers are supposed to be about.

I will tell you. And the author of Hebrews tells you, right? He talks about that. Earthly fathers did what they thought was best. They did the best they could, right? I will tell you as the father of five children, I do the best I can. But there are sometimes, Lord, help me, when all five of them have five questions all at the same time and I just want silence, right? But I call it discipline, right? That's earthly. We do the best we can but the author of Hebrews says, right? God does it perfectly. He doesn't do the best he can. He does the best for our good. Every discipline that he enacts, he does for your good.

Now, for some of you, that's hard to hear because your experience of earthly fathers has been hard and so that analogy doesn't—it's hard for you to overcome that but what I need you to see is that fathers are supposed to love their kids and if yours didn't, I'm really sorry but your heavenly father does so perfectly. Everywhere where your father fell short, everywhere where I fall short with my kids, our heavenly father, he nails it, right? He nails it because discipline is for you. And here's the thing. What does this passage mean by discipline?

This is a little fuzzy, so I want to clarify it. He does mean consequences for specific sins. Have you ever been disciplined by God for specific sins? There are consequences that you experience when you do wrong things. That is God's discipline. You can think about that like speeding tickets, right? Sorry, it's a discipline. You did something wrong and there's a consequence. I'm always working to try to make that apparent to my kids—like there are consequences for bad decisions. And I want you to see that those consequences are a blessing because they try to carve you away from the sin. They try to steer you back.

But there's also general suffering that we experience in this world because of the fall, and sometimes that's less clear—like health problems. Right? I eat a lot of cheeseburgers, so it's possible my health problems fall into that previous category. But even if I ate perfectly, I would experience suffering and death in this life. And it may not be clear—is that my fault? But that is the collective reality of living in a fallen world, our sin. There is discipline for our general sin that exists in this world.

And there's also things like—discipline is the same root as discipleship. So when we talk about the means of grace and we say things like the Bible, like, it's hard to read the Bible. Can I get an amen? Yeah? That's part of living in a fallen world, that we have to endure some of the enemy's attacks. He doesn't want that. There's all sorts of things in the world that press against us, and pressing forward by faith requires discipline.

The Difference Between Discipline and Wrath

That's what he means by discipline. And here's what's really important: it's really important that you understand what discipline is not.

He says, discipline is for sons. If you're not being disciplined, then you're not sons. If it's not discipline, you know what it is? It's wrath. God pouring out his just wrath on those who deserve it. But for those who have Christ in view, for those who have looked away to Christ, it's not wrath. Because his wrath has been poured out on Christ. Any suffering, any challenge you face in this world is meant for your good because you are in Christ. He takes the things that would have been wrath and uses them for his good purposes and for your good purposes.

Then what that means is, all of our enemies are working for us now. Do you see? When Satan comes at you, it's like running with the weights on. He becomes a part of your transformation process. God once again, punking Satan since the beginning of time. It's not wrath and it's not purposeless. It's meant for you because he loves you.

And if it's not that, then that's like a problem. If you're not being disciplined, if you're not seeing it that way, then maybe you need to think about: Am I a son or daughter? Am I a child of God? But we who are believers, that's what we sing—I'm a child of God, yes I am. And if you look at all these lyrics of the songs that we sang, it all talked about how suffering and challenge and all of that becomes blessing in that economy when we look at Christ.

Learning from the Cloud of Witnesses

I think it's helpful to look back on some of those who are in the audience, right? As we're racing, we have their lives. We know about them. It's easy to look at their suffering and see its purpose. Like, if you could go back into the wilderness with Moses and the people, would you want to press on them? Like, man, it's going to be okay. He's taking you to the promised land, and you're not going to believe what he's going to do to Jericho once you get there. It's going to be amazing, and oh by the way, manna—man, we would just love to have some bread raining down from heaven where I'm from every now and then just to show everybody like you guys have it good. God's doing some good things through this really hard situation.

Or Elijah—I always want to show up with the ravens when Elijah runs off, and he's despairing and giving up. I'm like, hang in there, buddy. There's this Mount Carmel thing. You're going to get these prophets of Baal, like you have fire coming down from heaven. Like, so cool. The suffering is going to be okay.

What about people at the foot of the cross? They're watching God die. He's done all this amazing stuff and they're killing him. How hard must that have been? But don't you just want to say, hang in there? The tomb will be empty in a couple of days. Just wait. Imagine what they're saying to you.

In this moment in the suffering you're experiencing, right? Because they see. You don't see. Where were they? We can't see it. It's hard. That's what this says. It says, like all discipline is hard. You know, when you go to the gym, right? I have been to the gym. Now, not like a long time ago, like recently. I try, okay? People, I try. And you start lifting something heavy, your arms get tired. I hope it's not just me, right? There's this big guy that yells at me, he says like, you want that, right? When you feel weak, you're getting stronger.

My friend, you know, when I was hanging out with him on Friday, they keep turning the oxygen down on his little nose thing and while I was there, they turned it off and he was miserable. He's like, I think I'm going to need that back on. They're like, no, for a little while, we're going to leave it off. You know why? Because it's making your lungs stronger. While I was there, he got up and walked for the first time. He talked about how shaky his knees were. But if he didn't do that, right, if those knees didn't shake, they wouldn't get stronger.

The classic illustration of this is the moth. You know, moths start out like a little caterpillar and then they get in a cocoon, right? Did you know if you actually wait until it's the right time and you break open the cocoon for the moth, he'll still have wings but he won't fly? Because his wings won't have gone through the stress of having to tear open the cocoon. They won't have like the blood that goes to him or whatever—I don't know. He can't fly apart from going through the cocoon, right?

Transformation is often painful but it yields the fruit of righteousness.

That's what the passage says. Bottom line, through our suffering, we become like Christ. We shouldn't despise the discipline of the Lord and say, hey, we don't deserve that. We're not going to go through it. We want to eliminate that. We also shouldn't be crushed by it. "Oh, this is God pouring out his wrath on us." No, you're children of God. We should see it as the process by which God is transforming us and that is why we have that in our vision. That's what we want. We don't want to be a people who are not deeply transformed.

The Run Free Marathon

Let me tell you a story. So there was this group in Orlando, Florida and they decided to host a marathon. They didn't know anything about anything but they wanted to do it. Just a group of small guys. So they went on Kickstarter and they ordered some run packages, you know, like the little numbers and things and the kits that you get. They got some medals for the winners. And they put it all on Kickstarter. You could buy this run kit and then you were signed up for the race. The race was scheduled for 02/02/2014 is when this started. And they've done it every year since. But 2014, this was the first time they had a modest goal of maybe they could get enough people and they'd make a thousand dollars. In twenty-four hours, they had hit the thousand dollar goal. They had enough people signed up, right? And it just kept growing and growing beyond that. All of their early bird packages had sold within two days, right?

The next thing, they had raised $10,000 and they had participants from 10 different countries within two weeks, right? I mean, this thing was getting big. They wound up with around a thousand racers. They were featured in the New York Times and they were more than 2000% funded when they were done. 2000%. Isn't that great? It's really amazing, especially considering the race never happened. It was the Run Free Marathon of 2014. They decided that what they wanted to do was send everybody a run package, have them take a selfie of themselves pretending to run. They made a website with all these pictures. They posted finishing times that were based on how early people signed up or how much money they paid. And they awarded trophies to the winners, also based on that. And they pretended. They pretended to have this big race. Nobody got healthier, right? Nothing good came out of this except for a bunch of people got to pretend that they were running a marathon, right? It's kind of sad and kind of funny.

But here's the deal. What is that a picture of? It's a picture of justification without sanctification. It's a picture of a Christianity, not without Christ, but without you. Our vision at this church is to be deeply transformed. We don't want to run a race that we're not a part of. Christ has invited us and that is good news, brothers and sisters, that we get to run. He runs through us and that through that process, we are transformed. Even though we have no business running, he weakens our knees. He helps us to take the steps and slowly but surely we get stronger and we change and we become more and more like him.

What an incredible blessing to be invited to run in this race. And what a privilege, brothers and sisters. And I mean this—it is to run alongside of you in these dark times.

May we run the race of faith that the Lord Jesus has placed before us. And may we be blessed by it.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.