A Patterned Image Part 1
A Patterned Image • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
0 ratings
· 8 viewsNotes
Transcript
Discovering the Pattern
Discovering the Pattern
In this series I want to help each of us discover the true pattern we are supposed to be following for our lives. Not a religious pattern. Not a cultural pattern we call Christianity. Not an eclectic pattern where we pick and choose what we want it to look like. There is not a customizable Christ or designer discipleship. You must discover and embrace the only God ordained, God acceptable and authorized pattern.
A pattern can be a good thing or a not so good thing. All of us develop patterns in life. Often, we call them habits, idiosyncrasies, obsessive compulsive disorders, set ways of doing things, or processes we have developed. Some of them we get from our parents, others who have influenced our lives, or they are the result of good or bad experiences that affected us mentally, spiritually or emotionally.
A pattern can provide something pleasant to look at or it can provide structure and order. A pattern can bring clarity or it can bring confusion depending on how it is perceived. Patterns can give us instructions and direction. Some patterns keep us bound, enslaved or hold us back from positive changes in life.
A pattern can also be used for designs, building, organizing, putting things in an order or developing something useful or something destructive.
A pattern is something that is repetitive, reliable, consistent, observable, predictable, intentional and can provide a model. It is something that can be imitated, replicated and dedicated. It is also something that can be easily overlooked and disregarded.
We see patterns in art, music, literature, mechanical designs, architecture, automobiles, nature and in people to include their traits, acts, tendencies, characteristics even in groups and organizations we see patterns of ideas and actions.
Patterns can reveal things about a person’s background, upbringing, their worldview, their relationships, experiences, character, motives, intentions, presuppositions, priorities, choices, way of living and probable actions and results.
For example, when a person’s life presents a pattern of things like constant job changes, financial distress, broken relationships, and church changes. If the reasons or justifications are consistently similar in nature, you can predict that the patterns will continue unless there is change in the one constant of the pattern which is themselves.
This is what the Scripture means when it comes to what many perceive as a conflict between God’s omniscient sovereignty and our free will which He sovereignly gifted. Christ as our atonement was predestined before the foundations of the earth. But God did not predestine who would accept this salvation and who would not. However, God knows forehand that the fallen human condition is pre-disposed to rebel. As Pastor J. John states, “The heart of the human problem is the problem of the human heart.”
Our thought patterns, emotional patterns, perceptional patterns, our reaction patterns and so many other patterns that we blame others for, find solace in and will often defend to a fault, all shape who we are in our fleshly souls.
We all live by patterns, it’s in our nature. But without the redeeming work of Christ we follow a flawed and unreliable pattern that ultimately leads to death in our vain efforts, broken souls and eternal future. You want to change the trajectory of your life? Change the pattern of your living. But be careful who you emulate.
In the beginning when God said, “Let there be” He produced patterns that reflected Him. And He saw that it was good. All was to exist and function within His patterned glory. But sin broke that pattern.
Later in Genesis God gives Noah a pattern to follow. It was to be a pattern of an Ark that would save and preserve mankind and the created order. Within the pattern God retained patterns of creation.
Note that the word “ark” is tabah תֵּבָה meaning a basket, such as Moses was preserved in and was a woven pattern; a box, case or chest such as the Ark of the Covenant; or it is defined as a coffin where you place a dead man and bury him once and for all eternity. Thus, the pattern of life which includes conception, birth, days, then death and eternity.
Again, in Genesis God gives Abraham a pattern through a promise of a new work of redemption that would be a complete and eternal work.
And in Exodus, that patterned promise to Abraham is given to Israel as a foreshadow of the completed pattern to come. First let’s look at it in the New Testament.
They serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things. For when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God, saying, “See that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain.”
“Our fathers had the tent of witness in the wilderness, just as he who spoke to Moses directed him to make it, according to the pattern that he had seen.
What are these verses referring to? Well, we can read of it in Exodus 25:40
And see that you make them after the pattern for them, which is being shown you on the mountain.
The tabernacle, and everything in it, was given to Israel as a model or pattern of how to live in holiness with God and each other. It was to provide for them a pattern of living a lifestyle of worship that was acceptable to God. It was a pattern of living consecrated, separated and sanctified from the way the pagan peoples lived in darkness.
In the book of Numbers God gives us a clue as to what the process of the pattern looks like.
And this was the workmanship of the lampstand, hammered work of gold. From its base to its flowers, it was hammered work; according to the pattern that the Lord had shown Moses, so he made the lampstand.
Jesus is the the light of the world in John 8:12
Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
Jesus is the lampstand and you are the tabernacle in 1 Corinthians 3:16
Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?
Jesus started this hammered work at the cross in Mark 15:24
And they crucified him and divided his garments among them, casting lots for them, to decide what each should take.
And for us to follow Christ we must live according to the only authorized pattern which is Jesus. And the only way to follow the pattern and apply it to our daily lives is to be crucified with Christ. The Christian who is not living the crucified life is not a follower of the Christ. Notice the pattern presented by Jesus in His instructions. He says, “I am the way, the truth the life” and no one can be My disciple unless he “denies himself, takes up his cross and follows Me”. This is the pattern. The Apostle Paul states such in Galatians 2:20.
I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
What is the Apostle Paul talking about? He is referring to what Jesus said in Matthew 16:24-26
Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?
The word “crucified” is yaqa יָקַע meaning to be dislocated, abandoned, executed, to sever oneself, to allow to fall to pieces and rot. So, what is the Apostle Paul and Jesus saying about us being crucified with Christ? We must allow who we were, before discovering who God desires us to be and the pattern we are to look like, to be dislocated from the life of Christ we now live.
That old self, the old way of thinking, living, attitudes, responses, every part of that old self must be executed, severed from us and allowed to fall to pieces and rot away never to return. Your old self has to be placed in that ark, that coffin, and buried once and for all eternity. And the only resurrection you should be witnessing in you is that new man who is in the image of the pattern of Christ. But if that old man starts rising up again, he is a zombie of the old you and zombies do not exist in the Kingdom of God, only in Hell.
Everyday of the true believer in Christ Jesus must be a day of being hammered and chiseled into the image of Jesus Christ. Everyday is a day of allowing God to chip away at things in our hearts, minds, souls, attitudes, choices, worldview, lifestyles, character, every part of our being that does not look like Jesus.
I fear so strongly that for so many generations the church has presented a pattern of Jesus that does not match the Scriptures or who He is in them. The church has presented an easy, user friendly, all inclusive, non-convicting but popular convincing image of Jesus that the world would accept but God rejects.
You cannot live Christ without crucifixion of fleshly self. And you there is no crucifixion without a cross. This is why the Apostle Paul says that he had been crucified with Christ. He follows it up with this in 2 Timothy 1:13
Follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.
It is a pretty simple and straight forward message. If you are still trying to live out this life of Christ in an old pattern or you have not truly discovered the pattern of Christ Himself, then I invite you to join me in rediscovering the crucified life in Christ before He returns or your time comes to an end.
