Guaranteed to Grow

I really believe 2020 is going to be a year of Kingdom expansion through Granger Missionary Church.

Introduction

*What are your top 3 goals this year?

(weight loss, save more money, exercise more, spend more time with family)

How many of you would like to be transformed by the end of 2020?

*What would you give to guarantee the success of your goals this year?

[ILLUST - Fox News article w/survey about what people would give up to be instantly changed]

Top Things People Would Do to Instantly Complete Their Fitness Goals

- Only eat plain oatmeal for every meal, for one full year (33 percent)

- Shave my head (30 percent)

- Spend one month alone, in the woods without electricity (29 percent)

- Give up sex for one year (29 percent)

- Give up all electronic devices for one full month (26 percent)

- Spend a week in jail (25 percent)

- Stand in line at the DMV for a full day (24 percent)

- Lose your voice for one year (21 percent)

- Don’t take a shower or bathe for two weeks (21 percent)

We want a New Year / New You

— do you feel like you’re in a rut

— didn’t make New Year’s resolutions because “What’s the point?”

New Year / Same You

— Nothing has really changed over the past several years?

— Sad thing is, this happens to us spiritually as well.

Today’s message is for two kinds of people:

Those who feel like their stuck in a rut spiritually.

Those who feel like there is really no more change needed.

This series is designed to guide us along our journey of transformation.

*God guarantees a new you, and gives you everything you need to grow.*

(ESV)

3 I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, 4 always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, 5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. 6 And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. 7 It is right for me to feel this way about you all, because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. 8 For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. 9 And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, 10 so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, 11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.

6 And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

Paul is writing to the church at Philippi - Church he loves dearly - first church he planted in Europe. Letter of encouragement

God makes you NEW.

“Good work”

The object about which Paul is writing here is the “good work.” It’s pretty cleat that the good word is not referring to the work of the Philippians — their partnership in the gospel or a gift they are sending to Paul.

It would be God’s good work THROUGH them but Paul writes that the good work is done IN them — namely, salvation.

The foundation for your sanctification is justification until you reach glorification. (all the theological nerds say, “Amen.”)

The guarantee of salvation is the motivating factor for our sanctification.

The guarantee of salvation is the motivating factor for our sanctification.

How?

ILLUST - Suppose I was planning to run a marathon. About 5 miles in I begin to question my sanity for attempting such a long race, but a time traveler comes from the near future to tell me that he knows I will finish the race — it’s guaranteed. I would imagine that such an understanding would have me stop running but run more knowing that I will have the joy of crossing the finish line.

The reality of our salvation is so much greater than the analogy - God not only knows the future and so can speak with confidence, but HE is the one who guaranteed our salvation through the resurrection of Jesus. Not only can He guarantee it through observation, He guarantees it through causation.

God makes you NEW.

(ESV)

17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. 18 All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation;

in Christ = salvation

new = not just modified — totally new.

The work that God is doing is GOOD — means good, beneficial, helpful.

God doesn’t have another way to operate.

(But I’m not finished yet – how am I new?)

It’s less like God takes you from scrawny to buff and more like God takes you from dead to alive – from disabled to able to become buff)

When we sin, when we fail to do the good we know we should, when we act out of anger instead of patience, despondence instead of joy — it is not that we are acting out of who we are and we need to stop so we may be new. When we act this way we are actually acting that is foreign to who we ACTUALLY are.

Stop pretending and live Jesus!

We have the fundamental change necessary to live like Jesus — not only are we made new, but we have been given the Holy Spirit to help us in the process of living out of who we really are.

The work that God is doing is GOOD — means good, beneficial, helpful.

God doesn’t have another way to operate.

GOD guarantees the new you.

“He who. . .will”

And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

Where was there anything in there dependent on you?

Salvation is God’s work from beginning to end.

GOD

God will not abandon you.

Guarantees

The foundation for spiritual growth is that God makes you new.

The foundation for your sanctification is justification until you reach glorification. (all the theological nerds say, “Amen.”)

The guarantee of salvation is the motivating factor for our sanctification.

How?

ILLUST - Suppose I was planning to run a marathon. About 5 miles in I begin to question my sanity for attempting such a long race, but a time traveler comes from the near future to tell me that he knows I will finish the race — it’s guaranteed. I would imagine that such an understanding would have me stop running but run more knowing that I will have the joy of crossing the finish line.

The reality of our salvation is so much greater than the analogy - God not only knows the future and so can speak with confidence, but HE is the one who guaranteed our salvation through the resurrection of Jesus. Not only can He guarantee it through observation, He guarantees it through causation.

The new is guaranteed but the growth is not.

“began”

Now wait a minute, didn’t we just say we ARE new? Just because we are new doesn’t mean that we always live or fully live out of that reality.

ILLUST - when a baby is born, it is something it was not (a real and full person )and, all things considered, will be an adult one day, but there is a lot of growth in between

This is sanctification — the transformation process.

God guarantees the new and guides us as we grow.

George Barna identified 10 stops along our faith journey but fond that most believers tend to only make it halfway through.

Jim Putman

Dead to alive

Spiritual Infant

ingorance

Spiritual Child

Self-centerdness

Spiritual Young Adult

God-centeredness, others-oriented, service

Spiritual Parent

Intentionality, lead others

Steps of transformation

I wonder what are three ways you’ve changed over the past year?

*What are your top 3 spiritual goals this year?

Galatians 3:3 ESV

3 Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?

Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament: Philippians 2. Expansion (1:6–8)

enarxamenoi

epiteleisthe

Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament: Philippians 2. Expansion (1:6–8)

The Philippians, while not in the same precarious position, also needed to hear that their growth in sanctification, already evident through their participation in the gospel, was really God’s work, and he would not fail to bring it to perfection.

The believers in Galatia were attempting to earn God’s favor after they had believed that Jesus died and rose again to be their Savior.

UNLESS YOU’RE JESUS, YOU HAVE MORE WORK TO DO.

We were never meant to coast through the Christian life.

Get saved — clean up a bit — be better than most around us — be in the 75 percentile

If we can’t name our spiritual goals for this year then that means we don’t have any — which means we’re coasting at best or sliding back at worst.

Because the new you is guaranteed but the growth is not:

The new worked in you needs to be worked out.

[God] began a good work in you . . .

2 implications here:

GOD works salvation in us, we cannot work salvation into ourselves.

Transformation is from the inside out.

As a result of the change of salvation we will begin to change our behaviors, but we must never think that changing our behaviors will somehow gain us salvation or gain us favor with God.

Our spiritual transformation is not a result of behavior modification (going to church, giving, not doing drugs); rather, it is an internal transformation that results in modified behavior.

“In you”

Transformation happens from the inside out — not the other way around.

— we don’t work to be made new - we are made new so we work it out.

2. Because of the salvation that God works into us , we begin to live in a way that is more and more consistent with the New You.

(ESV)

12 Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out (same word) your own salvation with fear and trembling, 13 for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

- not scared - in awe of the importance of it.

ILLUST — Adopted kids don’t work for their adoption, they work out of their adoption.

You will win.

“To completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”

“We go into the artist’s studio and find there unfinished pictures covering large canvas and suggesting great designs but which have been left either because the genius was not competent to complete the work or because paralysis laid the hand low in death. But as we go into God’s great workshop we find nothing that bears the mark of haste of insufficiency of power to finish and we are sure that the work which His grace has begun, the arm of His strength, will complete.”

— F.B. Myer

(ESV)

13 The Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?’ 14 Is anything too hard for the Lord? At the appointed time I will return to you, about this time next year, and Sarah shall have a son.”

What God begins, He completes.

If you are in Christ, then you are made new and you have everything you need to actually live out of that newness — no excuses — until God completes the work HE started by removing every last trace of our lives tainted and tattered by sin.

Conclusion

If you needed to choose, right now, your top 3 spiritual goals for 2020, what would they be?

If our complete transformation is guaranteed, then what is stopping us from a New Year New You?

“In Christ Alone”