Thank you for the opportunity that's mine to teach your word. Lord, I pray that those that have gathered in here today would be challenged and strengthened spiritually because the time invested in being in your house, the time invested in getting up and getting dressed and getting to your house to be able to hear the word of God. And I pray it wouldn't just be filling the hour, that we wouldn't just be covering the time, but that Lord, your word would speak to our hearts, that we would be challenged and stirred regarding this ultimate goal of the Christian life, and be with each of the other classes, Lord, from the youngest class meeting all the way to the contenders class across the hall. I pray that you would bless each and every one, and that, Lord, you would direct in the lessons that are taught. Lord, we thank you for it. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. So if we're looking at this idea of the ultimate goal of the Christian life, if I was to ask you what is the ultimate goal of the Christian life, what would you say? What would be some ideas or thoughts you would have for what's the ultimate goal? to please the Lord. Certainly, right there, the ultimate goal, we know we could rephrase that in a, you know, biblical way about, whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do with all thy might. We could say, everything that you do is supposed to bring honor and glory to God. So that's certainly Right there at the top of the list, the ultimate goal of the Christian life, to bring honor and glory to God and in pleasing him. Any other thoughts? Brother Ashburn. Amen, there you go, that's right there. You've got that, the first and great commandment. Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul and all thy mind. Love thy neighbor as thyself. And so you have the first, the two commandments and all the commandments are summarized or summed up into those two things. to do the will of God, to accomplish what God's desire is for you, your will and the will of God for Fred is different than the will of God for Evans and for Brad or Aaron. So God's individual will, obviously he has a general will for all of us, we know that, but then the specific will. And so we ought to desire to do that as well, to accomplish the will of God. All very good thoughts about the ultimate goal of the Christian life. And I think in all actuality, in all honesty, yes. to see him. Another one, this is where we wanna get to, amen, get to glory and see him and oh, what a day that'll be, amen. What a day that'll be when we see him face to face for sure. So I think biblically and as far as the class goes, we certainly could put any of these at the top of the list. But as I think about the idea of a Christian, and living like a Christian, we could also put there the idea of being Christlike, to be like Christ. And that's the direction we want to go this morning. I think any of the answers given could certainly fit into this. I think if we're going to be like Christ, we're going to be honoring God. We're going to be pleasing God. If we're going to be like Christ, we're going to be accomplishing his will. Just like Christ said, not my will, but thine be done. Being like Christ is to accomplish his will. Being like Christ is going to love the Lord, that God with all thy heart is going to fulfill that command and love thy neighbor as thyself. You know, Christ was the ultimate example of all these things. So as we desire to be like Christ, we will be accomplishing these other things. Now, have you ever had a family member or a friend or somebody look at you and say, man, you did that just like grandma? Or you said that just like grandpa? Or boy, you walk just like your dad. You ever had anybody give some example like that? What are you very much like your parents in? Evans, what characteristic do you find that you are very the same? We speak straight. We don't avoid it. If it's wrong, we tell it's wrong. Just say it like it is. Here we go, okay. And we tend to be like that. We tend to be like our parents. There's things that we act like them, we talk like them, we walk like them. But the reason that somebody could, I could never look at Fred and say, man, Fred, you did that just like your dad. You know why I could never do that? because I'd never met his dad. I'd never seen his dad. I don't have any context or any knowledge to be, he may be very much like his dad, but I wouldn't know that because I don't know him. And so what I'm saying is, I wonder if anybody has ever looked at you or I and said, man, you did that just like Christ. She does things like her mom. They're very similar. Yeah. Now, the better you know somebody, the easier it is to pick those things out. You know, so when you really know somebody, you're able to look at them and say, man, you know, you did that just like your father. because I've known Will B for a number of years. I've seen these personality and conversation and how things come out and things that he enjoys and that kind of stuff. So the better you know somebody, the better it is, the easier it is to be able to pick that stuff out. I wonder if anybody's ever said about you or I, hey, you did that just like Christ. So there's two sides to that. If we're gonna be like Christ, then we've gotta know him. We've gotta learn him. And then hopefully, as we start making these changes or adapting to who he is, then we'll start acting like him, being how he would want us to be. If we're gonna be like Christ, we would need to have a Christ-like mind. Can you look in Philippians chapter number two? These are familiar verses, but Philippians chapter number two, verses five, we really could read down through verse number 10. These are familiar verses, but would somebody wanna read that this morning? Philippians chapter two, verses five through 10. We're talking about a Christ-like mind. Brad? Yep. and being found in passion as a man. Amen, so these familiar verses here describing and talking about Christ gives us a lot of insight into who he was. But we begin with, he says, let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus. We need to have a Christ-like mind as we pursue this goal of being like Christ. Jerry Ross, in his book, The Teenage Years of Christ, says, and I quote him, he says, some goals are so worthy that it is glorious even to fail. For years, I have pursued this elusive and glorious goal, and I have failed thousands of times and in thousands of different ways. At times, I have been tempted to lower my bar, to adjust my dreams, to try something more easily attainable. When I have yielded this temptation, my flesh, ego, it has been appeased, but my spirit eventually begins to cry out in utter disgust. What satisfaction is there in obtaining a counterfeit? So again, I would raise the standard, and again, I would begin to fail. But even in this process, at times, I would find myself at heights that I would have never experienced if I had tried to attain for anything less. To strive for perfection and to fail is infinitely more glorious than to spend my life living a lie and pretending to be content. The ultimate goal that he is describing there was the goal to be like Christ. He said it is an elusive goal. It's a glorious goal. This ambition to ultimately be like Christ is a goal that sets the bar high. And in some aspects we look at it and we say, man, this is unattainable. It's so hard. I mean, the levels of accomplishment and success we have to attain to really truly be like Christ is such a high bar. Boy, I think that I'm just gonna strive to be like Fred. But he says, hey, what glory is there in that? He says, man, certainly even if I fall short, if I don't quite get all the way up there where Christ is, but hey, even in my failure, I will reach new heights. I'll climb to new levels. I'll accomplish more things in my life than I ever thought possible. Maybe I won't make it to be like Christ, but I will have accomplished glorious things in the pursuit. Amen? I mean, that's really the ultimate goal is to be like Christ. And sometimes Satan would come and try and discourage you and say, man, you can't do it. This is an unattainable goal. You might as well set the bar a lot lower. You might as well just give up and say, hey, I'm just gonna be content to be myself. That's a worldly mentality. I mean, I'm just gonna contend to be myself, and boy, everybody else oughta just love me for who I am, the way I am, how I am, and they shouldn't ask me to be any different. But what glory is there in that? He says, man, when you fall short, at least you have tried. at least you have shot for the bullseye. Maybe you fell a little short, but you've strove to accomplish something great, something glorious, and you will see things accomplished in your life that you never thought possible, but only if we really set that bar high and try and shoot for it. So the pursuit of Christ likeness is a long-term ambition. And along the way, we're gonna experience times of progress, times of failure, times of disappointment, times of success, but we've gotta stay on the task. We've gotta continue to pursue it. And we will achieve many glorious things along the way, but it's a long-term ambition. It's not something, today's attention span for people is shorter and shorter and shorter. I mean, YouTube videos used to be really short, and they told you, if you want to be a successful YouTuber, you know, you got to keep your videos short. Well, three to five minutes is too long now. Now they have a whole YouTube channel called Shorts, which, I mean, I don't know, what are those? Less than a minute or something? Are they 30 seconds? I mean, they're supposed to be really short, you know. It's a whole, you don't know. Fred's like, yeah, I'll tell you about it. Yeah, shorts are just these little short clips because people's attention span is so short today. And what I'm saying is we've gotta have long-term goals. We've gotta have the horizon in view, the end of life in view, to stay on task, to keep moving forward for God, to continue to try and strive to have the mind of Christ. If we're gonna have the mind of Christ, we need to study his character. If we're gonna study his character, can I ask you, where is it that we learn of God? Where would we, as Christians today, learn of God? The Bible, the word of God. We hear the Word of God in church, so we learn of God in church, in God's house. Any place that the Word of God is shared, any place that we sit and study the Word of God is where we learn of Him, but it is in His Word. If we're gonna study His character, then we've gotta get into the Word. And the Bible tells us clearly that to know God the Father is to know God the Son. We, of course, believe in the Trinity, God, the Father, God, the Son, God, the Holy Spirit. There are three in one concept. It's very hard for our mind to wrap around and understand completely that. How can he be all God's son and yet be God? How can the Holy Spirit be God, but be an individual? Actually, the Holy Spirit yet still be God and this Trinity, this three in one. Hard to understand, but we believe it because of the Bible teaches. And so Jesus even said, in John 10, verse number 30, he says, I and my father are one. I and my father are one. And in John 14, verse number six, seven, he says, Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the father but by me. If ye had known me, ye should have known my father also. He says, if you knew me, you knew my father. And sometimes fathers and sons are so much alike, even in the world today, that men could say that. Now, it's not always that way, but sometimes you say, listen, if you knew him, you knew his dad. You basically, they were so much alike. You knew him, you knew his dad. And so, man, what a privilege to be able to say that about us. If you knew him, you knew Christ. That's amazing. But he says, he goes on, he says in verse number nine, he that has seen me has seen the Father. He says, man, if you saw me, you saw the Father. He says in verse number 10, believest thou not that I and my father, that I am in my father and my father is in me. He says, listen, for you to know one is to know the other. And so when we're talking about being like Christ, we can learn about God and we know we're also learning about Christ. and learning the mind of God and the characteristics of God. Now there's some non-communicable character traits of God. Non-communicable is something you can't pick up. If Fred and I started spending a lot of time together, Fred would probably start drinking Mountain Dew. I guess he would pick up that character trait of mine, that affliction of mine to drink Mountain Dew, right? You know, there would be some character traits that Fred has that I would start picking up because we spent a lot of time together. That's just the nature of things. That's how things are. When you spend a lot of time with somebody, you start to become like them. Well, there's some things that, Doesn't matter if I spend every minute of every day with Fred, Fred's never gonna be as tall as I am. That's just, it's a non-communicable character trait. You know what I'm saying? He's not gonna spill, I wanna be tall like Pastor Caleb, so I'm gonna spend a bunch of time with him, and I don't know, four or five weeks, we'll see how many inches I grow. That's not gonna happen, right? So there's some non-communicable traits that Christ has, that God has. What would some of those non-communicable character traits be? Things that God is that we can't be that. Can't be perfect. So ultimately we would say sinless. We're not gonna be sinless. God has never sinned. That's a non-communicable character trait. We're gonna be in heaven one day, amen. Looking forward to that. What's a character trait of God? Something that his attributes. Think of those doctrinal words. Yes, okay, that's what I was going for. Those, they're bigger words, but that idea of being omnipresent. God is everywhere. We can't do that. Doesn't matter how much time we spend with God, we're not gonna be omnipresent. We're not gonna be everywhere at once. We can't be over spending time with Bradley and at the same time spending time with Evans and his family. No, we have to choose. Well, I'm gonna go spend time with Evans today and maybe next week we'll catch Bradley, whatever, but God can be everywhere. What's another non-communicable character trait? I'm sorry? Omniscient, so that is all-knowing. We can't be all-knowing. So it doesn't matter how much time we spend with him, we're not gonna be all-knowing. All-powerful. Omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent, yeah, thank you. Omnipotent, so we're not gonna be omnipotent. Doesn't matter how many weights we lift, doesn't matter how many times we go to the gym, right Brad? We're never gonna be able to do, we're just not gonna be all powerful. Another character trait you might not think about without some prodding, but the idea of God is eternal. He always was and always will be, and that's something that we could never have because there's a date of our birth. God formed us. Man was created by God, and then from then on, man's been formed in their mother's womb by God, and he knows us. So these are non-communicable character traits. Now, these are attributes and things about God that we could never be, but there are some things that we can be, and that we should strive to be like. And one of those is loving. loving, we should strive to be loving. There's really a list given to us. It's called the fruit of the Spirit. So these are character traits that are who and what God is, who and what Christ is. that we can attain and can acquire with time and energy and effort, and we should work towards it. So you have love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. The fruits of the Spirit, or the fruit of the Spirit. It's, if we're walking in the Spirit and living in the Spirit and striving to be like Christ, those things are gonna start to be part of our lives. If we find ourselves being less than patient, that long-suffering character trait of Christ is not coming through. And we gotta look at it and say, boy, I need to be more like Christ. I need to be more patient. I think that's one thing we all have a hard time with. Gentleness, goodness, you know, it's something we gotta teach kids, the idea of just being good to others. Because human nature, for whatever reason, you know, sometimes kids can be the meanest people, just so mean to one another. You think, why would you do that? How could you do that? It's that sinful human nature. And so we have to teach them, listen, you need to be good to others. That's what God is, he's good. God is good all the time, right? And all the time, God is good. In every situation, he's gonna do what's best for us. That should be a character trait that comes through in our lives as we pursue to be like Christ. So we wanna study his character. We also wanna study his conduct. You know, a person's conduct is governed by their character, by who they are. Somebody's going to act a particular way because of their character. because of what they are down inside. Bad character is going to equal bad conduct. Good character is going to equal good conduct. There are many biographies that are written about great successful men. As a teenager, I read the biography of Sam Walton. Why? You guys know my ambition as a young man was to be rich. Sam Walton was a pretty rich guy. When I was a teenager, he was worth $40 billion. That was a lot of money back then. It's still a lot of money today. But when you compare it to Elon Musk, who's worth over $200 billion, not anymore. He lost a bunch because the market's gone down. But $40 billion. When Sam Walton passed away, he divided up all of his wealth, and each of his kids got like $4.5 billion. And I thought, man, I'd be happy with $4 billion. I don't even need the 40. I mean, four would be enough for me. But I read that Sam Walton's book. Why? Because I thought, you know what? I want to be like that. This is my ambition. This is my goal. I want to be like him. So I'm going to read this book. And you know, I mentioned Lee Iacocca. I had a book about him on my desk as a teenager. A successful businessman. And there's people that will read these biographies and with the entire goal and ambition to, man, if I read this book, maybe I'll pick up something about who he was and I could be successful like that. Well, we have a book right here about Christ. Maybe if we read it enough, we can pick up a little bit and be like Christ. We can be like Christ. That's amazing. The Word of God. this direction, we learn about Him and the Word of God, and really, specifically, if we're talking about Christ, where in the Word of God would you find, I know there's prophecies in the Old Testament about Christ, and I know John, of course, the book of Revelation is the revelation of Christ, it's what God showed him, but where would you learn about Christ in our Bible, what is the place where we would find the most about Him? I'm sorry. New Testament. Let's get more specific. You're correct. The New Testament's where we're gonna learn about Christ, but I think you said it. the gospels. That's where we have really what would be called the life of Christ. If we were going to do a study on the life of Christ, it would be in those first four gospels. That's where we hear and read about his birth and we kind of get the story of his life and we got some segments of time that the Bible, for whatever reason, kind of skips. We don't have a whole lot about his childhood. hear about his birth, and then we see him in the temple at 12 years old, and we kind of get a picture of, you know, maybe a view of the direction he was headed and the purpose for his life. He says, I must be about my father's business. And then we see him at 30 years old in his ministry. But we learn about the life of Christ really specifically in those four Gospels. So if we're going to do a study about Christ and want to be like Christ, we could emphasize and focus in the Gospels. A.W. Tozer said, the Bible is the infallible declaration of God's mind. The infallible declaration of God's mind. You know, sometimes you're talking about biographies, sometimes you have autobiographies, books that were written by the individual themselves. Me telling my story and Those you're, would say you're kind of getting it directly from the horse's mouth, right? You're getting, and sometimes people have written a, like somebody today could decide they want to write a book about Abraham Lincoln. And this has happened. You'll find books written about Abraham Lincoln. Probably there's been one written about him in the last five years. Well, Abraham Lincoln's been dead a long time. So these men weren't even alive when Lincoln was alive. And all they can go from is other books that were written. And they do a lot of reading and a lot of history and look up everything they can. But the best that they can do is still a fallible book. They can still mistake some things. They can still misrepresent some things. And you learn about Lincoln, but it's possible that they didn't get this story right or the location of that happening wasn't correct. But this is the infallible declaration of God and who God is. So you can study this and be assured that you are learning who God is. And as we read specifically the gospels, but learning about Christ, you need to ask yourself some questions. You're learning about him and what did he do. So ask about why did he go there? What was his purpose? What was his goal? What did he say to those people? Why did he say that? Why did he respond that way? And think about it in our own lives and say, okay, so I should be responding like this. I should be dealing with situations that I face the same way that Christ dealt with this situation. I'm learning that that's what a preacher does is he studies the word and tries to draw out principles and truths and say, okay, so how does that apply to us at large? How can we take that and say, okay, that fits into this situation. That is part of this part of our lives today. And individually, in our personal walk, that's what we want to do to try and be like Christ. What a joy to think about the idea of becoming so much like Christ that there's no longer a battle in our members. That we begin to think like Him, begin to act like Him. You know, husbands and wives, the longer they're together, the more they act like each other. the more they think, maybe not on purpose, but they certainly know what the other thinks. They know how they would respond. They know what they're going to say. They know what restaurant they would want to go to. They know, oh, dad's not going to like this, or mom wouldn't like that, or boy, just from the years and years spent together. And what a joy to think about us as Christians, having spent so much time with Christ over the years, that we begin to think like him. That it's not a battle or a struggle or a process to say, boy, no, I can't do that, even though that's what I wanna do, because I need to do what Christ would do. But just in our heart and mind, just because of habit, we do what Christ would do. You know, the familiarity or the popularity a number of years ago of the WWJD, you know, what would Jesus do? And people asking themselves that question in every situation. Well, that's how we should respond, and hopefully it would come natural to us. So we see a Christ-like mind we want to pursue. We want to pursue a Christ-like motive. A Christ-like motive. Look in Philippians chapter 3. I think you were in Philippians chapter 2, but in Philippians chapter number 3, You want to see that he says here, yea, doubtless, I count all things but lost for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whom I have suffered. I'm sorry, I'm down in verse number eight, Philippians three, verse number eight, nine and 10. I'm beginning reading now in verse number nine, he says, and being found in him not having my own righteousness, which is of the law. So he says, not I don't have my own righteousness. which is found in the law, he says, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection. That's the power of Christ's resurrection. That's the power of God. That idea of becoming like Christ, It's not just a fulfillment of the law. It's not just a list of do's and don'ts. It's not just a, oh, I've got to walk on this line and hopefully I don't fall off. I got to try and strive. That is righteousness that's gained through the law. You know, the righteousness of Christ, that is righteousness that's imputed to us. That's righteousness that we get because we love Christ, that we pursue him. He says that I may know him and the power of his resurrection. The power of his resurrection is that we're not under the law, we're under grace, and his power enables us to live like Christ. If we're gonna have Christ-like motives, we know we gotta be like Christ, and so we've gotta pick up our cross. He said in Luke chapter 9, 23, he says, and he said unto them, if any man will come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow me. Daily, pick up your cross and follow me. You gotta deny yourself. That's part of the Christian life. That's part of being like Christ. Daily, daily dying to self, picking up your cross and following the Lord. You know, it's only through dying to self that we can live unto Christ. Otherwise, we're living unto ourselves. It may be even spiritual aspects. But we look at it and say, oh, you know, biblical principle works, even if you apply it for the wrong reasons. There are some successful businessmen, and they're very good with their finances, and they would have nothing to do with God. In their heart and mind, they would say, well, this is just good business practice. but it's biblical principle in how they're applying and using their funds. And biblical principle works, even when it's applied for the wrong reason. They can become successful using biblical principle, even if they're applying it for wrong. And sometimes, boy, I wanna have a good family. And so I'm gonna do this. It's biblical principle and it works when we apply it. But the goal could be a selfish goal, ultimately, well, I want my wife to love me, I want my kids to love me, I wanna have that kind of nurturing, loving atmosphere in my home. And so I'm going to not necessarily be like Christ for the cake of that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, but because what I want, I'm living unto myself, I want my wife to love me, so I'm gonna do these things. So we can pursue right actions, maybe even for the wrong motives. He says, pick up your cross, die to self. We're to live unto Christ. Self stands between you and spiritual victory. One man was praying and he said, so far today, God, I've done all right. I haven't gossiped. I haven't lost my temper. I haven't been greedy. I haven't been grumpy, nasty, selfish, or overindulgent. I'm really thankful for my success thus far. But God, in a few minutes, I'm gonna get out of bed. And from then on, I probably need your help. I need you to do something. Addressing, looking to God, saying, listen, in myself, I can't do this. Human nature's gonna come out. My ambition's gonna come out. My desires are gonna come out. Lord, I need to live unto you. And that's what Christ did. Romans 15 verse number three says, even Christ pleased not himself. Even Christ pleased not himself. It's not about pleasing us, it's about pleasing him. That's how we're to live. He picked up his cross, not only that, he served his cause. David asked in the Old Testament there, he says, is there not a cause? You know, everybody lives unto a cause. What's the cause you're living for? Some people have a goal, an ambition, a cause that they wanna live for. David said, is there not a cause? Well, the cause is that I may know him and the power of his resurrection. Christ had a servant's heart. He looked at service as a high calling, humility as a virtue, and obedience as a privilege. We know in the book he volunteered. He made himself of no reputation. He volunteered. Can I remind you this morning that service is not spelled Serb, U.S. Service is not spelled serbus. And sometimes people spell service that way. Service is to serve others. And we're going to close, but I want to just give you the last point is that we need a Christ-like method. A Christ-like method. Christ had compassion, and he had consistency. What a privilege to be like Christ. So I would exhort and encourage you to strive to be like him each and every day. Let's close in prayer and will be dismissed this morning. Lord, we love you. We're thankful for your goodness to us. We pray God that you would help us to strive to be like you, Lord, this worthy and glorious ambition. We may fall short. We may not attain all the way to that high goal. But Lord, we'll accomplish and achieve so much more having set that standard, that bar so high, more than we ever thought possible. Lord, help us to see the long-term ambition of being like Christ, the ultimate goal of the Christian life. We ask in Jesus' precious name, amen. Thank you so much. You're dismissed.