We're turning in God's Word again this evening to 2 Corinthians chapter 3. I just want to read the text, verse 18. with open face, beholding as on a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. God add His blessing to that reading from His Holy Word for His name's sake. Would you bow your head with me just for a moment please? Let's ask God for His help tonight. Father in heaven, our eternal God, thou hast promised to be the helper of the helpless. We know right well that apart from Christ we can do nothing. If the Spirit of God does not come and strengthen the preacher, if he does not come and give ears to hear, what the preacher, more importantly, what thy word says, then our meeting tonight will have been in vain. But thou hast promised, Lord, the help of the Spirit of God. He has been sent into the lives of thy people to do the work that they cannot do. And we pray therefore in the name of our Savior that that very Spirit of Christ will be poured out abundantly tonight in this gathering and upon thy people. We will know that thou art in this place. Lift the veil, we pray, this evening afresh. Let us look into things eternal. We pray it all in Jesus' name. Amen and amen. We're returning again to this text in verse 18 of II Corinthians chapter 3, one of Paul's well-known statements about the transformation of a Christian into the likeness of Jesus Christ. That word well-known gives me cause to pause. In some ways it's a frightening word for the preacher. The text is well known. If you've walked with the Lord for any length of time, if you've read the Word of God, you've read that text, you've heard it preached, perhaps on many occasions, it's well known to you. And because it is so familiar, there is, I realize, a danger to give half an ear to hearing what is said. I realize I am not saying anything new, nor do I want to say anything new. The best thing that I can do is to repeat what God has already said in His Word. And what dispels the fear that any preacher would have when coming to such a well-known text is remembering that He, like all the Lord's people, are slow learners. And I don't say that to insult you. That's the reality. We are all slow learners. I've been preaching through the gospel of Mark and Sunday mornings in my own church and recently coming to chapter 8 you find that the Lord performs the miracle of feeding the 4,000. Just prior to that, back in chapter 6, hadn't been that many weeks previous to that, he had fed the 5,000. And when they come to chapter 8, and he asks and says, these people are hungry, if I send them away fasting, they're going to faint by the way. He was really asking them a question, what can we do about this? The response was, in spite of the miracle in verse 6, when they only had a few loaves and fishes, the response still was, How can a man satisfy all these people here in this wilderness? You would have thought they would have gotten it, wouldn't you? It shouldn't even have been a question to them. Well, Lord, what are you going to do? Here's what we've got. Have at it. But they didn't. Not long after that, they're on the ship traveling across the sea and Christ says to them, Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees. Mark says they had only brought one loaf of bread with them on the ship. And when they heard Christ say, Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, they thought immediately, it's because we haven't brought enough bread for this journey that He's giving us this beware. Christ, when He perceived what they had thought and said among themselves, He asked them a series of nine questions. In essence, if I can boil it all down, it's this. Why didn't you get it? How is it that ye still do not understand? When I fed the 5,000 with a few loaves and fishes, how much was left over? Tall baskets. And the 4,000, just recently. And this time the baskets, it's the word for a large basket that a person could get into. How much was left over? Enormous. Then why are you asking, am I talking about bread? I can feed whatever I need to feed. I have that power. How is it that you do not understand? That's the question he left them with. And I have to conclude, they must have begun saying to themselves, Why didn't we see that? How come we didn't get it? What's wrong with us? The interesting thing is the very next miracle he does is the healing of a blind man, Bethsaida. It's a very unique miracle in that it's a two-stage healing. He uses spit Puts it on his eyes. Actually it reads he spit into his eyes. How would you like that? What do you see? I see men as trees walking. His sight wasn't perfect. The Lord touches his eyes again and now he sees clearly at a distance. That miracle was done just after he asked the question, how is it that you do not understand? In living technicolor, so to speak, here's a miracle to explain to you. You're slow to get it. It's in stages that you learn. And we're all just like that. We see things, yes, a little blurry. We see truths and we hear them and we hear them and we hear them and a little bit better. And so my point is, As often as you've heard what I'm going to say tonight, I know you need to hear it again. You may think I sound like a broken record, and for the young people who wouldn't have a clue what a record is, you who do or are a little bit older know what I'm talking about. It just gets stuck on that scratch. Although I may sound to some of you like a broken record, This is one part of the broken record you need to hear again. The clear implication of this text and what makes it so vital, so important to you tonight as a child of God is that we're not there yet into perfection. We're being transformed, we're being changed into the very image of Jesus Christ, but we're not there yet. This change in our thinking and our feelings and our behavior, our desires, where they become more like those of the Lord is necessary because there is this the sin that still dwells within us. We saw last evening. Are we forgiven of all of our sins, past, present, and future? Yes, thank God, every one of them. Sins I haven't even committed yet have already been forgiven by God. Already the blood of Christ has covered those sins. And there is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus. It's been dealt with. So it doesn't matter, as the brother was praying earlier, though the restless foe accuses, sins recounting like a flood, every charge my God refuses, Christ has answered with His blood. The sins have all been forgiven. But that does not mean that the sin has been removed from our souls. That's what we're dealing with. Saints, holy ones, set-apart ones, yes, but you all know we're sinning saints. We have been made free from sin, free from its condemnation. We've been made free as well from its dominion, free from its reign, its lordship. It's not the captain of the ship anymore. It's not the king on the throne anymore. Sin has been conquered by the Lord Jesus Christ. Sin shall not have dominion over you. In other words, This war, this struggle, this battle that you and I have every day of our lives, every moment of every day, is not a hopeless one, but one in which the Word of God and the Gospel of Jesus Christ assures us that we will be victorious. Now you need to believe that. You need to receive that. You need to rest in that. and you need to have no doubt about it, there is going to be triumph for the child of God when it comes to his sins. What a difference it would make in your life and in mine just to live in the reality of that truth right there. This sin is not going to beat me. It is not going to get the upper hand. sin will not have dominion over us. It's been secured by the work of Christ. That's what Paul is bringing out in Romans chapter 6. His point, of course, in that chapter is that Christ died on the cross in order to secure this righteousness that will always please God, and that righteousness is given to us freely by His grace, simply through believing on Christ. Yes, I know I'm a broken record. You've heard that before, but you're going to hear it again. The only standing you have before God is not your good works. It's not your attempts to be holy. It's not how faithful you are in devotions. It's not your holiness, brothers and sisters. It's the holiness of Christ that will always and only give you a standing before Him, that will give you access to Him any time, any place, any state you find your soul in. That's the gospel. That's the good news. Sanctification, this transformation into Christ's image is, will, must always be a necessary consequence of justification. Realize that and rejoice in it. And remember it when you have fallen. When doesn't that happen? Does not the confession present the teaching of scripture? Every day we sin in thought and word and deed. And if we don't think that we do, it's simply telling us we don't know the requirements of God's law. There's something we haven't learned yet about the spirituality of the law of God. We end up being like the Pharisees who think because they've never committed the act of adultery that they're free and clear of that, and they think they're righteous regarding that commandment, when the fact is Jesus said, you look upon a woman and you lust after her. You have committed adultery with her already in your heart. It's something internal, you see. You understand that when you learn something more of the spirituality of God's law, what He actually is requiring, perfect holiness. You need to remember that Christ who justified is the same Christ who's going to sanctify His people. He will subdue your iniquities. He will do it. The promise of this text is that you will grow in grace. You will not be next year this time the same person you are now. Sin does dwell in us. I'm a house for sin. You're a house for sin. He uses it in 1 Corinthians 3, "...know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?" The same word. So not only is the Holy Spirit dwelling in us, but there's another inhabitant. Sin dwells in us. Not only does it dwell in our hearts, but it is still acting out. And yes, it's still acting up. Isn't that how we describe it? You know? You've heard parents talk about their kids acting up. You're just acting up. Your behavior is not acceptable. And sin acts up. When sin acts up in us, we act up. Our behavior is reprehensible. It's damaging, destructive, soul-destroying, chills us. Wars we'll have against this end will go on all our days. Because it is either always inclining us, tempting us to sin, or trying to hinder us in anything we would do with regards to holiness. This sin will not only strive against holiness and rebel against God's law and tempt us to satisfy its unlawful desires, it will, if not mortified, drive us into sins that would destroy our souls. That's what we're talking about tonight. Sin that will, if not mortified, if not slain, if not put to death, will kill, will drive us and destroy our souls. And that's where grace comes in. You see, God, bless the Lord, has decreed this one who has purpose from eternity not to sanctify us. at the moment of salvation, I mean perfectly, you might, wouldn't that have been nice, we think, if when he saved us, he just took away all sin from us. Why didn't God do that? He could have done that, but then could he have done that? Really? Could he have done that? Isn't it true that God can only do that which is perfect, that which is wise, that which is holy? As much as I don't understand, it brings us back to the whole idea of existence in the world. Whatever God does, He can't do second best. So this God who did not decree to make us perfectly holy at the moment we were born again by the Spirit of God also determined that the sin, the sin that still dwells in His people is going to die. And He is going to be the one that makes that certain. This is what we have been focusing on in this first part of the conference. This work of transformation is fundamentally, it's primarily a work of God. We're not to put the attention upon what we do. That's not where we start. We will get into trouble, as I said this morning. We are changed even as by the Spirit of the Lord. We must not, therefore, make the mistake of looking with ourselves or into ourselves all the time. And this is what we do, however. We keep taking our spiritual pulse to see how we're doing. The focus is inward. The focus is all upon us and what we're doing and what we're not doing and not doing it good enough. And on it goes. You know, that will drive you around the bend. If you keep hearing that all the time, you keep putting yourself to that kind of subjection, it will drive you crazy because you can never live up to it. Listen, folks, you're not going to be perfect this side of heaven, and that is not an excuse for sin. Because John said that if any man says he has no sin, he deceives himself, and the truth is not in us. That means that at any time in your life, if you say this side of glory, I have no sin, I have reached it, you are a liar. And you do not the truth. It's not going to happen. This side of heaven, it's going to be there. So you keep on focusing on yourself. That's the worst place to start. I'm starting with the primary agent. Paul said, Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. I pointed out this morning that the Spirit of Christ The Spirit, the Holy Spirit of Christ, He is the one working on behalf of Christ this transformation. So we start to act differently, behave differently, we're changed. And sometimes, you know, we might not see it. But others will say, you're not the man you used to be. You're not the dad you used to be. You're not the mom you used to be. You're not the husband you used to be. You're not the wife you used to be. You've changed. Why? Because the Holy Ghost has been at work transforming you into the image of God's son. That's why predestinated, love the word, predestinated to be conformed to the image of God's dear son. The point just now, It's that great work of the Holy Spirit. Doing that is to bring us, how does He do it? That's what we're getting at here. How does this take place? It's wonderful to think, yep, oh, He's going to do it. We've been assured of it. But how in the world does this actually work out in my life? How does He actually change me? And the point I raised this morning, and I've got to finish it tonight. Didn't get to finish it this morning. He does this by increasing our knowledge of Jesus Christ. Is that not what the text is saying? We all with open face, beholding as in a glass, the glory of the Lord are changed into the same image. By beholding, gazing upon, studying, learning the glory of Christ, the beauty, the perfections All that Christ is, all that He is to His people, all that He is in the gospel, the Holy Ghost, increases our knowledge. And as we behold that glory, we are transformed. As we obtain that knowledge of Christ, we grow in grace. You see, if that is true, and it is true, that means, and it brings me to this second thought about how the Holy Ghost does this. He transforms us by bringing us into His schoolroom. I pray to God that word does not cause your mind to shut down. Listen folks, there are plenty of churches that are clap-happy around here. You want to go to those? You'll not get to a school room. You won't get to a place where you're going to be given the truth and the knowledge, but you can have a happy, clappy experience, made me feel good and hear all kinds of stories. But I promise you this, the transforming work won't take place. It's by knowledge. By the knowledge of the gospel, it's by the knowledge of the perfections, the glories, the beauties of Christ crucified. The schoolroom of the Holy Spirit. As we saw this morning, the Holy Spirit has been given to us in order to reveal to us the things that are freely given to us by God in the gospel. That's his chief work. His primary work is to reveal to Christ's people the things given to them freely in the gospel. Now that's all about acquiring knowledge. That's why I say it's a school room. So being like Christ has a whole lot to do with learning. It's not easy being like someone you don't know very well. It's hard to imitate them, isn't it? You've got to come to know them before you can imitate them. You can't really follow them without knowing them, so the Holy Ghost brings us to His schoolroom to show us the glories of Jesus Christ, the one who is going to deliver us from our sins. I will take it for granted that you are in earnest about wanting to be changed. That you know you need to be changed and transformed. If I were to ask you to sit down and give me a list front and back of things that need changing in your life, you would have no problem turning it up in short order. And if you did, All you have to do is ask your spouse, tell me what areas in our marriage that I need to work on. How's that for a challenge? Would we be afraid to do that? I want you to write down, honey, dear, whatever in terms of endearment you use, the things that you think need to be changed about me and our marriage. and swap papers, if you haven't the ability to sit down and fill out front and back of one sheet of paper in areas that you need to be changed in by the Spirit of God. He brings us first off into the schoolroom to teach us a course on the Bible. That's the textbook. There's all kinds of supplements, you know, he uses. But this is the textbook of the Holy Spirit. He brings us into his schoolroom, to this class, and says, open your Bibles. He's serious about wanting change in your life. He's really earnest about that. Then you go into this classroom. He brings you into this classroom and says, open God's Word. It's the Holy Ghost who actually imparts and implants an interest in Christ's people to learn the Word of God. There is an attraction that the Bible has to the child of God. Yes, there is sin to oppose every holy desire. I get that. But at the end of the day, I will tell you this. After a while of neglecting the Scriptures, you, if you're a child of God, you have got to come back to the Word. Why? Because the Holy Ghost is your teacher, and He's been sent to reveal Christ to you. And His textbook is this book. And you will come back to it. And you will read it. Pray tell what else could Christ mean when he said, he prayed to his father again. I'm a broken record now. You've heard it before, but you'll hear it again. Father, sanctify them, my people, through thy truth. Thy word is truth. Thy word is truth. Sanctify them through it. Transform them through my word. If that tells us anything, folks, it means that the Holy Ghost brings us to this book to give us the knowledge that we need of Jesus Christ, to teach us those truths about Him, to open our eyes, to see His glories, to see His beauties, to see what we need to learn about this matter of battling sin so we can be transformed. There's an appetite for the bread of heaven. Man shall not live by bread alone. You can finish it off, can't you? Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth from the mouth of God. That's how we live. That's how we're transformed. I'll tell you one thing, what you study will be shown in your life. What you study has got to come out. What you take in will come out. In the old saying, even amongst the world, you are what you read. You are what you eat, if I can change metaphors here. That's why the Holy Ghost brings every one of Christ's people into the schoolroom of the Word. He gives us ears to hear when the Word of God is preached. Why are you here tonight? Well, I want to believe, I would like it to be so, because There's a real interest you have in learning what God has to say about this matter of sending saints. That you're really interested. That you want to be here. You're not here because someone forced you here. You're not here because, well, if I don't show up at church, people will talk about me. But you're really here because the Holy Ghost has brought you here. And you have an interest, and you want to listen. Don't you see? That's the Holy Ghost at work. If you don't have any interest at all in the Word of God, if you have no interest at all in the Word of God, and you've never had any interest in the Word of God, never any interest in opening the book up and reading the Scriptures, By one who can only look on the outside, I realize God judges the heart, and He's the only one who infallibly knows the condition of anyone. But He's put us in this place of, you'll know them by their fruit. I would have to say, it doesn't appear as if there's an indwelling of the Holy Spirit in that individual. Because everywhere you find the Holy Ghost, He says, you're coming into my classroom of the Word of God, the Word that I have given, the Word that I have breathed. because I am, it is my mission, it is my mission to kill sin in your life and to transform you into the image of the Lord Jesus Christ. Why does He do that? So we can grow in this knowledge. We can learn these doctrines There's a church in Lexington, which is not far away, maybe it's three miles from my church. It's a large church. It's got one of those catchy names. You know what I mean? They will never mention the term doctrine in any teaching, any preaching. Doctrine, they say, turns people off. A lot of entertainment going on, but they're not interested in doctrine. The thing that they don't realize is they're actually teaching doctrine that's just false. We are brought, he's going to do this. He's going to teach you doctrine, particularly the doctrines of Christ. particularly the doctrines of the gospel, because you're going to be changed. You will have a deeper knowledge. It will grow, your knowledge of the greatness of God, the holiness of God, the love of God that is in Christ Jesus. The Holy Spirit brings us into that schoolroom to teach us the lifelong course of God's Word that we might see the truth about ourselves, that we might see what the old Puritan called the exceeding sinfulness of sin. I want to remind you, brothers and sisters, it was Paul the Apostle. I said it last night and I will say it again. This was Paul, the mature man of God, who had walked with God, who had talked with Christ face to face, as it were. He was the man who said toward the latter part of his life, of his ministry, Oh, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of this death? Paul said that? Yeah, Paul said that. You want to know why he said that? Because as he walked on, as he learned more about the truth of the gospel and the truth of God's law, the truth of God's word, he saw more of the exceeding sinfulness of his own sin. It's when your knowledge is small, shallow. You and I have light views of sin. We brush them off as if they're nothing. That's why we will not weep over them. That's why we can talk like we do and give excuses for it. And there's no excuse for it! Justify that which is an offense to God! The Holy Ghost brings us into that classroom of his word and we see the glory, we see the beauty of God's holiness. Isn't that what happened to Isaiah in chapter 6? He saw the Lord upon his throne, did he not? He saw the angels and He heard them flying round about the throne saying one to the other, you know the text well, don't you? Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts. The whole earth is filled with His glory. Do you see the link between holiness and His glory? What was Isaiah's response? Isaiah, a mighty prophet. Isaiah, the evangelical prophet, no clear presentation of the gospel of Christ. And in that prophecy right there, what does he say? Woe is me, for I am undone, a man of unclean lips, living amongst a people of unclean lips. He shows us that in the Word that we might be humbled because the truth is we're all very proud. And it didn't take our parents to teach us to be that way. Pride, the sin of Lucifer. I will be exalted at the throne of the Most High. Pride in the fall of Eve. God's holding back from you. You eat this fruit, you'll be like Him. I can be like God. We need to be humbled. You know, it's an abomination to God. We just don't really see how much. Until, until the Holy Ghost brings us to the Word, and He opens up our eyes to see the cross of Christ, and we see the only sunless man that's ever walked the face of the earth, hanging naked upon the cross, and they're laughing at Him, they're jeering Him, and what does He say? Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. You talk about humility. And then we see our pride. And we are brought low. Our proud talk is brought to an end. Our arrogance, our cocky ways, our condescending spirits where we belittle people and talk down to them as if they're ignorant. They're not as sharp or as smart as we are. Ah, you know what I'm talking about. The Holy Ghost is going to transform us. And He'll do it by bringing us to the Word to give us a greater knowledge of Christ. The glory of Christ will just overwhelm any glory of man. Christ's people do in this course, in this classroom, well, how they advance in their knowledge depends on many things. And we'll be looking at those things over the course of the week. But one thing is certain, the Holy Ghost is going to bring you, if you're a child of God, into this classroom of His Word in order to change you. it is going to happen. Secondly, the Holy Spirit brings us into His schoolroom to teach us a lifelong course on the subject of prayer to transform us into the image of His Son. I know you've heard it before. I know because, well, I sat under that man up there for five years of my life, and I heard a lot of teaching on prayer. But I heard more than a lot of teaching on prayer. I heard a lot of praying. There will never be any growth in our personal knowledge of Christ apart from personal communion with Christ. Prayer is communion with God. Prayer is fellowshipping with the Lord. We come, the Holy Ghost brings us to the classroom, and God, Christ, the Spirit, the Trinity, talks to us. And then we turn and go back to Him at the throne of grace, and we talk to Him based on what He has said to us. That's how there's change. That's how our thinking is transformed. Our mind is renovated. Our spiritual desires are increased. It's true. Isn't that, folks, what Christ said in John 15? Abide in me and my word and you, and you'll bring forth much fruit. You will ask, how he ties it to prayer, you will ask what ye will, abiding in him. Communing. Communing. The Holy Ghost is going to do that. He knows that you have to pray. You have to walk with the Lord. You have to talk. You have to pour out your heart to Him if you're going to be transformed. You know it. If you've been saved for any length of time, you know what happens when you neglect the throne of grace. What if I asked you to raise your hand tonight? Who of you, if I did, who of you have been neglecting the throne of grace? I want to ask you a follow-up question if you have to say, I won't embarrass you. Because I will tell you, there have been times, I was sitting in your place, that question was asked me, I wouldn't want to have to raise my hand, but I would. If you had to raise your hand, I want to ask you, what's your, what's the transformation process like right now? How you doing with the battle of sin? How's it going? How's that tongue going? How's the thought life going? What about the sweetness of the Lord Jesus Christ? The obedience to His laws? Love for Him? Is your heart just bursting with love for the Savior? Are you walking now where you really just are so eager to tell someone about the Savior or someone about what the Lord just showed you today from His Word. That would not describe you at all if you have not been in the classroom of prayer. The Holy Ghost is going to bring us there in spite of our neglects, our backslidings, our failures in prayer, He will keep bringing us back just like He does with the Word. Has it not been your experience? I know it has. I know it has as sure as I'm standing here tonight. When you have for any length of season ignored that throne of grace, you have been felt at some time compelled to drop to your knees and say, Lord, help me to pray. Here I am again, confessing my prayerlessness. Lord, help me to pray. Could I have a show of hands? The Holy Ghost is going to transform us. And it'll be this way. The school of prayer. There's a wonderful text in Zechariah 12. God tells Jerusalem that He would pour out on them the spirit of grace and supplication. Future prophecy of Jesus Christ. And then He says, The effect will be when the Holy Spirit of grace and supplication, there's prayer poured out, they shall look upon him whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him. That's a reference to Calvary. It's a reference to the cross. It's the spirit of prayer, of supplication. Then they're brought to see the Savior nailed to the cross. As we were looking up this morning, there they behold the beauty, the glory of Christ. And He's already said, it's by the Spirit of the Lord that we are changed from glory to glory by beholding the glory of Christ. See, it all just ties right in. And so you'll read about praying with supplication in or by the Spirit. You'll read about praying by the Holy Ghost in Jude 1.20. I'll tell you one thing, the Holy Spirit certainly knows what William Cowper put into one of his hymns. Restraining prayer, we cease to fight. Prayer makes the Christian's armor bright, and Satan trembles when he sees the meanest saint upon his knees. That's why you and I really have a battle to pray. If there is one area in our life, in our walk with God, that we have fought more than any else, it's right there. You can get dressed and you can come to church. Let me tell you something, you can even engage in the public prayer meeting, but you won't pray at home. A struggle for you. It's more of a struggle in private than it is in public. Satan knows there's power. He sees what God has done through the praying of His people. He's seen lives totally transformed by prayer. He doesn't want us to pray. He doesn't want you to the throne of grace. But I'll tell you what, the Holy Ghost is determined you're going to be there. Now how often you're there, how long you're there, the kind of praying you do while you're there, that's dependent on a whole lot of things. But He will bring you to pray. He will do that to His people. That's why the Puritans said a prayerless soul is a Christless soul. A prayerless soul is a Christless soul. You don't pray, you have no interest in praying, no desire. You've never had it. You've never had the Holy Spirit. He will transform us by bringing us into this school of prayer. We will say when it comes to that, like so many other things, oh wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this prayerlessness? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. He will do it. Be many a battle, you'll have to fight. And you won't win all of them. The ultimate outcome is sure though. Thirdly, He produces, the Holy Spirit does. He produces spiritual fruit in our lives that opposes the works of the flesh. That's another way in which the Holy Ghost transforms us. He produces the spiritual fruit, if I could just use the words of Scripture, the deeds of our flesh need to be answered, they need to be put down, they need to be subdued, conquered. And one of the things that the Holy Ghost does in bringing us into the schoolroom of His Word and into the schoolroom of prayer, these means of grace, is that He produces this fruit, these virtues, these graces in our lives. You know, of course, Galatians 5, for the fruit of the Spirit. Broken record again. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, goodness, temperance. The fruit of the Spirit. It stands in opposition to the deeds of the flesh. If we walk in the Spirit, we will not fulfill the lust of the flesh. That's the promise. Fruitfulness. Fruitfulness. The Holy Ghost produces it. You don't do it. I'm so glad I can say that tonight. You do not produce the fruit of the Spirit. It's the fruit of the Spirit. And He will produce it in every child of God. He will produce love in your heart, real love. He will produce joy. He will produce peace. He will produce longsuffering. And down the list we go. He will do it. It'll be in varying degrees, again, based upon a whole lot of things. But he is going to do that. And you see, the more fruit, the more fruit there is, the more fruit bearing, the more love and the more joy and the more peace. Guess what happens? We're more like Jesus. Don't you see that the Spirit is just Christ-likeness? That's Christ. That's Jesus. He's the epitome, the perfect fulfillment of love and joy and peace and longsuffering and goodness and meekness and templates. Fruitfulness. You and I know what it's like to come up short, don't we, on this love and this joy and this peace and all those things? I am promising you tonight, based upon the Word of God, that He brings about this transformation by producing fruit. The things, you know, we were seeing this morning about the churches in Galatia. What they were wanting was assurance. Assurance about their salvation. Assurance about their sanctification. Am I talking to anybody here tonight? Assurance about holy living. But they thought they were going to achieve it by the works of the law. They thought they were going to achieve it by doing better. And as the old preacher said, and I like the preacher, but he had this, he's dead now with the Lord. He would talk about, we need to dig a little deeper and climb a little higher. I grant all that. We do need to dig a little deeper and climb a little higher. But I'm going to tell you folks, it's the Holy Ghost that produces the fruit. that transforms us into the image of God's Son. Don't ask me to do something I cannot do, and I will not ask you to do something that you cannot do. The simple yet wonderful fact of the matter is that you will not find the works of the flesh flourishing where the fruit of the Spirit is flourishing. If the deeds of the flesh are flourishing, you just know the fruits of the Spirit are not flourishing. I'm not suggesting for a moment that the Holy Spirit does anything to change or to alter the flesh. The flesh can't be changed, as I said. It is irreparable. But what God's Spirit does is strengthen the graces of this new man, this new creation. He strengthens those graces so that you and I, if I could take the words of the shorter catechism, you and I are enabled to die more and more to sin and to live more and more unto righteousness. That's what he does. That's how he works. That's how he transforms us. My time's away, Mr. Greer, and I'm only on the first point. Let me see if I can quickly finish this up. Second major thought here in this text. The transformation of a believer into the image of Christ is a gradual one. Paul says in verse 18, we're transformed into the same image from glory to glory. It's interesting to me that he's using the word glory to describe Christ's likeness, to describe holiness. The beauty of holiness, the glory of holiness. From glory to glory. It comes by degrees. From one stage to another. And now I understand why the Lord impressed upon me back in that room in prayer to mention that scene in Mark chapter 8. That wasn't anything to do with what I was going to preach tonight, but now I get it. I understand now why. How is it that you do not understand? How is it? Why, when you've heard these truths, this isn't the first time, why do you say, I need to hear that again? Because we are all spiritual dyslexics. Dyslexia is simply a slow learner. For whatever reasons, could be a number of reasons, but they're slow at learning. They're slow to get it. These apostles had the best teacher in the world in the person of Jesus Christ. His teaching was flawless. His life, living out his teaching, was perfect. They heard the pure Word of God from the pure Son of God. He was the most patient teacher. And yet here they are, he mentions the word leaven, and they think he's talking about not having enough bread. They're so slow to learn. And I say this with all of the love that I can have in my soul for you as a child of God. You're a slow learner. And so am I. But Christ is a very patient teacher. I read the story. Spurgeon tells it, I think. There was a mother teaching her child a certain truth. And it took her 20 times teaching the same truth in the sit-downs, one period, 20 times before the child got it. And her friend who was sitting about her said, why did you just sit there and take 20 times over that? The mother said, because he didn't get it the 19th time. Oh, that so describes us. If it takes 10,000 times before a truth of the gospel sinks in, the Holy Ghost will tell it to you again and again and again because He has determined you will look like the Son of God. But it's by degrees. We're slow learners. We have to hear it again and again and again. You don't graduate from this school till glory. And even then you enter into higher university. Can I put it like that? Eternity to learn about this infinite God with no sin to hamper you. Won't that be great? Right now, here and now, it's five degrees. Take comfort in that. Don't get lazy because of it. Don't say, well, you know, I'm a dunce. I'm a slow learner, so I can just sort of just back off and, you know. No, no. No excuse. We're in the school to learn. He'll bring us there. Now there are things that you and I can do to help or to hinder this work. Not stop it, but we can't hinder it. That's what we'll look at next evening. At least we'll begin to. But for now, go out of here tonight thanking God he's brought you into that school. It's wonderful, you know. It's a great course to be in. You're being changed into the image of his son. Blessed be His name. Let's bow our heads in prayer. Let's seek the Lord's face together. Father in heaven, how good it is to be in the Word. How good it is to be under the teaching of the Spirit of God. And Lord, we ask Thee tonight as Thy people, enlarge our minds to grasp more. Increase our thirst for knowledge of Christ, not just for knowledge to be proud and puffed up, for that's what knowledge alone does, but we pray for that knowledge of Christ that does sanctify us, the knowledge of Him that does humble us and makes us like Him so that others, Lord, be helped. They'll be helped by seeing Jesus in us. In His name we pray. And for His glory we ask this, Amen and Amen.