As we take our last look at God's work of biblical change in conforming you to the image of his son Jesus, we're first going to take one more look at quotes from the world. The world, being sinful, often doesn't understand biblical change, but they know about change. So a broken clock can be right at least twice a day. And so as we look at the world, there's things we can learn from them. These are more recent quotes on change from the world. From Aldous Huxley, who died in 1963. He was the English writer of Brave New World. He said this, I wanted to change the world. But I found out the only thing one can be sure of changing is yourself. James Baldwin, who died in 1987, was an African-American novelist. He wrote Notes of a Native Son. He said this, people can cry much easier than they can change. Katherine Hepburn, I found this interesting, an actress. who died in 2003. We are taught that you must blame your father, your sister, your brother, the school, your teachers, but never blame yourself. It's never your fault, but it's always your fault, because if you want to change, you're the one who has to change. Some of you might remember Comedienne from America, she's still alive, and did the Carol Burnett show. Carol Burnett. Only I can change my life. No one can do it for me. And then the great one, no I'm not talking about the Lord, but if you follow hockey, it's Wayne Gretzky. He says this, you'll miss 100% of the shots you never take. And surprisingly enough, from the 44th president of the United States, a great quote. You remember his slogan to become president was all about change. But it actually is a great quote. Change will not come if we wait for some other person or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change we seek. Now, I didn't want to end with at least not having a couple more quotes from the famous Chinese philosopher, Un Nao Un. Of course, for us Americans, it is unknown. Worrying about something you can't change will forever be the biggest waste of your time. You can't change what's going on around you until you start changing what's going on within you. Well, we've heard from the world and we can learn some things from the world, but the one we need to learn from is the living God. So let us stand together as I pray and we read his word to us about the process that he is about and his people to change us. God, we certainly thank you for the fellowship we have had with each other this weekend. We thank you for the fun we've had with each other this weekend. We thank you for the food that we've shared with each other this weekend. We thank you that this congregation has many weekends and many years where we have celebrated those things. But you're about a lot more than fun and food and fellowship. What you're all about is changing us to become like your son, Jesus Christ. We thank you for that. We look forward to the day when it'll be finished, but now, as you're at work, we need to understand that and be a partner with you and rejoice in it. Would you, as we leave and about ready to go, we worship you for this day and the week to come in our life before us. We pray for that continued work, that wondrous work of your making us like Jesus Christ, that we would not be resistors to that, fighters against it, but joyously be a part of it, working in it with the spirit of the Holy God to become like our Savior in whose name we pray. Amen. You'll turn to Ephesians chapter four. I have a reading from Ephesians chapter 4 and verses 17 to 23 as we look at this process of change. Now this I say, and testify in the Lord. that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles, or what he's speaking about here is unbelievers, walk no longer as the Gentiles do in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardness of their heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality. Greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ. Assuming that you've heard about Him and were taught in Him as the truth is in Jesus. To put off the old self. which belongs to the former manner of life, which is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and to put on the new self created after the likeness of God in the true righteousness and holiness, that is, biblical change, to become like our Savior Jesus. Amen. Please be seated. Well, I hope you can all see here very clearly that God's will for you who are in Christ is to stop living like an unbeliever and become like Jesus through the process of biblical change, putting off and putting on. Ephesians 4, 17-21 talks about us not being allowed to remain static in the way we were. When you come to Christ, you are to become like Christ. You cannot remain as an unbeliever, even in your beliefs or in the way you act. Before coming to Christ, you did. You stood outside, not understanding the things of God. Our minds, indeed, were darkened in our understanding. We were alienated from God. We had hard hearts. We were callous. We were given up, living only for our sensuality and impurity. but through God's mercy and kindness towards you in Christ, those of you who have embraced Him by faith are now in Christ and will be changed forever. 2 Corinthians 5.17, we've said it already. You know it because you said it with me, right? Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old passed away. The new has come, right? Putting off, putting on. It's the biblical process you see throughout the scripture over and over and over again. And that's what's to happen with us. We must put off that old man and become new. I think it was yesterday that I, I think it was Abby that I saw. She had a butterfly sweatshirt on, right Abby? And I said, hey, you got a butterfly sweatshirt on. I think she did something like this. She would put her hands and chest into it. Yeah, a butterfly. Well, what we're talking about is that you leave that old ugly worm, that caterpillar, you know, wrangling around the 100 legs and go, bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop, eat everything you can. You know, that's the old life. You go in that cocoon process and you come out being able to fly, being beautiful. People like to go to butterfly gardens, right? You go there and the butterflies lay and you go, wow, cool. Oh, wow, butterflies, right? You can see videos of butterflies, right? You don't normally see videos of caterpillar gardens, you know? Who wants to do that? That's the old man. And we're called to be new in that process of change, metamorphosis. Your coming to Christ in your salvation is now to be lived out as you become like Christ in your sanctification. Now as we look here, we're going to look at three different words as God talks about putting off, and then having renewed minds, and then putting on. Putting off sin, renewing your mind, living by the scriptures, and putting on righteousness. And all of these are infinitives, which mean they are like Molly. The Lawrences just had biblical sweatshirts on this week. Molly yesterday, all day yesterday, wore a shirt that said, continue. Did you see that? Right? And so her sweatshirt is helpful for us because all of these verbs continue. You never stop. You never stop putting off. You never stop off sin. You never stop having your minds renewed by the word of God. You never stop putting on righteousness. So thank you, Abby and Molly. I know you didn't know about this, but you were really great. I appreciate that. We could have brought your sweatshirts up here, but we chose not to do that since you had worn them. All right. So all Christians are called to be not what we used to be, to change, not to be like an unbeliever, to be like a believer. Well, how do you do that? That's the process we're talking about. It happens in three verses. It's not, you know, sometimes pastors have to figure out their outlines, you know, and they'll do all kinds of things with words and things and try to get you. You don't have to do that because in three verses, it just does it for us. God is so good to be sometimes just so clear. And He is here. The first thing you do, if you're gonna change in verse 22, God wants you to change to become more like Him by putting off the old man. What it really says is, the phrase is literally put off the old self or the old man. Now he's not just talking about people like me with gray hair. If you're a child, you're not supposed to act the way you used to if you come to Christ. You act in a new way. If you're a woman, you can't say, no, I don't have to change. It's that old man. I want to put him off, but I don't have to change. No, he's talking about all of us. We put off the old way of living, loving sin and living for it. And what he's really talking about here, instead of following God, we follow our own passions, our desires. We live for our feelings. We're feeling-oriented. We are desire-dominated. We can't do what God wants us to do because we love those things. And that's what the world would put before you, that's important. Live like that. What does the Hallmark Channel tell all you ladies and girls, right? The mother's sitting on her bed and her daughter's coming in with some disastrous thing happened in her life, and they're sitting, the mom's giving her counseling. What am I gonna do, mom? Joey's left me and I... It goes on, and the mom says, It's okay, honey. Just follow your heart. Don't! Whatever you do, you know, the man, you know, we would never do that, right? But we watch the war movies, right? They're being overrun by 10 billion enemies. You know, there's no hope for them. And the private turns to the captain and says, oh, what am I going to do, Cap? And he says, follow your gut and we'll get out of here. Don't do it! That's the old way of living. You live by your feelings. That or what ruled you. And the Bible says this in Jeremiah 17.9, the heart, or we could say the gut, the heart Because it's that place where we think and move and have our feelings, where we make our decisions. If we make our decisions by our heart and our gut, the Bible says that they are deceitful above all things and desperately sick. How often should we make that our goal of doing that and use that as our barometer? Never! I'm not saying that feelings are bad but you can't trust your feelings because one day, I love her, I can't believe it, we're married and the next day you wake up and you're looking at her in the bed before she's combed her hair and brushed her teeth and you're saying, what did I do? You know, and if you leave it to your feelings, you won't stay together, or vice versa. Our feelings change all the way, and they're not guided by Scripture. They're guided by the circumstances and what we want, and the Christian is not to live that way. We are to put that off. Now, this process of change is all throughout the Scripture, but let's look in the book of Colossians. Galatians, Ephesians, we're going to have Philippians, Colossians, Colossians chapter 3. Notice the Apostle Paul is taking the same principle to another church because it's so important. You have to live working to put off that old man. And before we go there, I just want to read in Romans 6 where Paul's talking about the great theology and what we have to change. He says the same thing, Romans 6, 6. We know that the old self was crucified with him, Jesus, in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing." So we are no longer enslaved by sin, no longer enslaved to live by our passions, to live by our feelings. Passions and feelings are nice. I'm not saying it's not great to root for a team and hold a hand of your wife or girlfriend or boyfriend or husband and say, it tingles, I like it. That's a blessing of God, but we don't live by the tingles. We don't make decisions by those because sometimes they're not there, sometimes they are, and sometimes they tell you the wrong thing. So, in Colossians 3, verses 5-8, look at how important this principle is in the process of biblical change, because Paul is going to repeat it again to the church of Colossae. Colossians 3, verse 5, put to death. What is earthly in you? Sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, covetousness, which is idolatry. On the account of these things the wrath of God is coming. In these you too once walked. We don't walk that way any longer. In that way you once walked when you were living in them, but now you must put them all away. Anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth." So the first thing that God is telling us to do, and he's not saying, let go and let God, right? It is to say, sit there and wait. God's going to go poof. He's going to bring in a little angel with some fairy dust to change you. Who does this? The Scripture is written to who? Paul is saying, you! The church. You, to have biblical change, as God uses his word, brings it by the Holy Spirit, you have to do it. He will help you, but you can't say, oh, I'm stuck here, I can't do it, I'll never change. No, you, with the Holy Spirit, are called to be putting off this sin. How do we put it off? How do we change our feelings? How do we make them? How do we know what to do because our feelings rage in us at times? How do we know what we're supposed to be doing? Look at the next verse, Ephesians 4 in verse 23. God has given what you need for biblical change to become like Jesus as his spirit uses the scriptures to renew your mind. Now remember, these verbs are infinitive. They're talking about something that has to continue. This is lifelong. You just don't want to put off your sin because we know the nature of our sins, don't we? They're hard to kill. They cling to us. It's something we have to always be doing, killing the sins, going after them. But the way we know how to, instead of living by our feelings, which are unpredictable and not reliable, and living by our desires, we live by minds renewed by the scriptures. Listen to Romans chapter 12, verses 1 and 2, for you. I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. You're like Jesus, you're supposed to be like Him, and as you sacrifice your life to God, and how does that happen? Don't be conformed to this world. You know, we see the things of the world, and they draw us. Oh, look at that. That's cool. Wish I had some. I'd like to be like, oh, if I only look like that. That happens to us all the time. That's what movies and commercials are constantly doing. Why do you buy? Or your friends, right? Why do you buy the shampoo you use? Why do you buy the clothes you wear? You wanna look, you wanna have a certain look because you feel it or like it or your friends like it. Most of us just don't go out and get a bar of lava, you know, soap that has pumice in it. It'll get your clean skin clean and it'll wash half of it off, rub it off because it's so rough and you'll smell like a volcano. That's all we need, but we don't do that. We want to smell like Irish spring, the top of the morning. We'll actually have, you guys do that, right? Top of the morning to you, right? We could do that, but you know, we get caught up in, ooh, if I only, you know, and we have to, what's it say? Look at Romans, well, I'm reading Romans 12 too. Do not be conformed to this world by transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by the testing you might discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect, and what renews our minds as a Christian? The word of God, right? Because the word of God that is breathed by God is what? Profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness, being like Jesus, right? So that's the process as our minds have to be renewed. And what kind of verb is it? It is an infinitive, which means what on Molly's t-shirt? It continues. We have to continue renewing. I remember I read my Bible last year, and I'm going to read it this year. That doesn't work. Your mind isn't good. How often do you watch those commercials? All the time. How often do you go to movies? All the time. How often do you listen to music? All the time. How often do you read magazines? All the time. The radio? All the time. Right? You're being renewed. The world's renewing you like boom, boom, boom, bam. You know? And you just suck it in. Right? Oh, yeah. I remember I read the Bible. And that's what renews our mind. Well, how do we, we have to put a whole lot of the Bible in us, not to go, oh, I checked off the Bible. I got it, I did it. Yes, mom, and my devotion. We're okay today, mom, don't bother me tomorrow. It's not that reason. It's because the world is all the time going. Right, and every once in a while we get the Bible and we go, we read a page. What's the, how's that gonna renew your mind? Right? Well, what's the difference? And so, we have to be continually in the scriptures because we need it. God says that's his process of change. Now, renewal is not remodeling. A lot of us just want to make a little change, right? Okay. I understand that I'm no longer supposed to beat up my brother. Did you hit your brother? Not last 10 minutes, mom. But 20 minutes before that, you beat the snot out of him, right? And he'd love it. You have arguments with your sister or we'll make little changes to make things look good. It's the difference between if I went home to my wife and I said, honey, what would you like me to do with our kitchen? Would you like me to remodel it or to renovate it? Which do you think she'd like? Renovation. Let me tell you why. Because we just remodeled it, right? It's okay. When you remodel, you take your kitchen and you get new appliances, new cabinet fronts, new paint, new curtains. Right? See, kind of spiff it up, but it's still that old 30- or 40-year-old kitchen, you know, that has the wood stove. You know, it's still that old thing, but you've changed some things. But when you renovate, first you take and give a new ceiling, new walls, new floors, new pipes, new sink, new wiring, new counters, new cabinets, new wall coverings, new windows. And then you get the new appliances, the new paint, and the new curtains. You see, there's quite a difference between them, isn't it? And even the cost. And you just say, oh, I just want to be a remodeled Christian. It doesn't cost much. I can wear a t-shirt that says I love Jesus, but I don't have to act like Jesus. And that's what we want to do, because it's easy, and it's not work, and it's not continual. But God is saying, by His Holy Spirit using His word in our lives, a continuous process of being made new and like Jesus has to come on when we're renovated. Not an overhaul, but a restoration. So, what's God's process of biblical change so far? We put off We not only put off, we continually, thank you Molly, we continue to put off the old man and sin. We continually have our minds renewed with what? The Word of God, which is profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, training in righteousness, right? Continually, the process of God making you like Jesus Christ every day. We fight in putting off, continuing to put off the old manner of sin, renewing our minds with the scriptures so we know what to do, and then working to put off sin. Verse 23, you can look at it. God wants you to become more like Jesus by putting on the new man. And if you don't put on the new man, the old man won't go. You have to replace it with something. Remember the scripture that Jesus has about the lady, you know, she got rid of a demon or cleaned up her house, forget it, maybe both things. And then didn't do anything and seven more demons came back. Right? We put off sin. If you don't keep changing the process, that sin is going to come back worse, not better. And so, this is a continual process that God works in our life. Let's go to Colossians 3 again, because I want you to see in the Scriptures that this continues. It's the same picture here in verse 12. Colossians 3 and 12, remember we're putting off, here it just uses the word put on. Put on then is God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, bearing with one another. And if anyone has complaint against another, forgiving each other as the Lord has forgiven you, so also you must forgive, and above all these things put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which you are indeed called in one body, and be thankful. And how do you do that? Let the word of Christ. You have to be renewed again, right? You put off the old, putting on the new, with your minds renewed, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another with all wisdom." You see it's not just the pastor as I preach, not just your elders as they make their visits with you. We're to do this with one another. The admonishment to put off your sin. To have your minds renewed, to put on righteousness is something your parents do with their children, something teachers do at school. It's what the Sunday school teaches, but it's what we do as brothers and sisters with one another. That's what it means to be the body of Christ. We're in this process together of becoming like Jesus Christ. He has given us His Holy Spirit. He has given us His Word. And He has given us each other. We are to be a part of this process. putting off the old man. So if you do that, look at Ephesians, because now Paul gives us several examples of what it means to change. He shows us that you can't just put off and put on as your mind is renewed by the Scriptures. But he gives us examples, and one he uses is a thief. How do you know when a thief who comes to Christ is no longer a thief? Well, you say he stops thieving. He stops stealing. But it's so much richer and better than that in the Word of God. Look at verse 28. Let the thief no longer steal, right? He's put off. But also, don't just let him stop stealing, but rather let him labor. doing honest work with his own hands so that he might have something to share with anyone in need. So you know when a thief comes to Christ, when he no longer is a thief because he no longer steals, but he also, because he has been renewed, now gets a job. And He gives to those in need. He is no longer a thief because He's no longer living by His sinful feelings and desires to get what He wants at no cost to others because He is King and Lord of His life. But now that Jesus is King and Lord of His life, He is dominated by Jesus Christ and His commands to give to others. Not just not to stop stealing. The world would say, let's get him to stop stealing. Put him away. He can't steal. But it's much more than that. It's to be changed biblically. Not just to stop stealing, but to be like Jesus Christ who loved and gave himself to others. This is continuous. What is the process of biblical change? To continue to what? put off your sin, right? To continually be what in your mind? Renewed in your mind by what? The Word of God which is profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, training in righteousness that you will become like Jesus Christ. Well as you go from here this weekend you'll say, If pastor asks me next week, I might be able to repeat some of these things. Maybe. Where's that outline? Oh, I trashed it, that's right. I've given you the two stages of biblical change. Salvation, coming to Christ. Sanctification, becoming like Christ. The four steps of biblical change that God uses in scripture because it is profitable for teaching, right? Telling you what is right. For reproof, right? What's that one for? Excuse me, what? Tell you what's not right. Correction, telling you what is right. Training in righteousness, so that you might stay right. And now we've looked at the process of biblical change, which is continually putting off sin in the old man, and by having your mind continually renewed in the scriptures, right? And then with that, God using that, you're able to put on the new man righteousness, right? I have not given you an easy task. This sanctification Good old doctrine is helpful, right? Teaching, because the Westminster Confession of Faith, which we use in the beginning, and you have on your sheet, which you certainly will never trash, but keep forever in your Bible. Talk about what sanctification is, but then it, thankfully, these men are called divines. That just meant they were wise, they were godly. And listen what they say in the second paragraph about all of this going on. They say this. This sanctification is throughout the whole man, yet imperfect in this life. So I don't want you to get discouraged, you know, because this is hard. And you say, I didn't do it this week. I'm going to give up. Don't. Because they go on to say, because they're wise and godly, they're divines, it says this, imperfect in this life, they're abiding still some remnants of corruption in every part. That means that old man, until we get to heaven, is still going to be there, and it's still going to be popping up like guacamole. You hit it, and you think, I got done with swearing. And you go, I hit your head with a hammer. And you go, I don't know what you'll say, but you know. Your parents do something you don't like, and you know you love them, but then you go, I hate you. You would never do that. It's continual. There's still that old man living within us. It says, whence arises a continual and irreconcilable war? The flesh lusting against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh. Turn to Romans 7. Because God knows this. The guy who's teaching the church here, the Apostle Paul knows this. And he's talking about this struggle that he, all Christians, you and I all accept the Lord Jesus Christ who is perfect and saved us and helping us. But in this great, great book of Doctrine, Romans, you know, you go to Romans, oh yeah, the Doctrine, it's the foundation of all we believe. But thankfully, Apostle Paul just got real with us here, because he's seeking after being fallen with Christ. He knows that he has got this irreconcilable war going on. You know what we'd like to do? We just don't. We get tired of war, so we just raise our hands and say, I surrender. You know, just put me in a prisoner of war camp, maybe they'll feed me and I'll get Red Cross packages once in a while. I don't like war, I'm tired of it. No, it's continual and irreconcilable war that's going on. So if we look in Romans 7, verses 21 to 24, Paul is talking, this is the apostle who's just taught the church, and he's telling us about the war that he faces, and how he gets overwhelmed with it at times, fighting his sin. Romans 7, 21, so I find it to be a law. that when I want to do right, when I want to read the scriptures, when I want to put off that old man and put on the old man, when I want to put off sin and live righteously, evil lies close at hand. For I'm a Christian, I do delight in the law of God in my inner being. But I see in my members, I see in myself another war waging against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Do you know about that in your fight with sin? You feel like sometimes you're just captive. There's no way out of this. I've tried again and again to follow God and I'm just tired. Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? Most of us don't know what body of death is. He's not just talking about sin dwelling in him, but It's actually a torture that the Romans used. The torture that they used for the Romans is someone they found guilty and often persecuted. The body of death is they took another dead person and hooked it to you face-to-face, arm-to-arm, leg-to-leg. And you could not remove that dead person as they rotted and decayed. Can you think of that, the horror of that? And you might say, Pastor, come on, they never did that, did they? Let me read you from the poet Virgil, first century before Christ. The living and the dead at his command, that is the general who did it or soldier, were coupled face-to-face and hand-to-hand, till choked with stench, in loathed embraces tied, the lingering wretches pined away and died. Can you imagine that? It'd be hard enough to have a dead person face-to-face, arm-to-arm, and everything you do, they're connected to you, you know, when they've just died, right? The worms haven't come yet. The maggots haven't come yet. The stench hasn't come. Then after the first week, and the first month, and the years, they rot away, and eventually, if you don't die of some kind of disease, there's just this skeleton, awful skeleton before you that's still clinging to you. That's what Paul is saying we have, right? Do you know about the stench of your sin that still clings to you sometimes? And you say, I know I'm supposed to be like Jesus, but I just can't. It's still there. Well, maybe you knocked off the head because you just couldn't stand watching and looking in those eyes anymore. But you still smell and you know, I woke up today and there's a finger there and it smells and it's horrible. He's talking about he were wretched because we still have this old sin. We haven't gotten rid of it all. It still hangs to this body of death. What am I going to do? Well, thankfully, in the confession, there is one more paragraph about our sanctification becoming like Jesus. Paragraph three, in which war, although remaining for a corruption for a time, may much prevail. Yet through the continual supply of strength from the sanctifying Spirit of God, the regenerate part doth overcome. So we as saints grow in grace, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. Well, let's go back to Romans 7 because the Apostle Paul found that out and rejoiced. Because after he's talking about this stinking body of death and sin that still clings to him, he says, I did it! I got rid of it! I'm a great Christian! Now, let's look at the scripture and what it says. Verse 24 of 7, it says, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death. Verse 25, thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh, I still serve the law of sin. I can't make it. If I have to be godly on my own, I am undone. And then Romans 8, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law weakened by the flesh could not do by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh for sin He condemns sin in the flesh in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. That's good news as we go here in the battle, isn't it? The truth is we still have The old man, that body of flesh clinging to us in parts. Sometimes we're just so overwhelmed by the grip it has on us and the stench, we want to give up and just die or say, no, I'll go back to the world because then maybe the devil, maybe they'll take this off of me. But the joy is it will happen in heaven, but you have the hope now because of Christ. Perfect sanctification is something we will have. When we first come to Christ, you have something called positional sanctification. You're made holy. God looks at you holy because Jesus is holy. So even if you never change much, remember the thief on the cross? What could he do? He trusted in Jesus nothing, although he testified to the other Thief, hey, you shouldn't be doing this, this is the Son of God. So we have positional sanctification, but we've been talking about progressive sanctification, right? Biblical change, becoming like Jesus, but thanks be to God, there is a day when we go to be with Jesus that we'll have perfect sanctification. As we continue in this war, let's look to that and call out for God's help, but rejoice, because it will be happening. You will no longer, when you see Jesus, have this irrecyclable, that continual war going on within you, because Jesus has victory. And I'm going to end by this scripture in Philippians 1.6, where the Apostle says this, I am sure of this. that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion in the day of Jesus Christ. Thanks be to God. Let's pray. Our Father in God, we thank you for this process that you have of having us to become like Christ. We pray that as we go from here, we would not only know of it, but be a part of it thanking you that in Jesus Christ we can be now in the war. We've been signed up as soldiers of Christ to put off the old man in our sin as our minds are continually renewed by your word and by your spirit, by the word preached in the pulpit brought by our elders and by one another. as we renew our hearts and make us like Jesus so that with your help and by the Spirit we put off that old man, our sin, and we rejoice that the victory is already won in Jesus and that we will experience it when we see him face to face. Amen and amen.