Luke: 00:11

Well, morning, everyone. My name is Luke. I'm one of the pastors here at Conduit, and it's my privilege to say welcome home this morning. Let's pause and let's invite Pastor Cameron up as he starts our new sermon series. Heavenly Father, as we still and quiet our hearts, I pray that you would remove all distractions from our minds and hearts.

Luke: 00:38

Lord, that you would awaken us to your spirit here with us. Lord, I ask that you would use the preaching of your word to make yourself known, or that you would convict and instruct, that you would uplift us, Lord, with your words. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.

Cam: 01:01

Amen. Thank you, Pastor Luke. Conduit kids is jamming down there this morning. Well, not typically what you would call a prop preacher, which means where I like bring all kinds of props up on stage in order to make or illustrate a point. But I have lots of props this morning, and I don't know what to do with them all.

Cam: 01:33

So they're going to be a little bit clumsy. But before you leave today, I'll set these up in the back before we leave. But before you leave today, we have 300 Silly Putties. Okay? And you each need a Silly Putty to take with you on your way out the door and to bring back with you this week, or week after week.

Cam: 02:05

We're starting a new series for the season of Lent. And the name of the series is Formed. Pastor Luke talked a little bit about this last week, and it's a pretty common theme or thing that we talk about at Conduit and that we're trying to be extra intentional about this year is the intentional decisions that we make in order to be formed into the image and likeness of Jesus. Because without making intentional decisions, we often end up just drifting through life and through spiritual life especially. And it's been my experience that when we just drift through life, we never really end up at a very desirable place.

Cam: 03:04

Okay? Last week, Pastor Luke talked about some of the things that kind of unintentionally form us as people. Meaning these are the things that we don't actively pursue on our own, but they maybe happen to us. Things like the relationships that we have or have been subjected to. Some of the habits that we really don't think about, but that are just a normal part of our day and our life.

Cam: 03:36

We have a habit and it begins to form us. We've all had different experiences from the time we were born up until even this very moment. Experiences that form who we are, how we think about the world, how we see the world, how we interact with others around us. Really big experiences, really small experiences. We have stories.

Cam: 04:04

We have innumerable amount of things that form us and shape us into the person that we are right now. Some of those things are unintentional. Some of those things are intentional, where we make decisions that, yes, this is the thing that is going to form who I am. For Christians, we want to live in a pathway where we're allowing the Holy Spirit of God to form who we are. And to allow the teachings of the Word, the inward conviction of the Holy Spirit, the practices of historical Christianity, things like prayer and Sabbath and fasting and worship and generosity, Things that have classically formed Christians over time.

Cam: 05:07

We want to see even and leverage even the negative things of our lives to form us. Probably one of the most significant things, formational tools in our lives is suffering. How does suffering form who we are? And we can take even negative things like suffering or poor experiences, and if we intentionally surrender them to the Lord, He will redeem those things in our life to create in us who we couldn't be on our own.

Luke: 05:52

You see, discipleship to Jesus is an intentional process that we must engage in in order to be formed by God's purposes.

Cam: 06:05

We have to make decisions to engage in a process where we are willfully submitting ourselves to the Lord, that He may take us and form us and mold us so that we live like Jesus, love like Jesus, and serve like Jesus. Last week, Pastor Luke shared this I thought it was good. I wanted to include it in our sermon this morning as well, that both God's greatest purpose and our greatest good is to be formed into the image and likeness of Jesus. What we God's one of God's greatest purposes and our greatest good is to be formed and changed and transformed into who Jesus is. That greatest is good for your life.

Cam: 07:06

That is God's ultimate purpose for your life, is that you would look more and more and more and more like Jesus. That when people see you, you are indistinguishable from the life of Jesus. Now listen, some of the things of our formation are things, like I said, unintentionally, that happen to us. And some of the things are what we pursue. What am I going to pursue in order to become more and more like Jesus?

Cam: 07:45

To use some more language from Pastor Luke's sermon last week, some of the things that form us are, they become like pathways or highways that get created in our hearts over time through repetition. Sometimes we think really intentionally about them. Sometimes we just kind of look back and like, Oh yeah, that is a pathway to my heart that I didn't realize was being formed over a long period of time. But yeah, here it is. Maybe some examples.

Cam: 08:28

There's this quite, like I love, maybe not so much love, I have a habit, I should say this, of harping on our kind of modern reliance on our phones for everything. Everything. Many people can't find their phone, feel a little bit anxious? Like starting to get the cold sweats where you're feeling phantom buzzes.

Luke: 09:07

Right?

Cam: 09:12

You're literally making up that your phone is buzzing because a pathway has been created in your heart for it, right? And so sometimes people are like, I mean, come on, do we really like, are our phones really that big of a deal? Do they really form us that much? Have our phones really created such a clear pathway to our hearts? And my question for just hypothetically speaking, this is a rhetorical question, don't answer it.

Cam: 09:46

But my bet is that for the vast majority of us, your phone is the last thing that you look at before you shut your eyes. And it is the first thing that you look at when you wake up in the morning. That you fall asleep to it and you wake up to it. And so when we begin to ask questions like, what are the pathways that have been worn in our heart? See, we are formed by our practices and our habits, even for instance, when it comes to our health.

Cam: 10:24

Talk about like unintentional and intentional formational practices. No one accidentally becomes strong. No one just wakes up one morning with the capacity to run a marathon or to hike up a mountain. It is the habits and practices of our diet, of our sleep and rest, of our exercise that form us into the people who can do things like that. So if we are going to be a people who make intentional decisions on the things that form us, rather than just letting formation happen to us by unintentional forces, what are some of the things as followers of Jesus that we would pick in order to form us?

Cam: 11:33

If we want to become more like Jesus so that we love like Jesus, live like Jesus, and serve like Jesus, what pathways am I going to begin to start creating in my heart? What well are worn paths that I'm going to start creating? You see, sometimes when we approach a question like this, we have to be honest about what that takes, about what it takes to form a well worn path in our heart. Sometimes pathways are formed very gently over a long period of time, like water that runs over a rock and gently, but over a long period of time, kind of carves out its own little dip. Right?

Cam: 12:27

It's gentle. It happens over time. It's like, it's the long game, right? Oh yeah, that's what I want. Kind of a slow fade into formation.

Cam: 12:41

Let the water gradually form the rock of my life. That's one way. There are other ways as well. My wife and I took a trip down to North Carolina last week, going through the mountains of West Virginia and Virginia. You will see that there is also another way to create a pathway or to create a road.

Cam: 13:08

And it has to do with drilling down deep into hard rock and exploding it and clearing the way. See, sometimes formation is a gentle process that leads us down a long road, and we should be grateful to God for His mercy in that. But sometimes formation is a violent and explosive process that seeks to drill deep down into the stone of our heart to blow it away so that a pathway to Jesus can be made. That is also a mercy of God. Both the gentle and the violent ways that God makes us more like Jesus are a mercy from him because his greatest purpose for your life is that you would be more and more and more like Jesus.

Cam: 14:13

So over the next several weeks, we're going to be talking about some of the ways in which we are formed as people. And if we are willing to allow God to do the work that He desires to do in our hearts and our lives, that He will use these things and others to form us more into the image and likeness of Jesus. Today we're going to talk about the Word, that God forms us by His Word. Next week, we're going to talk about how God forms us through suffering. Then we're going to talk about how God forms us in community by using one another.

Cam: 14:57

And then we're gonna talk about how God forms us through obedience. But today, we're gonna talk about this. The Bible or the New Testament or the Old Testament or the scriptures or the bread of life or the law, or as we're going to refer to it today as the Word of God. Okay? Now, these are all kind of words or phrases that we use to describe this thing right here.

Cam: 15:32

This is the most popular book ever written. It is the most popular book to ever be printed. It is the most popular book to ever be distributed. It is the most illegal book in all of the world. More copies of the Bible have been smuggled into countries and to people than the copies of Shakespeare have been printed.

Cam: 15:58

It is unequivocally the most influential book that has ever existed or ever will exist. You have likely, if you have ever sat at a church service or listened to a Christian talk about the Bible, you've been told that this thing right here has power, is full of spiritual authority that leads us to godliness, has divine authorship and infallibility to it. We read even in it people like the Apostle Paul, who writes to his protege, Timothy, and says this about it. He says, But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the holy scriptures, which were able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. All scripture is God breathed and useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Cam: 17:23

That's likely what you have maybe heard of, or at least been introduced to as like, Well, what is the Bible? What is the scripture? Well, it's useful for a lot of things. For teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness so that the person of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. And I say unequivocally, yes and amen.

Cam: 17:45

That is true about it. But if I'm honest with myself, and if maybe we are willing to be honest with ourselves, some of us, maybe not all of us, but some of us may be willing to admit that sometimes we come away from our encounters with the Word feeling a little bit more confused than formed. Like, What? What did He say? You know, like, What is that?

Cam: 18:24

What does that mean? How can that possibly be what that says? Or it's a possibility that we come away maybe filled with knowledge, but uncertain how that knowledge can actually function to change my life. We read the story and we know the details now. We heard what Jesus said, but how does it get from here to here?

Cam: 19:02

How does it actually form who we are? So what would it then look like for us to take a more intentional approach to our formation in the Word by not just reading it, but by actually letting it read us. Letting the Word of God kind of open us up and expose our hearts to form us, to make us new. What I have learned about approaching the Word is that the posture that you approach it in determines really what you allow it to do to you. That there is a way in which I approach the Word where I can hold it at an arm's length in terms of its formational power in my life.

Cam: 20:18

And then there is a posture on which I can approach the Word where I lay myself on the altar of God and say, Let your Word pierce down deep into who I am and change me at my core. K? So the first thing that I'm gonna talk about here is the the posture that we have when we approach the Word. And I'm going to make kind of two, what may sound like really stark distinctions that sit on opposite ends of the spectrum, okay? But what I want you to end up hearing is that this is not an either or type of distinction, but it actually is a both and at the same time.

Cam: 21:12

I think that'll come into a little bit more clarity here in a minute. Most of us come to the Word of God with the goal, and this is a product of our culture, okay? Most of us come to the Word of God with the goal of mastering it. We're going to dissect it. We're going to draw things out of it.

Cam: 21:44

And then we're going to take what we've learned and the data that's in there, and we're going to try it, we're going to apply it to our lives. We say things like, I really just want to learn the Bible and understand it more. I really just want to learn it and understand it more. Now listen, hear me loud and clear. This is a fantastic idea.

Cam: 22:12

I love this. I have given my life to this. I have given my life to helping people understand and learn the Bible and will continue until my very last breath. Learning the Bible and understanding it, fantastic. Who here believes that I want people to understand the Bible?

Cam: 22:37

Okay, we all believe that, okay? So I'm not saying that learning the Bible and understanding it is bad. It is of course a universal good. But what I want us to try and see for a moment is that when we approach the Bible, when we approach the Word of God with the sole purpose of learning its facts, then we typically will just feed a quest for knowledge and we may avoid the opportunity for it to form our hearts. Okay?

Cam: 23:20

Why? Well, because formation may start in our mind and with our brains, but formation actually happens at the points and intersections where our hearts are most broken, most sinful, most darkened, most hardened. See, knowledge, we can read to learn and fill our mind and avoid the places in our soul where the Word wants to intersect with our brokenness and change and form us there. Let me try to make this point as clear as possible. Knowledge of the Word is desirable and important.

Cam: 24:14

But even James, the brother of Jesus, says that the highest good or highest goal of our pursuit of the Word is not to just be a hearer of it, but to be what? But to be a doer of it. James one twenty two-twenty five says that we must not be merely hearers of God's Word. Do not merely listen to the Word and so deceive yourself. Do what it says.

Cam: 24:52

He goes on, Anyone who listens to the Word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and after looking at himself goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom and continues in it, not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it, they will be blessed by what they do. Listen, knowledge alone by itself, Paul says in one Corinthians chapter eight, he says that knowledge alone just, you know the word, puffs up. But love, he says, which is the formed quality of the heart that has been transformed by Jesus, right? But love is the thing that builds up.

Cam: 25:59

And so my point here is that it's easy to approach the word in order to learn just learn it, but never be formed by it. There are historians of the Bible who know the data, the culture, the history, the background, the languages better than you or I ever will, but who do not know the God for whom it reveals. It is an entirely different task altogether to approach the Word and ask it to learn us, to search us, to dissect us, to point out all of the offensive and wicked ways in us. Now, much of this comes from kind of a, like I said, a cultural trajectory that we have of information over formation. There's information and there's formation.

Cam: 27:12

We've chatted a lot about this here. Are as a culture, we are gluttonous and obese on information in our culture, right? We information coming out of our ears, right? We have very little wisdom. All of the information that we have has not formed us into better people.

Cam: 27:43

It has made us think, and it just puffed us up in our heads, right? So I want to talk about the difference between informational reading and formational reading here. Informational reading, again, very good, is learning and memorizing the data. You can informationally read the user manual for your microwave, and you can informationally read the Bible that sits in front of me. And we can sometimes come to the text and we can ask questions of it.

Cam: 28:21

And we can say things like, Well, I just want to know, I just want to learn the deeper meaning of the text. I want to learn the deeper meaning of the Bible. And it's been my experience that when people say, and this is my criticism of cultural understand or the cultural way we've learned to read the Bible, is that when people come and say, Well, I just want to learn the deeper meaning of the Bible, what they usually mean is they want to know the historical background information. They want to know what the Greek word actually means. They want to know the cultural values of the area or the geography of the city that it was in.

Cam: 29:05

They want not the deeper meaning, they want the deeper data. The details, the history, the information, the cultural undercurrents, the hidden things. Listen, these are merely information about the text. They are, if you think of the Word of God as a house, they are the proverbial front porch. Are they important?

Cam: 29:34

Man, like I could be geeking out on some Bible history better than anyone. Okay? Love it. Love it. Like decades now into studying it.

Cam: 29:47

Absolutely love it. Very important, very helpful. So absolutely they're important, but are they truly the deep things? Is it truly the deep thing? See, I would propose that the deeper things of the Word of God are the things that form us into the image and likeness of Jesus.

Cam: 30:13

Not whether or not you know the Greek word for love. I think the deeper things are the things that call us out. I think the deeper things are the ways in which the Word of God slices through the facades that we show everyone else in our life. The deeper things are the things that the word of God does when it pierces down into the very depth of our soul and exposes us for the sin that is entrenched there. And listen, I love you.

Cam: 30:54

I do. But we tend to avoid the deeper things. We tend to avoid the deeper things, the formational things, because they're almost always the painful things. They're almost always the things we feel shame over or guilt over. They're almost always the things that we wish we hadn't done or wish we had done differently.

Cam: 31:21

The formational things, the deep things, the ways in which the Word of God seeks to pierce through the hard facade that we show everyone else to get down to who we really are is almost always the most difficult part of reading the Word. See, when we approach the Word of God with a posture that says, No, no, no, no, no, I don't want this to master the deeper parts of me. I want to master it. I want to know it more. I don't want it to know me more.

Cam: 32:03

But if we allow ourselves to approach it and be like, All right, I don't want to try and master it, I want it to master me, then we we are submitting ourselves to a process that can be painful to our flesh, even though it does end up being freeing to our spirit. Look at the way that the writer of Hebrews describes the work of the Word of God in our lives when we submit to its mastery over us. He says this, Hebrews four, For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any double edged sword. It penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow. It judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.

Cam: 33:01

Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of Him to whom we must give account. Now the writer of Hebrews uses some very pointed language here. No pun intended, right? He talks a lot about a joint, right?

Cam: 33:28

It penetrates even to dividing joints and marrow. Joints, those things which unite other things. It's the kind of the bonding dynamic of our body, which holds the parts of different things in proper relationship. Talks about marrow, kind of what is at the heart and is at the center or the essence of something. What the writer of Hebrews is saying here is that the Word of God goes to the very center of what we are and who we are, and it cuts through to that which bonds us together as a person.

Cam: 34:11

And the writer of Hebrews goes on to say that it judges, the Word of God judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. This living, productive Word encounters us at the core of our being and discerns the deepest structures of our hearts. And that is scary. Probably in one of the most pointed things that the writer of Hebrews says, he's like, Everything? Think about this.

Cam: 34:51

And if this applied to your life before God, before the Word, how would it feel? Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of of him whom we must give account. Everything of your life uncovered, laid bare before the eyes of him whom we must give account. Writer of Hebrews says, This is what the word of God does. I know I just said the historical and cultural values of the text are not the deeper meaning, but I'm going to give you some historical and cultural values of the text here, okay?

Cam: 35:45

Because it provides some deeper meaning. The term laid bare here comes from two different contexts. It comes from gladiatorial combat, gladiators in an arena, and it comes from the sacrificial altar, the altar of sacrifice. In association with the altar, being laid bare describes the position of the sacrifice, like hold your breath for a second, with its head pulled back and its throat exposed for the sacrificial knife. In association with gladiatorial combat, being laid bare describes the position of the vanquished gladiator laid across the knee of the victor with the throat exposed for the death blow of the knife.

Cam: 36:45

The writer of Hebrews here is suggesting posture that as before the Word of God, a position of total, absolute, unconditional vulnerability before the Word of God. Throat laid bare. He goes on to say that this is the posture of our true self before that living, productive, penetrating Word of God. The false self will do everything in its power to avoid such vulnerability. Now, reasons like this are exactly why I say that formation, through the Word and through other ways, that formation must be an intentional process.

Cam: 37:48

Because we don't kind of like drift unintentionally into the willingness to be laid bare before the word of God. It is something that you must want. It is something that you must desire. It is something that you must believe by faith is for your greatest good. And truth be told, a good portion of us don't want to do that.

Cam: 38:22

How many of you can maybe resonate with this spirit? And I'm only saying it because this has, for a large portion of my life, this has been something that I, like my flesh tries to like bring up all the time. Is like this. The surest way to get me to not do something is to tell me I have to do it. Right?

Cam: 38:50

Like, I need you to do that. Well, I'm glad you told me because now I know exactly what I will not be doing. Right? And listen, myself included, kind of wears that or wore that by God's grace as a little bit of a badge of courage. Nobody tells me what to do.

Cam: 39:16

You tell me what to do, I'm going do the opposite just to spite you. This is the attitude and posture of the heart that the Word is trying to kill. This is exactly what the writer of Hebrews is saying. Are you willing to lay down the hardened posture of your heart that says, I will not be told what to do. I will learn this thing so I know it, but I'm not so sure that I'm going to let it form me and change me.

Cam: 39:55

See, coming to the Word of God requires that we come in a posture of humility. A posture of humility and repentance, actively walking away from our desire to master it and joyfully submitting to the process of its mastery over us. Now we have kind of like the My biblical critique of the informational reading of the text. But listen, I also want to hold up the tremendous value for our minds, our hearts, and our souls to learning the Word of God, to knowing it and understanding it, to believing it and obeying it. Okay?

Cam: 40:48

Listen, when we approach the Word of God in a posture of submission and humility, then the knowledge that we get by it is given redeemed value in our life. Listen, knowledge without surrender just puffs up. Knowledge with surrender is going to develop love that builds up. Okay? So when we can approach the Word of God in a posture of surrender and humility of it over our lives, then now what we learn about it can only serve as redeemed value in our life.

Cam: 41:33

There's kind of like this old phrase that a Bible that is falling apart usually belongs to what? Someone who isn't. Right? You see someone's Bible, it looks like it's falling apart. You probably belongs to someone whose life is not.

Cam: 41:53

Because the saturation of a life in the Word of God is power for our transformation. Knowledge is not everything, but it is a big thing. It is a big thing. And we see this even in the example of Jesus. Listen, there is spiritual power in the memorization of Scripture.

Cam: 42:23

This is not Sunday school type of stuff. Or it is Sunday school type of stuff, but listen, we need to dispense with like the pride that says, Well, I don't need Sunday school type of stuff. I need the deeper meaning of the text. No, you need to just learn and obey the words you do know. And listen, even Jesus clearly memorized the scripture.

Cam: 42:51

It was very clear that He was not like There was no confusion in Him. Matthew chapter four, the temptation of Jesus, we see in verse four, in verse seven, and in verse 10, the enemy, the devil came to Him, tempting Him three consecutive times. And three consecutive times what did Jesus say? Hey, get away from me. I don't like you.

Cam: 43:14

You're mean. I don't like what you're saying. Or know, la la la la la. Mm-mm, no. Now what Jesus do in a moment of trial, of temptation, of possible falling in sin?

Cam: 43:32

Three words. It is written. And then flowed out of him the Word of God. It was clear that Jesus had filled up his soul with the very words of God. See, It is Written roots the power for transformation, not in human will or intellect, but in the eternal truth of God's Word.

Cam: 44:01

The Psalmist knew this as well. Read all over the Psalms. One of my favorite verses, Psalm 100 nineteen:nine-eleven. How can a young man keep his way pure? By living according to your word.

Cam: 44:16

I seek you with all of my heart. Do not let me stray from your commands. Then he says this, I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. The Psalmist was storing up the Word of God in his heart so that it became the reflex of his life. Not that it became like the last resort, like, Oh, I got to go figure out what But like he put in the work so that it became a reflex rather than a last resort.

Cam: 45:05

So I told you we took a trip to North Carolina last week or the week before, whenever it was. We need to go back. But on the way home, we drove and on the way home, my wife and I, like I was kind of getting a little tired of my playlist. Like searching on Apple Music, what am going listen to? We were both tired.

Cam: 45:27

Kind of like, I don't know. And so I'm like, Ah, you know what? I found this playlist on Apple Music, Top 100 hits from the '90s. The best era of music. Okay?

Cam: 45:44

The best era. This is the era that I kind of like grew up in. I was like nineteen ninety, I was eight years old. Right? So it's kind of like encapsulated my high school years, you know, the '90s to 2000.

Cam: 45:57

And I was like, I don't know, maybe there'll be some familiar music in there or now. It might get some good old bangers going on, like volume up, windows down type of thing. I was like, some of that music came on and listen, I had not heard it since high school. But let me tell you, I knew every word to every verse and every harmony and key key change. Why?

Cam: 46:26

Because I had spent a generation filling my heart with it. Seriously. I had spent a good decade getting that stuff in my heart. So you know what? When it came back on, I haven't listened to that music in twenty five years.

Cam: 46:43

But it was fresh to my soul in that moment. I know way too much gangster rap from the '90s. I do. I'm gonna tell you right now. Just telling you.

Cam: 47:03

But listen, this is the truth of getting the Word of God into your heart, hiding it in your heart, so that in a moment where the proverbial radio of life comes on, I don't even got to think about it. It is a reflex. It just comes flowing out of me. In moments of trouble, in moments of temptation, trial, pain, rejoicing, celebrating, whatever it is, what do you want to come up from you like the reflex of your heart? So here's where we get into some practice.

Cam: 47:37

This is a practice that I have been trying to do more of in order to memorize God's word. I have this little note card thing, spiral bound notebook, right? And every time I am reading my Bible in a day and I come across a scripture that I'm like really speaks to me, like just gets written there. It just gets written. Some are short, some are long.

Cam: 47:59

Right? Like some are yellow, some are purple, whatever. You know, like, it doesn't matter. Right? And trying to get into the practice of instead of scrolling my phone at a moment where I have five minutes, Ten minutes.

Cam: 48:16

Instead of falling asleep to it or waking up to it or whatever the case may be. Right? Like, how can I how can I hide more of the word of God in my heart? How can I get it into my heart more? We use these to study verbs in Spanish class, but what about the Word of God getting into our heart?

Cam: 48:31

We have these reading guides for you. They're in the foyer. There's some on the back shelf. There's like a three month read through the New Testament guide. Yes, a three month New Testament reading plan, a one year read through the Bible plan, can check them off.

Cam: 48:58

Incredible way to get the Word into your heart. But listen, I want to talk This is my last point for today. All right? And we're going to talk more about this at the end of this series when we talk about obedience. But I want you to hear that.

Cam: 49:15

I want to come back to this. Listen, the transforming power of God's Word is not in the raw knowledge of it, but in the faithful obedience to it. You got to hear this. God does not promise to bless your knowledge of the Word. God does not say that love for me equals knowledge of my word.

Cam: 49:52

Those who love me, one John says what? Will obey his commands. Obedience is the measure of the transforming power of God's word in our lives, not knowledge. Faithful obedience. Most of us, listen, me, this is me.

Cam: 50:14

Overeducated, under obedient. Way more education than I have obedience. Education, great. Obedience, better. Does listen, it does not matter if you can recite Matthew six fourteen and fifteen, but you won't forgive those who've hurt you.

Cam: 50:42

It does not matter if you've memorized two Corinthians nine:six-seven if you clench what you have in a spirit of scarcity rather than kingdom oriented generosity. It does not matter if you have memorized all of one Corinthians 13, if all that you are growing in is a record of the wrongs that people have done to you and how you are envious of another person's life. Like the submissive spirit that allows the Word of God to cut down into us, obedience to God's Word is what produces the transformation that we are pursuing. This is where formation and transformation happens. When humble and submissive posture meets hungry and obedient knowledge.

Cam: 51:41

This is where it happens. Humble and submissive posture slams into hungry and obedient knowledge. That's where transformation happens. The intersection of the two. Finally, Jesus says at the end of the sermon on the mount, which is the greatest block of teaching, His longest sermon, He says this as kind of like a conclusion to wrap up everything that He just taught on.

Cam: 52:19

In Matthew seven twenty four-twenty six, He says, Therefore, anyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice, AKA obeys them, is like a wise man who builds his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, yet it did not fall because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice just gets the knowledge, never obeys it, is like a foolish man who builds his house on the sand. Well, that's it. The rest of the verses, the rain comes down, the winds blow and beat against that house, and what happens?

Cam: 53:21

It falls with a great crash is what Jesus says. I'm not sure where I'll place you. I'm going to put these on the floor back next to the offering bucket right there in the center of the aisle. Please take just one for yourself. Your kids, there should be enough for everyone in the building to have one, your kids included.

Cam: 53:47

Just make sure they're not like smuggling them out of here like five at a time. Got 300 of them, should be enough for us all today. Wanted you to take these with you because, know, like Silly Putty is fun because you can just like form it into any shape. And since we're talking about being formed in this series, personally wanted something where I'm sitting at my desk reading my Bible, or I'm driving, right, and what needs something to do with my hands besides steering. Yeah.

Cam: 54:30

It's it's to just imagine being formed in the hands of God. One of my favorite things to do with Silly Putty, I'm not joking, one of my favorite things is I like to put it in like the palm of my hand, and I like to squeeze it as hard as I can. Squeeze it really hard. Put some pressure on it. Like just try to really even squeeze it out of the joints of my fingers.

Cam: 55:02

And then to open it up, I'm a child, right? To open it up and look at it and I get to see my fingerprints. And I just like got to believe that this is a lot of the ways in which God forms us. Right? Puts us in the palm of his hand, gives us a pretty significant squeeze.

Cam: 55:28

And then when we open it up, what we look like is well, we look like his fingerprints. He's got his fingerprints all over us. This is my prayer for us. So as you're grabbing your silly putty this week, maybe you want to pray this prayer. We can pray this prayer together.

Cam: 55:49

I hope that I have it up there. Heavenly Father, take a picture of it if you need to. Heavenly Father, I want to be more like Jesus. I want to live like Him, love like Him and serve like Him. Like clay in the hands of the potter, I submit myself to your forming hands.

Cam: 56:15

Make me more like him. This is our prayer. Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, thank you, Lord Jesus. Come and be with us Holy Spirit through your word.

Cam: 56:32

Form us into the people who live like Jesus, love like Jesus and serve like Jesus. We entrust ourselves to your forming hands, Lord, knowing that even in the squeezing, your fingerprints are revealed in our lives. In Jesus' name, amen. From Psalm one nineteen twenty eight through 32. My soul is weary with sorrow.

Cam: 57:05

Strengthen me according to your word. Keep me from deceitful ways. Be gracious to me through your law. For I have chosen the way of truth. I have set my heart on your laws.

Cam: 57:21

I hold fast to your statutes, oh lord. Do not let me be put to shame. I run-in the path of your commands. For you have set my heart free. Conduit, you are loved.

Cam: 57:39

Be blessed, and we will see you next week.