We Become Like the Videos We Behold
Chapters
0:01:26 Become What You Behold
4:27 Stop Watching the World
8:45 The Timing of Christ's Return
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:04.000 | We become like what we watch.
00:00:08.000 | The objects of our attention shape our becoming.
00:00:14.000 | Our potential as creatures is realized by what we behold.
00:00:19.000 | We are moldable creatures of clay,
00:00:23.000 | conforming to whatever attracts our gaze most.
00:00:28.000 | What we behold shapes us for better or for worse.
00:00:32.000 | And obviously this is a profound reality that carries with it massive implications
00:00:36.000 | for our media diets in the digital age, as we'll hear today from Pastor John,
00:00:40.000 | preaching long before the digital age.
00:00:44.000 | In this clip, over 30 years old, Pastor John is applying
00:00:48.000 | the glorious text of 2 Corinthians 3, verse 18,
00:00:52.000 | to our media diets. Here's Pastor John to explain.
00:00:56.000 | And then finally, my fourth suggestion,
00:01:00.000 | and probably it's the most needful to hear
00:01:05.000 | and the most practically applicable for change right now in your life,
00:01:10.000 | perhaps, is
00:01:14.000 | focus your attention on the glory of God.
00:01:19.000 | Focus your attention on the glory of God,
00:01:23.000 | and there's a reason for this.
00:01:26.000 | You become what you behold.
00:01:30.000 | Now that's not just a nifty little saying.
00:01:35.000 | That's a straight out biblical paraphrase
00:01:39.000 | of 2 Corinthians 3, verse 18.
00:01:43.000 | I'll read it to you. 2 Corinthians 3, verse 18 says,
00:01:47.000 | "And we all with unveiled face,
00:01:51.000 | beholding the glory of the Lord,
00:01:55.000 | are being changed."
00:01:59.000 | Just stop right there. How do you get changed?
00:02:03.000 | Behold the glory of God.
00:02:06.000 | If you behold the glory of God and hold it in fixed view,
00:02:10.000 | you will become like that.
00:02:14.000 | In your mind, you will think the way God thinks,
00:02:18.000 | see the way God sees, feel the way God feels,
00:02:22.000 | assess the way God assesses. You will be repelled by the things that repel God
00:02:27.000 | when you behold the glory of the Lord.
00:02:31.000 | Let me finish reading.
00:02:34.000 | "We all with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into His likeness
00:02:38.000 | from one degree of glory to another." I just love that phrase.
00:02:42.000 | It's so hope-giving because I know I've got such a long way to go.
00:02:45.000 | One degree of glory to another. It's progressive.
00:02:49.000 | The holiness that comes by beholding the glory of God does not happen instantaneously.
00:02:54.000 | From one degree of glory to the next, we move toward the image of Christ.
00:03:01.000 | But the point I want to make here is,
00:03:04.000 | it happens by beholding Him.
00:03:08.000 | If you've got your Bibles open to that text, you might want to just look across the page
00:03:12.000 | or somewhere a chapter later. 2 Corinthians 4.16.
00:03:16.000 | Listen to this awesome statement of the man, the old man.
00:03:20.000 | Paul's getting old here. He's got arthritis maybe, and his back aches,
00:03:24.000 | and his eyes are not so good anymore, and his hearing's not so good,
00:03:27.000 | and he can't walk as far, and he says, "So we do not lose heart,
00:03:31.000 | though our outer nature is wasting away,
00:03:37.000 | our inner nature is being renewed." It's the same word from Romans 12.2.
00:03:43.000 | "It's being renewed every day." Now how? How, Paul?
00:03:47.000 | How do you as an old man get new every day?
00:03:50.000 | The answer, "For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us
00:03:55.000 | an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison."
00:03:58.000 | Here's the reason. "Because we look not to the things that are seen,
00:04:05.000 | but to the things that are unseen.
00:04:08.000 | For the things that are seen are temporary,
00:04:12.000 | but the things that are unseen are eternal."
00:04:16.000 | Now, here's the key to being new, brothers and sisters.
00:04:19.000 | You want to be new in your mind as a young person,
00:04:22.000 | in your whole being and spirit as an old person? You want to be new?
00:04:27.000 | Stop watching the world, which very practically comes down to television.
00:04:39.000 | Stop watching the world!
00:04:43.000 | Why would we want to be entertained by the unbelieving so much?
00:04:49.000 | Why are we so hooked on the video and on the television and on the movies and on the radio?
00:04:57.000 | World, tell me, show me, feed me, shape me, make me!
00:05:03.000 | That's what we're doing. Oh no, not really.
00:05:06.000 | I'm not the least affected when I watch.
00:05:09.000 | You become what you behold.
00:05:13.000 | And I just ask you to compare in your life
00:05:17.000 | the degree to which you behold the Lord Jesus and the glory of our God
00:05:23.000 | compared to the degree to which you behold the world.
00:05:28.000 | How do they compare?
00:05:30.000 | Might there not be some insight here as to why we live in weakness and failure in the temptations of our lives?
00:05:37.000 | Why we don't have the effect in the world that we would like to have?
00:05:42.000 | Why our relationships can't be fixed?
00:05:46.000 | Is there perhaps some correlation between the fact that we focus so much on the world,
00:05:53.000 | we live in the world, we ooze world, we watch world, we read world?
00:06:01.000 | How many of us read books that have spiritual wisdom?
00:06:06.000 | Look at television that has spiritual wisdom.
00:06:08.000 | Look at movies that have spiritual wisdom.
00:06:11.000 | Read the Bible with its spiritual wisdom.
00:06:13.000 | How much time do we devote to this biblical principle that is unassailable?
00:06:19.000 | You become what you behold.
00:06:25.000 | I urge you to check out your lifestyle.
00:06:27.000 | Do you want to become holy?
00:06:31.000 | Do you want to become new so that you see like Jesus,
00:06:35.000 | think like Jesus, feel like Jesus,
00:06:38.000 | love like Jesus, care like Jesus,
00:06:41.000 | judge like Jesus?
00:06:44.000 | If you do, there is an agenda.
00:06:48.000 | Watch Jesus a lot.
00:06:52.000 | Father, I just beg for the miracle of transformation in our lives.
00:06:58.000 | Would you come right now and just convict us and give us some choices about how we spend your Lord's Day afternoon and evening?
00:07:07.000 | Are we really going to go home?
00:07:10.000 | Are we going to spend more time tonight asking the world without any God in it to entertain us?
00:07:24.000 | Then we will reap what we sow.
00:07:27.000 | And I just pray, Father, that that not be so.
00:07:34.000 | In Jesus' name I ask it.
00:07:36.000 | Amen.
00:07:37.000 | Watch Jesus a lot.
00:07:40.000 | That is not complex, but profound.
00:07:42.000 | A spiritual battle we must fight out of a firm conviction that we are becoming like what we behold.
00:07:50.000 | Prophetic word for our media diets in the digital age.
00:07:53.000 | Thank you to Ryan, a pastor in Mississippi, who sent this to us.
00:07:57.000 | The clip was given to him from someone in his church.
00:07:59.000 | So thank you for passing it along to us, Ryan.
00:08:02.000 | It comes from a 1990 sermon on prophecy of all places, titled "Why the Gift of Prophecy is Not the Usual Way of Knowing God's Will."
00:08:11.000 | Preached on April 1st, 1990.
00:08:15.000 | Thanks for listening to today's sermon clip.
00:08:17.000 | Our clips are now crowdsourced.
00:08:18.000 | You tell us what bits of Piper's sermons changed your life.
00:08:21.000 | And we share that clip with the APJ audience.
00:08:23.000 | If you got one, email me.
00:08:24.000 | Send me your name, hometown, the sermon title, and time stamp of where the clip happens in the audio.
00:08:29.000 | Tell me how it impacted you.
00:08:30.000 | Put the word "clip" in the subject line of an email and send it to me at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.
00:08:36.000 | That's our email address, askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.
00:08:40.000 | We have eschatology questions coming up on Friday and on Monday.
00:08:45.000 | First up, a question about the timing of Christ's return and some debates in church history over that timing.
00:08:51.000 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:08:52.000 | We are rejoined in studio with Pastor John when we return on Friday to talk eschatology.
00:08:58.000 | We'll see you then.
00:09:00.000 | [END]
00:09:02.000 | [END]
00:09:04.000 | [END]
00:09:06.000 | [BLANK_AUDIO]