We become like what we watch. The objects of our attention shape our becoming. Our potential as creatures is realized by what we behold. We are moldable creatures of clay, conforming to whatever attracts our gaze most. What we behold shapes us for better or for worse. And obviously this is a profound reality that carries with it massive implications for our media diets in the digital age, as we'll hear today from Pastor John, preaching long before the digital age.

In this clip, over 30 years old, Pastor John is applying the glorious text of 2 Corinthians 3, verse 18, to our media diets. Here's Pastor John to explain. And then finally, my fourth suggestion, and probably it's the most needful to hear and the most practically applicable for change right now in your life, perhaps, is focus your attention on the glory of God.

Focus your attention on the glory of God, and there's a reason for this. You become what you behold. Now that's not just a nifty little saying. That's a straight out biblical paraphrase of 2 Corinthians 3, verse 18. I'll read it to you. 2 Corinthians 3, verse 18 says, "And we all with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed." Just stop right there.

How do you get changed? Behold the glory of God. If you behold the glory of God and hold it in fixed view, you will become like that. In your mind, you will think the way God thinks, see the way God sees, feel the way God feels, assess the way God assesses.

You will be repelled by the things that repel God when you behold the glory of the Lord. Let me finish reading. "We all with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into His likeness from one degree of glory to another." I just love that phrase.

It's so hope-giving because I know I've got such a long way to go. One degree of glory to another. It's progressive. The holiness that comes by beholding the glory of God does not happen instantaneously. From one degree of glory to the next, we move toward the image of Christ.

But the point I want to make here is, it happens by beholding Him. If you've got your Bibles open to that text, you might want to just look across the page or somewhere a chapter later. 2 Corinthians 4.16. Listen to this awesome statement of the man, the old man.

Paul's getting old here. He's got arthritis maybe, and his back aches, and his eyes are not so good anymore, and his hearing's not so good, and he can't walk as far, and he says, "So we do not lose heart, though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed." It's the same word from Romans 12.2.

"It's being renewed every day." Now how? How, Paul? How do you as an old man get new every day? The answer, "For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison." Here's the reason. "Because we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen.

For the things that are seen are temporary, but the things that are unseen are eternal." Now, here's the key to being new, brothers and sisters. You want to be new in your mind as a young person, in your whole being and spirit as an old person? You want to be new?

Stop watching the world, which very practically comes down to television. Stop watching the world! Why would we want to be entertained by the unbelieving so much? Why are we so hooked on the video and on the television and on the movies and on the radio? World, tell me, show me, feed me, shape me, make me!

That's what we're doing. Oh no, not really. I'm not the least affected when I watch. You become what you behold. And I just ask you to compare in your life the degree to which you behold the Lord Jesus and the glory of our God compared to the degree to which you behold the world.

How do they compare? Might there not be some insight here as to why we live in weakness and failure in the temptations of our lives? Why we don't have the effect in the world that we would like to have? Why our relationships can't be fixed? Is there perhaps some correlation between the fact that we focus so much on the world, we live in the world, we ooze world, we watch world, we read world?

How many of us read books that have spiritual wisdom? Look at television that has spiritual wisdom. Look at movies that have spiritual wisdom. Read the Bible with its spiritual wisdom. How much time do we devote to this biblical principle that is unassailable? You become what you behold. I urge you to check out your lifestyle.

Do you want to become holy? Do you want to become new so that you see like Jesus, think like Jesus, feel like Jesus, love like Jesus, care like Jesus, judge like Jesus? If you do, there is an agenda. Watch Jesus a lot. Father, I just beg for the miracle of transformation in our lives.

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? Are we really going to go home? Are we going to spend more time tonight asking the world without any God in it to entertain us? Then we will reap what we sow.

And I just pray, Father, that that not be so. In Jesus' name I ask it. Amen. Watch Jesus a lot. That is not complex, but profound. A spiritual battle we must fight out of a firm conviction that we are becoming like what we behold. Prophetic word for our media diets in the digital age.

Thank you to Ryan, a pastor in Mississippi, who sent this to us. The clip was given to him from someone in his church. So thank you for passing it along to us, Ryan. 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." Preached on April 1st, 1990.

Thanks for listening to today's sermon clip. Our clips are now crowdsourced. You tell us what bits of Piper's sermons changed your life. And we share that clip with the APJ audience. If you got one, email me. Send me your name, hometown, the sermon title, and time stamp of where the clip happens in the audio.

Tell me how it impacted you. Put the word "clip" in the subject line of an email and send it to me at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org. That's our email address, askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org. We have eschatology questions coming up on Friday and on Monday. First up, a question about the timing of Christ's return and some debates in church history over that timing.

I'm your host, Tony Reinke. We are rejoined in studio with Pastor John when we return on Friday to talk eschatology. We'll see you then.