We spent twelve weeks looking at snapshots out of Jesus life under the series title “Becoming like Jesus.” I tell you what that 3 months did for me; it gave me a renewed sense of awe and wonder for this one who is the Savior of the world. I have had this deeper sense of worship that has kind of settled over me and has affected me throughout the week even during the hard times. When I have been doing my daily Bible

The truths in the Bible seems to jump out at me more than before.

How often this week have you found yourself completely absorbed by life. With all the pressures and the challenges of life constantly facing you; the demands of life for most of us last from the time we get out of bed until we fall into bed late at night One day runs into the next and that runs into the next and this whole thing of focusing on Jesus, while it is undoubtedly a nice thought, is seconded to everything else in our life just out of shear necessity.

Somewhere in the back of our minds we understand that this life is just preparation for eternity; that the things we will face this week are temporal and will not matter at this time next year; that only the things we do with eternal value has any lasting significance at all, yet when we wake up tomorrow and look at our long list of things to do; the temporal things push to the foreground and the eternal things often recede into the background of our lives.

When the Pastor spend twelve weeks talking about “Becoming like Jesus” we tend to think that if only I didn’t have two screaming kids pulling the scream out of me, and if my ex-wife wasn’t such a terror, and if that nagging temptation from the past didn’t keep popping up its ugly head, and if the people at work weren’t such jerks, and if I wasn’t giving 60 hours a week just to meet last months bills, and if I had life anywhere near as good as the person across the isle from me…..then I could probably become like Jesus….

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I didn’t preach all those messages picturing Jesus character and characteristics so that we could all stand back and say; “My wasn’t he a nice guy!” The whole theology of the New Testament in giving us such a clear picture of what Jesus was like was so that we would have a template to model our lives after….

Paul:

(Ephesians 5:1-2) Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. (NIV)

Somehow the way Jesus responded to life while he was on this earth is supposed to become the way we respond to life. If your reactions to life, people and events are different than Jesus; it logically follows that part of what this life is about for you is that those characteristics in you that are un-Christ-like will become more and more like Christ!

In case you think that this imitating God thing is for pastors and ladies over 65 read this promise…

This becoming like Christ isn’t just something you have to force yourself to do….

It’s something God has promised to do in you and through you…. If you will let him!!!!

Look… another promise for the willing:

I’m going to spend a few weeks showing us from the Bible how we can become like our Savior, Jesus Christ. I have to start today with the first and most important piece of advice… it’s the second point of the sermon:

I started this sermon talking about the benefits of focusing on our Savior for growth in our spiritual lives but there is a story line that God put through scripture that illustrates it like nothing else I’ve ever seen… I’ve used parts of this story in sermons in years past but it is essential that we look at it here today.

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God clearly understands our human tendency to imprison ourselves by focusing on the wrong things. He knows we will become consumed with the temporal and sometimes forget all about the eternal so God gives us dozen of illustrations in scripture that show us the spiritual power that is available to those who will take their focus by the knap of the neck and place it where it belongs.

The problem is not that we don’t stay focused… All of stay focused all of the time.

The issue is never am I focused; of course I’m focused….The issue is always what am I focused on!

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All of us will spend this whole week intently focused on something…

Let me tell you a Bible story:

We join the Israelite people in the wilderness… You remember they were slaves for 400 years in Egypt? God had miraculously delivered them by rolling back the Red Sea then rolling it back over the Egyptian army. ( stirring story.. unless you are Egyptian)

The Israelites are roaming around in the desert wilderness on the way to the promised land. Ever wonder why they didn’t just head up the coast to what is now Israel? Actually the part of the Egyptian army destroyed in the Red Sea was part of the National Guard, it wasn’t his whole army. There were several forts along the Mediterranean Sea and some of Egypt’s finest were manning those forts. Moses must have thought it too hard to sneak 3 million people on foot past a fort at night. In fact why didn’t they just trust God to deliver them from those soldiers just like he had the ones back at the Red Sea?

The Israelite people had an amazing ability to watch God do something awesome on their behalf; then turn around a few days later with complete unbelief and complain about the most trivial things in their lives. (Aren’t you glad we are not like that?) Because of their unbelief they spend 40 years wandering around in the sand.

They got Moses so worked up over their unbelief that he beat on a rock and got himself banned from the promised land. Finally, and in spite of themselves, God delivered the Canaanites into their hands…After that they start complaining again…

God said: that’s enough!!! You are completely out of focus!! You have all you attention on all the wrong things….Here, let me give you an object lesson that will help you to clear up your focus.

Now put yourself out their in the desert with them for a moment…You had been so bugged by the manna you were eating and your mouth was watering for a chicken ceasar salad over a Applebys. Now all of a sudden every time you try to sit down in the sand a deadly viper pops out and clamps onto you legs. How big an issue now is the whole manna thing in your mind? (Amazing isn’t it?? If you have a hangnail that’s just irritating you to no end and I walk up to you, take my size twelve and just grind it into your toe, the hangnail somehow no longer irritates you….at all.

It didn’t take they Israelites long to readjust their focus:

(Numbers 21:7) The people came to Moses and said, "We sinned when we spoke against the LORD and against you. (brilliant!) Pray that the LORD will take the snakes away from us." So Moses prayed for the people. (NIV)

If you were bitten, or you thought you might be bitten, or you though someone you loved might be bitten, your first priority, your all consuming passion would be to get within sight, stay within sight of that bronze serpent.

Talk about a focused group of people!!! For the next few weeks their was not one straying mind in the whole batch. They knew that their very lives depended on not losing focus, even for an instant. If they found themselves straying for even a moment, there was an overwhelming mental re-adjuster that would bring their minds right back to what really mattered in their lives.

If only, there was some way in the life of the believer to stay that focused on what really eternally matters….

1500 years passed…people continued to be self absorbed, Moses was now dead and gone but another voice is now crying out in the wilderness…This one is God in the flesh!

I think Jesus arranged the whole incident in the Old Testament, not only to get the undivided attention of the Israelites, but also so he could make a point for all the rest of mankind in the New Testament.

In Moses day a person had to become completely absorbed in the bronze symbol of God’s deliverance for his very existence.

Look and Live!!! the song says…. That’s probably not strong enough….

Now Jesus is calling for the exact same level of focus in the New Covenant.

It’s hard to correlate a man dragging himself through hundreds of feet of sand for one glimpse of a life saving symbol with a person accepting Christ and going on their merry way saying, Thanks for salvation…see you in Heaven!

It’s certainly true that a persons sins are forgiven simply by repenting, accepting Jesus free gift of salvation and accepting him into your life. I don’t want for a moment to diminish the importance of that for each person in this room. But…do you see the possibility of different levels of intensity in how one might approach Christ. I wonder, as I look across the room; at what level of intensity you have come to Christ?

Remember the Israelite who had been bitten by a snake? After he was healed by gazing on the bronze serpent, he then had the choice to get up and go home. At this point his mouth is watering for more of that delicious manna his wife cooks so he goes whistling off into the night….. What’s he going to find????? More snakes!!!

The point Jesus was trying to make was probably clearer to first century Jews than it is to us independent Americans today. Where was the safest, healthiest, place in the whole wilderness to be?????? Within sight of the symbol of healing!!!!!!

Jesus is trying to get us to see that he was and is that symbol of healing;

I want us all to see ourselves here… We would always be our sinful selves, We will always be locked in our sinfulness without the mediator….True???

If that is true what should be your position in respect to your mediator???

Let’s go one step further: