The Bible, The Brain, Becoming Like Jesus | Pastor Jake Sweetman

Why do our first reactions so often look nothing like Jesus, even though we love Him and know His Word? In this sermon, we explore how Scripture and brain science together reveal God’s strategy for true transformation—from the inside out.

Drawing from passages like Psalm 27:8, Ezekiel 36:27, Leviticus 20:7–8, and 2 Corinthians 4:6, we see that Christlike character is not primarily built by sheer willpower or more information, but through God’s joyful, relational presence—His “face” turned toward us (Num. 6:24–26; Ps. 16:11).

Key themes covered in this message:

• Why your “automatic” reactions reveal your real character (Luke 6:43–45; Matt. 12:34)
• How the Bible describes transformation as God’s presence sanctifying His people (Lev. 20:7–8; Ezek. 36:26–27; Phil. 2:12–13)
• The biblical idea of God’s face as the source of joy and change (Gen. 4:16; Ex. 33:14; Ps. 16:11; Ps. 27:8; Num. 6:24–26)
• Why we will finally be like Jesus when we see Him “as He is” (1 John 3:2; 1 Cor. 13:12)
• How the Spirit reveals “the light of the knowledge of God’s glory in the face of Christ” (2 Cor. 3:18; 2 Cor. 4:6)
• The role of the church as Christ’s body in shaping our identity (Eph. 4:11–16; Rom. 12:4–5; John 13:34–35)
• Joy as relational “happy-to-be-with-you-ness,” not mere emotion (Phil. 4:4; John 15:9–11; Neh. 8:10)
• How isolation stunts growth and why suffering-with-others can form Christlike character (Heb. 10:24–25; Rom. 5:3–5; James 1:2–4; Gal. 6:2)
• Why identity is received in community, not self-constructed (2 Cor. 5:17; Gal. 2:20; 1 Pet. 2:9–10)
• The covenant love (ḥesed) of God as the model for our relationships (Ex. 34:6–7; Ps. 136; Mic. 6:8; John 15:12–13)

This message calls us to move beyond a “half-brained” Christianity that focuses only on knowledge (1 Cor. 8:1–3) and into a whole-life discipleship shaped by joyful, covenant relationships—with God and with His people.

If you’re tired of reacting in ways you regret and long to truly become more like Jesus (Rom. 8:29; Col. 3:9–10), this sermon invites you to seek His face, step into Christ-centered community, and let God’s presence reform who you are, not just what you do.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:31

I'm pausing our series, going through the book of Revelation for the month of April. We will jump back in May to the wonderful world of the apocalypse. Very much looking forward to that because we are officially stepping into the back half of the book. And now we have to talk about the mark of the beast and all that stuff, which is gonna be awesome. So um in your Bible reading time, just spend some time, you know, starting at Revelation 13 and then going from there. A lot of fun stuff for us to cover. It's gonna be great. Uh, but I felt led by the Lord to take a few weeks and speak into the subject. Sounds a bit blasé, a bit commonplace, but I promise you, so, so vital for our hearts uh to grasp. Speak into the subject of community and what that means for us here at Cathedral, because as we grow larger, we need to make sure that we're doing um well, we're approaching this subject with a great deal of intentionality in terms of uh our own growth into Christ-likeness. I have a bit of a unique approach to take with you today. I'm getting some buzzing. If we can take care of that, that would be awesome. Thank you guys so much. Come with me to Psalm 27 and verse 8. Psalm 27, verse 8. Just one verse to get us going. Really excited about the content that we're going to cover today. It says this, my heart, this is King David speaking right here. My heart says of you, seek his face. Your face, Lord, I will seek. The title of the sermon today is The Bible, The Brain and Becoming Like Jesus. The Bible, the Brain, and Becoming Like Jesus. There's a couple of books that were uh really formative for the stuff that I want to share with you today. Uh, one is a book called Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord by a brilliant scholar named Michael Morales. A little bit technical, but I believe that any one of us could make our way through that. Uh really is a tremendous book, and uh encourage you to grab a hold of that. And also a book called The Other Half of Church by Jim Wilder and Michael Hendricks. Absolutely outstanding book. Both of those books have been formative for the sermon that I'm going to share with you today. Always good to cite your sources and maybe you want to dig into this stuff a little bit further. If you're anything like me, uh then you feel like you're doing fairly okay in the process of becoming like Jesus until something in life happens that you do not plan for. Something that you do not expect. And that unexpected occurrence could be something small, like somebody cuts you off in traffic on the freeway, or maybe your spouse says something to you that kind of rubs you the wrong way, or maybe it's something larger, like you get an unexpected bill in the mail. I saw a couple spouses just smiling at each other right then. That's great. Maybe you get a bill in the mail that's unexpected, or maybe you get laid off from your job, or maybe somebody in your life just decides that they're gonna be your enemy and they go on the offensive against you for whatever reason. And when those unexpected things happen, before you even realize what you're doing, you respond in a way that is so little like Christ. Maybe you curse under your breath at the other driver on the freeway. No, you would never do that. Maybe you clap back at your spouse and you say something that you regret, or you get consumed by fear because of the unexpected financial burden. Maybe you instinctively go on the offensive against the person who has decided to attack you. And after that moment happens, you think to yourself, what in the heck was that? I thought I was becoming more like Jesus, and here I'm not even capable of loving the people that I claim to love the most, let alone my enemies. And we ask ourselves, what is the problem with me? What does it take to really become more like Christ? That's our central question today, which of course is the entire point of Christianity, is for you and I to become like Jesus. Now, of course, we know that the character of Jesus will not be fully, perfectly formed in us until the age that is to come. We will not be sinless on this side of eternity. But we still ought to be on the journey of learning to sin less. There should be progress in your journey with Jesus. And if there's not, then maybe you need to look in the mirror because something is probably wrong. Why does it often feel like we hit very prolonged plateaus in that process? I would ask the question this way: why am I so often unimpressed with my reactionary self? Or maybe to ask it in a little bit of a more confronting way, why is my character still so far from the character of Christ? After all, we aren't the only ones that life happens to. Life happened to Jesus all of the time. And him taking on human flesh meant that he wasn't afforded pre-existing knowledge of all of that stuff all of the time. Sometimes life took Jesus by surprise. And yet his response to life was always full of love. Like even when Jesus got angry, he never regretted any one of his reactions because his reactions to life were always a reflection of the Father in heaven. And of course, in our journey of becoming like him, none of us are as far along as we could be. Our character needs further formation. Our reactive self, our responsive self needs to be further sanctified. And so in their book, The Other Half of Church, Wilder and Hendrix, they define character like this. This is really convicting. Character is our embedded, say this next word with me, automatic. Say that word when you say automatic. Are you guys awake today? Yeah, okay. Character is our embedded automatic responses to our relational environment, our instantaneous behavior that flows naturally from the heart. Like if you were to take like automatic and instantaneous out of that definition, we'd all be doing pretty good, right? Because like we screw up the first time, but then we like gather our thoughts and we go back to the moment and we do better the second time. But what we're really looking at is how you immediately rack react to the things that are happening to you in life. When life presents to you an opportunity to love or to serve or to give or to not Christ-like character is to do the former, not the latter. And if you really pay attention to your instinctual responses to life's invitations, expected or unexpected, you will realize how long of a way you have to go in becoming like Jesus. And so for this reason, Dallas Willard, I'm not sure if you've read any of his stuff, it's brilliant. He defined the apex of Christ-likeness as reaching the place where we experience spontaneous love even for our enemies. And if that's your character, like if you just spontaneously love the people who are opposed to you, you're doing awesome. And of course, everything downstream from there is just kind of gonna sort itself out. Now, one helpful thing for understanding how our reactive self, our character, actually grows to become Christ-like, is to know that your character is embedded in the right side of your brain. We're gonna get a little neurological here this morning. I hope that's okay. Your character is embedded in the right side of your brain, or what we would often just call our hearts. The right side of your brain is where your relational connections, your character, your identity all live. The left side of your brain, what we often just refer to or think of as our brain in our post-Enlightenment age, this is where conscious thought and language and problem solving take place. And your brain processes life from right to left. So before your left brain even has time to think, your right brain has already reacted on the basis of who you are, identity, and what your community has taught you to value. So the person that life has formed you into, your family of origin, the values that you've absorbed, that's what first meets every single moment that life throws at you. And that part of you often doesn't do yourself any favors. Because your identity has been bent out of shape by sinful patterns and by worldly values. And so becoming like Jesus is fundamentally about the reformation of your identity. You do not win in life with your willpower alone. You win with who you are. So Dallas Willard would say something like the point of your willpower, the point of your conscious choice is to consciously choose to put yourself in context where your identity can be reformed. Because when your identity is formed into the image of Jesus, you start to spontaneously respond to life the way Jesus would. You act like Jesus before you even have time to think WWJD. Like by the time you look at the bracelet, it's like you've already reacted. And so how do we get there? How do we leave behind our plateaus and we put ourselves in the context that is going to form Christ-like identity and character? Let's look at what the Bible has to say first. Ezekiel chapter 36 and verse 27. This is a verse that many of you would be familiar with already. We've read it many times here at Cathedral. This is God speaking. He says, And I will put my spirit, that is the Holy Spirit, in you. And here's going to be the result of you receiving the Spirit. I'm going to move you to follow my decrees and to be careful to keep my commands. And so we don't often think about this, but the result of the Spirit is not like tinglies on our skin. The result of the Spirit is obedience to the Father. That's what the Spirit works in us is obedience to God's decrees and commands. We obey God, we behave in the way He's instructed us, or maybe we'd say it like this His presence changes us. Okay, let's look earlier in Israel's history and we see where this idea has its roots. Go to your favorite book of the Bible, Leviticus chapter 20. Leviticus 20, verses 7 and 8. God says this: consecrate yourselves and be holy, because I am the Lord your God. Keep my statutes and do them. Why? I am the Lord who sanctifies you. So the idea behind what God is saying here is that Israel was to keep the Levitical laws, the sacrificial system and the holiness code. Why? So that God's presence could remain in their midst. And the result of God's presence being in the midst of Israel is that he would sanctify them, meaning that in that relational context, God would transform Israel's identity from a sinful people into a royal priesthood, from a self-absorbed people into a people who are concerned with being a light to the nation. And so in his book, Morales talks about who shall who shall ascend the mountain of the Lord. He says, just as basking in the sun's light brings color warmth and health to the body, so basking in God's presence brings holiness, that is gradual sanctification. You start to become more like the God you hang out with. So here's the idea. Israel was supposed to use their will, their obedience, to keep God's Levitical laws so that his presence would be maintained in the tabernacle. And in so doing, the promise was that they would experience the steady transformation of who they are. That's the big idea of Leviticus. Now notice the interplay here in modern terms between left brain and right brain, between willpower, placing yourself where your identity can be reformed. And of course, that promise is ultimately fulfilled in Jesus, who obeyed where we could not, and has brought us near to God's presence through the gift of the Spirit. And so the point that we're starting to see here is that God's strategy for transforming our character is His presence. That's good news for us charismatics. Hey, we got something right. We need ongoing time in the presence of God if we are to have any hope of growing in Christ-likeness. Now, many of us hear that, and without realizing it, we construe of the presence of God as like an impersonal force or like an atmosphere that we enter into rather than a personal God whom with we relate. And so sometimes you'll hear people say things like, Oh, we want to soak in God's presence. And I know what we mean, it's a metaphorical language, but the way that God Himself describes his presence is by talking about his face in relation to us. So he'll use the language of his face or his countenance shining upon his people. In fact, frequently when we read the word presence in our English Bibles, in Hebrew, it actually is literally the word face. So when Genesis 4.16 says that Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, it literally meant that he went out from before God's face. It's a relational rupture. When God says to X to Israel in Exodus 33, My presence will go with you into the promised land, it literally means my face will go with you. It's relational presence in spite of their failure with the golden calf incident. When David says in Psalm 16, 11, In your presence is the fullness of joy, it literally means that the fullness of joy comes from being before God's face. That's quite a different effect, isn't it? The joy isn't the result of an impersonal presence, it's the result of God's face being turned towards you in loving delight. And so coming back to the notion that it is God's presence that transforms us, we must understand that it is not an impersonal presence that like seeps into us and then somehow changes our character. No, it's a face-to-face relationship that changes us. This is even symbolized in the way that the furniture in the tabernacle was set up when God instructed Moses to set up the lampstand, the menorah, inside the sanctuary, the holy place. Um, he said, make sure that the lampstand, the light of the candles, which represented the light of God's presence, make sure that that light is being cast upon the twelve loaves of bread that are set up on the table across the room. And of course, those twelve loaves of bread are representative of the twelve tribes of Israel. So even in the furniture, God says, Make sure that the light of the candles is shining upon this bread. Now, in your English Bible, that bread is called the bread of the presence. In Hebrew, you may have guessed it is called the bread of the face. Because it is meant to symbolize the light of God's face shining upon his people. This all really makes you appreciate the high priestly blessing that they were to regularly pronounce upon Israel. And number six, the Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his shine upon you, the Lord be gracious to you, the Lord turn his face towards you and give you peace. It's not just a good Carrie Job song. It's not just a nice passage to memorize. This is actually God's strategy to transform you and to make you more like Jesus. Being in a loving, joyful relationship with the God who is Christ-like is the key to making you more Christ-like, to helping you reach the place of regular and spontaneous desire to love, to serve, to give, to sacrifice, to behold his face. So no wonder the ultimate resolution to the final reformation of our character at the end of the age is described like this in 1 John 3:2. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known, but we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him. Why? Because we're going to see him as he is. His face shining upon us is the key to your ultimate transformation into Christ-likeness. And in the meantime, it's the same effect, it's the same process that's being outworked in the church. Paul says it like this in 2 Corinthians 4, 6, for God who said, Let light shine out of darkness, made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God's glory displayed in the face of Christ. Paul saw the glory of God in the face of Christ on the road to Damascus and was transformed by that encounter. And now he's teaching here in 2 Corinthians that because we have received the gift of the Spirit, the light of God's glory now shines outwardly through us, so that as we encounter one another, spirit-filled people, we are displaying the face of Christ to each other. And if we embody that, like really, really embody that can be absolutely transformative in our church. Not just in the sense that it teaches us how to behave better. No, no, no, this goes quite a bit deeper than that. This actually starts to deal with our identity. The face of God actually transforms your character. It's not just behavior modification. If you're focused solely on behavior modification, you'll always be out of step with what God wants to do in your life. Now just imagine a vision really quick. Imagine we say that we are a church for the glory of Christ, the beauty of the bride. Could there be anything more beautiful than a people who aren't just performing but who are actually changed? Imagine a vision of discipleship here in cathedral, just for a moment, where our character is really being reformed. Because that is transformation according to the Bible. The question is, does it actually work? Is that actually true? And that brings us to some really helpful insights about the brain. If character and identity are embedded in the right side of our brains, then the question we should ask is what are the ingredients that are needed for this part of who we are to grow in a positive direction? And so in the other half of church, they explore that exact question from a neurological standpoint. And they wanted to help you see how we've often reduced formation down to left brain stuff, like gaining more knowledge, like problem solving. Like how often, when you sit down with your neighborhood group leader or your pastor and you're bringing your issues to them, how often are you hoping that they will help solve your problem? Because we have reduced growth down to problem solving, down to conscious thought. And therefore we've ended up with a half-brained Christianity. And so we need to engage the right brain if we're going to have a holistic approach to transformation that deals with identity and not just conscious behavior. So, what does this part of our brains actually need in order to thrive? Well, we can't cover all of the answers, but I think what we do cover will make you realize the endless wisdom of God in just a moment. The first thing that our right brains need to thrive is joy. Everybody say joy. Isn't that so generous of God that of all the things he could have chosen for your brain to thrive, he chose joy? Like he wasn't like, I'm gonna make misery the thing that like just no, God chose joy. Our brains run on joy the way that cars run on gasoline. So in the same way that a car can have all of the right parts and all of the right components and be put together, but if it has an empty gas tank, that car's not gonna run. So also, Christians they can have all of the right knowledge, they can have all of the right disciplines, they can have all of the right practices, but if you are low on joy, you are not going to function properly. The way that God has designed your brain will not allow it. He designed your brain to run on joy. Now, if your brains run on joy and your brain processes life from right to left, from pre-conscious character and identity to conscious thought, then that means that without joy, your character cannot grow. You cannot be transformed into Christ likeness when you are low on joy. Joy is absolutely essential. And so we should ask the question okay, well, what is joy? It's kind of one of those squishy words that goes undefined. And Christians like to say that joy is not the same as happiness. But what do we mean by that? Like, what is joy exactly? Well, here's an amazing statement from a neuroscientist named Dr. Alan Shore. I don't believe he's a Christian, but after his lifetime of studying the brain, here's what he came down, uh came up with in terms of a definition for joy, neurologically speaking. Joy is what you experience when you can see in another person's and eyes that they are happy to be with you. Did you catch that? That joy is what you experience in your brain and in your body when you can see on somebody else's face that they are delighted to be in your presence. Michael Hendrix sums it up. He says, Joy is not happiness, joy is happy to be with you. And because your brains run on joy, that means that you are actually constantly scanning for faces that express exactly that sentiment. That they delight in you. In other words, you are constantly looking for loving relational connection with God and with others. I love the way that Dr. Kurt Thompson said it, who is a Christian. He said, From the moment you are born, you are looking for someone who is looking for you. That's how you and I were designed. So if I need joy to experience transformation, and joy comes from someone's face expressing delight in me, is it any wonder that God's strategy for our transformation comes from his face being turned towards us in love? Isn't it incredible that brain science has discovered what God revealed thousands of years ago in his word? That the experience of his face turned towards you in delight is actually what you need to be transformed. That I, the Lord, make my face shine upon you, and I, the Lord, sanctify you, those two things work hand in hand. The profound thing about this, this is really worth thinking about for just a moment, is that this really does mean that you can have joy no matter what else you may be feeling or experiencing. Because if joy is the sensation that somebody is happy to be with you, then you genuinely can have joy in sorrow. You can have joy in suffering, you can have joy in disappointment or frustration so long as you let others in. Definitionally, joy truly is not circumstantial, it is relational. It is the look of on somebody else's face, the look in their eyes that says to you, I know this hurts, but I'm happy to be with you in the hurt. That's joy. And because of that joy giving presence, your character now actually has the fuel that it needs to grow even in hard. And suffering. So it's no wonder, because of the relational strength of the church, that the New Testament authors authors spoke so confidently about believers' ability to grow in their character, even in the height of suffering. Because they understood that when we come together, the face of God shines through the presence of the Spirit in each of us to one another, and that that yields a joy that produces a strength that really is needed for us to grow even in hardship. The one circumstance that truly does inhibit your growth in Christ is isolation. And that circumstance is almost always self-induced. In fact, from the brain's perspective, trauma happens anytime you suffer alone. And so what could be an amazing opportunity for growth actually becomes an occasion for more damage. Whenever we withdraw from the very people whom God has ordained to produce healing and growth in our lives. No isolation means no one's face to shine on you. No face means no joy. No joy means no gas. No gas means no growth in your character, which means that you will go on depending upon the futile strategy of trying harder to be like Jesus on an empty gas tank instead of actually developing a more Christ-like character through the fuel of joyful, loving relationships. And so because of the way God designed your brain to work, that strategy is always going to leave you a day late and a dollar short. You will be constantly reacting to life out of a malformed identity, and you'll constantly be asking yourself, what was that? Oh gosh, that's that was dangerous. Relationship is the key. We are transformed by the face of God shining upon us. And so in light of this, um, I like this analogy. Jim Water talks about how you and I need to get good at giving God our face. So, like Gen Z, now's the time. You gotta crucify the Gen Z stair. It's gotta go. Some of you are giving it to me right now. In fact, some of you are doubling down on it. We ought to lend God our faith. Because I actually have the power through expressing my delight in you to sow joy into your life. There's actually nothing more powerful at helping you to stop thinking about yourself and being all insecure than to start being concerned with other people and how you're making them feel. And if you consider yourself a vessel of God, a servant of God, then to live your life in a way that says, God, you can have my face, you can use my eyes, you can use my smile, you can use this part of who I am to express your delight in other people in order that they would have the joy that they need to grow, then yes, God, wow, what a simple and powerful way to serve the Lord. Consider this as a parent. For those of you who are frustrated with the growth of your children, do you spend more time scowling at them, or do you spend a lot of time just delighting in your kids and letting them know through your smile? For for you leaders here in this room, you're frustrated with the people that you're leading at work, or maybe you're even frustrated with the people that you lead in church. Does your smile communicate to them how much God delights in them? There really is power in you and I allowing God access to our faces. And now consider how detrimental it is that we spend so much time like this. Faces down means low joy. Faces, countenance lifted up, shining upon one another, creates a high joy environment where you and I can all experience growth from the Holy Spirit. Which brings us back to the second thing that our brains need to thrive, and therefore for our character to grow. I've only got two points, don't worry, we're almost done. This whole idea of the biblical word hased. Why don't you say that word when you say hased? In the world of psychology and neuroscience, they talk about the importance of relational attachments in human relationships. Because our brains, they draw upon these attachments in order to grow our character and develop our identity. In fact, attachment is actually the strongest force in the brain. Your desire for relationship is the strongest thing going on in here. It's almost like you were created by a God who is Trinitarian love. It's crazy. It's like he designed you for love. And so Water and Hendricks, they say who we love shapes who we are. That's quite counter-cultural to our current world, if you really think about what that statement is saying, that your relationships play a massive role in the formation of your identity. You see, contrary to popular culture, identity is not determined from the inside out. Identity is determined from the outside in by your relationships. It is not actually something that is self-generated, it is something that is received. Your identity center is made up of what Wilder calls mirror neurons, which means they are much more reflective than they are self-determining. So you are becoming the person that other people teach you to be. And then you behave out of that identity that you've received. This is good news. Tim Keller talks about how the good news of the gospel is that so much of our popular culture's understanding of identity is that we have to achieve our identity. The truth, the biblical truth, the good news of the gospel is that your identity is actually a received thing. It's a gift that you get. And that is actually in alignment with how your brain was designed to function. And so it's no surprise that loving relationships with Jesus and his church are absolutely necessary to the formation of our identity, and out of that identity we respond to life. And those responses are basically the fruit of your right brain determining what do my kind of people do in response to this thing that's happening? And your right brain, by the way, asks that question six times a second. Who am I? And how do my kind of people respond to this? How do my kind of people respond to aggression? How do my kind of people respond to an opportunity to give? How do my kind of people respond to unexpected hardship? Do they retaliate? Do they close their fists? Do they begin to panic? You are always answering those questions on the basis of your identity that has been formed through your relational attachments, and you are answering that question twice as fast as the blink of an eye. Like before your left brain had time to decide what you should do, your right brain already determined how you felt about it. That's the importance of making sure that your character is well formed. And before you came to Christ, the way that you react to life is the result of your of how your prior community taught you, for better or for worse. But after you walk with Christ, your loving attachment with him and his people begins to reform your identity and therefore reform your responses and reactions to life. When you used to get aggressive, now you become a person of peace. When you used to run, now you become a person who commits. When you used to be stingy, now you're a generous person. When you used to lie in order to protect yourself, now you live in the lie and you trust God. Because the relationships that you're in are literally reforming you. It really is amazing. And so this is why, like this is why at Cathedral, we're not gonna shy away from talking about real life stuff in the context of relationship. Like in our endeavor to disciple you, we are gonna talk to you about awkward things. Because if we don't bring that stuff into the midst of our relationships and talk about how do God's people respond to sex, to money, to responsibility, to power, and so on, then we will never learn the way of Christ because none of us change on our own. Disappearing into the desert, into a monastic life isn't gonna change you. Learning morphology isn't gonna change your character. Becoming Catholic, brainbuster, isn't gonna change your character. Christian character is formed on the basis of loving, Christ-headed attachments that make up our people. And it's those relational attachments that ultimately change us. And so our priority has to be nurturing those relationships. This is what the Bible calls Hesed. And it's rooted in the character of God. God reveals himself as a God who Hasid to steadfast love in Exodus 34. In the context of Israel abandoning their covenant with the Lord and worshiping this golden calf, God reveals himself as a God who is compassionate and gracious, abounding in Hesed, in steadfast love. It's who God is. Essentially, it is God's covenantal love that commits himself to his people. And of course, this is seen most demonstrably at the cross. And as people who have received that love, we are now taught to practice that same self-giving sacrificial love. But what many Christians miss is they think that this love is merely an effort to try and be like Jesus on their own. And so they go around trying to be like to do sacrificial things. Trying to do loving things without ever actually embedding themselves in a community and building loving sacrificial relationships. Hear me so clearly. You can have your head down doing a bunch of love-looking stuff. But unless you actually build covenantal bonds with the people that you serve, you will not actually become more like Christ. You may choose to behave like him in fits and starts. But your character will remain malformed. This is why the Apostle Paul said to the Corinthian church, whose relationships were fracturing and splintering. This is why he said to them in 1 Corinthians 13, 3, if I give all that I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship, then I may boast, but I do not have love, I gain nothing. So you can do things that look loving but not actually be grounded in loving relationship. And therefore, not only is it not actually love, it's also not doing anything to you. It's not doing anything for you. You gain nothing. It's these loving relationships that hold the key to our transformed character. And so, one more definition our instantaneous reactions to life circumstances, some of which result in non-Christian behavior, right? Like we can all identify with that. They can be transformed by having a joyful Hesed community that has a well-developed, ooh, our culture hates this word, group identity. We cannot self-determine who we are, a group identity based in the character of Jesus. And this, of course, accords exactly with what Elijah so brilliantly taught out of Ephesians 4 last Sunday that we cannot grow up into Christ, who is the head as individuals. We can only grow up into Christ as the body made up of many parts coming together. So what should you do? You must use your will to put yourself in the context of the body, where the presence is, so that that presence can start to form your identity. The result is that your spontaneous responses to life, including to the person who cuts you off on the freeway, including to your enemies, will start to become more Christ-like. Because as your identity is transformed by the presence of a joyful, loving community, your behavior will be transformed as well. Um keys you guys can come. The essence of what we're talking about today is a whole-brained approach to transformation. And um we live in an atmosphere that is always having an effect on us. We swim in cultural waters that are always shaping us, whether we recognize it or not. And our culture today is downstream from the Enlightenment, which of course majored on things like rationality and logic and critical thought, things that are very important and things that are left-brained activities, which God designed. Those are a gift from the Lord. But because we've really centered on those things, so much of the Western church's understanding of discipleship is predominantly left-brained. We think growth equals a class. We think greater Christ-likeness means that we just need more knowledge. And those things are important, but we've limited it to that. And so for us in many contexts, we've limited our understanding of discipleship to rows, not circles. Like the only person's face that you can see right now is mine. And Charlie's, or sorry, Michael's, of course. But you need this for your identity to begin to be shaped and formed. Knowledge and critical thinking about what we believe are absolutely essential. God designed your brain to know truth. You have two hemispheres for a reason, so it's essential that we teach and know the truth. We will always do that. But it's just as essential to recognize that you cannot learn your way entirely into transformation. Content can't change your character. We should know that by now, right? Because we're drowning in content. You need joyful, loving relationships with God and with God's people. In Ephesians 4, uh, Paul says that part of the way we grow up into Christ is speaking the truth to one another in love. You guys know that that verse? And I think we often think about that, like the key there is Paul is saying, like, say truthful stuff, but just make sure you say it in a loving way. Like, that's like Paul's way of saying, like, it's not what you say, it's how you say it. I don't think that that's what Paul Paul is talking about. Because again, the context there in Ephesians 4 is relational unity within the church. I think what Paul is saying is that unless we have the soil of love, then we can say all the truth we want. It's not gonna have the soil that it needs to go down deep and put down roots and grow up and bear fruit. It's like we can say truthful things, but we gotta make sure that we're building a community of loving, joyful relationships here at cathedral, really intentionally, really counterculturally, so that the truth of the gospel has the soil that it needs to grow, and so uh we need to pursue that at all costs, and um, this will be harder for you and for me than taking another class because this is gonna grate against your flesh, it's gonna grate against your ideal of individualism, which you have inherited, whether you recognize it or not, from the cultures that you swim in. But this is what it means to be a Christian. It means to be connected to one another in relational love, and through that connection to understand that actually to sit down together and to break bread and share a meal and talk about the struggles and the issues that are going on in life, that's not a waste of time. It's not second best in your process of becoming like Jesus. It has it is actually essential. And so we need to make an effort here at Cathedral to both deepen that love and to broaden its availability. And so, my ultra call is very practical. They seem to be getting this way a bit more these days. I'm just trying to lead us towards like taking action, to use our willpower to make a choice that's gonna put us in a context where we're gonna grow. And so, what that would look like today would be for every single one of us who are not experiencing the kind of relationships that I just described in this church to go to the Connect Desk and to say, please give me information about neighborhood groups. Help me to get embedded into this community so that I can actually grow to become more like Jesus Christ. Others of you, um, I'll just say this plainly, we need more of those groups. Our church has outgrown our current capacity to be able to serve everybody well when it comes to providing this level of community. And so, those of you who've been a part of our church for a while, you need to take a step and say, you know what? I'm gonna open my life, my space, my time, my calendar, my home. And I'm gonna create a context for people to come and build those bonds with one another so that I can be a part of this church growing up into Christ-likeness as the body comes together. And so your step today is also to go to the Connect Desk and say, How do I learn to do that? What is required for me to step into that kind of leadership here at Cathedral? The third thing I'll say is that as we close, there are those of you who you need courage to enter into that kind of relationship. Because once upon a time you had it, but someone broke trust and hurt you, caused trauma, caused pain, caused issues. And now, like you're really resistant to this idea that you need relational community, even though it's what your brain hungers for. Or to say it like King David did at the start in Psalm 27 and verse 8, this is true of you. My heart says of you, seek his face. Like long before neuroscience figured out that your right brain hungers for loving, joyful relationship. King David, inspired by the Holy Spirit, wrote, The cry of my heart is to behold the face of God. And so you got to do the second part. Your face, Lord, I will see. And you can do that in your prayer closet, you can do that in your times of worship, you can do that as you study the scriptures, you can encounter anywhere the spirit meets you, you can encounter the face of God. One of those places, dare I say, the primary place the New Testament gives primacy to is in the community of believers. And some of you need prayer around that today. And so as we close the service, I'll have Pastor James do that in a moment. But if you need prayer for that or for anything else today, then our prayer team will be down here. We'd love to pray with you and to help you move forward through that pain. Now join together in community so that trauma can be transformed into healing and that you can be for others what somebody else is for you. Amen. God bless you.