And we know that to them that love God all things work together for good, even to them that are called according to His purpose.
For whom He foreknew, He also foreordained to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren:
And whom He foreordained, them He also called: and whom He called, them He also justified: and whom He justified, them He also glorified.—Romans 8:28-30
Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God; and such we are. For this cause the world knoweth us not, because it knew Him not.
Beloved, now are we children of God, and it is not yet made manifest what we shall be. We know that, if He shall be manifested, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him even as He is.
—1 John 3:1-2
But whensoever a man shall turn to the Lord, the veil is taken away.
Now the Lord is the Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit.
—2 Corinthians 3:16-18
Beloved Lord, we are so thankful that we are found in Your presence. We simply want to acknowledge that apart from You we can do nothing.
We can, of course, preach. We can use many words. We can outline and prove. It can all be very biblical. But unless that anointing, grace, and power are upon the speaking, the translating, and the hearing, it will amount to nothing.
You have so dearly won for us that anointing through Your finished work. Now, Lord, we stand by faith in it. Let a double portion be upon the speaking, the translating, and our hearing.
We do not know how long we have, Lord, before the night comes when no man can work. Will You challenge us? Will You touch our hearts? Will You speak in such a way that we cannot remain the same?
We shall be careful to give You all the worship, thanksgiving, and praise of our hearts. We ask this in the name of our Messiah, the Lord Jesus. Amen.
I think all of you know—or every true child of God ought to know—that the purpose of God for us is to conform us to the image of His Son.
That is, every one of us should be changed into the likeness of the Lord Jesus. Let me make it even more plain: men and women should see the Lord Jesus in us. They should see His grace expressed in us, and they should be affected by His beauty.
It is nonsense to talk about salvation which leaves us unchanged. To be a child of God is to be conformed to the image of His Son.
But we have to be very honest. The stark reality is that, for most Christians, this is not true. We become religious. We get to know our Bible. We get to know Christian routine. We break bread, sing hymns, pray, study the Word of God, and even go into some form of evangelism at times. But we ourselves are not changed.
There is something horribly wrong when the Spirit of God is not changing those whom God saves. Then we become a graveyard: a whole number of monuments—so-and-so converted on such-and-such a date—but lifeless.
Our Christianity becomes an outward thing. We only have to see all the evidences of this: superficiality, shallowness, hypocrisy, racism, jealousy, unbridled ambition, and a thousand other things.
So what has to happen to change us? A spiritual revolution is needed.
There are only three things I really want to say this evening. Here is the first: the invincible and powerful purpose of God.
John says, “We know that, if He shall be manifested, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him even as He is.” This is the invincible purpose of God for every child of God.
It is more clearly put in the Roman letter:
For whom He foreknew, He also foreordained to be conformed to the image of His Son.
—Romans 8:29
Do not be afraid of that word in English, predestined. Some people go into a kind of trauma the moment they hear the word. Whom He foreknew, He also predestined—for what? To be conformed to the image of His Son, that He, the Lord Jesus, might be the firstborn among many brethren.
God is bringing many sons to glory—not merely little children. A baby cannot run your business, but a son can. There is all the difference between growing up to be a son in the house of God and remaining a child.
It is a wonderful thing to have many babies. It transforms any church, assembly, or fellowship when God saves and you are swamped with a whole lot of spiritual babies: all crying, all hungry, all thirsty, all longing for fellowship.
But there is something horribly wrong when, in a fellowship of believers, you have dozens or hundreds of people who should be growing up, yet they cannot administer anything. They are still babes—twenty years old in the Lord, thirty years old in the Lord, forty years old in the Lord, fifty years old in the Lord—and they are still babies.
They cannot war the warfare of the service. They cannot intercede in the presence of God. They are babies.
When you are a baby, you are nursed, rocked, looked after. Everybody circles around you. They give you things for your mouth, toys to hold, and things to look at. The whole world circles round you when you are a baby.
But that is only one stage. We are meant to grow up. There is something hideous about a thirty- or forty-year-old who is a baby. Yet the house of God is filled with such examples.
The Word of God is very clear: “If He shall be manifested, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him even as He is.”
Not just that we will have a body like His. Not just that we shall have spiritually physical attributes. But we shall have the character.
It is not just that you have a body that can go through walls or that does not need to eat. The essential thing is character. To be conformed to His image means that we have a character like His.
Here, then, is the invincible, all-powerful purpose of God. In Romans 8, we read that all things work together for good to those who are called according to His purpose. Underline the word purpose.
Predestination. Purpose. Conformity. This is the invincible, powerful purpose of God for every child of God.
And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.
—1 Corinthians 15:49
Is this not amazing? This purpose of God—where does it leave you tonight? Are you being changed? Is there a little more in you of the Lord Jesus than when you were last here, last year? Or are you static? Nothing has happened. You are the same.
Wherefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature: the old things are passed away; behold, they are become new.
—2 Corinthians 5:17
I much prefer the marginal rendering: “Wherefore if any man be in Christ, there is a new creation.” The old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.
When you have the older rendering, you can spend your whole time looking inside and saying, “Well, old things have passed away; all things have become new. But have they?” Then you become self-centred. You look inward.
It is in Christ that there is a new creation. Are you in Christ? If you have been saved by the grace of God, whatever you feel, your position is in Christ.
In Christ there is a new creation. The old has passed away. All things have become new, and everything is of God.
You and I are part of a new man. Who is that new man? The Lord Jesus. How are you and I part of the new man? Through the saving grace of God, we have been positioned in Christ.
There, we are part of the new man. There, we are in a new creation. There everything is new. The old is excluded, and everything is of God. This is where the Lord begins.
Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except one be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
—John 3:3
When you are born anew, it is a new birth. Where are you? You are in Christ. You are born of the Spirit of God. Something tremendous has happened. Your whole position has changed.
Who delivered us out of the power of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love.
—Colossians 1:13
It is a revolution. We have been delivered from the power of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of God’s dear Son. Our position is in Him.
No wonder the Lord said, “Abide in Me, and I in you.” You remain; you dwell where God has placed you. When you abide in Him, you discover that the Lord Jesus is in you. Then comes revelation and illumination, and then you are changed into the image—the likeness—of the Lord Jesus.
While you abide in Him, He is in you, and He reveals Himself. Remember what the Lord Jesus said in Revelation 21: “Behold, I make all things new.”
He speaks of all the things that belong to the old: mourning, pain, crying, death. All these things are passed away. He makes everything new. Where does He begin? With sinners like you and me.
He begins with human rubbish. You and I may think, “I am a very nice person.” But until you are saved, you are rubbish—absolute rubbish.
Until you are saved, your position changes. Now you are in Christ. Into what was rubbish, God pours eternal pleasure. Only God could do this.
He takes you. He takes me. He saves us. He justifies us. He repositions us. He delivers us from the power of darkness. He transfers us into the kingdom of His dear Son.
There we discover fathomless, formless, unsearchable riches—incredible resurrection life and power. He begins with you, and He ends with a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwells righteousness.
He begins with you, and He begins with me. Now the process has started.
You know what it says in Ephesians 4:
That ye put away, as concerning your former manner of life, the old man, that waxeth corrupt after the lusts of deceit;
And that ye be renewed in the spirit of your mind,
And put on the new man, that after God hath been created in righteousness and holiness of truth.—Ephesians 4:22-24
Put off. Christians often say to me, “How do I put off the old man?” First of all, it is God’s doing. He took you out of the old and put you in the new. That is the meaning of your new birth.
But you have a responsibility. You have to accept that putting off of the old man.
It is the same thing in Colossians 3:
Lie not one to another; seeing that ye have put off the old man with his doings,
And have put on the new man.—Colossians 3:9-10
Let me illustrate this. I do not know whether it will help, but I will try. Years ago, I was on one of these tours in the steps of St. Paul—not one of those marvellous ones that Brother Christian leads, but one of the more worldly ones.
We had a wonderful old professor. She did not know the Lord, and she did not know her Bible, but she knew everything about Greek history. We were going to Corinth, and she said, “I suppose you have noticed the number of statues that have no head.”
“Yes,” I said, “I have.”
She said, “I thought so. You notice these kinds of things. Did you notice the hole?”
“Well,” she said, “in one period of history, so many of the kings were assassinated. It took a couple of years to carve a statue. In every town square, there had to be a statue of the emperor or the king.”
“So someone very bright said, ‘Why do we not make a very fine body, put a hole in here, and change the head? When the king is assassinated, it will not take us so long to make the head and put it in.’”
Suddenly it came to me: put off the old man; put on the new man. People always say, “How can I do it?” It is a change of management.
When the Lord Jesus is Lord, you will be changed into His likeness. All the circumstances of your life, all the relationships in your life, all the problems in your life, and all the tribulation in your life will be used by the Spirit of God to fashion you and produce spiritual character.
That is the secret: when you are under the headship of the Lord Jesus. When you have got your own head, there is no change. When He is Head, there is glorious change, because the Holy Spirit will use everything in your life—family, business, and church life—to change you.
When you are your own boss, you should be living in the new, but you are living in the old. I hope that illustration helps you and does not confuse you more.
Here is the second thing I want to underline: facing reality with faith and obedience. It is a tremendous thing to be able to face reality.
Every time a child of God, a servant of God, saw the Lord, he fell down as one dead. It was as if, by seeing the Lord, he realised how different he was. In so many cases, the Lord or an angel had to lift them up.
You will never grow in the Lord. You will never be changed into His likeness unless you face essential reality.
The heart of this matter is spiritual character—not merely outward appearances, not merely window dressing, everything dressed to look good. Facing reality.
I can put it yet another way: there is no magic wand. We like to think that somehow everything is instant—instant coffee, instant cakes, instant cream. People want instant holiness. They want to be instantly changed into the likeness of the Lord Jesus.
There are no shortcuts. Let me say it again: there are no shortcuts to spiritual character.
You can have a crisis; that can happen in an hour or two. In that moment you face reality. But to produce spiritual character takes much time.
Praise the Lord, the Holy Spirit is in charge of this business. He is the One who supervises and manages the changing of us into the likeness of the Lord Jesus.
Look again at 2 Corinthians 3:18:
But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit.
Please note one or two things. Firstly, “beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord.” That means you are beholding Jesus. It has something to do with your spiritual sight. It has something to do with the eyes of your heart.
You remember the prayer of the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 1: that God would grant to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your heart being illumined, that you may know what is the hope of His calling, the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and the exceeding greatness of His power to us-ward who believe.
This is all to do with being changed. It all comes back to the eyes of our heart. If we are not seeing the Lord, there is no chance of being conformed to His image.
Then listen again: “transformed into the same image.” Here is something else: “beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, with unveiled face.”
If you look at the context, it is all to do with the Jewish people. The apostle says that when they read the Word of God, there is a veil over their mind. Then he speaks of us with unveiled face.
There are many Christians who, like the Jews, have a veil over their eyes. It is a veil that comes between them and seeing the Lord.
If there is anyone here who has that veil, listen to this: when a man or a woman turns to the Lord, it shall be done away.
What brings a veil on the face of a believer? Sin: cheating, fraudulence, gossip, jealousy, rivalry, and many other things. These are the things that bring the veil back.
Then the reading of the Word of God is just a religious exercise. It is not seeing the Lord. But now listen carefully:
But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory.
—2 Corinthians 3:18
In other words, there is progress. The Apostle Paul, by the Spirit of the Lord, says, “from glory to glory.”
I am sure your experience is mine: it is from affliction to affliction, from tribulation to tribulation, from one problem to another problem. Why does it say, “from glory to glory”? Because it is the capacity for glory that is being worked.
It is in the same letter:
While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen.
For our light affliction, which is for the moment, worketh for us more and more exceedingly an eternal weight of glory.
—2 Corinthians 4:18, 17
I wish it were but for a moment. It does not seem to be but for a moment. It seems so long, so impossible. But the Word of God says that our light affliction, which is but for a moment, works for us an eternal weight of glory.
If you look at the weight of glory compared to the light affliction, light affliction is nothing.
Do you think we are all going to arrive one day in the presence of the Lord and say, “Oh, Lord, how we suffered! You should be so pleased with us. We went from affliction to affliction, from tribulation to tribulation, from one difficult set of circumstances to another difficult set of circumstances, from one impossible person to another impossible person. It was continuous, Lord. We did it all smiling”?
No, no. Not one of us will be like that. We will not even remember most of it. We will say to the Lord, “Could that light affliction, which was but for a moment, have worked such a weight of glory in me?”
“This is Your doing, Lord. I worship You. I cannot but worship and praise You.”
Look again at verse 17:
Now the Lord is the Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
—2 Corinthians 3:17
Not bondage—liberty, freedom. We are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, and it is from the Lord the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the One who is in charge of our being transformed.
Is there a veil on your spiritual eyes? Turn to the Lord, and He will remove it.
The last thing I want to say this evening is very simple: the glorious provision.
Think again about Romans 8:29:
For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.
This matter is so important to the Lord that all His grace and all His power are put at the disposal of the child of God.
People always say, “Oh, if you only knew my background, you would understand why I have such difficulty. If you knew the kind of home I was brought up in; if you knew the kind of relationships I have suffered.”
I suppose every one of us considers ourselves unique. Shall I tell you something? God has predestined that you be conformed to the image of His Son.
Do you mean to tell me that He is like some civil servant who has not taken into account your particular problem? If you have an awful background, He has exactly the grace commensurate with your background.
If you have obstacles—huge, mountainous problems that seem to stop you from going on—God has provided the power commensurate with the mountainous problem.
All the predestinating grace and power of God are behind you. He wants you to be conformed to the image of His Son.
The problem is whether you are prepared for Him to be Lord. Once you are prepared for whatever the Lord will bring into your life and use to change you into His likeness, the whole predestinating power and grace of God are behind you.
Every problem you have, God has foreseen. Everything that you could imagine would stop you is all known to Him, and He has made provision.
Is this not amazing? It leaves us without excuse. If we are not changed into His likeness, it is certainly not His fault.
This means that you and I need to face reality. Dear brothers, dear sisters, do you hear me? I believe we are entering one of the most troubled periods in the history of the world.
It cannot be long before the Antichrist appears. There are only two obstacles I see against his coming: militant Islam and the United States.
I have no doubt that God is going to break the back of militant Islam, even though it may do terrible things. It may even involve the United States. Nevertheless, I believe God will use little Israel to break the back of militant Islam.
While Islam is in place, the Antichrist cannot come. But when it is removed, the whole world will say, “We cannot go on like this. The First World War, the Second World War, and war after war after war—we have to have a world leader, a world government, and a world security force.”
The second obstacle is the United States. There is, as yet, in the United States a residual Christian conscience. That biblical conscience has to be exterminated before the Antichrist comes.
I do not want to get into this too fully, but if I were an American, I would take note of the physical disasters that have come to the United States: the worst fires in recorded history, the worst floods in recorded history, hurricanes that have destroyed cities.
When God is bringing judgment, He always begins gently, and He waits: is there a response? If there is none, more severe judgment. Then He waits: is there a response? If there is none, more severe judgment, until in the end it becomes catastrophic.
Dear brothers and sisters, listen to me. I believe the Lord will touch the affluent economy of the United States. It will come suddenly. You and I need to be prepared.
We have one small life. In that one small life, God has to do something in us. He has to produce spiritual character in us. He has to change us into His likeness.
It takes time. He can compress it and make it more intense, but nevertheless it takes time. You cannot produce spiritual character instantaneously.
Listen to me. If you are deaf, if you have a veil over your eyes, and this thing happens, you will panic. Now is the time to get right with God. Now is the time for the Lord to sweep away the veil.
Now is the time for us to behold the glory of the Lord with unveiled face. Oh, God.
This is the grace of the Lord. We need to hear His voice—not mine. You do not have to worry about my voice. It is the voice of the Lord behind the human voice that you need to hear.
I have said this a number of times, and I say it again: in my view only, the United States is like the Titanic—invincible, magnificent, everyone enjoying themselves, eating, singing, dancing, music—until it hits an iceberg.
When the captain said, “Even God could not sink this ship,” it was sad. Am I wrong, or am I right?
If I am right, you need to get right with the Lord. Those of you who have bitter quarrels with other Christians, you need to get them put right.
Those of you who have been fraudulent or dishonest in business, you need to come clean.
Those of you who have been playing about with sex, you need to get it settled with God. Whatever it is, it is not worth hanging on to. Let the Lord challenge you, and let Him do a work in your heart.
We have so little time left. Shall we pray?
Beloved Lord, will You speak to our hearts? You know every one of us, and You know the condition that we are in. Lord, speak to us. Do not let us escape.
We want, Lord, to be changed into the likeness of the Lord Jesus. We want You to do in us the work that is required.
Lord, it is Your grace that will do this. Do a work in us, and we ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.