Thank you, Dave. You're welcome. Why don't we begin by praying together this morning? Would you do that with me? Oh God, we want to continue worshipping now. We want to worship by understanding You better. How else can we worship until we know You and continue to get to know You? So I pray that you would open the eyes of our heart so that we might see you now as you are revealed in your word. In Jesus' name I pray, amen. If you missed last week, then you missed part one of a two-part launch to a brand new series that we're doing here at Island Baptist Church. I've entitled the series, Life According to Jesus. Let me take just a few moments to recap for you what we said last week, because we saw from God's Word a couple of really important things, and I'll take maybe two or three minutes just to give you a snapshot of what we said last week, okay? Last week we saw that life has a perfecter, someone who did human life without flaw, and his name is Jesus. Not only that, but we saw that life has an author. The Bible calls Jesus both the author and the perfecter. Those two titles are not given to anyone else but Him. But we saw something else last week that was very important. We saw that from the beginning, God made human beings to act like a mirror. Do you remember this last week? Like a mirror that reflected parts of his own nature. No other creature was made like this but us. We were made to reflect the nature of God. And here's the key. Reflecting God is where we creatures, made in his image, will find our most authentic joy. No creature made in God's image can ever find anything but cheap substitutes for joy, apart from acting like that mirror we were made to act like. Everybody understand that? That was the big idea, the main lesson that I wanted to get across last week as we launched this series, and it's going to serve as the big idea again today. Here's how we set it last week. If you want to jot it down so that you can remember it, this is it. According to Jesus, Human beings were made to glorify. Now you can replace that word with a couple different words. Glorify, meaning to reflect or to magnify or to bring to the surface so that people can see it, or to love. We were made to glorify God and, the second part is just as important, Most people miss the second part. And, enjoy Him forever. That's the main point that I'm trying to get across. If you miss anything, that's what I'm trying to say here this morning. That's it. The aim of this whole series is really very simple. We as a church, we want the life that God wants for us. Is there anybody here who doesn't want that? I just want the life God wants for me. Nothing else, nothing more, nothing less. I said last week at the conclusion, I'm sick of cheap substitutes. I hope you've grown sick of them too. I want what God wants for me. And we as a church, we've set out to do that, to find the joy that Jesus knew in life and promised to those who follow him. Now listen, let me make sure there's no misconceptions here. We are not a gullible people here at Island Baptist Church. We know that life brings pain. Jesus promised it to those who follow him. So we're not so gullible as to think the life of joy means the life absent of suffering. That's not what it means. We know suffering is going to come. Jesus even told us if we're going to follow him, it means picking up a cross and carrying it, right? But here's what I'm after, and I hope you're after too. I want the joy that he knew in the midst of suffering. Don't you want that? If you want that, stick around for the next 51 remaining weeks, because that's what I'm going after. I want the joy he knew in the midst of, listen, having no place to lay his head. He had no possessions to call his own, and yet his joy was never less than perfect. I want that. And he says we can have it. So that's what we're after. Life according to Jesus will seek to examine as many aspects of this life as I can possibly fit into 52 weeks in a year, with the hope of bringing our lives into full submission to the author, because we know that's where joy is found. Not in being our own boss, but submitting our life to the author of life. Make sense? If you were here last week, then you'll remember that understanding our being, what God made us to be, was where we spent a lot of time. We just finished a sermon series in Genesis where the character of God was on our minds for 91 straight messages. 91 messages where this is our God was what we focused on as a church. Well now, the time has come for us to look at his finest creation. What is a human? And how is it that we're supposed to live in relation to this Creator who made us out of the dust? We're going to get really practical this year. How do we live life as a human being? Let's just go back to the square one and ask basic questions of what it means to be a human being made in the image of God. Jesus provided for us not only the perfect example of what a flawless life looks like, but he also gave us the exact words that we need to understand where to begin. Jesus said this, this is the text that we're in, it's in Matthew 22, let's put that up on the screen, shall we? Matthew 22, the author of life says this, he tells us that we're supposed to love the Lord our God with all our heart, remember we looked at that last week, and all our soul. And then he goes on with all our mind, too. Then he says the flip side of that coin, there's a second part to that, is to love our neighbor the same way we love ourselves. So we're going to continue this week examining what it is that we creatures made in the image of God are supposed to do. If that's who we are, what are we supposed to do with our lives? We learned last week that number one thing you need to know about yourself. You are a creature made to love. You're made to love God. And then, listen, out of that natural overflow of love for God should come something, right? Should produce something. Out of that natural overflow of love for God should come a love for what He loves most. If you're really reflecting Him sooner or later, you'll start to love what He loves. That only makes sense, right? That's what Jesus is saying. You were made to be. I say this all the time, I'm a visual learner, so I like to create little things to help you see it with your own eyes. So I put together a little illustration that will help you see where we're going with this, okay? I put these little silhouettes for you up on the screen. This is what we said last week. We examined what the human heart is. The human heart, I showed you from the Bible, that word is mentioned 800 times, which tells you this is really important to God. This is where your emotions are stored. Motion. What drives you. What moves you. This is your desire factory. That's what the human heart is. This is where all your affections are stored. What moves you to do the things you do. That's the human heart. Next, we also looked at the human soul. Now this is where people get confused. Let me tell you what the Bible says the soul is. This is God's thumbprint on you. This is your unique personality. That's why I put a bunch of these other people here, and then one person who sticks out. This is your individuality. What makes you unique in all of creation? This is why human life is so valuable. Because if you weren't here, you specifically, there's a part of God's character that the world doesn't see right in front of their face. Do you understand? Each individual human being has an impression of God's character on their soul. Paul called this your inner man. We looked at that last week. Now I want to ask you a question before we look at the next two parts of your human framework. Before we look at them, I want to ask you a question that I asked last week that I hope is still fresh on your mind. If not, let me refreshen it a bit. I asked this. How are we, creatures that are made out of the dust, in the image of a creator, how are we supposed to love God? If you had no instruction manual at all, how would you imagine a creature made to look like and reflect a creator should go about loving him. Should we write him love poems or try to hug him? How do you do it? Well, we concluded last week that we, creatures, love a creator by reflecting him, and here's the key, to a world that doesn't know him. To a world that doesn't know themselves anymore. to a world that doesn't even know how to love each other. God is in the process of redeeming man to be what we were made to be, and we, as born-again human beings, our job is to show the world Him. That's how you love Him. That's what you were made to do, to act like a mirror for all the person to look at you and see God. That's how you love him. So today we're going to examine the next two parts that God gave you to do this. Take a look at the next two little silhouettes I put up there for you. Your mind. He says to love God with all your mind. Well, I'm going to explain how this works, but your mind is your thought life, obviously, but it's also your reasoning. No other creature made in his image can do this quite like human beings can't. How do you love God with all your mind? Jesus says, you want joy? You're sick of settling? You've got to do this. Then you'll find it. We're going to look at that real closely today. Then, your body. What you do. This is your relational life. That's the flip side of the coin. Loving other people with this tool that God gave you. What you do with your body. We're going to look at that very carefully too. So, let's jump right in and look at category number three, shall we? The third category of your life that God gave you to reflect Him is your mind. This is your thought life. Now, I'm going to say something here at the bottom. This is what I see. That should make you go, my thought life? What I see? You've got to help me understand that one, pastor. Let me help you. Jesus, the perfect human being, loved God perfectly by glorifying Him throughout His entire life with His mind, what He thought about all of His life. Look back at verse 37c, the third part of it. He says, You shall love the Lord your God with all your mind. Here's how this works. If we, creatures made to reflect Him, are going to love Him with all of our mind so that we can have this joyful life we were made to have, it requires you to do two things. To love God with all your mind first means you need to see God's mind. If you're going to reflect His mind, you have to see it first, right? You have to know what you're supposed to be a mirror of, right? The second thing which is most important, listen, after you've seen God's mind, you have to love what you see there. Many, many men and women have come along through the ages and they've seen God's mind as it's revealed in their Bible. When you hold your Bible, you are literally holding the mind of God contained through the Word. Many men have caught a glimpse of it and they've not only hated what they've seen, they've decided they preferred something else instead of it. Can you imagine seeing a glimpse of the mind of God and saying, you know what? I prefer something else. I'm going to focus on that for my whole life and reflect that. That's just absurd, isn't it? Friends, we do that all day long, preferring something else to the mind of God. And we wonder why we don't have the joy Jesus talked about? If you're going to have this joy, you have to love God with all your mind. This is precisely what the Apostle Paul says, preferring something over the mind of God. This is what Paul says has been happening since the day of the fall, and it's been growing and growing and growing and growing to this very present day. Can I show you? Look at what Paul says has been happening. Romans 1, 18-21. Take a look at this. He says, For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. Now here it is. Listen carefully. For what can be known about God is plain to them. They see it because God has shown it to them. For His invisible attributes, namely His eternal power and His divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made. So they're without excuse. For although they knew God, although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him. But here it is. But they became futile in their, what? Their thinking. Their thinking. And their foolish hearts were darkened. The human mind, listen, is like a light. It's like a light that has gone dark. And until someone comes along and flips the switch, it stays dark. Doesn't matter how genius you are, you cannot understand the things of God until someone turns the light on. Did you know this is exactly what Jesus taught? That the minds of men stay dark until God chooses to turn it back on. You can't take a look, so you're just going to have to listen, or guess what you're going to have to do? You're going to actually have to open your Bibles. Yes. Luke chapter 10. I'll give you a second to get there. That's in the New Testament. Matthew, Mark, Luke. Luke chapter 10. You need to see what Jesus has to say about this. This is really important. Maybe the Lord shut off our projector this morning so that we could use our Bibles. This is what Jesus had to say about this. He said, in that same hour, this is Jesus, listen, in that same hour, He rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, now listen, I thank you Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things." Hidden something? That you've hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father." And listen, this is key. And no one knows who the Son is except the Father. Or who the Father is except the Son. And anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him. Then turning to the disciples, He said privately, Blessed are the eyes that see what you see. For I tell you, many prophets and kings desired to see what you see and didn't see it. and to hear what you hear and didn't hear it? Friends, listen, he's not talking about their eyeballs, and he's not talking about these floppy things that hang off the sides of your head. He's talking about a different set of eyes and a different set of ears. What Jesus tells them here is this. Human beings have been trying to perceive the mind of God through human wisdom, human philosophy, and really high human level thinking. Think like Plato and Aristotle and Socrates and all the men of our day who like to tell themselves that they can think higher than other men. These kinds of men have always been around. And here's what they try to do. They try to attain the mind of God without the Son of God. You can't do it because He is the mind of God. I don't care how brilliant you are. I don't care if you've written a million books and they're studied in colleges across the world. If you don't have the Son of God, you can't understand the mind of God. It's impossible. In order for God to reveal himself to you, the light has to be turned on. And God is the only one that can do that. You can't turn it on yourself. God has to do it. And when He does, like little children, little by little, our minds start to come out of the darkness and into the light. And when that happens, guess what starts to happen? When our minds start to come into the light, we start to see like God sees. And we start to see like Jesus sees. That's where our thinking produces sight. Do you know what the Apostle Paul said about this? About seeing like God sees and thinking like God thinks? Take a look at this. 1 Corinthians 2.16, he says, Who can know the Lord's thoughts? Like, who could ever have the mind of God, right? Who knows enough to teach Him? But we understand these things, for we have the mind of Christ. If you want to know how to see like God sees, think like God thinks, you can't do it apart from having Christ. It is impossible to do it. You have the mind of Christ little by little. Even these little ones in here, your mind is starting to be able to think like God thinks. when Jesus said you were made to love God with all your mind. He used a word which, really, unless you understand the Greek, it's hard to understand really what he's talking about. He used the word dianoia. And dianoia means dialectical thinking. Circular, like from one end of an idea to the other end of an idea. But don't think of it like a straight line. Think of it in a circle. A human being is able to think from all these different perspectives or points of view in order to get all the way back to the thought and come up with a conclusion. No other creature can do that but us. Love the Lord your God with dialectical thinking. Here's what the word means. Critical thinking through reasoning from one end of an idea to the other. That's what Jesus said we're supposed to do when we love God. So those of you who might think, I don't care anything about theology. Just give me plain old Jesus. Listen to me. Do you know how silly that kind of thinking is? If you want to have the joy Jesus had, You need to learn to think. Get alone in your closet. Close the door. Lock it. Turn off the lights. Don't turn off the lights. Open your Bible. Bring a nightlight with you or a flashlight. And read something. Anything. Something short. One verse. And think. Think. Because God made you to think and use that dialectical thinking to see him. If you turn off your mind, you will never see Him and love what you see. Do you understand? Thinking leads to joy, the kind of joy Jesus knew. Get alone with God, think deeply about Him, and when you do, I'm telling you from personal experience, when you see Him, Close your eyes and see Him. I'm telling you, you will fall in love with what you see there. Much more than what you see with your eyes open, believe me. What you see with your eyes open, I promise you, will disappoint you someday. What you see with your eyes closed, if you see what I've seen, you'll fall in love with it. You'll never be satisfied by anything else ever again. That's what I'm after this year. Your mind can bring you to one of two places. The great heights of God or the great depths of human depravity. You can choose where you allow your mind to go. I read a story once. Kids, you'll like this story. Look up here. I know a lot of this goes over your head, but some of it you can get. Listen to this. I read a story about a mom who was chopping up veggies, making a salad one day. And her daughter, who was home from college, she came in, and just kind of passingly, she told her mom she was going to go see a movie. And her mom heard and she knew about the movie, and it was a movie that was kind of questionable. It wasn't such a great movie. And so her mom, she's sitting there, she's chopping up veggies, and without even her face changing at all, she's chopping up, and she reaches down and grabs a handful of garbage and throws it inside the salad. And she keeps chopping. And her daughter goes, Mom, you just put a handful of trash inside the salad. And her mom's chopping away. She goes, Yeah, I know. I thought since you didn't mind putting garbage into your mind, you wouldn't mind it in your belly either. Isn't that the truth? Do you get it? I hope you get it. If not, come and I'll explain it to you afterwards. Her mom knew. Where you allow your mind to go is where you will eventually go. One of the great minds of our time, I talk about him all the time, C.S. Lewis, some of you thought I was going to say John Piper, didn't you? You know me well. C.S. Lewis said this, and I hope you jot this down because this is really important. Take a look. All mortals tend to turn into the thing they are pretending to be. What are you pretending to be in your mind? What do you imagine with your imagination most in your mind? Whatever that is, mark my words, you are transforming into that thing. You are. Proverbs tells us that this is true. Proverbs 23, 7, as a man thinks, so he is. Just as we did last week, I want to offer you a little self-assessment that you can use to help you determine where you are in your thought life or in any part of your being. I want to do that today as well. I want to help you as we're getting ready to do this for an entire year. I want to help you to start off right, to take an honest look at where your mind is and ask, have I really brought this part of my being into submission to the author of life? Here's the one question I want you to ask as a self-assessment for your mind today. Take a look. what has captivated your thought life most. You can determine what has captivated your mind most by what you think about when there's nothing to think about. Like when you're sitting out on the beach and you're just relaxing and your mind has gone off someplace, where it goes will tell you what you've been captivated by most. Think of it like this, church. Your mind is a pet. And you've been training it. Like on a leash. You've been training it to go where the tastiest food is. The tastiest food for thought, right? Where do you think this pet will go when you let it off the leash? When you let your mind off the leash. Okay, ready? Go wherever you want to go. Where's it going to go? Wherever that pet goes is what you've been captivated by because you found that that thing is the tastiest food supply. If you are your tastiest food supply, when you let your mind go wherever it wants, you're going to think about yourself most. Because you've trained this pet to go, I like thinking about me. I like thinking about me the most. So if you get alone and you say, okay, mind, go free. And it goes to you. You've taught yourself to do that, saying, this is where you'll be most satisfied. This is where the best food is. Think about yourself. If you let that dog go, that pet go, and it runs off to work or your career, that's where you've trained your pet to go for the tastiest food. But if you let that leash go, and it runs to God, I am telling you, not only because of the word, but because of my own experience, you'll never want any other treats for your little pet ever again if you train your mind to go there for food. But you have to train it like you do a pet. Put it on a choke leash and train it. and it will go to the tastiest food supply. And believe me, listen, if you're here this morning and you go, Pastor, my mind has been trained to go to some pretty nasty places and feast on some junk food. For years I've been training it to do that. Listen to me. Just stick with me for a year. Stay here. Stay here and let's just see if maybe God might want to take your mind and reshape it into the perfect mind of His Son. Stick with me. And if you do, you'll see God and you will find Him to be more satisfying than any other place your mind has ever gone. Ask some of these people who have been training their mind for years how satisfying He is and they'll tell you. The last place I want to take you this morning, the last part of your being that God gave you to reflect Him and glorify Him is this. Category number four, the human body. This is your relational life. And I'm going to explain how in just a moment. This is what I do. Jesus, the perfect human being, loved God perfectly by glorifying Him perfectly with I'm getting into position here, his body. How do we do that? How do we do it? Verse 39, he shows us the flip side of the coin. So he says, love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and he says, look, but this coin has two sides. Second side of it, when this is happening, you'll begin to love what God loves most. You'll begin to love people as you love yourself. So, first question that comes to mind, how do I love myself? Well, let me just think about this morning. This morning I woke up and I had some crusty stuff in my eye, so I loved myself enough to take it out of my eye. And then I loved myself, I had to use the bathroom, so I woke up and I loved myself enough to relieve myself of that pain or discomfort. And then I love coffee, so I love myself enough to go and make myself a cup of coffee. And then I love myself enough to go and sit with my favorite blanket in my favorite chair and read over my sermon. I really did a good job loving myself this morning with my body. I pretty much did everything that it asked me to do. That's how much I loved it. That's what you're supposed to do for other people. Love them with your body, with your actions. the same thing. As you love yourself, caring for your own needs as good as we are, we come to that pretty naturally, don't we? Do it for others. That's the flip side. Jesus said, take a look at this, sacrifices and offerings you've not desired, but a body you've prepared for me. With his body, Jesus demonstrated how human beings are supposed to glorify God through tangible acts of selfless love for other people. God gave you a body, right? I think everybody in here has one of those. Why didn't he just leave us as souls roaming the earth? You ever ask that? Why aren't we just spirits? What's the body for? It's an instrument for something. Ask those kinds of questions to your Bible and it'll answer. Why do we have these things made of flesh? What am I supposed to use it for? With your body, you will, don't miss this, you will glorify one of two things, only two, God or yourself. That's what you're going to do with your body. You're either going to magnify God or you're going to magnify you. Those are the only two options. With his body, he used it explicitly for one ultimate action. Serving his father's will by living for the benefit of others. Now let me show you what the Apostle Paul says about your life. What do you think it's going to say? Pretty much the same thing as Jesus lived in his body for. Take a look. Before I show you, don't put it up there yet. Before I show you, I was excited about this verse all week. Here's why. People have all these little doohickeys hanging from their rearview mirror. This should be one of your doohickeys. that hangs from your rear view mirror. This should be the wallpaper on your iPhone. This should be the backdrop of your laptop. That's how important what I'm about to show you is to your human life. All right, Frank, throw it up there. 2 Corinthians 5. He, Jesus, died for all. That's what he used his body for. So that Those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for him who died for them and was raised again. Do you see how that verse works? Keep looking at it. He died, this is what he used his body for, so that you who live should stop living for yourself. But for him, and what did he do? He lived for them. So we follow his lead, our pioneer. He died, so too should you. Die to all of your desires so that you can come alive to a whole new way of living for them. When you leave, point to somebody, not in their face, but just, I'm supposed to live for him. I'm supposed to live, find somebody that gets under your skin. Do it. Maybe they're not here, because nobody here would ever get under your skin. Find someone and say, Jesus died so that I could die, so that I could stop living for myself, so that I could instead live for them. That's why he died. Get a doohickey, put it on your car, read it every single day. This is really important to understanding how we're supposed to live our lives, is it not? Yes. You might not realize this, but every single act you take in your body affects someone else, right? Let me show it to you. Every single act. You might be thinking of a few acts that don't affect anybody, like eating an apple. I'm telling you, every single act, even the things you think don't affect somebody else, do. Let's start first in marriage, shall we? In marriage, God said to Adam, it's not good that man should be alone, so I'm going to make you a perfect complement. A woman whose body perfectly complements yours. Not only her body, but her mind. It's not the same as yours, Adam. It's a different mind that was made to perfectly complement yours. So, when God made man to fit together with woman, whatever the man did to his body, he did to the woman. Whatever the woman did to her body, she did to the man. That's why he says you're one flesh from now on. So all the single people in the room are going, yes, there are some benefits to being single after all. What I do with my body is my business and not even you, Pastor Luke, should even be talking to me. I can check out now. Can I just remind you of the blatantly obvious? Jesus was single. And so was the Apostle Paul, the one whom Jesus appointed to be the primary teacher of what you're supposed to do with your body. So let me just read to you, all the single people in the room, what you're supposed to think about how you treat your body. We've read it a lot in this church, but I'm going to read it to you again. 1 Corinthians 6, 19-20. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who's in you, whom you've received from God? You're not your own. I don't know how Paul's face looked when he wrote this, but I wrote it like, pfft. Anybody who thinks they're their own really doesn't know what they're thinking. You're not your own. You were bought at a price. What does that make you? Property of another. Therefore, what should I do? Glorify God with my body. Let me switch gears here with you for just a moment. We're supposed to be talking about joy, right? That's what this whole series is about, finding joy. Do you know, I grew up hearing that God created things on the earth for the joy for your soul, but he's not interested in the enjoyment of your body. That led to a really warped understanding of why God gave me a body growing up. It's nonsense, and I want to put it to rest now. The Apostle Paul wrote to Timothy, and he was telling Timothy how to warn people not to trust their resources, not to trust their money and all the gifts that God had given them. And then he says, instead of trusting all these resources that you have, trust the one, and then look at the phraseology that he used there, trust the one who richly provides us with everything for what? Stay with me back there. Jesus himself said, take a look, until now you've asked nothing in my name. Ask. Ask and you will receive. Why? That your joy may be full. That your joy may be full. So, I want to take for just a second, I want you to consider two aspects of your physical body that God gave you for your enjoyment. To put to rest this idea that God doesn't care about your body. Listen to this. These are logical things that you can conclude, okay? Let's start with sex, shall we? God created it not just for procreation, but for your enjoyment. That's why it feels so good. God made it that way. And if you don't believe me, there's an entire book of the Old Testament devoted to this topic. He made it feel good because he gave it to you for your enjoyment. Now think about food. Food is not just for fuel or nourishment. It is for those things. But it's not just for those things. Let's just think logically for a minute. Do you know how many taste buds you have in your mouth? 10,000 some odd. And they get replaced or replenished every two weeks. Why would the Creator put together this dust creature and not just put one taste bud in there? If it was just fuel, I will tell you why. Because He Himself takes great pleasure in watching His creatures enjoy the gifts He made for them. He enjoys watching you taste something and say, it's sweet, Lord, like You are. Oh, it tastes like honey on my tongue, like I feel in my soul when I read Your Word. Food was given to you for pointers to God. Enjoy those things. Here's where it gets wrong. And here's why I think people probably taught me the way they did, wrongfully. Because creatures with dark minds like ours, we take what God meant for good and we abuse it all. All of it. There's not one single gift that God has given us in our life that we don't abuse in some way. All of it. And you say, that's a good point, Pastor. How do we abuse God's good gifts? What do we do? It's the same abuse for all of it. Whether it's food or sex or any other thing that you can think of that God has given for our enjoyment, we abuse it all the same way. Do you know what it is? We prefer the food over the provider. We prefer the body of a man that's so pleasing to look at, the body of a woman that's so pleasing to look at, instead of the body of the one that gave you life. Listen to me. You want to gawk over a body? Gawk over that body, the one who retained his scars and his thorn-pierced brows so that you could spend all of eternity looking at it and gawking over it because it bought you life. Gawk over that body. Are you staying with me? Gawk over it. That's what we do. We abuse all the good gifts that God gave us by loving the gift rather than the giver. We, instead of loving God, we exchange him for the creation, just like Paul wrote about. We make God someone who exists for us rather than we being created for him. We even design worship services around ourselves. That's how far gone we've gotten. Here's what happens. The moment we abuse something that God meant for our good, here's where it gets to your relationships. Guess what happens? Don't miss this, this is so important. The moment you abuse anything God meant for your good, shame is flipped on. Even if it's just an apple and you go and you walk into this garden and you eat an apple, in that moment, shame was turned on for the very first time. And then what happened? This. Hide, hide quickly. God can see me and I know it. Your relationship with yourself, malfunctions. Your relationship with everyone else, malfunctions. Your relationship with God, malfunctions. The moment we abuse any gift, even our bodies. God meant your body to be enjoyed, but the more we abuse it, the more we say, stop looking at me. I know what you're thinking about me. And then we start going after each other. Because that's what happens when shame comes into the picture. Distorted, isn't it? Distorted. I want that life that Jesus offered us. The life we were supposed to have in the garden. What you do unto your body, you do to everybody else too. Even the things you think don't affect anybody else, they do. Here's why. Shame affects your behavior. Every time you get ashamed of yourself, you behave differently towards the person sitting next to you. You either don't love them the way you're supposed to, you go into your closet and you want to hide. That's what shame does to people. It's been doing that since the beginning. You were made to glorify God with your body, church. You were. And you do that best by using your body as an instrument. You were made to do good works so that people would look at you, listen, and glorify your Father in heaven when they see your good works. That's what Jesus said. Go, use your body to do good things for other people so that when they see you doing it, they'll go, who is her God? How selfless she is. I'm never like her. How great must her God be? That's why he gave you a body. Last self-assessment. You want to know, how do I bring my body under the authority of the author? I have one simple question that you can ask yourself right now to do a little self-check to see how healthy your relationship has been or is with your body right now, okay? Here's the question. For whose glory am I using my body? Now remember, it's only you or God. Right now, in this moment, you're using your body to magnify something, and you will for the rest of the week. Will it be mostly you, or will it be mostly God? And so, here's how you can determine. You can determine for whose glory your body's being used, by whose interests you're most willing to suffer to achieve. Said a little differently, Jesus suffered in his body because his Father's interest in you was most important to him. We flip that around and here's what most of us do. What we're most interested in, we're willing to sacrifice some of our body for. So here's how this works, plainly, for kids in the room. You say to your kids, I'll work my fingers to the bone, I'll work till my legs don't even hurt work anymore, till I can't even stand up straight, my back is so bad, if it will mean a better life for me and mine. Jesus said just the opposite. Jesus lived his life like this. If it will mean life for you, then I'm willing to let my body die. and suffer the rest of my life. Forget me. If it'll mean life for you, take my body. Take it, kill it, mutilate it on a cross because I love you more than I love my body. That's how we're supposed to think about our body. So who do you glorify most with your body? You or the God who gave it to you? Now if you're here this morning going, oh, pastor, that one hurt. But mostly all I do is think about how I can be more comfortable. Well listen, you're not alone. Such is the American way. Stick with me for a year. Don't think I've got it all figured out either. I'm with you in this. I want that joy too. Let's do this together for this year. Learn how to bring our bodies into submission to the author. Yes? Okay. Next week we're going to continue looking. and how to glorify God in our relational life, we're going to bounce all over. Look at all different things, from the heart, to the mind, to the body, to the soul for this next year. We're not going to go in any specific order. We're just going to keep you guessing. Next week we're going to continue on this idea of how do I glorify God with my body and my relational life. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to look at one of the most basic parts of your relational life. Your friendships. How do I glorify God through the friends that He's given me? Here's another question. Why can't I do life alone? What happens if I start to do life by myself in isolation without friends to do it with? What can I expect to see happen if I choose to go it alone like a tough guy? I don't need that church. I'm a strong man. Jesus said very differently. What did God design friendship to accomplish in the human life? Boy, I hope you'll come back next week to learn that. Let me close with this. Life according to Jesus begins, I hope you picked up on one thing. It begins by understanding that your life is not about you. Your life is about glorifying the Creator God who made you to love Him and to love the people that He loves. If you're born again, if you're a Christian, then you've been born again into a lifestyle that models the life of our pioneer, our author, our perfecter, and we are here to model everything he did. The more our culture shifts away from God, here's what happens. We shift the spotlight off of him and onto us. That's what Facebook was invented to do. You realize that, right? shift the spotlight onto you and leave it there. Here's what will happen if we allow that to continue. We shift all of the glory, the look at me, off of God and onto us, and as that happens, joy will sink. You will never, ever, ever know the joy Jesus was talking about as long as you say, spotlight, where is it? Let me move to where it is. Ever. You were meant to say, spotlight, let me turn it off of me There. You do that, I promise you, you will discover joy. The longer you say, let me just borrow it for a few minutes, joy, gone. Joy and glory are inseparably linked. Give it to Him, get the joy. You with me? Temptation now as we close. You know when I do that, we're almost there. The temptation now as we close is to ask you a closing question that many of the self-help gurus or like the Tony Robbinses of the world would are trained to ask you, which is this. You ready? What do you want for your life? Do you know why it's not moving you? That's the wrong question. They all ask that question and deep down somewhere, way deep in there, you go, I've been asking myself that for like 20 years. And the more I go after what I want out of life, the less happy I seem to be. No, no, no, no, no. People who want the most joy like Island Baptist Church is after. We don't settle for that. We ask a different question. What does God want from my life? That is life according to Jesus. Let's pray. Lord, if there was one final plea that I would like to make on behalf of every person in this room as the shepherd of this church, is give us the life that you want for us. the life of joy that Jesus knew in perfect fellowship with our Maker, we are sick of substitutes and we want the authentic joy we were made to have in fellowship with our Creator. Would you help us, Lord, in the next year to obtain just a little bigger piece of that so that others will see us and want our Savior for His sake and our joy, I ask, amen.