A Case for Character

I want to say good morning to each one. Welcome here. I'm going to have to—pardon me—erase a little bit here because I intend to use this a little bit.

All right.

I want to congratulate you all on being survivors. We are just on the other side of the holidays of Christmas and preceded by Thanksgiving, and there's always this moment of quietness between Christmas and New Year's, I feel.

Some of you, your belts may be out another notch than they were previously. Some of you are having immunity or developing immunity that you didn't have before, and those are gifts that keep on giving. But I hope as well that you have deeper and better relationships of spending time together with friends and family, and I hope you also have a renewed appreciation and a gratefulness for the gifts that God has given us.

I'm showing my hand a little bit by some of the things I said. I tend to be a little bit of a grinch when it comes to the holidays. I'm not endorsing that, saying that's a good thing, but I do struggle sometimes with having a positive attitude about everything.

I've come to the conclusion that my favorite holiday is the one that is still left in this time, and that is the one that is currently two days, 13 hours, 27 minutes, and 15 seconds away, and that is New Year's, the change from 2024 to 2025.

There's a certain amount of uncomfortableness that sometimes comes along with this. I was talking to or messaging a friend of mine, and we talked about the New Year a little bit, and he's like, "Yeah, it's not his favorite because it's like, wow, time is passing. It's this marker." And it's also you look back and say, "Wow, I should have done more," and things like that.

But for me, it's a new beginning. It's a fresh slate. And so while there is a certain amount of looking back, there's the anticipation of a new year, another chance, and that's why I enjoy this time of year.

I'm going to start with a little exercise this morning, and I'm going to invite you to participate. I want to engage in a time of reflection. Margaret Wheatley says, "Without reflection, we go blindly on our way." Reflection is more than just thinking. It's actually a little bit deeper than that. It's to think carefully and deeply about something, to consider its implications and its meaning often with the goal of learning from an experience or making a decision. Reflection is something that is actually rather rare in our day, and a large part of that is how we are surrounded by distractions of epic proportions. There's noise. There's information. We're bombarded with it. We have access to it unlike any other time.

Reflection can also be somewhat uncomfortable, and the reason that is it can almost stir up self-loathing because you look at it's that whole thing of looking back and saying, "Wow, I wish I would have done," or, "That time has passed."

But I think reflection in a positive way is actually very good because reflection is a test of our perception of what is reality.

We resist reality for a number of reasons, and reality simply is the state of things as the state of things as they actually exist.

Some of it can be arrogance. It's we feel like we already are in possession of the perfect ideology or understanding. For me, many times I'm not saying I'm affected by arrogance. I know I'm not, but a lot of times it's actually fear that causes me to resist reflection and reality. And it's fear of being wrong. It's fear of time wasted, the expiration of our ability to influence or change something.

But reflection actually takes a level of courage but also humility to recognize that we may have been wrong, the courage to face our faults in order to change or improve them. It requires us to accept our fallibility, and this all hinges on our willingness to accept reality, the state in which they actually exist. The interesting thing about reality, it does not change. No matter whether or not we are willing to accept it or think about it, it does not change. It is a state of as things actually are. So the statement of knowledge is power is actually correct because knowledge, a lack of knowledge when it comes to reality, does not change the reality. It just means that you are unaware of it.

So I want you to join me a little bit in this practice or this exercise of reflection, and I hope it's something that is helpful to you. I'm going to put up three questions on the board for you to consider, for you to think about, and this is all in reflection back on the previous 12 months, actually 10 and 11 months and however many 28, 28 days.

So with that context, I want you to think about, one.

What did I experience? Two.

What did I accomplish? And three, I'm going to leave that one to a little bit later.

So experiences are things that have happened to us. Some of them are resulted decisions we have made. Some of them are just the circumstances we found ourselves in. Some of you experienced a milestone birthday this year. A number of you turned the great age of 30. It's a big to me, I'm just on the other side of that. It's an important milestone in my life, and I always have a certain amount of excitement for people to reach that because I think it's a great birthday to have to get into your 30s.

And I'm sure wherever you find yourself in your age, probably you have different milestone birthdays. Some of you went on a trip or a vacation, maybe you were involved in something that happened to you. Some of you may have purchased a house or things like that. So I want you to think about what you have experienced this year, and like I said, some of that is actually somewhat out of your control in a way.

Then I want you to go down to the next one and think about what did you accomplish. Accomplishing has the idea of achieving a goal. It's something that was done and that you can sort of check off your list.

Some of you may have graduated high school this year. Maybe you had your first job. Maybe you read 20 books, paid off debt, lost weight, gained muscle, got out of bed earlier. The list could go on. Some of you, this is one of the greatest accomplishments. I was thinking about everyone here, and some of your accomplishments I know.

Brandon remodeled a house this year. Big accomplishment for him and Heather. I think about a number of you actually grew a human. It's one of the most amazing accomplishments. Not only did you grow a human, but some of you actually birthed a human. It's such an amazing accomplishment. I was going to put that down, the birth of a child as an experience, but I was like, "You know what? That's much more of an accomplishment, especially for this side of the house."

So I want you to think about that. Were there goals that you wanted to achieve this year that you have? And I want you to think about that as reflect on your year. What did you achieve?

Both of these are both healthy, and it's good to think about, but the last one, in my opinion, is the most important and is what I've based what I am speaking about this morning off of, and it is this question.

Who did I become?

As you think about that, it'd be interesting what goes through your mind. Who did you become? This is a question of character. This is what the character is left after you take away everything you experience, everything you have accomplished. What you have left is who you've become.

We have somewhat of a distorted view of character. Character is actually a little difficult to sum up in one word or a very short stance. What is character? And I'm going to read you an article that I think has been helpful to me to understand my distortion of or my incorrect understanding of the word character. This article is written by a man by the name of Brent McKay, and he has a podcast and a website, and I found this on his website, called The Art of Manliness.

This is an article on character. I'm just going to quickly read it here for you. Character, like honor, is a word we take for granted and probably have an affinity for but likely struggle to define and articulate. It is a word most men desire to have ascribed to them, yet the standards for its attainment remain rather vague in our modern age. It is certainly not a word that is used as much as it once was. Cultural historian Warren Suzman researched the rise and fall of the concept of character, tracing its prevalence in literature and self-improvement manuals and guides popular in different eras. What he found is that the use of the term character began in the 17th century and peaked in the 19th century.

Suzman writes that embodied a culture of character during the let me back up on that. That's not correct. I'll just move on. During the 1800s, character was a key word in the vocabulary of Englishmen and Americans, and men were spoken of as having strong or weak character or good or bad character, a great deal of character or no character at all. Young people were admonished to cultivate real character, high character, and noble character, and told that character was the most priceless thing they could ever attain. Starting at the beginning of the 20th century, however, Suzman found that the idea of character began to be replaced by that of personality.

But character and personality are two very different things. As a society shifted from producing to consuming, ideas of what constituted the self began to transform. The rise of psychology, the introduction of mass-produced consumer goods, the expansion of leisure time offered people new ways of forming their identity and presenting it to the world.

In place of defining themselves through the cultivation of virtue, people began to express themselves through hobbies, dress, and material possessions. Suzman observed this shift through the changing content of self-improvement manuals, which went from emphasizing moral imperatives to work and work to personal fulfillment. The vision of self-sacrifice began to yield to that of self-realization. While the advice manuals of the 19th century and some of the early 20th as well emphasized what a man really was and did, the new advice manuals concentrated on what others thought he was and did. In a culture of character, good conduct was thought to spring from a noble heart and mind. With this shift, perception trumped inner intent. Readers were taught how to be charming, control their voice, and make a good impression.

A great example of this is Dale Carnegie's book, How to Win and Influence People, from 1936. It focused on how to get people to like you and how to get others to perceive you well versus trying to improve your actual inner moral compass.

When I read that, I remembered a book I have on my shelf. I don't know if you've ever read this book. It is a book I haven't read, but I did buy, and I've sort of hesitated to read it because I've been unsure of it. And so after I read that, I started looking at the book a little bit and trying to see if what he says rings true.

So the book is this is the special anniversary edition. It's been printed for 80 years and is more than 15 million copies sold. It says, "The only book you need to lead you to success."

So I opened it up, and right inside, before the first chapter, there had this section called Nine Suggestions: How to Get the Most Out of This Book. I'm just going to read you the first one. If you wish to get the most out of this book, there's one indispensable requirement, one essential, infinitely more important than any rule or technique. Unless you have this one fundamental rescue, a thousand rules on how to study will avail little.

What is this magic? And I cannot speak today. What is this magic requirement? Just this, a deep, driving desire to learn, a vigorous determination to increase your ability to deal with people. How do you develop such a nerd? By constantly reminding yourself how important these principles are to you. Picture to yourself how their mastery will aid you in leading a richer, fuller, happier, more fulfilled life.

Listen to this. Say to yourself over and over again, "My popularity, my happiness, and sense of worth depend to no small extent upon my skill in dealing with other people."

This, I think, is a very, very good example of what the article is speaking of.

And what it is is the focus on personality and perception has created a people with technique but of no moral character and depth. The reason I know this and I believe this is because one of the most humbling things, if I look over the past years of my life, is coming face to face with this.

When I came up against, with the help of some people helping me see the truth, is the realization that my perception or the person that I was portraying to the world far outdistanced the character of who I was.

And that made me sad because so much of my life has been cultivating that perception of what people think of me and how people think of me at the cost of developing actual character.

I don't want you to totally disregard technique. It has its place. My approach to technique this morning is going to be a lot because of my own tendency. I like technique. I can talk technique and strategy a lot. If you would look at the books on my shelf that I've read, it's somewhat embarrassing how much of them are in the self-help genre of how to do these technique-based books.

But for me, and I think it's going to be I don't know. I'm not saying I'm never going to read this book, but it's going to be a lot it's going to be a while before I read this book because until my character is in place, I will not be able to handle and be able to weed out the improper techniques and the push of this book. If you've read this book and you have good things to say about it, I'm not going to judge you at all on that. I haven't read the book. It's just my perception of it.

So when it comes to character, I tried to figure out how would I what's character to me? How can we pin this down a little bit?

Character is the values and the virtues at the very core of who you are that govern what you do and why you do it.

I want you to think about character as your operating system. If you have a computer or any kind of electronic device, they have the operating system. It's the brain. It's what controls it. And I believe that's what character is. It's that thing at the center of who we are that controls us. And that character can be good, but it also can be bad. The Bible often refers to this character as our heart. It's our inner man. It's what is inside of us.

Character is not a technique. Rather, it is a state of being. And what do I mean by that? It describes how someone or something is at a given time is at a given time rather than an action that they are performing.

I think we would all agree that there are good characters and bad characters. And in order for us to answer this question of who have we become, we have to know what character is, what good character is. We need something to aim towards, something to measure ourselves against, to come to that conclusion of who are we and who have we become.

I want to start by doing this by going back to the very beginning, back to the original design. And I want you to turn in your Bibles to Genesis 1:26.

I'm going to read 26 through 28. "Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.' So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him male and female." He created them. "Then God blessed them, and God said, 'Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.'" So when God created us, when he created mankind, it says man was created in God's image and also in his likeness.

These words have similar meanings. Image has the idea of an image or a likeness of, and the likeness has the idea of resemblance or similitude. When God created man, when Adam was created, he was created to resemble God. And I often think of this thing as man resembling God as more of like more of like in an image of a in a picture. And while I'm not here to argue that, does God look like me? I don't know.

Balding? Probably not. And so I'm not going to go there. But I believe that this resemblance, this likeness that God built into man when he created was not necessarily a look of how we look, but it was God created Adam with his own character, with built-in values and virtues of himself. That's how Adam resembled God.

So then we have the fall of man. When sin entered the world, the virus of sin invades this operating system. Man was controlled by God's character. It's who he was, what governed him. And then sin entered, and this virus overtook and corrupted the system.

And because of that, man was expelled from the garden. That relationship with God was broken because of that corruption, because man no longer resembled God in the character, in the person of who he was, that state of being.

When man fell, the instant that man fell, God knew with foresight. He knew what was going to happen, and he had a plan that immediately started the minute that man fell. And it was the plan of redemption, and it was launched immediately.

This plan of redemption was to restore his character and his likeness back into man and with that, back into relationship with him. The entire Old Testament was part of this process, this redemptive process. If we look back at the Old Testament, the law and the prophets and all that, it was all steps in this bringing back this awareness or bringing back this or starting the process of bringing back his character to man.

Paul says in Romans that the law brought awareness, brought in awareness of sin. It was a standard to man to measure against, to show us man's corruptness. While the Old Testament law was effective in and of its, within its purpose, it also had an expiration date. Or maybe I think a more accurate way to say it was probably there was a date of completion. And as we on this side of the New Covenant, we can look back on that and reflect back on that. But through the Old Testament, God was always setting the stage. He was always setting the stage.

The people, there was people throughout the Old Testament. And what did God say about them? He said, "They have a heart after me." And there was something different about those people. They were governed by something above just the law.

In Jeremiah 31:31, this is a passage in the Old Testament where the prophet Jeremiah is pointing forward. He's setting the anticipation for this New Covenant. It says in verse 31, "Behold, the days are coming," says the Lord, "that when I will make a New Covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, the land of Egypt, my covenant, which they broke, though I was a husband to them," says the Lord. "But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days," says the Lord. "I will put my law in their minds and will write it on their hearts and will be their God, and they shall be my people.

No more shall they shall every man teach his neighbor and every man his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,' for they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest," says the Lord, "for I will forgive their iniquities and their sins I will remember no more."

I want to take I want us to take notice of the two parts of this redemption, this plan of redemption that God put in place.

There is salvation from sin. "I will forgive their iniquity and their sin I will remember no more." That's the first part. The second part is, "I will write my law in their minds and in their hearts."

This New Covenant, this plan of redemption, was not just salvation from sin but also the restoration of man back into the image and the likeness of God.

Modern Christianity largely ignores that second part. It's all about the forgiveness of sins.

But there's very little said about the restoration of God's character into man. And that's a tragedy because as thankful as I am for the forgiveness of sin, the hope of the restoration of me back into the character of God excites me.

They are both equally important. And in fact, I'd argue that they cannot exist apart from each other. It is impossible to be saved without a change of character. Likewise, it is impossible to have character without salvation.

Jesus came to earth to die as the ultimate sacrifice for sin. But just as importantly, he also came to exemplify what it looks like for man to resemble God.

So I want to ask you, do you believe that it is possible for you and for me to resemble God?

Like I said, I find that thought exhilarating. And there's also a little bit of a little bit of terror there as well. Awesomeness. It's a little daunting. It feels like the bar is way up here. But I believe it is possible. In fact, I believe we have proof that it is possible. If you would turn to Acts 11:26, that is talking about the Christians at Antioch. And what did they say? It says, "And the disciples were first called Christians at Antioch." This was actually a derogatory term.

And it's made up of two Greek words. The first one part is

Christos, which means anointed one, and

Tian, which means little. Oops.

The early Christians exemplified the characteristics of Jesus so much that the people around them called them little anointed one. I can't think of a higher compliment as Christians than for someone to look at us and say, "I see a little Jesus."

That's inspiring to me. And we have this same opportunity to be little anointed ones. The question remains, how do we get there? What does the law in our hearts look like? I want to talk about character some more.

And I remind you, character is the values and the virtues at the very core of who you are that govern what you do and why you do it. Character is our operating system. It is what governs us. It is my belief that when the Bible talks about Christ in us or being our bodies, us being host to his spirit and to him, I believe that is referring to the characteristics of Christ in us.

It's not some mystical spirit thing that is sort of hard to defend, like, "Is he in there? Is he not?" I think it is something very tangible that we can get our hands on and that we can actually see and experience by others, by us, but also by others.

To have the spirit of God is to exemplify his character, that there's something inside that is controlling and is governing us. We're studying right now. We're studying the Sermon on the Mount. And I believe that is a study of character. This whole thing, Jesus is starting he is starting this process of turning their understanding from a law of just doing what I'm supposed to do to something that is inside of you. It's this character of Christ that is at the core of who you are, and it's what governs you. So you don't commit adultery just because it says not to, but you don't commit adultery because it's the change in your hearts, the character that is inside of you.

Same thing as far as oaths. You don't have to swear an oath because in the end, swearing an oath is actually admitting that you lack character, is appealing to the character of something higher than you to take the place of the lack of what you have. But as Christians, if we have the character of Christ in us, what we say is what we mean.

To help us get our hands on this a little bit, I want to look at Galatians 5:16-26.

Paul begins this chapter, ironically, of speaking about liberty.

I'm going to read you a quote by a man, a French judge, if I understand correctly. I'm going to try to pronounce his name. Montesquieu. I think that's how you Montesquieu. Montesquieu. Thank you. This is what he said. "There is no freedom outside of character.

Liberty is not the freedom to do just as we please. Liberty is the ability to do as we ought."

I want you to sort of have that in your mind as we read out down through these verses here in Galatians, starting in verse 16.

"I say then, walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh. And these are contrary to one another so that you do not do the things that you wish. But if you are led by the Spirit, you're not under the law.

Now, the works of the flesh are evidence." Here's some tangible things. This is the corruption, which are adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contention, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like, of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in the times past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Now, the contrast. "But the fruit of the Spirit, the evidence or the proof, or as I like to think of it, the character of Christ is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such, there is no law. And those who are Christ, having crucified the flesh with his passions and desires, if we live in Christ, if we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. Let us not be conceited, provoking one another, and envying one another."

So now I want to go back a little bit to the beginning of the message and look at this question of who have I become against this list of the characteristics of Christ?

And I want us to ask ourselves the question, who are we?

After all we take away, everything we've experienced and everything we've done, what is left of us as who we are?

Is it love? Is it joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control? I want to end today by looking forward. This time of year is also the beginning of another. It's a time of resolution, of new beginnings.

Most resolutions focus on experiences and accomplishing. I want to challenge you to think of 2025 in the light of the character of Jesus that we looked at. Who will you become in this following year? Who will I become? Choose character. Choose freedom.

Choose liberty. Once again, I want to end with the quote, "There is no freedom outside of character. Liberty is not the freedom to do just as we please. Rather, liberty is the ability to do as we ought." My goal this morning was to create a hunger and a longing in each one of us to pursue the character of Christ, to have a passion, to live up to the name as little anointed ones, and to aspire to resemble God.

God willing, next time I share, I want to look at how do we get this operating system? It's fine and good to have it out there, but how practically, how do we do this? How do we get this character of God a part of who we are, the thing that governs us and motivates everything that we do? Is it something that is bestowed upon us, or is it developed? What is God's part, and what is our part?

How do we promote character personally but also collectively?

And so I'm going to leave you with that. Is there any response to the message?